new lows

i am sitting on a towel on the floor of my bathroom, a pile of folders and papers and books beside me, trying to keep warm with a laptop in my lap and sitting as close as i can to the only heater in the entire apartment, a Thermodor built into the wall (i suspect my current use for it fails to meet its intended purpose – my guess being to eliminate bathroom odors? i dunno, that's based solely on the name and what i've heard about ppl lighting matches after taking shits: i was told the flame "burns the bad air" so you can't smell it any more, but i always thought that didn't make sense and was bad household science. anyway...)

i'm 2.5 weeks away from a blissful retreat to my home state, and only a few grad school projects away from the end of this forsaken semester, but this lump of (forgive me) shit before me is too huge to surmount, it seems. i am teetering on incompletes for 2 of the 3 grad classes and it is so fucking cold in my apartment right now, i can't get anything done. it's either crawl into bed, or sit on the floor of the bathroom next to the heater. and so it goes...

i'm fighting nausea and panic and utter depression and lack of excitement, and all from the floor 2 feet away from a fucking toilet. thank cheeses i'm the only one who uses it and i just cleaned it the other day, or this would be a really long miserable night indeed.

to the future!
-stephan!e

sometimes i think i'm too fuckin sensitive for my own good. i take things so personally sometimes that i can't focus on anything else. i read so much into little in/actions, and it takes a lot of persuasion and patience to coax me out of my dark moods. i think the ppl i love most are the ones who understand that, and who are able to rescue me from myself, but i worry that even those ppl will eventually tire of doing so; it must be near impossible to be with me, to be around me.

i have this lingering fear that i will eventually drive all the ppl in my life away from me. i act in ways sometimes that makes me think that i must desire to be alone, to hurt myself and others, and i act in ways sometimes with a sick knowing that's what i'm doing.

i wish i could just say what i want, what is wrong, be able to place my frustration, my anger, my fear, and my sadness, rather than waiting foolishly for someone else to rescue me and figure it out. i don't like expecting others to know me and having to be so disappointed. (but i think the trouble is that despite my moods and my behaviors, i really, desperately, foolishly, need and want someone to depend on, b/c i want to be able to trust in others and the world, and not feel so alone and adrift.)

i wish i could just get over it and move on and ugh, i don't know why i'm writing this any more.

rant!

i just have to blow some steam before it explodes me. pardon the venting.

whoever designed the university intern program for credentialing new teachers needs a fucking shoe up their ass. it is the most fucking miserable experience for the teacher candidates, and should not be considered anything less than a disservice to their students and the educational system immediately surrounding them, as they are completely deprived of any resources or support and drained and stretched to the point of being completely ineffective and incoherent. furthermore, it turns off new teachers to wanting to seriously remain in the educational system, or to give them the opportunity to try new and exciting pedagogies, which runs counter to what we should be encouraging in our educational system, b/c if the new teachers aren't going to be a source of innovation and exploration, who is?

there is absolutely no practicality or reason to this system. and it makes for some really fucking poor practice. i'm not even talking revolutionary pedagogy here, i'm just talking basic standards-based ordinary teaching. take this: my supervisor is supposed to get 4 formal observations done in the semester. i met with her to determine what days she would come in. but, b/c of surprise teacher training academies, district meetings, science lab trainings, etc. i had to cancel some observations, and she cancelled some observations, and now we're down to the last 3 weeks of the semester and she's threatening to give me an incomplete. she wants to come in tomorrow, a day i had planned as a test day, to observe me teach a lesson. what the fuck am i going to teach them, it doesn't even fit well into the calendar and the flow of the units.

so dig: this week is weird, b/c it's thanksgiving, and so monday is a full day, and tuesday and wednesday are half days. i need more than half a period to give a unit test, or to introduce a new topic, so i was going to do it like this: monday was going to be review, tuesday tests, wednesday a party/intro to new unit day. but, monday was taken out b/c of an emergency district meeting, so things got pushed back. tuesday became a review day (which sucked b/c i had to take two half periods to do a thorough review) and wednesday was going to be two periods of testing. but, b/c of my fucking supervisor and her demand that i teach a lesson, i'm now struggling to figure out what to do. i told my kids they were going to get a test tomorrow, so i can't just be like "haha, just kidding..." b/c then they would lose trust and never take me seriously again, esp. after all the emphasis i put on them studying tonight, and bringing their notes tomorrow to turn in for extra credit. so, no matter what, i am still going to give them the test. but, i wonder if squeezing in a lesson is going to be too little time to do either very well. and it doesn't make much sense, to me or the students, to have them test for a period, then come back and immediately start a new unit. it doesn't flow, and it gives them no sense of closure or release. they're not going to feel like things make sense, they're going to act up b/c i'm not giving them time to celebrate completion of a unit (which really, they should be allowed to do) and they're not going to retain anything from my new lesson, b/c their behavior is going to be absolutely bat shit crazy.

fuck shit cunt damn piss ass grunt kick fist.

