Unsent Letters

Free at last! Free at last!! Thank God Almighty, I'm free at last!


Portfolios were graded last night. My last essay was handed in on Friday. Grades were entered 10 minutes ago. I'm *done*. (Apart from giving back portfolios in my office for two hours today. Then I'm done-done.)

Along with portfolios, I always provide a grade summary sheet, breaking down the components of the final grade. I think I gave out too many A's this semester, but I double checked and the scores still come out the same. I don't give a flip for the proper "bell curve" of grades or the average we're supposed to have given to the class (which is a B-, by the way--mine always comes out slightly above that). I think second semester freshmen work harder than first semester frosh, simply because they dicked around for one semester and are probably on academic probation (here at the state school, anyway), or they had a nasty scare with their grades last semester. I always separate portfolios before I grade them into what I assume will be the A's, B's C's and fails (a D in this class means you have to take it over). I was surprised at the number of B's and C's that turned out to be A's. They worked hard.

Some, however, did not.

And that's really frustrating to me, because I'm not yet jaded enough to sit there and watch them fail. I put notes on their essays, I hold last minute conferences, I do everything I can, and yet, there are some who will actively choose to fail. I failed a couple more people, but there were four distinct fuckups to whom I really wish I could've sent a letter along with their grade summary. It's one of those things you compose in your head but would or could never say outloud. It would be short and sweet:

J-- Well, here we are, at Failuresville. I can't say I didn't expect it. When you stomped in with your UGG boots and rolled your eyes at everything in the first half of the semester, it was no surprise you strategically started missing in the second half. You crapped out on your partner project, missed several important peer reviews & conferences, and I'm pretty sure you plagiarized your second paper--I just can't prove it. Fortunately, now I won't have to. You know, I even hung around the main office past the deadline for turning in your portfolio before I put the sign on the door that, to paraphrase, says, "You're screwed." This was after you emailed me and I told you 4:00 was the absolute deadline. No portfolio, no pass.

M-- Wow, you're just one big waste of space, aren't you? I mean, that's how you introduced yourself to the whole class on the first day. Something like "I try to do as little physical activity as possible," if I recall correctly. You should've warned me that extended also to the mental. It's not that you can't do it--you just don't give a shit. Did you really think I wouldn't notice that you added a sentence and a half and called it a "revision"? Did you really think that genius sentence was going to change all the major things wrong with your papers? I can only pray you don't take my section next fall--I think it's too late for you to change your schedule anyway; the sections are full.

L-- You were a surprising failure, but I should've seen it coming. I mean, after all, in your first essay--the one where you talk about your "literacy moment" and you chose to write about football--you said you were drawn to become a precoaching major because it looked like an easier job and you got excited watching this one particular game. You didn't then go on to play highschool football, or help out the coaches, or even carry the water. You probably just sat on the couch drinking a beer. I imagine your English experience was much the same. I'm sure you looked at the book or the syllabus. You may have even felt some stirring emotion toward paper and pencil. But you didn't follow through. That was painfully obvious. I wanted to charge you just for reading your portfolio.

S-- I am so glad you're gone. I really am. That sickly sweet little voice telling me yet one more excuse for screwing something up was about to turn me rancid. You cried wolf so many times, I barely believed you when a real emergency hit. But what pissed me off the most is when you went over my head at midterm to my "boss" and complained about me holding you accountable for absences *you* took. You weren't even smart enough to try and make the dubious claim that you didn't miss class! You just wanted to be held to a different standard. I'm sorry your bar job keeps you up til 3 a.m. so that you sleep through my class. After I heard that story too many times, I sent you a pretty little email questioning whether you worked for an education or whether you were going through the motions. Here's a clue: quit your stupid job and find another one. Your fellow students as well as your Dear Teacher also work another job, and yet they manage to get things done. Quit whining. I suggested you drop the course. You told me you couldn't, because you were on academic probation. That cleared up a lot of things immediately. The best thing that could happen to you is for the university to force you to take a year off and quit wasting your parents money. Maybe you'd grow some maturity then.


