"I'm a liberal, pro-choice, lesbian atheist, and I'm sure that both of your children will benefit from a semester with me."
Now, that's what I should have said.
As this new academic year began, the only bit of drama was a father who came to my second class on Monday. He wanted to know if I would allow his daughter, a twin in a different professor's class, to join her brother, who had me.
"Yes, I would mind," I replied.
"So you don't mind?" he asked again. I guess this guy was not used to a woman thwarting his goal. He had that ultra-conservative, religious, home-schooling vibe.
"I said that yes, I do mind. She'll be fine in the other professor's class." In my head, I added, This is college, not kindergarten.
"But they'll be separated by two buildings!" he emphasized.
When I wouldn't budge, he tapped a young man on the shoulder and said, "Let's go, Justin. Maybe the other professor will take you." Embarrassed, the kid followed his father out of the room.
I guess the other professor—the kind, flexible one—did take Justin, as the young man did not return. I feel sorry for that colleague, whoever she/he is, because that one moment of kindness and flexibility will mean a semester's worth of a helicopter daddy interfering in the twins' education—and probably the professor's teaching, too. I feel sorry for Justin and his sister, who both have so little autonomy that they cannot navigate the first day of college, a passage into adulthood, without the presence of their father.
I'm really quite proud of myself, though. Not that many years ago, I would have let myself be bullied by a parent making such a request and would not have realized the consequences until it was way too late.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Sunday, August 20, 2006
Walking in the "Angriest" Town
The other day, Elizabeth and I were walking the dogs home from the lake. While we waited to cross the moderately busy street from the park to our residential neighborhood, a rare thing occurred: A driver who saw us stopped his car and waved us across. When we reached the other side of the street, we turned to each other and simultaneously noted, "He must have gone to school in Gainesville."
Elizabeth is a Florida Gator; I have spent some time in Gainesville, home of the University of Florida, working as an item writer/validator for the Florida Department of Education. The one thing that a visitor to Gainesville immediately notices is that drivers willingly share the road with pedestrians. While there, if I so much as looked over my shoulder to gauge street-crossing potential, motorists would stop their cars. I'm not sure if the police ticket heavily at the beginning of a new academic year or if the city culture values pedestrians and models that behavior to newcomers. I have never felt on guard in Gainesville as I do here in Orlando, where the morning news has another hit-and-run pedestrian fatality to report at least once a week. In my city, motorists will run down cops and leave the scene. Here, we walk at our own risk, and I would require a gun to my head to ride a bicycle anywhere in the city.
The danger I have felt on the roads—both in a car and on foot—is not imagined, I recently learned. According to Men's Health magazine, Orlando is the angriest city in the entire country. This top spot was determined in part by traffic-congestion data, speeding citations, and road-rage reports; the ranking does not surprise the residents. Most people do not signal their intentions or yield the right of way. Many of them are blabbing away on a cell phone, oblivious that other drivers share the road. Stopping at a new red light means running the risk of being rear ended, as the general road philosophy is that 3 to 5 cars can continue through the intersection after the light has changed. Cops choose to pull over 60-year-old women driving 4 miles over the speed limit to meet their ticket quota because the more aggressive drivers might roll down the window and start firing a gun.
Since Elizabeth and I carpool to work, we get to observe and analyze a lot of bad driving behavior. We have concluded that an asshole pilots 1 in 4 vehicles; some days we raise the percentage to 1 in 2.
Just the other evening, I got to witness a bout of driver rage that inspired anger in me as well. Bug and I had gone for the long walk, which includes a quarter-mile stretch of road that parallels the back of the downtown graveyard. Motorists used to exceed the speed limit, racing down this long stretch which was unbroken by a single stop sign. The city eventually erected a series of speed bumps to discourage the bad behavior.
As Bug and I were strolling down this road, a truck squealed out from a feeder street and came barreling in our direction. Right before the first speed bump, the driver slammed on his brakes, but not in enough time to keep the front bumper from scraping on the asphalt after he hurtled over the hump. I could see him cursing inside the cab, his face an angry storm. "Well, that will show him not to drive like an asshole in my neighborhood," I thought, assuming that he was just cutting through. He rammed the accelerator again, sending the car lurching forward a few yards before he came squealing into the driveway that Bug and I were about to cross. Two or three feet further along and Bug and I would have been struck. Incredulous, I stood there on the sidewalk. The driver wouldn't exit the truck—I assume that the near-miss had shamed him—so I mouthed "Asshole" in the direction of the rearview mirror and kept walking. His roommate/girlfriend/wife, having heard all of the engine reving and tire sqealing, ran out of the house, asking, "Are you mad about something?" I pity the woman if she has made a life-long commitment to that loser.
This situation was closer to wrong place, wrong time than usual, but every moment as a pedestrian in this city gives me ample evidence that yes, we are angry here in Orlando.
