Tutor Trauma

So, my Turkish student, Z, the "little pill" I told you about who I tutored in spoken English, broke up with me. I think.

I'm still not sure what happened, and I'm not sure if I ever will be, given the cultural chances of misunderstanding each other. I don't even know if I'm supposed to be upset. I think I'm ruffled and confused. But I don't think I'm upset.

We both agreed to take a break over the holidays. She was tired, and I had a portfolio to finish, as well as a trip to California. We said we'd pick up next semester. Well, the next thing I know, Director/Buddy sends me an email saying that another tutor has asked for "permission", I guess, to tutor Z because her old tutor didn't have the time for her. Wuh?? So I checked with Z. Turns out this other tutor, T, was her old tutor, and Z would rather just go back to her. Okaaay. That's all you had to say. Why make up the lie that I didn't have time? Especially when she asked for time off?  She sent me a curt little email saying that she'd rather tutor with T, but that she appreciated my help and company and to take care.  I think I was dismissed.

What complicates things is that I thought we were friends, not business partners, if you will.  I've had brunch at her house more times than I can count.  I got her into the university's intensive English program--sat with her, helped her fill out the forms, got her extra classes for free and fronted the money for a class she couldn't afford.  I've taken her and her husband to the store when they didn't have transportation.  I went with her to that dinner thingy in the mosque--I'm pretty sure that's not done for strangers.  We talked about life, husbands, problems, etc.  And now, it's so long, and thanks for all the fish.  I don't get it.

What concerns me is that I have a sneaking suspicion this is about getting something out of the other tutor that she couldn't get out of me.  Before we took our break, Z and her husband asked me to call a certain doctor and see whether or not the doctor would give Z fertility treatments so she could have kids--for free.  They couldn't afford to pay for the miscarriage she had this time last year and had to have their debt covered by a charity.  But they were so desperate for kids, they wanted to know if a doctor would do this for free.  I had deep personal reservations about this.  In my opinion, if you can't even afford the treatment, and you have trouble paying all your bills each month, you can't afford a baby.  How on earth would you pay for all that extra cost??  On top of that, it just seemed deeply immoral to me that in a country where many of the inhabitants don't get free health care for serious illnesses or even preventative treatment, you want to ask for free fertility treatment.  If we're going to give free services, shouldn't we treat people who are desperate first?  

I really tried to keep my personal bias out of it, but maybe it showed somehow.  I like to think I did a good job.  After all, Z is a conservative Muslim of the headscarf wearing variety.  There is a lot we don't agree on, but it never shows.  I'd like to think this didn't show, either, but maybe it did.  I understood, actually, how the culture they came out of looked at having babies (or not being able to), and I understood why they wanted it so badly, especially since I believe she's about 34 or 35 now.  But in the end, it didn't seem to be a smart choice to me.  It actually seemed a little offensive to me.  I tried my hardest not to let it show, though.  I tried to explain to her the way the medical system worked here in the US and her chances of convincing someone to do this for free, considering we look at it as an elective procedure--many insurances won't even cover fertility treatments, so most Americans have to pay out of pocket for that.  They wouldn't listen, and they normally don't listen to me on issues of money and the American culture, even though I would fucking know BETTER than they would, now wouldn't I?  They still believe they can haggle for it, and that's just not really possible here.  I promised her I would call the doctor for her and tell them what she wanted and see what they said.  

I called, I left several messages, I got laughed at.  I told Z the doctor said it wasn't possible.  I left out the part about being laughed at.  So then we take our break, and now Z wants another tutor.  Part of me is suspicious that she just thinks she can get this fertility stuff out of T, where I couldn't.  Trading up, as it were.  Sigh.

I don't know what happened.  She hasn't spoken to me or sent me an email.  I really thought we were closer than that.  In a way, I'm glad I'm not tutoring right now, because I need the extra time to get my conference paper together.  Besides, I'm the faculty advisor for the student group at the university in conjunction with D/B's literacy program.  It's not like I don't have things to work on.