Boy that felt good!

-- Virgil

5 More Things

because it's "dead" week, and i'm nearly dead myself, i thought i would post some more frivolity. i did this meme back in august of 2006. i'm saving the capitalization for my last paper (the 20 page whopper is done!!), so you get none of that here. be happy it's at least punctuated! here's the new:


5 things in my fridge:
1:grape fruit juice for making "salty dogs" with vodka
2:a chicken waiting to be cooked in a basalmic vinegar marinade
3:four bottles of loenbrau (spelling??) beer--tastes sweet and it's german
4:a whole pineapple that navy buddy swears he can cut up properly
5:leeks i was going to use for making chinese egg drop soup--hope they're still good!

5 things in my closet:
1:my blue kentucky derby dress for the first weekend in may
2:my brown twirly skirt that i wore for the first time because the weather was nice
3:a pair of bronze flats with industrial looking riveting on them--hot!
4:a new pair of camo pants that i wore to our united way presentation (i'll give you the story if you really want it)
5:a pair of blue pants done by isaac mizrahi for target that i love with all my heart. i never thought off the rack pants could look so good--they're almost a metallic blue. if you can get a pair, snag them.

5 things in my purse:
there is nothing in my purse right now--everything is in the little tote bag i use for school. so, i'll go with what's in that.
1:an attendance sheet from friday that i need to put in the grade book
2:my favorite tube of lipstick, apricot glaze
3:a giant coffee stain and a lipstick stain that for the life of me i can't figure out how it got there
4:two letters of recommendation that students asked me to do (made me feel good that they asked)
5:random assorted change for the parking garage

5 things in my car/truck (only 5 things?!)
1:boxes of propaganda about literacy that need to go to the library
2:too many coffee mugs in the back floor
3:a bunch of clothes and books for a local give-away nonprofit that i haven't yet dropped off
4:papers. lots and lots of papers.
5:a bright orange road safety cone that i purloined from fight night!

And Now For Something Completely Different

I'm tired of ranting for a while. It's the end of the semester, and I have two papers due, which, if put together, would equal half of a novella. I have student portfolios coming to me this Friday for a grade (39 of them). I'm thinking of using the stair method of grading. You go up the stairs, throw them off the top stair, and whichever portfolios hit closest to you are A's and so on down the stairs. I'm getting close to being finished, and all the preplanning for this semester has really paid off. But, I'm not done yet. I think if I have to read one more scholarly article talking about the "discursive practices" of something, I'll scream.

So, to blow off steam, Director/Buddy and I went to the fights in town on Friday. Wow, was that a good time! Maybe it was just stress issues, but what is it about watching two sides of beef beat the hell out of each other that's just so...fantastic? The fights were held in a ballroom at the Waterfront Hotel. This town is so small you can rub shoulders with the movers and shakers of this town (or accidentally spill your beer on them, if you get excited over a knockdown). The ballroom was big enough to hold the ring, special tables for the high dollar patrons, and probably 8 rows of seats around the room for the peanut gallery, which I happily claim to be a part of. It was a good idea, anyway, to be in the back. Two gals screaming at the beef moving around, cussing at the boxers, at the people in front of them, whooping with beer in their hands probably need to stand in the back where they have room to do those things. I'm glad I didn't wear heels. I'm sure I would've toppled over. After the fight, I stole an orange safety cone out of the parking garage. I'm not sure why; I needed it at the time. It's still in my trunk. Beer, fights and petty theft. An OK way to get out from in under the pressure of the semester.

This particular week is going to be hell on wheels, as all my work comes due before, not during, finals week. Fortunately, I have Navy Buddy here to distract me, if necessary. Director/Buddy has been good enough to plan another tentative Honi-Honi trip immediately following this work week from hell now that the weather is warmer. I've learned a few lessons from the last Honi-Honi experience. A) don't dance with younger boys, as their parents may be lurking around--or at least do an ID check; B) apply sunscreen, and apply it early; C) drinks do not belong on the dance floor.

