My Split Classroom Personality, Smokers, and Friendly Gay Guys

My Split Classroom Personality
When I am in the classroom, as a student instead of the usual teacher, there are two mes. The first me is a flat out, bald-faced nerd. I sit near the front, raise my hand to unashamedly ask and answer questions, and have this burning, almost incontrollable desire to make a comment if something is said that somehow relates to my experience of the subject at hand. Now, so far, that sounds like the kind of person who elicits inward groans each time she raises her hand, right? So far, I'm the kind of person who is responsible for thinly veiled eye rolls and sniggering snorts following the instructor's placatingly benign rejoinder, "Um, yes, that is interesting." But I haven't told you about the other me yet. The other me's modus operandi is "be as unnoticeable as possible, do NOT call attention to yourself." The other me's job is to silence and control the first me, or rather, to make her more palatable to others. When the first me is itching to raise her hand one too many times, the other me jumps in and holds it down. When the first me has a comment burning on her lips, the other me shakes her head menacingly with a finger over her lips. When the first me wants to know more about the difference between aquí and acá, the other me nudges her in the ribs and hisses, "Is that really necessary?" No one personality reigns. The two mes simply balance each other out.

Smokers
Is there some kind of correlation between Spanish majors and tobacco consumption? No, seriously. Like half the class (professor included) has a daily pre-class smoke break. Once I found myself out there, finally meeting and talking with my classmates, the latter politely blowing smoke away from me as they inquired about my academic plans and offered sympathy when I explained to them my necessary commute. I finally met the darling Spaniard of the class, with his lovely Spanish lisp during my foray into the smoke break world. I, for some reason, always experience a nostalgic feeling when confronted with the image of smoke being politely blown away from me. Perhaps it's leftover from my time in Europe where the general public would laugh you to scorn if you hinted at the possibility of there being such a thing as a non-smoking section.

Friendly Gay Guys
I usually get to Auburn maybe 20 to 30 minutes early so I can take a breather before class and read in a shady spot outside. Today, I spotted a tobaccophile from class, or rather, he spotted me. We began to chat, and he totally opened up to me. He told me the story of how he was a Poli Sci major in undergrad, but his senior year the department wouldn't let him do the project he wanted to do, so he told them "f-you" (to paraphrase) and changed his major to Spanish. He still managed to graduate on time. "Wow, that's quite an accomplishment," I said, blushing. We continued talking and he invited me to sit in the air-conditioned GTA office while he finished his composition (due today). We were given two options: "When I was young" or "My family." I asked him which one he chose. "Well, my family is pretty boring, and so is my childhood, so I asked the professor if I could write about something else and he said 'sure,' so I'm writing about my ex-boyfriend. He doesn't really care what we write about. I am totally not doing Kevin justice," he muttered, half to himself. I smiled politely and went back to my book. Other GTAs from class popped their heads in and he introduced me to them, like a friendly big brother or something. I even got to offer the darling Spaniard my calculator so that he could finish up the grades for the section he was teaching. (Who else but a nerdy teacher would carry a calculator around?)

My dad and I always get into arguments over his seeming impression that I'm some kind of gay advocate or something. I'm totally not, but what's the use of harping against an "agenda" that has been around since Genesis? It highly annoys me when people jump up on the "the gays are taking over" bandwagon like homosexuality is some kind of especially insidious vice that trumps all evil. What about people who lie? Hypocrites? What about heterosexuals who sleep around? Most Evangelical Christians haven't a fear that the "fornicators" are taking over. I mean, seriously. I do not condone anything that the Word of God speaks against. But neither am I going to lambast people instead of trying to reach out to them.

Summer Reading on Collideoscope

90&9 hosts a blog called Collideoscope whose tagline is "Where Christianity and culture intersect."

In the heart of covering and discussing culture, I was asked to do a series of reviews where I simply discuss the books I'm reading this summer. I love reading, and I love talking about what I'm reading, so, I heartily agreed. I've posted the first one already--check it out here.

Hebrew Wisdom Literature

I have a big block of free time at work. And really, I'm going to get down to exporting my grades in just a minute, but I have to share this incredibly insightful post I read a minute ago by a fellow blogger who is in seminary. He talks about the ideas behind terms we toss around in our society such as "balance" and "extremist" and how they hold up through the lens of the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Psalms and Job. Interesting stuff. Check it out here.