But come on.  We drank tea together.  That practically makes us family.

-- Dante's Virgil

Literacy Trends

Because I can't let my old job alone, even though I don't work there anymore, and because I think literacy is the key to, well, everything, a new article by the Economist and some recent statistics made me perk my ears up. Or, I'm just a literacy geek, whichever you prefer to think.

Here's the link: linkity

The study compares data from 1992 to 2003 to determine trends in literacy rates. The link has a state by state breakdown, so you can see what the trends are in your own state--and even by county. My state seems to be at 13% functional illiteracy, with the counties I worked for posting 11% and 15% respectively. If that's true, that's incredible, because the numbers we used to post from the 2000 Census were 20% and 36%. My home state of Kentucky posts up at 12%. New York, shockingly, is at 22% and Texas is at 19%. This is really interesting, because I don't think most people would assume WV is more literate than New York. It could be that the data is just more easily measured now. But the data is somewhat incomplete because, if I understand it correctly, it excludes people who can't take the test because they can't speak or read English--so it deals only with Americans who are not immigrants, essentially. If we added those figures back in, the rates are probably higher. But, too often people want to excuse illiteracy figures by blaming the immigrant population, along the lines of, well that's just people who can't speak English--real Americans aren't in those figures. But that doesn't explain why New York has far more illiterate people than West Virginia--unless we can say that coming from traditionally impoverished areas has nothing to do with being illiterate. I'm not sure how to explain that gap other than population size differences. I believe the information overall found a 14.5% national illiteracy rate. That's a hell of a lot better than 20% (but again, I think that's without nonnative speakers added in). Check out the link to see how your state measured up!

A couple of weeks ago, the Economist ran this article called "The Readers", which also addressed literacy practices.

FOR a quarter of a century, surveys of reading habits by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), a federally-funded body, have been favourite material for anyone who thinks America is dumbing down. Susan Jacoby, author of “The Age of American Unreason”, for example, cites the 2007 NEA report that “the proportion of 17-year-olds who read nothing (unless required to do so for school) more than doubled between 1984 and 2004.”

So it is a surprise that this bellwether seems to have taken a turn for the better. This week the NEA reported that, for the first time since 1982 when its survey began, the number of adults who said they had read a novel, short story, poem or play in the past 12 months had gone up, rising from 47% of the population in 2002 to over 50% in 2008.

Although 3% doesn't seem like a lot, it translates to hundreds of thousands of people more, so it really is a big deal. The article goes on to say that this trend was seen across all demographic and ethnic groups.

But the best part:

The increase has been most marked in groups whose reading had declined most in the past 25 years, African-Americans and Hispanics (up by 15% and 20% respectively since 2002). It has also been larger among people at lower levels of education: reading among college graduates was flat, but among those who dropped out of high school it rose from under a quarter to over a third.

Most remarkable of all has been the rebound among young men. The numbers of men aged 18-24 who say they are reading books (not just online) rose 24% in 2002-08. Teachers sometimes despair of young men, whose educational performance has lagged behind that of young women almost across the board. But the reading gap at least may be narrowing.

Yeah, double digit figures, baby! That's tremendous improvement, and that's outstanding.

The article ends by saying that 21% of adults didn't read a book because they couldn't. But the new info from the NCES may indicate that 21% figure is a thing of the past. Have we finally turned the corner on illiteracy and reading apathy? Godless, I hope so!