Wish me sanity! This week is a bitch.

-- Virgil

Dante's School Issues: Also a Rant in Parts

Part 1: I hate public schools. I hate what they do to the teachers and the kids. I hate what they've done to the institution of teaching. You should eavesdrop on some of the conversations that soon-to-be teachers attending the university have with each other. ("I can't wait to have my own classroom, so that I never have to analyze anything again. Books are analyzed to death." Says the almost graduated soon to be high school English teacher.) I think most of them go into the major just to be sure they'll get their summers off. The old and established teachers are no better. And here is where my problem comes in.

My son right now is in hot water with his grades. My son has never been in hot water with his grades. But this year, he's brought home D's in a couple of subjects on his report card consistently. And I'm so spun around by the whole thing, I'm not sure what to do. It isn't that he can't do the work. On the papers he turns in, he gets A's and B's. But apparently, the teacher's method of making them turn in their papers to a certain box near her desk isn't working out so well for him. Because if he doesn't turn that paper in to her that day, it gets a zero. That's what's bottoming out his grade. He doesn't yet understand the concept of an "average", so I can't make him understand how bad it is when he doesn't turn in his papers.

Dante has never been an organizationally gifted child. What little boy is, really? His favorite method of controlling his toys is to keep them in a big pile on the floor. You put something away, he forgets he owns it. I'm sure the same is true for his papers. If he sticks them in his desk, it's as though they've vanished through a portal into another universe. When they move on to other subjects, he forgets he even has a paper. It boggles my mind. I was not this way when I was a child. But he is, so that's what we have to work with.

His old teacher, who is too fat to get up off her butt most of the day, wasn't very sympathetic. She even has an aide, so she really doesn't have much excuse for not making sure the 9 year olds turn their work in. Would it kill her to announce to them to make sure their papers are all turned in before they leave that day? Apparently it would. I solved the problem of Dante not turning in unfinished papers. He may not understand the concept of a zero yet, but he sure as hell knows what a low score is. He wasn't turning in unfinished papers because he didn't want to see that low score--and instead was ruining his average with zeros.

Third Grade Teacher began to change her tune, however, when I did a little bit of research. When I called to check up on his work in KY, she gave me that same old song about how sucky he was (keep in mind the tests/papers he does turn in are above average work); "Well, maybe he needs a section-504 plan." That stopped her mouth. That plan is a little gem that says if a student can do the work (as Dante obviously can), but has difficulty accessing it (as in, does not have the organizational skills needed to follow through), the teacher has to accomodate whatever it takes to allow him to access the curriculum. Which means, she'd have to get up off her fat ass and ask him for his papers. She's done a total 180 in talking to me now. It pisses me off, though, because what of those other kids who don't have a Virgil to bring down the hammer with their professional lingo? Do they just go on and suffer? Likely.

If Dante gets too many D's, he may have to go to summer school, which means he won't be able to come and visit me. Which means I'll probably go on my own destructive behavior bent. I explained to him the situation, I remind him every time we speak to turn in his papers, etc. This last period, instead of two D's, he only had one in Social Studies (which used to be his favorite subject). Last night, I found out he got 100% of his Social Studies test. So it's a good start. But my plan, provided he can even make it up this summer, is to do some extra work with him to prepare him for the 4th grade. I'll have 9 weeks.

For those of you who homeschool, I'd love to hear what you'd do. My plan so far is to check out tons of library books--I feel like if his reading is doing well, most other things will come along with that. I'm going to get him some Mad Libs to help with grammar identification (he's having trouble with adverbs right now). He loves it when I make up paragraphs full of mistakes and let him find them and correct me with a red pen. He loves marking up my papers! But other than that, I'm not sure what to focus on. I may not focus on much more than that. The more he enjoys what he does, the more likely he is to actually want to do the work when he goes back to school.

I know one thing. Regardless of all the people involved who want Dante to stay in Kentucky (which is more or less everybody but me), if he has the same grade issues in the first two grading periods of 4th grade as he did with 3rd, I'm pulling him out at Christmas and enrolling him in private school up here. Then the chaos will really start, but I can't stand to sit there and watch his grades go down. For a public school kid, they rarely start going back up.

