My Literature Class: "Get A Divorce!" Girl

I know why this girl annoys me so much.  I'm pretty sure that at the age of 14, I was her.  I don't think I was her at the age of 18, but what do I know?  I'm not much good at self-awareness, even now, much less then.

She got a 102 on the quiz we had last week, which is annoying, but has not much to do with me.  Except she brings it up in every class.  Now, I got a 97, which is nothing to sneeze at - and I would have had a 102 if I hadn't completely whiffed on two questions that I should have gotten right.  (Reading for comprehension, people.  Is very important.)  But I know that the guy who sits right next to me did not fare so well.  He's a non-traditional student, too, and I constantly admire his self-restraint in this class.  Because if I were him, I might have done something regrettable by now.

It's not just this, and it's not just that she makes up jokes a three-year-old could come up with and then completely brings class to a halt to announce them in a voice that dares you not to give her the admiration for her "wit" that she thinks she deserves.  No, it's not just all that, although, none of that makes me want to love her.  The nail in her coffin is the stuff she blurts out in group discussions.

Now, I am totally a blurter.  I say things without thinking all the time.  It's a huge flaw, and I've been trying to correct it for probably the last twenty years.  I do it a lot less than I once did, but I'm still not great at shutting up when I should.  This girl, however, couples blurting with a complete lack of awareness of her surroundings and the other people within them.

Here are some of the gems from the last couple of weeks of classes:

• To address another student's legitimate concerns about what to study:  "Drink a Red Bull!"  I'm pretty sure she lives on a diet of these, because all this annoying "bubbliness" (her word, not mine) has to come from a chemical place.  It cannot be naturally acquired.
• In reference to a piece written by a Chinese immigrant:  "Just because he's from quote-unquote CHINA..."  (I actually have no idea what she said after that, because I'm pretty sure my head exploded.)
• With regards to a discussion on whether or not symbols about windows would have a different meaning to someone who lived in a shantytown:  "Let's don't talk about shantytowns.  That depresses me."  I'm actually a little impressed she has any idea what a shantytown is.

My very favorite thing she has said occurred yesterday.  We were talking about a piece that all the young'uns seem to think is about the death of dreams, but I think is about retaining your own culture and your own sense of self, and she dropped this one:

"Well, everybody knows that as you get older, your soul dies."

Spike said that I should have said "Well, it's a good thing I created all those horcruxes, then."  Which would have been awesome.  Except that I never think of that shit right in the middle of the moment.  I'm dying inside, not because I'm old, but because I totally wish I had thought of that.

What I did say:  "It's good to know that my soul is dead.  That explains why it's cold in here."

She went on to say that the reason she says that is because her daddy told her that she should always say exactly what she thinks when she thinks it and keep her "bubbliness" because as you get older, your soul dies and you're not bubbly anymore.  The error in this, of course, is that your soul doesn't die - you just learn manners.  I think her daddy is doing her a huge disservice by encouraging her to believe she's a unique snowflake who doesn't need to learn manners, but I get great satisfaction from the idea that eventually she'll figure it out.

So far, she has not persuaded me from my opinion that people under the age of 25 should just shut up and listen.  In fact, this particular opinion is getting cemented in a beautiful gazebo in my mind, with a great stone monolith proclaiming this opinion as fact.  I'm even mentally landscaping it with beautiful flowers and stately ivy curling around the stone monolith.  It will forever be an awesome monument to life experience.

My Literature Class: The Mumbler

Oh, where to start.

I mentioned in my last post not involving Mumford and Sons that there is an idiot girl in my literature class (the "Get a divorce!" girl).

She's getting better and better.

And by "better and better" I actually mean "worse and worse."

The good news is, other people are starting to talk in my English class, so I'm staying quieter.  Yay!  The bad news is, the other people who are talking are this girl.  And her buddy, the eighteen-year-old boy sitting next to her (the mumbler from the earlier post).

So, let's actually talk about The Mumbler first, because I can confine my comments to just two things he has said recently that were wildly misinformed and/or exemplary of any jerkish qualities he may possess.  Plus, GAD Girl deserves her own post.

Last week, we somehow ended up talking about the Border Fence that we have here between our state and Mexico.  He believes deep in his teenage soul that this fence will work.  I did not disabuse him of this, but then he uttered the words:

"Well, it worked in Korea."

