A classroom idea I won't do.

The other week I was thinking, that when I teach college writing, I make my students roll dice, and for the rest of the term I teach them as I normally do, only I never use their names at all, but just call them shit like "Student #43" instead.

It'd be a burlesque on the corporatized university...  Get it?

I'm so precarious that I don't want to cause any trouble, though.

I checked in with my one professor friend who teaches (modern) (Czech) literature and she actually loved the idea, and only just suggested that I call them things like "Profit Center #43" instead.

A morning of two oddities:

One morning the other week before my tutoring job, somehow my slice of toast I was munching fell out of my hand as I went to go get the coffee percolator, and it flew a bit and landed over on the floor to the left of the stove, butter side down.

A bit later as I was biking up towards the subway stop, there were a bunch of firefighters parked by the side of a residential street, and as I passed by, one guy was turning some giant wooden lever thing on top of a fire hydrant, and he was unscrewing it as a few others watched, and as I biked right past them, spurts of rusty water were like spurting out onto the street by the curb, and then washing over in a thinner sheet to where my bike tires were just then going by.

Both things happened, on the same morning.

Mutual woo-ing?

So, I'm thinking of unionizing my one tutoring job at a non-profit, since it really is like "Uber for adjuncts," though I do like the students.

Already I made sure to get names and emails, and I've created a list for the entire bargaining unit.

I also went out for coffee with one guy the other day (a European immigrant who worked for a franchise, and actually left the franchise since he didn't like how U.S. labor law protects employers and his company made him cut hours and increase precarity to the point where employees were crying on him, "there has to be a balance, and here it's too far one way," he was like).

I also hit up another tutor the other day, when I bumped into him in the college library, and I mentioned getting together for coffee, and he also said that he liked the job, but "there's not enough hours," at which point I grimaced in sympathy.

When I went to email him from the list, then, I googled him to try to kick up a photo to see if I was writing the right person, and what do I find out, but that he's a long-time labor activist and actually did stuff like being a steward and bargainer and shit.

That got me wondering, was his side comment about lack of hours actually him trying to feel me out for a unionization drive?

We might have been wooing each other!

LOL.

Me, to a (black-sounding) phone survey woman the other week...

...who asked me if I supported a "managed lane" where people could pay more to use it, above and beyond the conversion of a local highway to a tollroad:

"Heck no!  I don't think people with more money should be able to buy their way into better treatment than any of the rest of us."

. . .

(Then when she sounded amused and said something like, "Thank you," I was like, "Sorry, but I'm feisty like that.")

A classroom trick I'll never do.

This year, I've thought that on my long days of teaching, as a burlesque on overworked teachers stretched thin between multiple jobs, that at the start of each new back-to-back class, I'd take out a pocket mirror, tap some sugar on it, roll up a dollar bill, and snort it, and be like, "Aaaah!", and then begin teaching.

I'd never actually do that, though.

I think.

An Agatha Christie surprise.

The other week a book I had requested wasn't in yet at my local public library branch, and I'd been thinking of reading a mystery since my one (lawyer) friend from (Missouri) is always reading one and is always talking about them, so I checked out which Agatha Christie books they had, to see if I should get one.

One was part of the Poirot series, and it didn't seem like it made much sense for me to start off on a series, but the other one they had was called "Pale Horse" and seemed to be a stand-alone, so I got that one.

As it turns out, it starts out with a catfight between slumming heiresses, and it eventually gets into the mid-20th c. English occult revival and bastardized Freudianism!

As they say, that's kismet.

Good choice, me.

A mildly disturbing moment with a tutoree.

The other week during a tutoring session at a community college, one of my (young) (Latina) tutorees talked herself down, and said out loud in response to something we were doing, "That's because I'm so stupid."

In all my years of teaching across (elite) schools, I've never had a student say that before.

I was decently disturbed, and wondered where she'd learn to think that about herself, not to mention verbalize it.

I didn't say anything, but was especially conscientious about affirming good work throughout the rest of the session.

She really is a good student to have and work with, and does good work each session, and improves across sessions!