Argh, more positivity, still!: Friend liked a present, friends' funny comments, all on a daytrip.

So, a few weekends ago me and my one (Asian-Canadian) friend took the bus a couple of states over for a daytrip to meet up with some friends of mine who I know from my hometown - the brother of my one friend who runs a domestic violence / homelessness shelter, his hairdresser wife, their 3 young kids, and his parents and younger brother to boot (didn't know they were coming!).

My friend the hairdresser - that is, the wife of the family - is a very cool person, but tends to be exhausted from the kids and can be in quiet moods in larger social settings, esp. if there's someone she doesn't know very well.

Anyhow, she had been stressed b/c they're prepping to move, so I brought her a bag of whole coffee beans from a local roaster (her husband said it's a favorite thing of hers) and she really, really liked the present, which was nice.

Additionally, she and my one (Asian-Canadian) friend got along like gangbusters and had tons of bubbly energy together, which doesn't usually happen when she first meets someone.

As we were checking out art - me and my friend travelled on the daytrip to see this citywide art fest - me and him and her passed by this bicycle decked out in glued-on Mardi Gras beads.

"I wonder how many times she had to lift her shirt for that," my friend the hairdresser was like, speaking about the artist.

Slightly earlier, my one (Asian-Canadian) friend was telling us about how someone he knows studies the culture of prisons, and how if you enter with a haircut at some places, they don't let you cut your hair b/c they want you to look exactly like you came in for ease of identification.

"So you'd come in with a mohawk," my friend the hairdresser was like (my [Asian-Canadian] friend has a mohawk).

"Yeah," he was like - and then we all began to joke how that was dangerous, since if other guys wanted to make him their bitch, he had an easy handle that they could grab on to.

"Or I could try to advertise it as a bonus for people who'd try to protect me," he was like.

Even previous to that, me and my one hairdresser friend were talking about Buddhism, and she was fascinated by this story of an England-born woman who became a nun and meditated for years in the Himalayas.

Still, she had to ask about her time in her little yard that she never left for 3 years.

"So where did she poop?", she was like.

More positivity, must have, more positivity: Expose response.

I'm satisfied with the response to my most recent expose about corrupt university administration.

My goal is not to change, but to spread awareness and get people to confront the severity of the problem.

So, I was very satisfied that by the end of Sept., in its 5th day of publication, my expose had received 190+ tweets, inspired 2 further commentaries by a well-respected higher ed thinker and by a writer for a nationally-known magazine, and seemed to still be going strong.

I do need to depend less on outside affirmation for my self-esteem, though.

More positivity: Upcoming films.

Also good news (to focus on the positive):

I just found out that this one Polish director is going to be appearing *twice* at the city's filmfest - and tickets were only $11!

I had seen one of his movies from 1980 this summer at a local arthouse cinema and *loved* it...

It was about a wholesome, oddly innocent Polish guy who was principled and resisted compromises but ultimately was deeply shaken by his inability to grapple with the existence of death and evil in the world.

(Identify much?)

Anyhow, I didn't even know the director was still alive, and now he's in my own backyard with 2 of his recent films.

Can't wait!

Pleasantness: Class reading, a student's accent.

I'm trying to be positive again, now that the "overwork and no $" of teaching is upon me for the year and won't let up till June.

One of the positive points:

First term I get to read a number of interesting books, including bits from Ovid's Metamorphoses (in translation).

Another positive point:

One of the students in the class is from Maryland and has a strong, strong accent.  When she said where she was from, honest to G-d it sounded like "Murriland", just like John Travolta talked in the Divine role for the Hairspray musical movie.

I'm interested to find out her story.

Made a freshman cry: I feel bad.

The 3^rd week of class at the art school, this freshman shows up who had been in class the first day…

Earlier, though I had put a cap on enrollment so I had to give permission to people who wanted to come in, she somehow showed up on the roster, and didn’t respond to an email that I sent with the syllabus, asking her to read through it and make sure the course was a “good fit” with its expectations that students visit a religious group 3-4 times over the semester.