-- Virgil

What Happened On My Birthday: July 23

From a fun Wiki thing I found at Meg's...

List 3 Events that occurred that day:
1904 - Probably the first Ice cream cone was sold at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri.
1967 - 12th Street Riot: In Detroit, Michigan, one of the worst riots in United States history begins on 12th Street in the predominantly African American inner city (43 killed, 342 injured and ~1,400 buildings burned).
1984 - Vanessa Williams becomes the first Miss America to resign when she surrenders her crown after nude photos of her appeared in Penthouse magazine.
List 2 Important Birthdays:
(The now infamous) 1940 - Don Imus, American talk radio host
(And the even more infamous) 1973 - Monica Lewinsky, American White House intern
List 1 Death:
1966 - Montgomery Clift, American actor (b. 1920) (One of my favorite actors)
List a Holiday or Observance. (if any):
Roman Empire - Neptunalia held in honor of Neptune (Not sure what's involved there, but it sounds like a good time!)

-- Virgil

University Shenanigans

Two big posts went/are up for grabs at my university, currently, and there is intense controversy surrounding both of them.

First, we lost our basketball coach, John Beilein, immediately after we won the NIT. The freshman basketball player in my composition class has been devastated. According to him, they won the tournament, and Coach was on a plane to Michigan the next day. He feels betrayed. The new guy we hired swiftly is problematic. What the previously linked article won't tell you is the number of problems Huggins has had with his coaching time at Cincinnati. NCAA violations, players who got special treatment or who had trouble with the law, and a thugish coaching style are his hallmarks. Cincinnati even had a few scholarships yanked for his shenanigans. Lucky us. My basketball player seems scared to death.

The second Big Deal is that we're in the market as a school for a new President, which is also filled with controversy. It comes down to Nellis and Garrison. Nellis is an academic first and an administrator second, who has raised or helped to raise over $7 million in grants, mostly educational grants. Garrison, like the current president Hardisty, is a politically connected lawyer with no background in higher education. He lists as one of his skills "fundraising", but all he did was fundraise for Wise's political campaign. Those are drastically different dollars. Recently, one of the profs in the English department gave an impassioned speech about the situation to the Board of Governors, which was met with hearty applause from the audience.

I'm amused by all of this anyway, as a political exercise. But there are some ramifications for me personally. The new basketball coach is probably going to make it rough on me with his students--I don't have the best track record when dealing with the athletic dept. There was some flap last semester that apparently has resulted in my name being somewhat of a dirty word for the basketball team(s) as far as English instructors go. I exaggerate, but not much. I would be happy to tell Coach Huggins to his face that his player sucks at English and will fail. Coach Huggins is the kind that would probably create that kind of opportunity for me.

A president who doesn't give a crap about academics is always problematic, because it means he'll cut funding to the humanities first. They always do. That means no scholarships or grants, no travel reimbursement for conferences, and it might mean a tighter limit on who gets into the department in the first place (no money to support them)--which could affect me as I go to apply for PhD status this fall.

Sigh. Stay tuned.

-- Virgil

Non Profit Rantings: Part 3--Shitty Volunteers

Besides donations, I'd say one of the most valuable aspects of any agency is its volunteers. Without them, we'd have no program no matter how many grants we got. But it never fails to amaze me how many kooks are drawn to nonprofit work. (I see you laughing--yes, I've considered the possibility that I'm a kook as well. Hmph.) For every decent volunteer I get, I probably interact with 5 weirdos who have varying levels of mental issues, their own agendas, just plain pains-in-the-ass people. And since we practically live or die by word of mouth, I can't exactly jump down their throats.

But this one old fart I'm about to make an exception for. Apparently, this situation has been going on for quite some time without me knowing anything about it. I have no idea what to do about it, so in the end, I struck a compromise.