-- DV

Shameless Bragging

So, my teaching portfolio came back.  Every faculty member has to turn in a portfolio at the end of the school year (which is in the first two weeks of August, normally, so the portfolio for Fall 2008-Spring 2009 is due August 15) that documents how they have fulfilled what they've been hired to do.  When you're hired at a university as a prof, you get a letter explaining what your duties are and what percentage corresponds to your duties.  My job is 80/20, which means 80% of my effort is supposed to be teaching (even though it feels like 234%) and 20% is supposed to be dedicated to "service," which means committee work for the department or other university work.  My position is in line with one of the newer trends in universities, because I have no research component.  That could probably be built in later, but more jobs are being created for people whose purpose is just to be a teacher; many other positions are traditionally created with a research component, and then the proportion is usually 40% teaching, 40% research and 20% service, or some combo thereof.  Anyhoo.  I had to turn in a portfolio this past December because as a new hire, I came in after the deadline, and they need something on the books in order to evaluate me in the Spring with everyone else.  Portfolios are always examined a year behind.  So, 2009-2010 raise money is based on what they're looking at right now in the Spring of 2009.  If I waited 'til August to turn mine in, I wouldn't be evaluated until 2010, which  means a year without a performance based raise.  If that makes sense.  I have to do *another* portfolio by August 15 of this year to encompass the whole year, but then I should be on track with everyone else and I should only have to do one a year.  That portfolio will determine my 2010-2011 money, since it will be evaluated in the Spring of 2010.

It was difficult to put a portfolio together at the end of last semester when I was dog tired from teaching six classes, grading a mountain of work for final grades, etc.  It caught me at a low point energy-wise.  After I finished and turned it in, I remember going to El Hijo's office to wait for him to get finished so we could go home--and I passed out in an office chair.  I was just beat.  I did have some help--my main boss looked it over for me and made some formatting and wording suggestions, so that made me feel better about the whole thing.  There was also some tension because it was my first one.  The rating goes Unsatisfactory/Satisfactory/Good/Excellent.  It's very difficult, so I'm told, to get an excellent in your first year of teaching.  For one thing, the committee might not want to give it out right away.  It depends on a lot of things.  My main boss and the chair of the dept. both told me not to feel bad about not getting an excellent.  The important thing is just not to be "unsatisfactory."

Well, I got an excellent in teaching!  It's 80% of what I'm being judged on, so W00t!  It was helped along tremendously by my student evaluations, which carry more weight since teaching evaluation is such a big part of my job performance.  The scale goes from one to five, five being the best.  The lowest score I got was a 4.6, which the committee called "enviably low."  My median score was a five, I believe.  In their response, the committee really praised all of those scores.  I'm happy about that.  And I'm really proud of myself.  This was a pilot project, and I couldn't have asked for a better result.

I find out in another two or three months if I still have a job, because they have to make the decision to continue this project or not.  At least I know I've done my part to prove myself.

-- DV

Catholic Lunacy

Boy, if there were a Jehovah's Witness equivalent to this, I would be all over it.

Some of you might be familiar with PZ Myer's blog Pharyngula (it's linked in my sidebar, if you're interested); Myers is a biology prof in Minnesota who is also an atheist and speaks out frequently on relgious lunacy, especially attempts to force "intelligent" design and creationism in general onto the public. He's quite the internet sensation and has a good little following. His fame has gradually increased beyond the internet, most recently because of an incident with a cracker.

Back in July, in response to a Florida student's experience during communion, he issued a call for communion wafers so he could purposefully disrespect them. The student was Webster Cook who took the Eucharist host but didn't immediately eat it--he saved it for later, basically, and that didn't sit well with the church leaders, who tried to forcibly remove it from his mouth. The student got death threats and everything, supposedly egged on by Fox News. Catholics freaked their freak, comparing it to hate speech, calling for his expulsion, and the kid was bombarded by hate mail and death threats. So, Myers offered to disrespect the crackers personally in a show of support for Cook. People again freaked their freak. Myers also got death threats, including requests from the Catholic League that he be removed by the university, etc. in spite of the fact that Myers was being sarcastic. I believe some people who had threatened him in that way actually ended up being fired themselves. From Wikipedia:

In a talk show featuring Myers on Catholic Radio International, hosted by Jeff Gardner, Myers confirmed that he had been sent an unspecified number of consecrated hosts and said that he intended to “subject them to heinous cracker abuse.” When asked by Gardner to explain why he must do so, Myers said that Donohue of the Catholic League was insisting that he acknowledge the Body of Christ in the Eucharist. Gardner pointed out that Donohue had no authority to insist on such acknowledgment. The show host then asked Myers which individual possessing the Magisterial authority of the Catholic Church had insisted that he recognize the body of Christ in the Eucharist. Myers replied that no one from the Catholic Church had contacted him.[27]

On July 24, 2008, PZ Myers, in his post, "The Great Desecration," wrote that he had pierced through the "cracker" with a rusty nail, which he also used to pierce a few ripped-out pages of the Qur'an and The God Delusion, and had simply thrown them all in the trash along with old coffee grounds and a banana peel. He provided a photograph of these items in the garbage, and wrote that nothing must be held sacred, encouraging people to question everything.[28] The following day, University of Minnesota, Morris (UMN) Chancellor stated: “I believe that behaviors that discriminate against or harass individuals or groups on the basis of their religious beliefs are reprehensible,” but that the school "affirms the freedom of a faculty member to speak or write as a public citizen without institutional discipline or restraint."[29]

LOL. What a lot of skirt the man has! I wonder if he would've had more trouble if he weren't so popular. But you would think it would've ended there, after things died down a bit, but apparently it's gone up the chain to the very top. The linked article explains how there are certain sins the Catholic power structure feels can't be handled by your average priest. These things are considered so bad that only the Pope can hear them and decide. These things include trying to kill the Pope, priests who had anything to do with abortion before they became priests, priests who reveal confessions from other people (like a lawyer-client privilege clause). They also include purposefully defiling the Eucharist. That's punishable by excommunication and can only be absolved by the Pope. Guess who is listed as an example of this heinous sin? Good ol' PZ. He ranks higher in sin on the list than people who foment genocide.

I think the Pope just wants to meet him.

But it's too bad the JWs don't have anything comparable. I'd so be all over that.

-- DV

Dear Mr. President

The news has recently been reporting that Obama has made the decision to close the Guantanemo Bay detention center as one of his first acts as president, and I wholeheartedly support this. There is some concern, as the linked article points out, about what to do with the prisoners after Gitmo is closed and what will happen after they are released, if that happens at all. Gitmo has been a blight on humanity and has terribly damaged our national reputation. Prison culture in the US is horrific anyway, but the stories out of Gitmo are beyond the pale. A good acount is Mahvish Rukhsana Khan's My Guantanemo Diary; she was a lawyer and an interpreter there for a few years, and the book gives a mixture of personal accounts and facts about the prison and the "trials" conducted there. I'm so proud of the lawyers and other humanitarians who have aggitated for years for an end to this travesty. I'm appauled that there are still people who believe this place somehow protects Americans.

Dear President Obama,

Congratulations on your recent victory in the election. We have many bright hopes for the future of our country and for our children. I was especially pleased to see that in spite of the ecnoomic and political chaos going on in the world today, you planned to make the closing of Guanatemo Bay one of your first orders of business.

"Gitmo" has been a dark cloud hanging over our country for years. I am sure you are aware of the monstrous travesty of justice that place represents. Only 5% of detainees have ever been charged with actual plots or acts of war against America as discovered by our own intelligence community. Some men are being held there on the sole charge of owning a Casio watch. Some who have lawyers who have handily disproven their clients' charges are given more and more charges, just as flimsy as the first. Two men were there for telling a joke about Bill Clinton. Worse, to me, are the ones who are being held without being told what they are even charged with. Many of these are the victims of flyers dropped in Afghanistan offering financial rewards for turning people in. This money was many times an average citizen's income in Afghanistan, and 86% of the prisoners in Gitmo have been "captured" in this way. This is intolerable and it is not justice. Justice is not something only Americans get to have.