Now, I am not very good at schooling my features into an emotionless mask when people utter idiocy of this kind.  I'm pretty sure I looked really, really shocked at the time.  I managed to get out "No!  Nonononono..." before the professor changed the subject.

There are just so many things wrong with that statement that it's so hard to pick just one.  I think I might just let it lie and let you all think over just the basic difference between a demilitarized zone and a fence that just stands there, not doing much.  You can ponder all the situational differences and the political differences and the consequences of each and all that on your own.

Yesterday, he told me I was wrong.  Just flat-out wrong.

I can handle being wrong.  I don't like it (who does?), but I can handle it.  However, this is literary criticism - it's a lot harder to be wrong when you're giving opinions about something you read.  Even if you don't agree, it's not necessarily that the other person is wrong, it's just that you don't agree.  I'm really great at saying "I see your point, but I don't agree" or something else that doesn't completely discount the other person.  Especially if the other person is older than me.

I have shifted from worrying about the future of the nation to worrying about what my household is going to be like when my kids are teenagers.  Is this what we're all like as teenagers?  This is horrible.

My Latest Musical Obsession: Mumford and Sons

Now, you may think that I'm late to the Mumford and Sons party.  Which is true.  But I would like you to know two salient facts with regards to this:

1.  I am not a hipster.  I don't mind if I'm not the first person to hear about a band.  It bothers me not in the slightest, especially when the band in question gives me hours and hours of happiness as Mumford and Sons has done for me over the past week.  Don't care if I didn't hear about them first.  I've heard about them now, and I am in love.

2.  I actually did hear about Mumford and Sons last year.  I just didn't get their album at that time.  So there.

I have literally had this album on repeat for a solid week.  If I'm listening to music, I'm listening to this album.  (Which is called Sigh No More, in case you're interested.)  Even more impressive, I'm not listening to it on shuffle - I'm listening to it exactly the way it was designed, because it seems like it tells a story to me.  I love that, which is definitely a factor in my love for Bruce Springsteen (which is a long and storied adoration - Springsteen concerts are akin to religious experiences for me, and yes, I have been to more than one.  And even more than one in a given week.  So.)

The best way to describe Mumford and Sons is a sort of awesome bluegrass/indie-folk thing that has this great driving beat, which is accomplished by the lead singer, who used to be the drummer for somebody else, and now works a bass drum-tambourine thing with his foot while playing the guitar and singing.  The lyrics to their songs are sort of philosophical and fantastic in this regard as well, because there is just something about their sound that clicks with me, so the lyrics are pretty much an added bonus.  They could be singing about socks, and I would still listen to it obsessively.

Given my earlier post about CeeLo Green, you may have noticed that my musical tastes vary wildly.  This is true.  It comes from my background as a musician myself.  I can appreciate perfect musical moments whenever and wherever I hear them, so I listen to everything.  On this album, there are countless perfect musical moments.  Ones where I still get goosebumps and my throat gets tight because it's just so right.  And that's after listening to the album approximately 100 times in a row.

To prove my point, here's a video of their song "The Cave," which is one of my favorite songs on this album.

Buy this album.  BUY IT NOW.  I get absolutely nothing from telling you this, except the knowledge that if other people buy this album, the world automatically becomes a better place.

My Literature Class

I tried to title this post "My Lit Class" but it made me feel icky, so I got all formal with it.

We're all in luck!  My Algebra teacher went on vacation, so class was cancelled for today and I have time before Government to write.

I decided to take my Intro to Literature class from the same professor I took my quickie English Comp class from over the Summer.  My reasoning was thus: I got an A in that class, and once I got to know her a bit on e-mail, I liked her.  Also, I figured that she couldn't make me read "Battle Royal" again.

I was wrong.

Fortunately, I was only wrong about "Battle Royal."  She's still a really nice lady - a former hippie and Freedom Rider, harkening back to my days at the Liberal Arts Academy.  She likes to encourage discussion, which is where I become the asshole in the class, because I can't stand the silence.  She asks a leading question and everybody just sits there and stares at her, so I end up giving my asshole opinion just to make the silence stop.  So I come off as a know-it-all, and probably a brown-noser because everybody knows I had her for my Summer class.

She likes to show us movies.  The problem is, our tastes in movies, mine and hers, are completely divergent.