-stef

Sisyphean punishment

image source

i'm beginning to suspect i've done something to deeply offend the gods.

why else would they have doomed me to such a Sisyphean task? i can think of no better phrase to describe my experiences thus far teaching 6th grade special ed math and science in south central LA: the long days and nights of constant worrying and physical stress, the huge gaps in achievement meant to be overcome in one year, the endless lesson-planning for classes the next day that don't even see full implementation because of my students' eruptive behavior, the false sense of achievement and hope when my students finally understand a concept one day, only to feel extra deflated and dispirited when they come back the next day having forgotten it all again, spending 3 whole weeks just trying to teach the bare basics of math, while the students constantly scream and yell saying it's "baby work" and still get all the problems wrong, giving up my breaks and my lunches and yes even my dinners to meet with students, talk with parents, grade papers and write new worksheets, only to come in the next day and have to do it all again.

HUGE BOULDER + HILL = ETERNITY OF FRUSTRATION.

i am quickly growing to hate my job. i spend the majority of my day waiting for the day to end. when not thinking about that, my thoughts turn to trying to calculate the remaining days before i am completely free of my contract and can walk away. June 2010 just seems like too long to wait...

i'm wondering where my train derailed... i came here with good intentions, to take a teaching job so i could help people and feel like i'm making a difference, to avoid a life in corporate america and a desk job with no sense of purpose, to avoid feeling miserable all day and hating my life and my work and never seeing the sunshine.

i never knew my dream job would actually turn out to be my personal hell.

and this is only week 4. there are 32 more weeks to go. (my students could not tell you what percentage of the year is finished. they could not tell you how many weeks total there were to begin with.*)

welcome to the jungle!
-stef


*there are 36 weeks in the school year (32+4=36). i'm only 11.1% done (4/36=.1111=11.1%)

THE FUCK?!!! (part deux)

i come home from school and begin the tedious process of unpacking all my shit just so i can repack it to move out to L.A. to begin my stint as a teacher.

and what do i need more than anything in the world right now? well, to be back among friends and some hugs, ideally, but i'll settle for some comfort music (the one song i can't get out of my head right now is "tonight, tonight" by the smashing pumpkins, and another S.P. song i don't know the name of but that i know i would recognize it if i could only hear it again, because i was overwhelmed with a feeling of forwardness, of no-looking-back, of immediacy and now, that flooded out the words, all i could hear was the beat and the swell of violins, a tolling bell, as i drove around in the infinite dark and expanse of cornfields in northern illinois, clutching the hand of someone i love, wishing we could drive forever and ever into that blackness and this song would never end and i would never have to let go, never have to say goodbye or even goodnight)

but i come home and plug in my harddrive, and what do i hear? an awful clicking, the whir of a struggling fan trying to bring my computer to life, and then the tinny sound of a clunky alert on my computer, telling me it can't read the disk and to eject it. wow, i want to vomit. this is the same sickening feeling i got in my stomach about a month ago when this happened the first time. and why should i be surprised? of course this would happen, i'm karma's biggest bitch. i want to vomit all over Bill Gates and Steve Jobs' faces right now, for inventing my dependency on technological happiness and for turning my life into invisible data, so easily corruptible and so easily lost. bastards!

i can't even begin to contemplate the scope of what i lost this time. (gag reflex). just about everything of value to me was on that stupid little lunchbox-sized piece of machinery, all of my writing, all of my plans for future writing, drawings, photos of friends and video projects (many still in progress), concert videos, memories of friends, lovers and family, and so many, oh so many good albums i may never be able to recover again. funnily, the only thing of huge value i did manage to save on my laptop was my recently completed senior project. and i don't even care about it, because i have dozens of hand-bound copies lying around my room right now. the materiality of it makes me ill. (gag).

i'm going to go the library now, i guess, to try to find a copy of the Smashing Pumpkins' Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. and then i'm gonna put Billy Corgan on full blast on my half-blown speakers and proceed to drown my sorrows in lemonade and whiskey. and when i sober up again, i'm gonna invest in a typewriter. perhaps i shall become a luddite.

[edit: i go to the library website and find that, of course, both their copies of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness are lost and/or missing. such is my life these days...]

[edit #2: after looking at smashing pumpkins downloads, i realize that the song we were listening to in the car on the ride home was "Disarm."]

with infinite sadness,
stephanie

THE FUCK?!!!

48 hours before senior project is due: i'm sitting at my desk, listening to music and working on my paper. i have 10 documents open at once, maybe 3 applications. i'm pressing F9, which on a mac, lets you zoom out and look at everything at once, so you can find your bearings.

i zoomed out and it wouldn't zoom back.

i heard gears spinning, the clicking of some hardwear trying to find its place, a fan doing its best to keep the system from overheating.

