A Teaching Tip . . .

Don't try to grade critical review papers while listening to The Black Keys. You will immediately become highly unmotivated to grade critical review papers and instead will immediately become highly motivated to drink one too many very cold beers in a dark and loud bar. And maybe shake your moneymaker a little bit, which is highly incompatible with grading papers. Or so I've heard.

Flashback Friday

It's not Friday, but I couldn't resist the alliteration.

This is a rare thing: a photo taken of me during childhood. I think this was taken on my 5th birthday. This picture illustrates several things:

1. Chocolate cake and I go way back.

2. I used to have blonde hair for reals.

3. I think we can safely blame my mother for my lack of table manners.

Although it might seem as though my mom is charmed by my attempt to shove as much chocolate cake into my gaping maw as possible, don't let her adoring gaze fool you. She's not paying any attention to me at all. Instead, she's congratulating herself on successfully color coordinating the kitchen curtains, her turtleneck, and my birthday cake. The woman is obsessed with turquoise and brown.

When this picture was taken, my mom was only a couple years older than I am now. In this picture, she is a mother of a 5 year old, a 13-year-old, and a 15-year-old, and she's rockin' the pageboy haircut, which she'll continue to do for the next 33 years of her life . My life today is nothing like her life was then, but we both can bake a tasty chocolate cake.

IF IT'S TOO LOUD, YOU MIGHT BE APPROACHING MIDDLE AGE, BUT MAYBE NOT BECAUSE 50 IS THE NEW 40

OK, so I promise to stop referring to 38 as "middle-aged." Sheesh. Understand that this week is developmental theory week in my intro class, and most developmental theories categorize 38 as middle age. Of course, most of those theories were created back in the day when people smoked unfiltered Lucky Strikes, so 38 was quite literally middle age. There are some constrast effects going on as well because I'm married to a guy who's apparently following the Sting anti-aging program. I am so sick of hearing about how young he looks. Seriously. And I spend most of my time with 18- to 21-year-olds, so, you know.

I NEED SOME SWEET CUSTOM RIMS FOR MY LIFE WHEEL

I recently had a number of e-mail interactions with a life coach. Not on purpose. In these messages, she referred to "The Confident Woman" and "The Life Wheel," and "The Welcomer." I wonder if she knows about the Sweet Spot. I should send her that link. Admittedly, my own discipline has some pretty ridiculous terms--BIRGing (Basking in the Reflected Glory of a close other), self-handicapping, The Big Fish in a Little Pond Effect (a topic of one of my scholarly publications), and so on, yet I am quite elitist about the life coaching thing. At least in my field we have some empirical support for our constructs? And when working with clients there are actual licensing procedures? However, in a steel cage death match featuring Life Coach vs. Psy.D., Mr. Banality and I agree that Life Coach wins. FATALITY. Mr. Banality actually convinced me to change my initial prediction about this match-up. His reasoning? "At least life coaches are only taking advantage of rich people and aren't flooding the market and devaluing my work." Touché.

KICKING SOME MUSHROOM ASS

Yes, I did just make an old school reference to Mortal Kombat because 1993 is the about the last time I was familiar with video games. My young cousins received a Wii for Christmas, so I did get to play a little Super Mario Galaxy over the holidays, and I did not get it. How do I kill you? Oh. We're collaborating. What's that thing chasing us? Is that a tumor? It's a mushroom? How do I punch it? I don't punch it. I jump? What? I jumped on it--now how do I kick it to death? It just killed us? What kind of lame ass game is this? I spent the rest of the game making Mario jump through pipes until I got too motion sick to play anymore.

INTERNET: BOON OR BANE?

So, I Googled "Theremin Hero" and found out that I am not the first person to come up with that idea. The internet is really raising the bar for creative thought. In related news, too many people know about YouTube. And by "too many people," I mean the people who own the copyright to the things I want to show in class. Come on! It's for educational purposes! At least there is still an abundance of "cat using toilet" videos available. That'll keep my teaching evaluations up.