This Is What I Know

1. I need sleep. Like a big dog.

2. My room looks like a drunken rock band had a thrashing party in it.

3. I really need some sleep. Today when I woke up, I thought it was Wednesday.

4. Somehow, I'm still coherent enough to read and comprehend books. I finished On Beauty by Zadie Smith the other day.

5. The interior of my car is slowly attaining the characteristics of my aforementioned room.

6. I need to start looking for an apartment if I want to move out in August.

7. I need to do some serious cleaning and sorting if I want to move out in August.

8. My summer break is not going to be much of a break. Doing summer camp part-time at my school and taking summer classes every day amongst other things aren't going to give me much of a chance to take one! Ah, well. So is life.

Advanced Spanish Syntax

is the name of the class that I'm starting at Auburn tomorrow. Conveniently, this class starts at 3 p.m. tomorrow while my place of employment doesn't let out for the summer until next Thursday, and I usually don't get to leave for the day until 3 p.m. Auburn is a 45-minute drive away. Um, conflict?

My supervisor graciously allowed me to rearrange my schedule so that I could leave by 2. And most of the afternoons so near the end of school my usual classes will be busy having end-of-the-year parties and the like, so there wasn't much rearranging to do at all, thankfully.

But I'm nervous. I have no clue why. It's not like this is new to me. I've only been out of college 2 years. And I took a graduate course (a theology one at that) last summer, so it's not like I'm out of touch or whatever. I guess maybe I have this unnerving feeling that I'm going to be . . . behind or something. I have this fear the class is going to be chock full of advanced, serious native speakers who can quote lengthy sections of Pedro Calderón de la Barca and who can conjugate irregular verbs in every tense known to the inhabitants of Romance Languagedom and who can syllabify effortlessly (using all the correct linguistic symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet) and I'm going to be left, trembling and coughing, in their Spanish dust.

But I'm trying to take it easy. I'm trying to remind myself that God really does have a purpose in my staying in Alabama, commuting to this school, and spending a fortune on gas in the process. He must.

I had to fight back tears today

at school. No, it wasn't because my students were being hellions. I'm very blessed to work in a place where I can be a teacher rather than a disciplinarian. I've never come close to being in tears for that reason, thank God.

But it was a child, a new student in first grade. He walked in shyly with the rest of the class and his teacher stopped him and introduced him to me. He was a pudgy, round-faced, Asian boy. He was brown-skinned, Filipino, maybe? His two front teeth were a little gapped and ever so slightly protruded. He looked up at me expectantly. I suddenly found myself blinking back tears. What is wrong with me? It wasn't that I pitied him or anything. It was just that I was suddenly struck by his innocence. There was something about him that awakened some weird, protective/maternal feeling in me because of the simple fact that he was small, sweet, soft-spoken, and innocent. He was beautiful.

I teach plenty of cute kids. Some of them are downright gorgeous. And this little guy wasn't overwhelmingly attractive, so it wasn't like I was awed by sheer cuteness. It was more than that. But still, I was surprised at my response.

Two Roads

I wrote a book review for 90&9.com comparing The Road by Pulitzer winner Cormac McCarthy and Through Painted Deserts by Don Miller. Check it out here.

Calling All Short Story Lovers

Check out this short story by Zadie Smith featured in The New Yorker.

I must admit

that I do love flowers. I love all kinds, but especially sunflowers. I am very appreciative of them, regardless of the source.

Received today from a 5-year-old . . .

A small bag of peppermint candies with a note attached that reads, "You have 'MINT' a lot to me--thanks for being such a great teacher!" Awwww . . . warm fuzzies.

Single people, please read this

People, I almost gave a tongues and interpretation when I read this. Thank you, Brittanie, for awakening the single masses to this much needed exhortation.

More Don

Don Miller. I cannot get enough of this man. I've finished the last book of his I hadn't read yet, Through Painted Deserts, and now what do I do? Start back over with Blue Like Jazz?