This volunteer, Old Fart, has been one of our oldest volunteers. He happens to be a fundamentalist preacher for a megachurch here in town. I don't like him. He is arrogant and talks over you when you're trying to talk (because he's the man, and you're the idiot woman). He once ran a community "divorce help" class, where, according to inside sources, his whole schtick was: don't get divorced, it's a sin. So, in you trot for help dealing with divorce, only to be told that now, on top of the emotional and financial trauma, you're going to have a roasty future.

I should've been suspicious. But I've been to busy to have time for basic human emotions like suspicion. Trouble happened, because he also runs an English as a second language tutor training class for us--great for getting a group of tutors ready to go. He's one of the few trainers we have, so when he offered to do another session, we jumped at the chance. Our student waiting list is always out of control, so when I found that he could crank out a group for me, I was excited. The group meets Mondays for 2 hours for the next 6 weeks.

Well, about the 3rd week, I get a phone call from a distressed member of the class. She told me she just had to say something about the class, even though Old Fart had said we already knew about it. That pricked my ears up. Then she drops it on me: Old Fart has been running this class as a prayer meeting to go convert the Oriental. He even still calls them Orientals (which is so 1950s). He starts off with prayer, he quotes scripture all throughout class, he leads off examples with "now, this would be a great way to introduce the Oriental to Jesus Christ." He's running a missionary school. And he's charging people for it. And it's under our name.

I was so pissed I couldn't see straight for a while. But I couldn't seem to make Director/Buddy understand why it was so important that Old Fart stop doing that. Apparently, he's always done that, everytime he had one of those training sessions. She was just grateful that we had the help, she didn't care what bargain was made. "They knew they were going to a church; they should've figured that'd be part of it." Um, no.

Our whole point in life as an organization is to be learner-centered. That means, the person who is learning gets to decide what they want to learn. We're not here to cram our culture--especially our freaky fringe culture--down other people's throats.

"Hey, I think I'd like to get my US driver's license, can you help me with that?"
"Um, no, but we can talk about Jesus Christ."
"Well...I sort of need to drive around. Can we do anything with the driver's license stuff?"
"Your vehicle to the Lord is more important, Oriental."

All kinds of horror scripts flashed before my eyes.

I've tried every scare tactic I know, and Director/Buddy isn't scared enough. I shrieked about church and state, and how we're registered 501-c-3, and if we're going to be "churchy", that's a different registration. But since Bush's creation of "faith based initiatives", the line is too blurry to make that argument stick. I tried the word of mouth argument that all the secularists were going to tag us as a fundamental missionary organization and not support us. Phased her not a whit. Finally, I struck a compromise. "If you're going to charge people and be churchy, you have to put it on the flier. I'm telling people it's free and it's really not. Lots of people like to have a Jesus Warning Sticker with their material, OK?" And that seemed to do the trick. So IF it ever happens again, at least people truly will know what they're getting into.

-- Virgil

Non-Profit Rantings Part 2: Shitty Technology

OK, so in a way, this is almost like Part 1, but it still bears repeating, simply because it happens so often. Apart from giving us books that are falling apart, chewed up crayons and cow figurines, the second favorite donation people love to give us is shitty technology. At least with this donation, the giver isn't just tossing us junk--I think in their minds, they've taken one step away from just chucking it in a landfill. But it's one teensy-tiny step. It's still a shitty donation. Why?

Because most people donate broken technology. Or, technology that "will run just fine, IF...", and there follows some list of instructions on the various time and expense we will have to go through in order to use their "gift." I recently crossed town in the freezing cold to load the trunk of my car with two things: a scanner with no cord, no driver/installation CD or any other form of instructions, and a printer that doesn't work. The lady that gave it to me was a very nice lady. I can't imagine why she didn't tell me it was broken in the beginning, so I could've told her kindly to keep it.

In order to get these things to work, I'm going to have to haul it all to Office Depot, or some other place with technology boys with names on their shirts, have them look at the ports, track down a cord, or hire somebody to take the thing apart and figure out what's wrong with it. And even then, I can't guarantee our computers will recognize the hardware. It looked ancient. So "free" stuff suddenly becomes very expensive in terms of both money and time.