3 hours later and my harddrive would be pronounced dead on arrival. when the guy at the apple store plugged it in to try some diagnostic tests, he said he couldn't even detect a harddrive on there.

now i have a useless piece of empty computer, which will cost close to $2K to recover the data from. and i don't know if my external harddrive got fried in the process too. i'm just hoping i made it away from this with just a small piece of my music collection still intact on that external...

i feel like the Universe's bitch right now. what did i do???!! i keep wondering why my karma is so for shit these days. maybe i hit a squirrel with my car and didn't know, in which case i'd like to formally issue my apology: i'm very sorry, it was nuthin personal, i actually love squirrels very much, if i could, i'd adopt the dead squirrel's family and let them live in my home.

just pleeeeaaaase, stop it with the bad karma!

less than 24 hours to go, and i am in some deep shit.

-stephanie

Colin Powell at Miami University and the culture of materialism

from a pro-peace/ending the occupation in Iraq listserv:

"Colin Powell's second visit to Miami University, bookending the Bush administration, brought to us a message that recalls Indiana Jones: Fortune and Glory.

Though Powell's speech laid out a sports metaphor that on its surface seemed positive, underlying the entire talk was a pervasive message that money rules. By means of setting up an introduction of 9.11, Powell spoke of a materialism, vanity and power. He told the story of how upon retiring, for the second time, he didn't know what to do with himself so he bought a car. This was met with much laughter from the audience. He then told us about how he was considered by Time magazine to be aging gracefully--more laughter. Lastly, he said that when asked what he misses most about being Secretary of State he answers--"My own plane."

This story was filled with kings, dignitaries, red carpets, bands playing for him, "adoring crowds," and so on. These three stories seemed to me to be the most powerful of the night. They were distractions from real issues that he could have addressed while at the same time established the importance of money--buying cars, having planes--and looking good. Fortune and Glory. I imagine some might object to my criticism that Powell was being funny, entertaining, but I think such criticism only makes the point stronger. He distracted people from real stories about what it's like to be a General or Secretary of State, the difficulties, the rewards, the work, the decisions, and narrowed all of his experience down to possessions--the things he got out of it.

Later, when Powell outlined the four major issues he sees the US facing, I could not help remembering the earlier stories. So, when he said that government left us--his "young friends"--with some positives, that countries are on playing fields rather than battlefields, he was less than inspiring. The four games being played, according to Powell are 1) economics--we need to strengthen the economy to bring people out of poverty; 2) energy--we need energy to build up economics; 3) environment--careful use of the energy needed to build the economy; 3) education--better k-12 education in order to build the economy. Why aren't those things exciting? Because they're burdened with greed. Those stories about corvettes, Time and airplanes defined Powell's issues. Everything was about what you can get. He ended his speech by telling a story about how he gets free hot dogs from foreigners. It could have made you cry to hear him tell of the sheer pleasure these foreign hot dog vendors get from simply being in America. And Powell, who was paid how much to speak to his young friends, doesn't give up six bucks to help this person? His speech, however, let's us leave feeling that we too can achieve like he did, we can get things, but mostly we should be happy to be Americans."

- Aaren Yandrich

oh YUCK. now i am extremely glad i didn't go to see this Tuesday night. i had made up my mind to go and help my friends protest against the war, was gonna walk across the bitter desolate expanse that is the frozen landscape of the Miami campus to go sit in a stadium full of self-entitled yuppie brats and listen to this jingoist garbage??! thank god insane sinus pressure and debilitating nausea intervened!

i think my pure unadulterated hatred for American jingoism and its close cousin rabid consumerism would have exploded my head and splattered my mucus membranes all over Colin Powell's face. so much for glory, eh?

seriously tho, to hear that he came to Miami to give a speech about the beauty of American capitalism, to urge the (already) materialistic Miami student populace to join him in drooling over and jacking off to the ideas of fast cars, oil, money, youth, power, and fame without shame or conscience, makes me wish i hadn't been too sick that night to go over there and punch him in the neck and groin. what kind of message is he sending to our college students if the only thing he urges them to aspire to is the accumulation of ever more material wealth and wasted potential?

oh, it just makes me so angry. this is exactly the kind of perverted political philosophy i am putting to shame in my senior thesis, but what good is it if the leaders of our nation - and the future leaders, too - are too busy gawking at themselves in mirrors to see that everything is completely fucked?

an image capture from American Psycho - a satire deriding the American corporatism and materialism of the 80s, a fitting analogy that was just too easy to pass up.

Colin Powell and his ethos of Fortune and Glory are a disease and a cancer, and he's only bound to flip that Corvette and pin himself under it.

-stephanie