One of my colleagues came by my office to ask the time as her watch was off by seven minutes (Daylights Savings Time mishap). After fixing her watch, she said, “I used to think my teachers were all crazy. Now I know why; sometimes, I feel crazy.”

Touché.

This is just sad. ULM already has t-shirts commemorating their win over Alabama.

“Hey, you decided to show up. You know we meet more than once every two weeks.”
“Why do you have to say that? I show up.”
“You have 14 absences in a class that’s only met 24 times.”
“But I have excuses for 3 of them!”

In class today, each student had a peer partner “grade” their paper based on certain criteria. In each section, students gave a grade of 0-4, which corresponded to F-A. One student, gave another student a 1/0. If you know anything about algebra, his response upon getting his paper back was pretty funny.

“What the heck? She gave me an ‘undefined.’ I should have given her a negative pi.”

I asked a colleague recently what Office character she thought I was most like. She thought for a couple of seconds and said, “Stanley,” and in a deep voice, said, “I don’t care.” I related this to Rachel, and she replied, “You are kinda like a Stanley,” and in Stanley’s voice, said, “I like Pretzel Day.”

So, it looks like some students here made the news by re-enacting the Jena 6. *sigh*

Update: A letter from ULM’s President was sent out today, and apparently, we’re going to have a forum on diversity tonight, followed by “educational opportunities focusing on cultural diversity and racial sensitivity, including special programs that will be included in the freshmen orientation process.”

Of course, I teach first-year orientation, so that will be a fun, late-term addition. Oddly, the first-year orientation course is the least diverse class I teach.

I have to wonder if we want all this negative publicity. Are we trying to send a message, “Hey, we’re ignorant racists; don’t come here!”

First, the Jena 6 debacle. Then, the Jena 6 re-enactment. Then yesterday, a first-grade teacher decides to demonstrate how to use a noose on a student to teach the class about “black history.”

Are we brain dead down here?

I was ranting about how OU should be better ranked than LSU (my Sooner pride runneth over), when one of my female students piped up, “LSU deserves to be #2. They have a hot quarterback.”

I had a scary thought today: my current students were in elementary school when I started teaching college students. Yep. Fifth graders.

In an effort to staff our writing center, the dean has asked faculty to serve at least two hours in the writing center. If we volunteer four, we can write off a few hours from our ten required office hours. It’s a good tradeoff, and I’ve decided to put in all my hours on Tuesdays so that I can have Fridays off and can leave earlier on the other days. At the beginning of the semester, there are very few students in the writing center, and I’m pretty much going insane from boredom. I can spend an hour or two prepping for classes, and then I’m done with all I can do. I can read, but none of the chairs are comfortable. Quite frankly, it’s torture. After I volunteer my four hours, I have to teach a night class. For the last three weeks, we’ve been on the Puritans, which is pretty torturous to read. I mean, it’s interesting stuff, in a sense, but page after page of Puritan plain style and stories like Samuel Sewall’s courtship of Madam Winthrop, and I’m ready to bang my head on the wall.

I’ll end this on a positive note. I did come across a neat story last night in Cotton Mather’s biography of John Winthrop in Magnalia Christi Americana:

And there was one passage of his charity that was perhaps a little unusual: in an hard and long winter, when wood was very scarce at Boston, a man gave him a private information that a needy person in the neighbourhood stole wood sometimes from his pile; whereupon the governour in a seeming anger did reply, “Does he so ? I’ll take a course with him; go, call that man to me; I’ll warrant you I’ll cure him of stealing.” When the man came, the governour considering that if he had stolen, it was more out of necessity than disposition, said unto him, “Friend, it is a severe winter, and I doubt you are but meanly provided for wood; wherefore I would have you supply your self at my wood-pile till this cold season be over.” And he then merrily asked his friends, ” Whether he had not effectually cured this man of stealing his wood?”

Tomorrow, I begin my seventh year of teaching in the college classroom. Seven years. Here goes nothing. (I mean that, literally.)