On the first day of class, she showed us a clip from Greystoke: the Legend of Tarzan.

Did you know that Tarzan was played by Christopher Lambert of Highlander fame?  Or that Jane was played by Andie MacDowell?  And Jane's father was Ian Holm? 

No, you probably don't.  And nor should you.  Because it was a terrible movie.

A few classes later, she showed us a video a friend of hers had compiled, set to Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire."  She made absolutely no comment before showing us the video, so I was completely unprepared for the film clips of Saipan, the naked children of Nagasaki, and the Chinese Army shooting a guy in the head, for reals, at the end of the video.  I held it together through everything, right up until they shot the guy in the head.  And then I started to cry.  In public.  If you're reading this, I probably don't have to tell you how much I fucking hate to cry in public.

Today, she showed us clips from The Lion King to illustrate the use of symbolism.  It was pedestrian, but it completely blew the fragile little minds of the teenagers in my class.  Which brings me to: the teenagers in my class.

On the second class day, we discussed "The Hand" by Sidonie-Gabrielle Collette.  It's a story about a newly-married woman who, after a whirlwind courtship and two weeks of marriage, starts a weird obsession with her husband's hand one night in bed.  She stares at it for hours and finally works herself up into a big old hysteria about how ugly her man's hand is, and how she's going to have to just resign herself to a sad, sad life full of pretense and nothingness because of his damn hand and her stupid feelings about it.  It is, of course, symbolic and a whole bunch of other things, but one of the idiot teenagers in my class burst out with "If she hates him so much, she should get a divorce!"

There are many, many things wrong with this statement.  Here are a few, in no particular order:

• This story was written around 1924.  You couldn't just "get a divorce."
• It's not about getting a divorce, idiot.
• Seriously, the girl in the story had been married for two weeks.  Is that how people deal with things now?  You think his hands are ugly so you get a divorce?  Is that how it goes?  I guess being married for almost thirteen years should be an achievement worth a fucking medal, then, because I'm fairly sure that my husband and I have both been irritated with each other countless times in our marriage.  And if annoyance = divorce, we should be lauded by the goddamn President for our personal committment.

Today, for some reason known only to herself and maybe God, the professor decided to ask if anyone had seen the Republican debates.  I had not, so for once, I could keep my asshole mouth shut.  There was a girl in class who clearly felt strongly about the issues in the debate, and she mentioned how upset she was when the audience applauded Rick Perry for his record of 234 executions while in office.  Some other idiot teenager (a boy this time), started muttering under his breath that they deserved it, they were murderers, etc., etc.  First off, if you don't have the balls to actually speak up and join the discussion, shut the fuck up.  Secondly, if you are under the age of 25 (and I'm being real generous there), your opinion is stupid, so shut the fuck up.

Yep.  I said it.  If you're younger than 25, you probably have not lived enough to have a credible opinion.  There are, of course, exceptions to this rule - there are very mature, considered people under the age of 25, whose opinions are worth something.  It's just that there are none of those people in my class.  Or none that speak up.  Why is it that only the idiots speak up? 

And since I've already admitted that I give my opinion every time a hush falls in there, what does that make me?

Your Student Activity Fees At Work, Pt. 2

On the first week of school, there were posters everywhere advertising that our dear friends in the Student Life Center (the ones who brought us the Jam or whatever that was in the Spring semester) were kicking off the Fall semester with a viewing of Kung Fu Panda 2.

You may be thinking what I was thinking when I saw these posters.

Why Kung Fu Panda 2?  Why not something age-appropriate?  Oh, dear God, what if that is age-appropriate?

If you'd seen the posters yourself, you might also have thought:

Why are they only showing it at two campuses?  Could they only afford two DVDs?  Who goes to these things?  Do their moms not allow them to watch R-rated films?  Why the hell are they serving ice cream?

Sometimes, just walking on campus is an exercise in deductive reasoning.

The Long National Nightmare Is Over

Well, it was long by my standards.  Three entire weeks of finding textbooks for extremely clueless people who were getting more and more desperate (and more and more rude) as the days went on.

