This semester I am not teaching any foreign language courses and it is wonderful. Last semester on Facebook, I completed the quiz “What kind of elementary school teacher are you?” with the result Funny and Friendly.
You are a very funny and friendly teacher. You like to make your classroom a fun place to be. Childhood is supposed to be fun and you believe school should be no different. Children will not learn if they don’t want to be there.
You incorporate humor into your lessons. Students smile and laugh in your classroom. You love to have them work with partners or in groups so they can help each other and talk about what they are learning. Students love being in your classroom because they have such a good time, they don’t even realize how much they are learning.
Sometimes your classroom might get a little loud because of all the fun that’s going on, but you know that they are truly learning and let them continue on.
This is true even though I don’t actually like group projects or playing games in class. It is why I was a good T.A. of foreign languages to students who had not already had the spirit beaten out of them by nuns or No Child Left Behind. I am, however, a terrible professor of the same subject for people who just want preparation for tests based on mechanics, rewards for spelling right, and punishment for spelling wrong.
I am worse yet for consumer-style students who believe the language should behave as they wish it to do, or who want to choose which parts of it they are willing to learn and which parts they prefer not to know. I find it terribly humiliating to have to “negotiate professionally” with attitudes like these. That is why I so dislike being a professor.
I feel so sorry for the students, realizing how mistreated they have been, and how much pain they have been taught to reinflict upon themselves. I am horrified to see that they have spent their entire lives so far chained to a desk and a mechanics workbook, with someone ready to hit them for the slightest misstep.
I had a student from Other State Regional University last year who said: “Why do Louisiana students not realize that it is all right to take a risk and try something new, even if you make a mistake? Do people here not realize that that is the fastest way to learn? If I try to stretch myself to my limits with the advanced questions and make a mistake, will it hurt my grade in your class? It would not have at Other State Regional University, but having seen how people react here, I just wanted to make sure.”
I am funny and friendly but it is probably far too late to have fun and friendliness work on people from here. I have tried that and they do not take it seriously. Next year I intend to be more severe. Louisiana is allegedly the happiest state in the Union but I think [that is because] it is masochistic.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Or because the unhappy people are so unhappy that they leave?
Someone who is from here suggested that it was because people don’t have anything to compare it to. Most of the unhappy states seem to be the more conscious ones! NY, MA, IL, CA…. Oddly, the high suicide states of WA and OR are not among the most unhappy.
[I have to pray for 8 days now … gave my anti anxiety drug to my colleague up for tenure so ze can be calm enough to actually finish making hir dossier … that means 8 drug free days for me now, it will be a Test.]
[The Test will involve mentally fighting the demon of self limitation and its accompanying states of terror and stasis. I think I can do it.]
[Also, I have to quit, anyway: I’ve developed an interest in the prescribing MD, have to quit the habit of him and therefore the pharmaceutical, and let an interval go by, so I can approach him at the gym … yes, I am a teenager.]
[Also: Internet cafes suck and I get sick of being at the office, I can’t wait until our neighborhood gets Internet service again. And: I am only getting $1700 back on my Federal taxes, which is disappointing and produces financial anxiety, makes it hard to get out of here in the summer.]
[These are my Complaints. Now I will start counting blessings, to forge the identity which will survive eight drug free days and perhaps many more.]
But back to the post. An old and perceptive friend says the whole issue is, I am not the caretaking type and not cut out to be a nurse. The reason I don’t like college teaching is that it requires you have that personality melded with the obedient behavior of a Wal*Mart employee.
You are not really, in a literal sense, taking drugs are you?
—
Anyway, got my computer back last night — I am $450 out of pocket for a new motherboard.
Looked at le Supervisors comments, and they seem more than manageable, at least in not requiring any heavy theoretical rethinking, which I was half anticipating. (I kind of like that sort of challenge, actually, so it would have been wish fulfillment).
Excellent news! Drugs, oh, yes … on many days .5 mg of alpralozam, for fear! This drug is supposed to be very bad for you but I have not found this. It enables me to stay focused in class and in my office while my abusive ex’s voice booms outside in the halls, ordering people around as it used to do me. Its effects only last a few hours, though, and I don’t have any of it now, so I am drug free.
[I’ve done my state taxes now, and I will get over $400 back, so all in all I am about receive over $2100 in refunds. Having money in the bank is a very good antidote to fear and claustrophobia, I find.]
Re the post, too: I have to say that my introduction to literature, junior level, is rocking this semester, like a real college class. This is good in itself and it also makes me realize I’m not wrong to miss teaching courses like this normally.