er..no other COUNTRIES are trying to flee to America? um...yeah

"Although currently Mexicans are jumping the border to get to America, no other countries are trying to flee to America in hopes of the 'American Dream.'"

::facepalms::

Noventa millas

I should say that her view is not representative of most of the class, but even one student making an ignorant, racist comment like that makes me want to curl up in a ball and cry. One of the admin said, "Well...I guess that just means they have a lot to learn from you...?" I'll do my best, but I'm so overwhelmed. This is a new prep for me, and the class is really more of a cultural studies history/English blend that means I need to master even more material than usual. I inherited the course ("The Fractured American Dream") but not any guidance or material with which to teach it. I thought we'd do a few days on the mythos of "American Dream" and talk a bit about the ideal versus the reality through some essays about early US immigration before moving on to other facets of the dream, but now I clearly need to stop and address this misconception in a serious way. Statistics, some essays or articles on current US immigration, and a recent piece about how most Americans (immigrant or not) are NOT in a good place would all help, but I have to find all of that, vet it (preferably a bit more than Sarah Palin), and figure out exactly how to go about teaching it all before I even start the first actual book we'll be reading. Argh.

thanks kristin. and good luck this year - teaching, that I could never do.

I'm sitting in the green room killing time until the preview begins. Bored.

Kristin, that kind of in a roundabout way reminded me of this article: [link]

Pix, that sounds like a fascinating class. I am certain that you're a very good choice for teaching it, too. I look forward to hearing how it goes.

My CEO brought me over a signed baseball today. No big deal, 'cept it's his nephew, Ziggy, whose signature graces it. Very cool.

No big deal, 'cept it's his nephew, Ziggy, whose signature graces it. Very cool.

That would be the MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL RECORD SETTING BRAD ZIEGLIER!!!1!

I had to watch a really terrible movie about a cricket today. It made my head hurt. A lot. Luckily, there was a happy show about a very haunted honky tonk (like 18 ghosts, totally awesome) at lunch that almost made up for it. Especially when it turned out that one of the ghosts had a ghostly diary hidden in the floorboards that was conveniently labeled "The Diary of Johanna." And Johanna was very frank about her dead fiance and the father she killed because she suspected he might have killed her fiance. Totally charming.

I sort of wish I could've introduced Johanna to the cricket movie.

Now I'm doing organizing paper work. The problem with dealing with large groups: you're not all going to be perfectly happy. Sorry?

But this weekend I look forward to more paperwork, an oil change, some light bulb changing, and possibly going shopping for some more exercise gear. My stuff is pretty limited.

And I'm totally happy with my boobs. I think I lucked out, and they're nicely transitional where they're a convenient size, but I can dress them up when necessary. I have problems with my butt. Many strangers have felt free to tell me that they really admire how large it is. And it gets groped fairly often. 100% of the times I take public transportation, for instance. Which is one of the many reasons I avoid public transportation. I did smack a guy in the face who did that on the school bus though. And he got in a lot of trouble. And I got a lot of satisfaction, since his face was very, very red. Mostly because I'm much stronger than I look. And then I deliberately took to braiding my hair right before I got on the bus, so if he so much as came near me, I would turn around really quick, and he'd get whipped in the face with a long braid. Which was also satisfying, and also left a mark. I think he eventually put it together that I wasn't without ways of defending myself, and I was much smarter than he was, since I was much more effective and never got in trouble for what I would do, and he got into tons.

Ah hah! Found the article that I was actually thinking of, about a high school student from Senegal whose team got to the finals of a robot-building contest, and who got accepted to college in NY, but he might be deported because he's in the country illegally. (His mother left him here when he was in middle school.) [link]