This book was the most fun of the others. Well, I'll just say it was less theological. In a nutshell, it's his recalling a road trip he and a friend made in a Volkswagen van from Houston to Portland. It made me want to go camping. Can you believe I've never gone camping before? Well, I've stayed at one of those camp places, in a bunk in a cabin, and did the whole canoeing and roasting marshmallows over a campfire thing, but I haven't gone bona fide, sleep in a tent outside camping. I've never purposely watched the sunrise. Can you believe it? I'm not saying I've never seen it rise. Of course I have. But I've never purposely gotten up before dawn, gone outside, found a spot to get a good view and sat down to watch the sun rise.

Reading this book made me jealous. It really did. There are worlds completely untapped by me. There is so much of which I haven't even begun to scratch the surface. This book made me want to forget this routine life, just scrap it all, become a nomad, and find God out in the wilderness, on the road. Reading this book made me want to plug my ears to the same old, same old, clap, clap, clap, turn to your neighbor and say blah-blah-blah, come on and get excited everybody stuff. Reading this book made me want to marvel in the why, it made me want to be content with just knowing that God is good. It made me want to kick my obsession with the how in the rear end. Bffff! There it goes, flying out the window.

Here's a paragraph just as he ends the book. He's sitting with his road trip buddy, watching the sun rise over the mountains:

It is a wonder that those exposed to such beauty forfeit the great questions in the face of this miraculous evidence. I think again about this small period of grace, and thank God for it, that if only for a season, I could feel the why of life, see it in the metaphor of light, in the endlessness of the cosmos, in the miracle of friendship. And had these mountains the ability to reason, perhaps they would contemplate the beauty of humanity, and praise God for the miracle that each of us is, ponder the majesty of God and the wonder of man in one bewildering context.

I want to be able to just be content with awe. To not understand God or myself, but to be able to be okay with that. I think there's something about nature, God's creation, that helps us do that. Today I sat outside for a while. Under a tree, on a blanket, reading and journaling in the shade at my favorite park. It's a manicured bit of nature, nothing like Don's roughing it through the Grand Canyon, but it's still beautiful. For minutes at a time, I would stop reading or writing to drink in my surroundings. I would stop and breathe and feel alive and, for a few minutes, forget about the swirling trivia that unduly hogs my brain. I need to do that more often, I think.

Life is like . . . a book?

The following was forwarded to me from a friend I consider my go-to book guy. They're pretty hilarious. My favorites are numbers 1 and 4, because they're so . . . fiction writer.

From the latest Powell's Books enewsletter:

The trouble with reading a good book is sooner or later you have to come back to your own life. And isn't everything just a little more disappointing after that?

Forthwith, my list of Five Reasons I Wish Real Life Were More Like a Book:

1. On your dullest day, when absolutely nothing of interest happens and every single person you meet is boring or irritating, you could still be praised for your "evocative prose."

2. If at any point in your life it's crucial that you receive an unlikely nugget of information without which you simply cannot proceed, you will always stumble upon a hushed conversation around the corner that will conveniently reveal everything you need to know.

3. Female scientists are incredibly gorgeous and sexy. Male scientists are impossibly rugged and handsome. Everyone who isn't beautiful is a villain.

4. The simplest of tasks, from searching for a match to biting into a cookie, can trigger a massive wave of vivid recollections and crisp memories that will take you over every major event of your entire life in only five or ten seconds.

5. When you say something stupid on a first date, you can always fix it with a rewrite.

Here's one I'd like to add, as one who often talks to herself aloud:

Talking to oneself would be appreciated as "stream of consciousness" instead of questioned as "Who are you talking to?"

BD Sighting No. 30583

I see BD like, once a month, if that. And each time I do, I'm unprepared. Like today, he walks into the middle school office while I'm sitting there chomping on a handful of M&M's. I couldn't even give a pleasant hello; I could only offer a nod of acknowledgement because I had a mouth full of masticated chocolate. I mean, why?

Anyway, he lingers, hair freshly cut, to eventually talk with the principal, and we finally exchange pleasantries. His last official day of work will be like a week before mine since he doesn't give final exams (and doesn't teach elementary school). His summer plans? Going to summer school. And mine? Oh, the same. It hits him. "Oh, wait, you'll be at Auburn too, right?" Sho' nuff. (He even asked what classes I was taking!)

I shan't speculate on this. I shan't attribute anything more to this than is needful. I ain't gonna do it, no siree Bob.