She was foreign and the 1^st day came up to me after class to ask questions about what I had written on the blackboard; her notepad showed she had written down everything I had put up there, and I worried that she didn’t have a good basis for college-level academics, but instead was used to learning things rote.

Then, she didn’t show up to class the 2^nd week and there was no email from her about missing the 1^st assignment, so I filed an official report kicked through academic advising, saying that since she didn’t attend class and no assignment was submitted, I assumed she wasn’t taking the class, and to talk with an Academic Advisor and remember the add-drop deadline.

No response to that either.

Then, she shows up at the 3^rd class, having done no reading in the class so far, 2 assignments behind, with another assignment and another week of reading due the next class period.

I told her I didn’t think she could take the class b/c so much work had gone by already, and I was confused b/c I had emailed her and never heard back.

She said she had been sick a week and had lost the syllabus and didn’t know how to contact me, and she just cried and said she was sorry she had disappointed me.

I had a guest coming in that day who was a departmental coordinator who had done documentary visits to a biker gang, and she showed up then, and together we navigated the situation, told the student that adjustment to college could be hard but this happened with a lot with students, and I assured her that if she was upset about not being able to take the class, I was teaching it next semester and she could take it then as well, she was more than welcome to do that.

I also sounded out that she was living off campus, and the departmental coordinator and I encouraged her to talk with her friends, take “self care” time and relax, and to talk with her Academic Advisor in the morning.

She was so upset, she didn’t want to go into the classroom and get her bag she had left there, so the departmental coordinator went in and got it for her.

I would have walked her over to Counselling Services right then, but because my class is in the evening, it had been closed already for an hour.

After class, though, I wrote Academic Advising right away.

The next day, I played phonetag with the Academic Advisor, but then spoke with her… 

She found the situation odd too, esp. how the student hadn’t been reading her email at all, and she spoke with me for more details of the situation.

At the Academic Advisor's advice, the student had already dropped my class and was going to focus on her others, and I encouraged the Academic Advisor to hook her up with tutoring and possibly counselling services, which she thought was a good idea.

Overall, what an upsetting situation.  I just hated to see that student cry!  Something just seemed wrong with her, and I felt bad for adding to it, though I'm almost positive she wouldn't have been able to catch up and that would have caused her more stress in the long run.

Korean Colleague (2 of 2): Pope Francis’s visit to Korea.

That same night I sounded out my colleague about Pope Francis’s recent visit to Korea.

It turns out that people suspect that Pope Francis openly rebuked Korea’s current cardinal…

During the visit, Pope Francis took a yellow ribbon from the parent of a Seowol ferry disaster victim and wore it on his cassock a lot afterwards, and on the plane ride back said that “someone” had tried to persuade him to remain non-partisan and not wear it (to which Pope Francis said that people must always take sides with the suffering, which quote got a lot of press).

In Korea, everyone thinks that that “someone” was Korea’s current cardinal, who’s very buddy buddy with the government.

Korean Colleague (1 of 2): Trashy bar story.

Lately I’ve been hanging out with a (Korean) colleague who’s cool as all hell, and will be guest lecturing at my class.

Me and him were at the student bar going over his planned lecture and some other people joined us, and then we all ended up talking about bars and I mentioned this bar I had been at in Milwaukee when I had lived there for the summer, a really old school run-down gay bar on the edge of an industrial district.

It was very small and I went with some classmates to there for the bar’s 30^th anniversary party, and when I went to the restroom to piss, the restroom was very small, just a two-by-two area in front of the door with a urinal right next to the sink and then on the other side of that a stall that was up one step from the floor, and through which I could see 2 sets of old man feet, both facing the toilet.

(I assume the guy closest was bending over it.)

Then, I hear one of the guys whisper, “What’s your name?”.

In any case, I had always assumed that I was overhearing pillow talk of anonymous restroom sex, but my (Korean) colleague had a different interpretation of the story, and thought that they were talking to me in order to get me to join in.