Elizabeth is a Florida Gator; I have spent some time in Gainesville, home of the University of Florida, working as an item writer/validator for the Florida Department of Education. The one thing that a visitor to Gainesville immediately notices is that drivers willingly share the road with pedestrians. While there, if I so much as looked over my shoulder to gauge street-crossing potential, motorists would stop their cars. I'm not sure if the police ticket heavily at the beginning of a new academic year or if the city culture values pedestrians and models that behavior to newcomers. I have never felt on guard in Gainesville as I do here in Orlando, where the morning news has another hit-and-run pedestrian fatality to report at least once a week. In my city, motorists will run down cops and leave the scene. Here, we walk at our own risk, and I would require a gun to my head to ride a bicycle anywhere in the city.
The danger I have felt on the roads—both in a car and on foot—is not imagined, I recently learned. According to Men's Health magazine, Orlando is the angriest city in the entire country. This top spot was determined in part by traffic-congestion data, speeding citations, and road-rage reports; the ranking does not surprise the residents. Most people do not signal their intentions or yield the right of way. Many of them are blabbing away on a cell phone, oblivious that other drivers share the road. Stopping at a new red light means running the risk of being rear ended, as the general road philosophy is that 3 to 5 cars can continue through the intersection after the light has changed. Cops choose to pull over 60-year-old women driving 4 miles over the speed limit to meet their ticket quota because the more aggressive drivers might roll down the window and start firing a gun.
Since Elizabeth and I carpool to work, we get to observe and analyze a lot of bad driving behavior. We have concluded that an asshole pilots 1 in 4 vehicles; some days we raise the percentage to 1 in 2.
Just the other evening, I got to witness a bout of driver rage that inspired anger in me as well. Bug and I had gone for the long walk, which includes a quarter-mile stretch of road that parallels the back of the downtown graveyard. Motorists used to exceed the speed limit, racing down this long stretch which was unbroken by a single stop sign. The city eventually erected a series of speed bumps to discourage the bad behavior.
As Bug and I were strolling down this road, a truck squealed out from a feeder street and came barreling in our direction. Right before the first speed bump, the driver slammed on his brakes, but not in enough time to keep the front bumper from scraping on the asphalt after he hurtled over the hump. I could see him cursing inside the cab, his face an angry storm. "Well, that will show him not to drive like an asshole in my neighborhood," I thought, assuming that he was just cutting through. He rammed the accelerator again, sending the car lurching forward a few yards before he came squealing into the driveway that Bug and I were about to cross. Two or three feet further along and Bug and I would have been struck. Incredulous, I stood there on the sidewalk. The driver wouldn't exit the truck—I assume that the near-miss had shamed him—so I mouthed "Asshole" in the direction of the rearview mirror and kept walking. His roommate/girlfriend/wife, having heard all of the engine reving and tire sqealing, ran out of the house, asking, "Are you mad about something?" I pity the woman if she has made a life-long commitment to that loser.
This situation was closer to wrong place, wrong time than usual, but every moment as a pedestrian in this city gives me ample evidence that yes, we are angry here in Orlando.
Wednesday, August 9, 2006
Nibbled by Ducks
When I first began teaching, I felt nothing but disdain for the old burnouts in the department. I resented how their bad attitudes and behaviors tarnished the sparkling reputations of us young snots who had real enthusiasm for the job and believed that we made important, measurable differences in the lives of students. I got angry when administration enacted a new policy not because of something I did but because Gerry, the Civil War buff, was passed out drunk in the rotunda instead of teaching his 9 a.m. American Lit class.
Now, after 21 years in the classroom, 21 years observing academic politics, I am beginning to understand how the burnouts "crisped" over the years. The process is slow—maybe inevitable. One faculty member who has since retired described it as "being nibbled by ducks." I don't believe that certain unpleasant realities of academia are a good enough excuse to become a burnout, but every now and them, I lose a little more of my trust, my empathy, to the nibbling of those very ducks, and I understand why the burnouts turn off as they do.
I turned in grades a week ago. For the last seven days I have been enjoying the first week of vacation, playing with my new macro lens, cleaning closets, taking the basenjis for longer than usual walks. I have checked school email once per day, mostly because I don't want to return later this month with 150 messages that require answers. Until today, I had been pleased that no one had emailed to complain about a grade. I meet with all of my classroom students individually before the do-or-die, department-graded final exam to give them their averages, so they all knew what to expect. I had provided the online students with a grade worksheet so that they could easily calculate their averages before exams. The best surprise is no surprise, my motto.
This morning when I opened my school email account, I found a message from Latoya. The subject line was "Urgent Change of Grade" and the content read something like this:
Latoya's average was a 69.6 after the final exam. I use Excel as a gradebook, and the grade boxes are set to 30 pixels wide, so Excel rounds up all grades to a two-numeral number, in this case a 70. Latoya was way closer to a D than a B. I curtly replied that she had barely gotten a C in the class and that I had no intention of changing her grade. Later in the afternoon, I got a new message that she had "mistaken" me for a different professor and apologized.