Friday was my last day at the textbook store.  I didn't get asked to stay permanently, and I can't help being really, really glad about that.  (Especially in light of the extremely stupid sunburn I'm sporting after a day at the beach yesterday.  The spray-on sunscreen failed me, but only partially.  So I have a blotchy sunburn in some places, and I also look like I'm constantly wearing one of those stupid shrug things on my shoulders - only in a lovely, bright maroon color.  I have no idea how this happened.  But I do know this: if I had to go to work this week with this sunburn, it would sap all of my remaining will to live, and I would be a lifeless husk.)

Here are some things I witnessed at the textbook store.  I promise I am not making even one of them up.

• A teenager with a really amazing mullet, who gave his email address as something like darkknightoflove@blahblah.com, and who paid for his textbooks out of his Twilight: Eclipse wallet.
• Hordes of incredibly ill-prepared people who came in and basically asked "Do you have that one book by that one guy for that one class?"  I would ask them (reasonably, I think): "Which class?" at which point they would get an incredibly annoyed look on their face and say "I don't know!  Isn't that what you're here for?"
• A variation on that: "I'm looking for the orange Algebra book."  I would then pull the only orange Algebra book on the shelves.  "No, not that orange Algebra book."
• One of my favorites: a girl came in wearing shorts that had to be six inches from waistline to hem, a huge t-shirt that hung over one shoulder, exposing bathing suit straps, platform sandals and her hair in a side ponytail that I had perfected in the fourth grade.  She was holding an Anatomy and Physiology lab manual and said "I want to compare this to the one you have on the shelf and see if they're the same.  They should be the same, right?  What's the difference?"  We went to the shelf with the current A&P lab manuals to find one labeled "CAT."  Hers said "FETAL PIG."  She said "That shouldn't matter, right?"
• I was reshelving books when a girl came up to me and said "I can't find the Poli-Sci section."  I said "No problem, it's labeled as POSI on the sign at the end of the aisle."  I then glanced up to realize that the reason she can't see the neon green sign is because she refuses to take off her giant, sparkly Snooki sunglasses.  I took her over to the section and she waved her hand at me and said "You can go now."

You think the world is fucked now?  Wait till these idiots take over.

Fall Semester, Tightly Packed For My Inconvenience

When I signed up for the Fall semester, I made sure my classes were in a morning block on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so as to maybe make myself more employable.  The "employable" part didn't actually happen, really, apart from this temp job at the textbook store, so now I'm stuck with two really intense mornings per week.

There are downsides to this, obviously.

• I have ten minutes between classes.  This works out fine between the first two, because they're down the hall from each other.  It's the time between the second and third classes that makes it tough - they're in different buildings.  And the professor for the third class will totally lock you out if you're consistently late.  So I haul ass between Algebra and Government like it's my job.
• There is no time between classes for me to write this blog, so I have to do it when I should be doing other things, like homework.  So, upside and downside.  I can't write about things as they happen, but I can totally write about things as a distraction from doing actual work.
• There was a third negative, but I can't remember it right now.

An interesting thing happened to me in my Government class yesterday, though.  The professor asked for volunteers to take notes for a hearing-impaired student we have in class named Jason.  Jason actually has a team of interpreters so that he can do regular college classes with everybody else.  The interpreters are almost hypnotic.  I watch them sometimes while the professor is talking.  I especially like their facial expressions while they're signing.  They work on a tag-team sort of deal.  It seems like they will do their interpreting for awhile, until their hands get tired, and then they tag out and are replaced with the backup, who signs until their hands are tired, and then rotate again.  It's a pretty cool system, especially as it leaves interpreters with only half-tired hands at the end of the class.

So, the professor asked for volunteers to take notes for Jason.  Nobody raised their hands.  Then she said "They'll pay you!"  It turns out that CCC will pay $100 to you at the end of the semester if you agree to take good notes for your hearing-impaired classmate.  I probably don't have to tell you, I jumped all over that shit.  I take strong notes with good handwriting, and I was already going to have to take the damn notes, so why not get paid to share?  (Here's the part where I expose my lack of money-making sense: I would have done it for free, because I was already taking the notes - it's not like I was doing anything extra.  But yes, CCC, I will take your hundred dollars.  Good day to you, sir!)

So, anyway, the packed schedule is indeed packed.  It's a high-intensity college morning twice a week.  It's almost like high school - that part where you're weaving through the throngs of people, trying to get to class before the bell rings.  Only we don't have bells.  We just have the walk of shame that comes if you're late.