Prison culture in America is notoriously horrible. But what these men have been through in Gitmo is absolutely inhumane. They have suffered every form of torture and deprivation. Sick, old men have had their medical treatments removed or withheld as a form of punishment. Prisoners have frequently reported sexual humiliation and rape. This has been confirmed by military physicians and other personnel. It is absolutely disgusting that members of our military would behave in such a manner.

So I encourage you to go through with your decision to close Gitmo and not to listen to alarmists who claim in spite of all the evidence to the contrary that this gross inhumanity somehow makes us safer. But I urge you not only to close Gitmo but to also be careful of the people coming from there; please do not put them in the general population of regular prisoners in the US. Please do not put them in another military prison, of if you do, please send humanitarian officials to regularly monitor what is going on in those places. Please do not put them in foreign prisons where many of them will simply be abused again. And please bring them to a speedy trial where their innocence or guilt can finally be determined and they can get on with their lives.

In spite of their treatment, many prisoners and their families express a belief in the American people and our justice system. They believe if we just knew the truth, we'd do the right thing. Please help us do the right thing, finally, and restore our dignity and faith in our justice system, by closing Gitmo and monitoring the outcome. I am also writing to my Senators and Representatives to encourage them to support your efforts. Thank you so much for taking this action.

-- DV

I finally feel as though we have a President who can read the letter for himself. I never wrote to GW; even if he could've read it, I doubt he would've, even if it had made it past his handlers.

-- DV

GW Bush--An English Teacher's Worst Nightmare

The picture comes from a Bush press conference in China, where reporters asked him a few hostile questions, he goes to leave but can't get past the locked doors.

In a sort of retrospective on our sitting President, who probably is more like "getting halfway up from the chair" President at this stage (don't let the door hit you in the hindspot on your way out), the BBC put together a concise little list of Bushisms.

Some of my favorites:

I want to thank my friend, Senator Bill Frist, for joining us today. He married a Texas girl, I want you to know. Karyn is with us. A West Texas girl, just like me.

It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it.

You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.

2004 was a particularly good year for vintage Bush gaffes. Here is what he had to say about "frivolous" lawsuits against physicians and about illiteracy, which must make his wife Laura wince in pain every time he opens his mouth about it.

Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country.

Then you wake up at the high school level and find out that the illiteracy level of our children are appalling.

On the literacy front, here's his comment from 2006 about his reading list:

I said I was looking for a book to read, Laura said you ought to try Camus. I also read three Shakespeares. ... I've got a eck-a-lec-tic reading list.

I have never understood why people voted for someone like Bush in the first place, much less twice. He claimed to be misunderestimated shortly after election in 2000. Here's a few quotes from 2001, and it's not like he wasn't saying dumb stuff like that before then.

I am here to make an announcement that this Thursday, ticket counters and airplanes will fly out of Ronald Reagan Airport.

Do you have blacks, too?" --to Brazilian President Fernando Cardoso

Or from January of 2001, shortly after inaugeration:

I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family.

That's mainly because they won't hold still.

My ultimate favorite, though, didn't make the article's list, but it should have. He was signing a defense budget bill back in 2004, and this is what he had to say about his reasons for doing so:

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful - and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people - and neither do we.

Truer words were never spoken. Watch out for those flying ticket counters.

-- DV

News from Numbnutsville

Recently, El Hijo and I were giggling that I should really post little excerpts from my hometown rag of a newspaper, the Advocate (which of course advocates for nothing in particular). My cousin actually writes the sports columns, which are howlers both in content and grammatical deliciousness, since he mixes evangelical beliefs with, say, football or drag racing. I may post some of those later. But for now, here are some typical news stories from the little Appalachian town that was built on a swamp.

Mom, Daughter Stab Each Other

Apparently, cops were called to the trailer park in a place appropriately titled "Dogtown" where the mom and the daughter (51 and 32, respectively) had gotten loaded on alcohol and then got in an argument that resulted in a "non-life-threatening" injury to both. They were then taken to jail (probably in the same cell) and given ten days and a $143 fine. Lol. I knew the daughter, too.

