Just behind on posts.
Things this week:

• Midterms
• Articles/interviews
• Catching up on studying/homework
• Work (I grade papers! Oh man do I have stories about being a T.A. in high school. I am an awful employee. Was, I mean. In high school. NOT NOW. Google, shut up about me!)
• Catching up on/re-doing sleep cycle
• Making the trek to the DMV for my written exam
• Rethinking the course of my life

Updates I should make:

• The Malibu runs like a wagon, does this bizarre pulsating revving noise while idle, and is covered in dings and nail polish in improbable places. It will be fixed up and sold to someone who is not me.
• I am really uncomfortable putting too much online right now. This is all too googleable and I hate doing this shovelware blogging but there ain't much I can say without offering a caveat or ten: what I have to say isn't all that interesting or non-libelous. I have really high standards of what I let the world read from me and it isn't this.
• Stuff in the works: the Renaissance Pleasure Faire (awesome nerdy bawdy Sunday), movies I've seen recently on DVD (and my soon-to-be Netflix experience!), stuff I'm doing with my awful draft I completed for 2008's NaNoWriMo (namely, quantifying it in order to separate myself enough to deal with it without having to actually read it), another Series of Transportive Events post, the arrival of my Coraline Nike Dunks in the mail earlier this week (photos to come!! I just need my camera) and several other things I want to roll in (retroactive posts are icky, but I may do them for the sake of organization. Besides, it would be on the timeline -- I went to the Ren Faire on Sunday, for instance, and the Dunks came in Tuesday.)

Keep an eye out for more from the hypnic jerk.
That is all.

Photo credit: shc32 on Flickr via Creative Commons

The other day in my intro Italian class, my professor stopped her lecture and chastised the class for talking too much. I bristled despite myself, remembering my high school days not-too-fondly. I had to control that little nag of annoyance of my classmates and teachers -- it's what caused me to stop attending classes in high school and (consequently) put me here in the first place. What surprised me, though, is that I have yet to escape this stupid dynamic: kids act a little badly, teacher punishes kids, kids feel rebellious, teacher enforces more punishment, kids feel like crap and act more rudely.

It's true that there was a noticeable murmur on one side of the classroom whenever my professor drifted to the other side to answer a question or address someone directly, and she did tell people to quiet down. But the ensuing lecture about keeping our mouths shut while the professor was speaking seemed over the top to me. At several points she mentioned incredulously that she was not teaching kindergarten. If this is so, why were we being lectured about this at all? Wouldn't a polite reminder of respect suffice? Most of us at community college are technically adults by now, and I can't help but feel that we hardly act and are treated as such.

I have to wonder sometimes -- had I not screwed up so badly in high school, would I be in a four-year university right now? And would a professor of a four-year university harp on things like loudness and attendance?

I think the concepts of being an adult at four-years and community colleges are very, very different. At the CC level, most people are commuting and working and raising families or living at home and working toward a discernible goal. At higher-level schools dorms evoke a kind of childishness and don't really encourage work or family obligations. Yet I get the impression that rude conversations and ensuing diatribes wouldn't be tolerated at a four-year school. Why is it a norm here?

Also: SIIIGH ATTENDANCE. It enrages me that this is tied to grades at the CC level. If I can get my work done and the tests aced but I still miss a couple of classes, then I shouldn't be docked for a personal choice (or illness, in my case). I know that if I miss too much class I will fail. Things like attendance and self-control (texting? are you serious?) should be a personal responsibility for alleged adults. Professors shouldn't have to enforce this stuff.