Addendurm.

That last convo really made me down on ever teaching college again – the student debt is just appalling – but then like right after that I saw several times that in-state schools are free for families under a certain income line, and that made me feel better, because it really does make college accessible and that would not totally pervert the student-teacher experience by making it somehow predatory and rapacious…

I had been thinking about this a lot lately, too, because during my recent conference this fall I caught up with someone who I know from grad school who had transferred to the conference’s host university after getting tenure at a low-level state school in another state, and she had been talking about how at her last school the graduation rate over 6 years was horrible and you’d get all of these poorer students that came in thinking that college was a path out and up, but instead they just got a lot of debt and not even a degree where they could hope to recoup anything like that.

That conversation really made me realize once again how people who get tenure often lack certain moral sensibilities, where they have to be okay with just horrible horrible situations going on around them, as long as they get a personal job out of it.

Which, is really not me, and is really not for me.

Two experiences of the younger generation…

…overheard at bars earlier this winter:

1) At a student-ish bar with a good weekday burger deal that I stopped through after using the campus library, two (white) (college-age) (off-shift) workers were sitting a couple of stools down from me, and the (man) was telling the (woman) about how during their recent Christmas party when they had the bar closed down for that someone went out in the back alley to smoke and they found a (homeless) man on the ground “tweaking,” and that the woman he’s usually around with and with whom he shares a dog was nowhere to be found.

2) At the local brewery that I go to, two (college-age) (white) girls are talking about their friend who graduated who’s attempting to move to the city that I used to live in, but the best that he can find for apartments is $800 for part of a 4 bedroom, and the best job that he can find in his field is $13/hour, which really won’t cover the apartment and his student debt at all.

Winter workout.

Because of a burst of snow and icy roads earlier this winter, I wasn’t able to go out for my weekly jog even with my winter weather gear, and so instead I googled high intensity workouts that I could do indoors and I found this great one that only takes 25 minutes.

Only, the first time that I did it, I could only get through 1 of the 3 main reps, it was so high intensity, and I actually felt slightly sick afterwards, it was such a shock to my body.

Like, it was amazing, it totally made me feel like a track athlete throwing up in a trashcan after being pushed to their limits, even though the main workout was just 30 seconds of activity followed by 30 seconds of rest for 6 different activities, ideally repeated 3 full times.

The next time, too, I was able to get through 2 of the 3 reps, and after that, all 3 of 3 reps.

What I love about it too is how it makes all of these muscles feel sore that I usually am not aware of, which means that the exercises must be hitting groups that I usually don’t.

And, after one of these workouts, those muscles are sore like that for like days.

What a great workout. 

A coworker backstory, both recent and far distant.

So, it turns out that my one (tall) (skinny) (techie) (Thai) coworker returned to the restaurant because he was laid off from his local programming job during a recent downsizing.

And, he had had a good severance package for like a year, but he put out over 700 applications and wasn’t getting any bites, so he decided it wasn’t worth it to apply to tech jobs anymore, and so he sought out other non-tech jobs that were easily available to him.

He said he’s also working at a bike shop, but that’s more so because he gets a discount there, like for this amazing carbon fiber bike he got, at the mention of which he pulled out his phone and showed me this super specialized bike with an aerodynamic frame and special pedals and whatnot, etc. etc. etc.

“I hadn’t realized you were into biking,” I was like.

And, he said that he used to bike semi-professiionally in his late teens and early 20s, like he would place in races and make money and stuff, and at one point he was eating upwards of 5,000 calories a day.

Then, he showed me more pictures of the bike,and how it was carbon fiber this and carbon fiber that and whatnot.

“You really like carbon fiber,” I was like. 

Then, I was like, “After the Singularity happens and we can upload our consciousnesses, you know what I think your body will be made out of ?”

“Carbon fiber,” he was like.

“Exactly,” I was like.

Two winter sights…

…during an early winter snowstorm earlier this year in the one college town that I now live in:

1) The bookbox out across the street from the local library is gone, leaving just a stand with ragged nails sticking upwards from a large squarish flat board that forms the very base of the top pedestal.

2) By the pathway to my back cottage, there’s sheets of discolored snow towards the house, and there’s just enough of it to make me look closer and realize that it’s not from some animal pissing, but rather dirty water dripping down from the roof and trickling down through heaps of snow that had fallen off of the roof, creating sheets of like light beigish-brown snow on the top.

. . .

(At the local public library, the deskworker there wasn’t aware of the bookbox issue, but asked around and found out that it wasn’t vandalism or something, but rather a precaution that people take whenever there’s a huge snow and there’s a risk that ploughs or something will go by and the snow they kick up will take it down inadvertently.)

Another day…

…at the one (Thai) restaurant that I work now, as of several months ago:

1) My one (newer) (taller) (Thai) coworker comes in with her two young daughters after they got let out early from school, so I go back to our odds-and-ends workbox where we keep pens and scissors and corks and stuff  and where I had put a bracelet that I had made with her youngest daughter at an event that we went to a few weeks earlier, and I slip it on so that I can wear it over to their table.

And, the youngest one notices it immediately, that I was wearing it like I had told her that I would, and she just lights up and is so excited. 

2) I think that I hear someone playing the marimba that’s part of our holiday display up towards the ) of the restaurant, only I look down the length of the restaurant and I don’t see anyone there, and it’s only when I go and help the table next to that display and a woman there is spooning ice cubes out of her glass and the metal of her spoon hits the side of the glass and makes a ringing sound, it’s only then when that happens that I hear that same ringing sound and I realize where that sound must have been coming from, all that time.

3) A group of three (late middle-aged) (STEM?) professors including one who looks very (Romanian) share a meal, and then when one of them pulls out “the T-card” and starts talking about what can get included as a professional expense, I’m like, “Oh, is that for the tea?”, referring to the tea that two of them had ordered and were drinking, only they hear that and they’re like “No,” and they don’t hear my joke at all.

4) A (fatter) (middle-aged) (white) woman with a pudgy face and glasses and curly curly blonde hair just loves our homemade salad dressing, and she is all smiles about it and just beams her big round face up at me and is like, “I could drink it through a straw.”

Signs of increasing local homelessness:

1) The local supermarket co-op does away with its seating in the covered area outside its doors, since (homeless) people had been congregating there and harassing staff and local customers.

2) The (older) (white) (female) (townie) bartender at the local brewery tells me that with the one sandwich shop that moved to a few storefronts away from them like a year ago, everyone there has been extremely happy, since they lost the homelessness problems that they had had at their last location, like people coming in and using tables and stealing bags of chips from the open racks that they had out, in addition to staff sometimes being afraid to close alone when it got quiet and they were like the only ones there, apart from the homeless people who were maybe around.