Here's a gem from this week's paper:

Cops Charge Gray Man With Attempted Assault With Fork

Gray being an area in the county, not a man who is literally gray, of course. This numbnut assaulted his live-in girlfriend, fled cops on foot, ran into a Pizza Hut and "allegedly tried to attack the manager with a fork." The article does not indicate the man was trying to rob the place, merely that he attemped to fork the manager. I've been in that Pizza Hut before. I'm pretty sure it was a fucking spork, anyway.

And oh, what the hell. Here's a piece of my delightful cousin's sports column. I'll repeat that it is, in fact, a sports column.

"Christmas has come and gone, and I hope everyone got what they wanted for Christmas. Most of all I hope Jesus wasn't taken out of Christmas. Many churches have some great plays, however, I still have to say the best play, I've ever seen or been a part of was the Easter play a few years back at Dripping Springs Baptist Church. Not only do I hope Jesus wasn't taken out of Christmas, I hope you put him first in 2009, just not on Easter or Christmas! [...] Union College made their first appearance in the NAIA College World Series. Lyn Camp Lady Cats won the 51st District Championship for the first time and the Lynn Camp Wildcats advanced to the semi-finals of the regional tournament in basketball."

The cognitive dissonance you're feeling right about now will be excused. It's a normal feature of this column. Good lord.

And my cousins wonder why I don't express a desire to go back.

-- DV

I Went to Play at the MLA--Part 2

So, what goes on at the MLA? Lots and lots of panels. Panels consist of about three or four speakers who are selected based on topic who then present their individual work as it relates to the topic. El Hijo presented his work following a person from the Revolutionary War and how he had been memorialized through time (quite good, really, but then, I'm biased) alongside a Rockstar Professor and a guy from MIT. I was really proud of him. I saw a few other panels--the ones he wanted to go to--and ended up actually exchanging information with an Assoc. Dean of another university about service learning, of all things. Anyhoo. Panels are kind of hit or miss. One panel might be great, and then some panels have that one pompous asshole who came in thinking "Twenty minutes? Psh. I'm more important than that," and proceeds to blather on until the moderate jerks the microphone away. You know you're good if 1) there are more audience members than panelists and 2) when someone from the audience says during the Q&A after you just presented your work, "In light of that last presentation, I now have a question about your work..." to some other panelist in attack dog/you're a dumbass mode. If you can make the whole lot of them look bad, you really know your shit.

The big draw was, well, I don't know how else to explain this, but an academic catfight between an old hand and a rock star group of respondents. That old hand was Stanley Fish, a man who was absolutley brilliant with his first book, but now seems to simply be playing the role of provocatuer, not really making a statement, just irritating for irritation's sake. Stanley Fish was a rockstar professor before there where other rockstar professors. I guess he is the Elvis Presley of English. I'll let you think about that for a minute. Anyway, the fuss was about his latest book, "Save the World on Your Own Time," which basically pissed off everybody to the right and the left. To respond to Fish's new book, MLA put together a rather ferocious attack dog panel--three other rockstar profs (which should tell you how influential Fish really is, if they need three people to combat one). Most of my readers wouldn't know any of the panelists, but I'll mention one by name, just for JP & B!. She was Judith Butler. Yes, she of the Precarious Life, she who sat next to Stellarc and the Prosthetic Impulse. JB herself. I have to say, she presents quite differently than she writes. She looks/moves like the female Richard Dawkins (which caused me to have an immediate crush on her), and her presentation is out-friggin-standing. The other two people gave great rebuttals, but really the panel didn't need them. They could've just put Judith Butler up against Fish, and it would've been over. He spent most of his time responding to her accusations, anyway. It was, all in all, kind of cool. In a geeky, English kind of way.