At this point, I got curious which of my colleagues might be "ruining" Latoya's chance of financial aid, so I pulled up her transcript. I learned that she had earned 3 Cs and 1 B during the summer, giving her a 2.25 GPA for the semester. The only problem was that her overall GPA—reduced by a string of Ds, Fs, and WFs from previous terms—was a 1.95, not yet high enough to qualify for financial aid. I concluded that Latoya was probably emailing all of her professors to say that we each had made a grievous mistake and were frustrating her academic future, hoping that one of us would forget an entire semester of her dreary performance and boost a grade.
That she believed we were dumb enough to believe her is the "nibbling" for me. Next semester, convinced as I will be that another Latoya has registered for one of my classes, I will make a policy change that requires I become meaner or make more work for myself, which I will then resent. If Latoya was the only student who inspired such a change, that wouldn't be so bad. But there was Brian who convinced me that I would allow no more make-up quizzes, and Bethany who made me severely penalize work more than one week late, and a long list of other students who have changed me from easy-going to an instructor who sees things now only in black and white and who doesn't much care that someone's mother just got diagnosed with cancer.
I am looking forward to the fall semester. If it started this Monday, I would don a new shirt and slip on a new pair of shoes—all spiffy for a new academic year—and go off to teach, still convinced that I make important, measurable differences in the lives of my students. But I no longer see most of them as willing partners in the process—more like ducks I am herding to a pond.
Now, after 21 years in the classroom, 21 years observing academic politics, I am beginning to understand how the burnouts "crisped" over the years. The process is slow—maybe inevitable. One faculty member who has since retired described it as "being nibbled by ducks." I don't believe that certain unpleasant realities of academia are a good enough excuse to become a burnout, but every now and them, I lose a little more of my trust, my empathy, to the nibbling of those very ducks, and I understand why the burnouts turn off as they do.
I turned in grades a week ago. For the last seven days I have been enjoying the first week of vacation, playing with my new macro lens, cleaning closets, taking the basenjis for longer than usual walks. I have checked school email once per day, mostly because I don't want to return later this month with 150 messages that require answers. Until today, I had been pleased that no one had emailed to complain about a grade. I meet with all of my classroom students individually before the do-or-die, department-graded final exam to give them their averages, so they all knew what to expect. I had provided the online students with a grade worksheet so that they could easily calculate their averages before exams. The best surprise is no surprise, my motto.
This morning when I opened my school email account, I found a message from Latoya. The subject line was "Urgent Change of Grade" and the content read something like this:
From: latoya.tiller@_____cc.eduA little Latoya history is needed here. This student began the course by missing the first exam, giving her a big, fat zero. The first two or three writing assignments read like her email above—no punctuation, no capitalization, just verbal diarrhea—so I had to fail them as well. Then she pulled her shit together and began to produce average work—or her roommate, her mother, or her boyfriend wrote it for her. Latoya had emailed me late in the semester asking for her average, so I reminded her of the grade worksheet available at the course website and told her to do the math herself. In hindsight, that advice was a mistake; anyone who writes as poorly as Latoya probably can't do simple addition and division either.
To: sparky.lightbulb@_____cc.edu
Date: August 9, 2006 9:34 AM
Subject: Urgent Change of Grade
I was in your online research class and i should have a "B" as my final grade but after downloading my transcripts I have a "C" i need you to change this asap because it is messing up my financial aid please email me as soon as you can because the computer won't let me register for fall classes until you resolve this mistake.
Latoya
Latoya's average was a 69.6 after the final exam. I use Excel as a gradebook, and the grade boxes are set to 30 pixels wide, so Excel rounds up all grades to a two-numeral number, in this case a 70. Latoya was way closer to a D than a B. I curtly replied that she had barely gotten a C in the class and that I had no intention of changing her grade. Later in the afternoon, I got a new message that she had "mistaken" me for a different professor and apologized.
At this point, I got curious which of my colleagues might be "ruining" Latoya's chance of financial aid, so I pulled up her transcript. I learned that she had earned 3 Cs and 1 B during the summer, giving her a 2.25 GPA for the semester. The only problem was that her overall GPA—reduced by a string of Ds, Fs, and WFs from previous terms—was a 1.95, not yet high enough to qualify for financial aid. I concluded that Latoya was probably emailing all of her professors to say that we each had made a grievous mistake and were frustrating her academic future, hoping that one of us would forget an entire semester of her dreary performance and boost a grade.
That she believed we were dumb enough to believe her is the "nibbling" for me. Next semester, convinced as I will be that another Latoya has registered for one of my classes, I will make a policy change that requires I become meaner or make more work for myself, which I will then resent. If Latoya was the only student who inspired such a change, that wouldn't be so bad. But there was Brian who convinced me that I would allow no more make-up quizzes, and Bethany who made me severely penalize work more than one week late, and a long list of other students who have changed me from easy-going to an instructor who sees things now only in black and white and who doesn't much care that someone's mother just got diagnosed with cancer.
I am looking forward to the fall semester. If it started this Monday, I would don a new shirt and slip on a new pair of shoes—all spiffy for a new academic year—and go off to teach, still convinced that I make important, measurable differences in the lives of my students. But I no longer see most of them as willing partners in the process—more like ducks I am herding to a pond.
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