Hi!
Coursework is keeping me super busy, but I wanted to pop in and acknowledge all the really nice comments you guys left for me on my last entry. Everyone: thanks for your two cents, and thanks for your vote of confidence–it really, really helps.
These are the classes I’m taking this semester:
Gender in Pop Culture
Women, Culture, and Society
Writing Communites
Poetry Workshop
The top two are sort of fluffy courses for my Women’s and Gender Studies minor, but the Pop Culture class is probably going to be awesome. I’m excited for the readings in ways that scare me. We had to pick paper topics on the first day, and I actually thought to myself, “I wish I write about MORE THAN TWO of these readings! MAYBE SHE WILL LET ME!” Then I punched myself in the jaw. And then I was fine.
Writing Communities is probably my favorite class at the moment, though in a couple of weeks I’ll probably want to rescind that statement. It’s more of a club than a class, being that we are completely in charge of planning, publicizing, hosting, and reporting several free reading events by pretty well-known contemporary authors and poets who are coming to our school this semester. It’s called the Visiting Writers Series, or the VWS, just so you know when my posts start to refer mostly to that term. That’s the class–putting together the VWS and immersing ourselves in, well, the community of writers. I’m excited because this is a whole new aspect of career writing that I’ve never been exposed to, and because I have a hunch that I’ll really, really enjoy the PR stuff.
Poetry Workshop was, uh, cancelled. For two weeks. I have to write a poem by September 5th and print out the syllabus. That’s all I really know. We’ll see how it goes.
Yesterday after three classes in a row, I went off to HLC for 4 hours of work. It was totally awful–the one kid I worked with has made it painfully clear that he doesn’t take me seriously. He’s like, 17, and he’s at the center because he’s been sent to another school to go back to 8th grade. And it makes me really uncomfortable to work with him.
First of all, he’s a bully, and he brags about all the people he’s picked on–his one classmate who is in a wheelchair, “fat chicks,” “Mexicans and other people who don’t even know how to speak English.” He regularly uses curse words, which, whatever, I use curse words all the time, but not at my job. And I expect my students to show me the same respect.
He’s told me that he’s going to follow me to my car and hide in the back seat and startle me while I’m driving, which, taken out of context, sounds worse than it was, but SERIOUSLY? Don’t threaten a woman. Obviously he’s never seen the “Power of Consent” video I was forced to watch during Welcome Week when I was a freshman. He’d be interested to know just how few rights he has if I claim he was harassing me.
This is the first time I’ve had a real problem with any of the students at HLC. Most of my problems have come from within myself: feelings of inadequacy, anxiousness, competitiveness and the like. I discussed this issue with my boss, and she understood and sympathized (she also assigned another teacher to work with him), but I don’t think I drove the point home enough that I do not want to work with him again, period. I don’t really know what to do. But for now, I’m trying to put it behind me and follow my own advice: take things one day at a time.
What about you folks? Any on-the-job nightmares that might make me feel better about this kid? Until then, I’m going to wallow in the fudgy (and also fat free!) deliciousness that arrived in the mail today!! Thanks, Amanda! You rock!