In other rockstar professor news, I saw the goddess of composition, Andrea Lundsford, sitting alone by herself, unattended, looking at some notes. Seems like that should be a foul, somehow. She should have an entourage of some kind, after all, nearly all the universities in existence who teach composition use her books. She is truly THE goddess of composition. I don't know where her satyrs were. I also ran into another rockstar prof in his field, whom El Hijo actually had met before. That guy is a grade-A asshole, to quote Cheney. His initials are Glue Huffer. What a dick. And to make it worse, he was totally sucking the ass of the guy in our university who is an Elite Rockstar Professor--who later apologized for Glue Huffer's behavior. Jerkwad.

That in a nutshell is the business that we were supposed to attend.

Oh, and the line for the Starbucks in the lobby was perpetually long. I found that kind of funny and ironic somehow.

-- DV

I Went to Play at the MLA--Part 1

So, long time no blog.

After classes were officially over, I still had to finish my own work, which took an extra two weeks to do. Then we jetted for San Francisco and the MLA (Modern Language Association) conference for people who teach English composition, rhetoric, literature, theory, etc & foreign languages at the university level (although the foreign language people were banished to a different hotel). It's the big poop of the English world. El Hijo was presenting a paper there. I was there for moral support and to nose around and mock the process. When we came back on the 31st, we were jet lagged for a day or so, and then it was run, run, run to Kentucky to get Dante back again. And now, I'm putting together my game plan for Spring semester with a set of classes I've never taught before. So, been a little busy. I'd really rather be blogging anyway, though.

MLA. LOL.

The ironic thing about this conference is that it's sort of like attending a Trekkie national conference, only if everybody on the incoming planes wore their Trekkie outfit of choice. We do, apparently, have a uniform, and most of us tend to stick to that uniform. We have several varieties of uniform, but the primary one includes wearing squarish glasses, sweaters, dark jeans (if you're a grad student), and looking like you have a stick up your ass. The older men usually have beards (who knew?). We carry around interesting bags filled with obscure books so we look smart. The other uniform, apparently, is to come in looking like a hot, thirty-something lesbian, preferably with a shortish, spiky-ish hair style. If you don't know what that looks like, you really need to get out more. There were a couple of grad student outliers who had all-pink hair, nose rings, spikes & all. To which I thought, why??? I get that you're being an "individual" (which, really, that's so overdone now that you're really not), but god let's hope you're not on the job market. If your primary goal is to say "I don't care what you think" to everyone around you, don't be surprised if everyone around you assumes you won't care what students or your colleagues think either. You prolly won't get hired. Just sayin'.

Another way of ferreting out who was in the hotel for the conference was the way everyone kept these tight little pretentious smiles on their faces whenever they caught anyone looking at them. The smile said, "I'm cool. I'm smart. I've noticed you, and you should be thankful." But what it really means is, "I think I just crapped my pants." It was pretty amusing to just people watch.

I have more updates to report in upcoming posts. JP & B!, I saw the white haired lady who came to our illustrious campus to talk about that book we all had to use--the goddess of composition? She was there. So was a certain lady theorist who pranced into our lives when Stellarc did. Remember that? Heard her take the piss out of an older, also equally famous dude named Fish (remember him?).

If you want to know what everyone else who went there thought about MLA, check out Rate Your Students, particularly here and here. Hilarious.

But probably the best explanation of the atmosphere came inside the elevator on our way up to our room that first night. It was packed; some people were wearing their conference badges (like geeks). An older couple was packed in with us, and the old guy turned and looked at one of us and said, "What's this 'MLA' business here, anyway?" Two of us answered. My answer was, "It's a bunch of English professors and foreign language teachers." "Not really my thing," the old guy replied. "Me neither," I responded. But the other woman's answer was better. When he had asked what the MLA convention was about, she responded: "We're pirates."

We totally should've gone with her answer. It was much cooler than the reality.

-- DV