Here's a clue: if you want to get rid of it, we probably will, too!

-- Virgil

Oh, and Sam asked me how much time we actually wasted with the previous shitty donation. I work a four hour day on the day that donation happened to arrive. It took me all of those 4 hours to sort through, heave it up on the pickup truck, drive down to the dump, wait our turn, heave it over the side of the truck, drive back, etc. When I took the usable crap to KY, negotiated with the librarian, etc., somehow I guess I managed to still be on the clock even when I was supposed to have a break. As far as money goes, I work cheap. I'd estimate it only cost around $34. But my sanity is priceless.

Non Profit Rantings--Part 1: Shitty Donations

There has been enough general crap build up at work to cause me to need a venting session. So much so, that I'm afraid my rants are going to have to be compartmentalized. Part 1: Shitty Donations.

I know that a nonprofit is supposed to be grateful for whatever the hell it can get. We work on a shoestring budget; we highly value "in-kind" services, like rent free space. We got free office rolley-chairs yesterday. Whoo-hoo. But honestly, people, give some thought to what you're doing before you just go dump stuff at your local nonprofit. I think some people believe that nonprofits are just a place to park the junk that they can't use anymore. I'm sure that Goodwill has to sift through clothes with tears, holes and stains. I mean, come on, would you want to wear something like that? But we have a unique and dicey problem, being a literacy center and all.

People want to give us books.

Now, that may not seem like such a bad thing. Literacy=Reading, after all, right? My specific bitch is with the kind of books we keep getting. It's blatantly obvious that whoever decided to dump their boxes of reading matter on us paid no attention to what we actually do, nor gave two flying fucks about what others might be able to do with the material. We recently got a call from Hospice in the next county. Some big company in Southern Pennsylvania did a big literacy drive and had donations to give to us. "The driver will be there within the hour!" We were sort of psyched. Most of the adults in our program can't read most of the books people donate to us. It's really difficult to find reading material that isn't patronizing that an adult with a reading level of about the 5th grade can get hold of. So, we weren't too optimistic. However, even though we're an adult literacy program, we run a mobile library for kids in that county who have no access to a public library. The bus even makes a stop at a local elementary school that can't even afford to have a library. So, any kids books in good shape, we stick on that mobile library.

Forty-five minutes later, I was ready to drive up to PA and throw their things back at them. I had an entire load of crap that covered the front deck, including old sports magazines that were tattered and worn; kids books that were so rain damaged mold was growing on the pages; a complete set of science encyclopedias--from 1975; a giant bag of crayons--wtf are my adult learners going to do with a huge bag of used crayons??; a happy cow figurine--what, precisely, does that have to do with literacy?; several dozen tapes of country music (WTF??); a "how to use the library" three ring binder--from 1982; and two globes that still had the USSR as a country on them.

It was pretty obvious that they were just dumping off crap that they had held onto for years, did some spring cleaning, and lobbed it all onto us. There were two giant boxes of kids books, and I spent precious time going through to see what was usable and what wasn't. As I was going to KY to get Dante, Director/Buddy suggested that I see if his school would take the books. Good enough idea. I came away with two usable boxes of books out of the crap that they dumped all over the porch. I have one of the globes at home as a whimsical decoration. At least Dante's library teacher was grateful to get the books. She said the school had frozen her library budget for three years due to lack of funds. That giant book box was the first real books she'd gotten for the library in that time. We took the rest of the crap to the dump. That's right, the dump.

When we came back to WV, guess what was waiting on the front porch? The first out of two more loads. Same junk. This load contained a bunch of broken chalk pieces. Nothing usable. Guess where both loads are going? Straight to the dump.

Ironically, in a couple of days, Director/Buddy has to do a photo op with the people from PA, who want their faces in the local paper showing what a "good deed" they did. She says that what's going to make her smile is the image of she and I, the literacy nonprofit people, standing in the bed of her pickup truck heaving over boxes and boxes of that crap.

-- Virgil