If I Were Coherent

Today, I imagined leaving my students at the end of my student teaching semester, and I was just overcome with sadness... (I started crying).

I'm such a sop. It's just that in one and a half weeks... I don't know... they're such wonderful people, in the process of learning, growing, becoming--I feel so honored to be able to be around them. They're so brilliant and lovely.


More on this later. I'm going to catch a bus to New York.

I love teaching. Whenever I tell people that I want to be a teacher, they give me a skeptical look. That slight quirk of the eyebrow that speaks the world to me. "So, it's like... your calling?" they ask me. They cannot conceive of it any other way. I suppose they almost can't believe that it can be pleasurable for me.

Whatever. I love it. I hate calling it my "calling", because seriously? That sounds so finger-in-the-throat vomitous. I like to see it as knowing what I want in life and going for it. Teachers don't make much money, but I think I'd rather wake up each day sooooo freaking excited to go to work than having a bunch of money I made as a robotic wall-street vampire with no real life or passion.

Hmm, I'm getting a little worked up here. Maybe a little self-righteous?

The point is: I'm soooo happy. I love working with students. I LOVE IT!

Right now I'm teaching two ninth grade English classes (15 year olds) and we're about to go into Macbeth. I'm currently leading a mini-unit on Sonnets. One of the hardest things I'm finding right now is that I don't know how to ratchet down the what I want to teach them. I don't mean "dumbing down" the curriculum, but like--they're 15! I keep assuming/expecting them to be at the level of college level students. Which is like so unfair to them! Lesson learned: Don't assume they know how to do things even if they seem totally competent 9th graders.

Seriously though, I love these kids! I just gotta remember what it was like when I was 15.

Oh, I remember now. I loved lit but was pretty bad at putting together a cohesive/sophisticated argument. Hmmm---something to keep in mind I guess.

Okay, it's bed time now. (9.41 pm) Isn't that funny? I sleep earlier than most children.

So today, I found out that Yoga HURTS. Not the contortiony type of hurting--(though that definitely exists) but the muscle burning, I just lifted 10 pounds kind of hurt.

And baby, I feel hella good.

This semester, I try my hand at being a real teacher in a real school with real students and real work...

Even though I've been missing in action for the better part of two years, I've decided that this is a good opportunity to reflect on my student teaching daily (hopefully). Of course, schools and students will be anonymous, and some entries will be friendslocked for privacy.

EEEE. I'm excited. Wish me luck.

From forth the kennel of thy womb hath crept
A hell-hound that doth hunt us all to death:
That dog that had his teeth before his eyes,
To worry lambs and lap their gentle blood;
That foul defacer of God's handiwork,
That reigns in galled eyes of weeping souls;
That excellent grand tyrant of the earth
Thy womb let loose to chase us to our graves.
O upright, just, and true-disposing God,
How do I thank thee that this charnel cur
Preys on the issue of his mother's body,
And makes her pewfellow with others' moan.

---

If you want to insult someone whose son is evil and has killed his brothers...

Every time I think "I should write something for LJ"

I come to this page: and boom: I have no idea what to say. I wonder... is it a phase I'm moving out of? It's not like I have a RL journal to write my thoughts in.

And journals are so useful. How else are our memories recorded for the future selves? What did we live for then?

I guess maybe I feel like I'm waiting right now. I'm waiting for a job. Waiting for student teaching to start. I'm waiting for my life to begin. (A bad way of thinking certainly).

I'm living in the future--I don't have anything to say about my present?

Except this:

This is a nearly impossible question.

Off the top of my head:

Before Night Falls, by Reinaldo Arenas

Thinking about writing an analytical paper that compares Colin Goh's Singapore Dreaming, Lorraine Hansbury's A Raisin in the Sun, and Hisaye Yamamoto's Seventeen Syllables.


For fun.

I'm such an English teacher.

Are you sad? Feeling down? Did your food taste bland, dry, loveless? What's wrong?

--

Let's talk: Let's talk--what's wrong? E-mail me, skype. I've been too long silent in your life.

(Haven't I?)

--

This crazy, tilting world.

--

Words, words, words,
hamlet says.

poor boy

It's strange to be a graduate student at the place you spent four years as an undergraduate.

There is an incongruity between familiar place and absent people. Class of 2010--where are you?

More importantly, does the class of 2010 even exist--or to put it clearly: Does Brown University exist?

That stable construct that exists in my mind (and yours, class of 2010) is, I've realised nothing more than an illusion. It is an anthill--every year a class leaves, and every year a class enters--how then can we say: this is Brown University? How can we, in our minds, hold a shared conception of Brown University?

Is this Brown University the same as my Brown University? Is your Brown my Brown?

--

Enough navel-gazing. I need to get to work. Winter makes me lazy and hungry. Should I constantly worry about a job?

Should I constantly worry about my job?

Should I constantly worry about anything at all?

(no no no no no, no)

And why should I? I will write tonight.