LET'S COME UP WITH A BRAND NAME THAT REALLY SAYS, "LUNCH"

I was cutting up a pear this morning to take for lunch, and I tried a piece of it. It was really tasty. I wondered if it might be an organic pear. I had already removed and thrown away the sticker, so I picked up the only remaining pear in the fruit bowl to check it out. No sticker. The only time I've wanted the sticker to be there, the only time I haven't seen the sticker as an annoyance, and there was no sticker. What are the odds?

Speaking of lunch, I love my bento box because it has two little compartments, a matching belt to hold the compartments together, a matching bag, and a matching wee fork that's quite similar to the toddler forks I have in my utensil drawer for Hypothetical Child. And it's an authentic, Japanese bento box, so it's extra cool.

But the brand name is a little . . . I don't know.

Like many other things about Japanese culture, I find this delightfully disturbing.

THE BANALITY CLAIMS HER CALLING

Last week I met with a surgeon at the fancy-pants university hospital. Beforehand, I met with a resident, George F. Harris IV, MD. And Dr. George F. Harris IV and I shared some wonderful teachable moments, and as someone who is fully dedicated to education, I felt compelled to assist him in his training.


Dr. GFH4: OK, so you're (he looks down at my chart) . . . The Banality. And you're 38 years young?


Me:Uh, yes.


Dr. GFH4: Heh. Maybe I shouldn't have put it that way.


Me: I think that probably works better for elderly patients than middle-aged ones.

******LATER*********


Dr. GFH4 (looking at my audiogram): So, what this shows me is that you've got some conductive hearing loss. I'm trusting these squares more than these triangles because the squares represent the mask.


Me: We should probably take a few steps back. This axis (I point to part of the audiogram) represents decibels, and this axis is frequency. The lines are my thresholds. I'm guessing the blue lines represent my left ear and the red represent my right ear and that the lines up here show how I performed when the middle ear was bypassed. You trust the squares because the other ear was masked with static during those parts of the test. Is that right?


Dr. GFH4: Exactly right! You must have had an audiogram done before!


Me: I have, which is good because otherwise I'd have no idea what you're talking about.


Dr. GFH4: That's true. That's a good point. I should've started out by explaining the basics.


What a great relief when I met with the surgeon, who, unlike the resident, understood how tuning forks work (Hey, Dr. George F. Harris IV, if you wait too long, the tuning fork stops vibrating), and didn't poke the hell out of my ear canal with the ear microscope thingy. The surgeon spent at least 20 minutes with me and answered every question I managed to blurt out in quick succession, four-year-old style. Plus, he had actual ear bones in a little plastic box his pocket. I could hardly contain my excitement. Those bones are tiny. When I commented on that, he got really animated and started talking about how the ear has the tiniest bones and the tiniest muscle and the tiniest tendon in the whole body. I have decided that I love this surgeon.

WHY I HEART THE INTERNET: REASON #4 BAZILLION


I'm not getting surgery just yet because there is a 1% chance that something could go wrong and I could completely lose my hearing. I'm going to try hearing aids first. This is all very riveting, isn't it?

I needed to set up a hearing aid fitting appointment with the local ENT. Because I'm incredibly lazy, instead of turning my chair 90 degrees to the right, opening my desk drawer, pulling out the phone book, and looking up the ENT's number, I just Googled it. While I was on hold with the receptionist, I continued to click through the ENT's website. I think I mentioned earlier that he's a plastic surgeon, and I was enjoying checking out the "before" and "after" shots. And there on the page in front of me (but not staring at me because it was a profile shot), was one of my colleagues. And I'll leave it at that because when you know the details, it's not as exciting as you might think.

SHE'S A REJECT, BUT SHE HAS A PROMISING CAREER IN ESPIONAGE

Mr. Banality and I are supposedly adopting a child, but I'll believe it when I see it. Part of the process is an FBI background check. In August of 2006, we took a trip to the federal building in Des Moines to be fingerprinted. The paperwork lasts 18 months, which, at the time, we didn't think about at all because we assumed we'd be finished with the adoption at least 8 to 10 months before the paperwork expired. Yeah. So, we had to go back in January. The technician was not so warm and friendly. She took one look at my fingers and handed me a bottle of CORNHUSKERS' LOTION. I made some joke about a lot of people having dry hands during the winter and especially people who work outside, and she replied, "Well, some people have problems with it." Then she warned me that my fingerprints might not be readable.

I was concerned about how this woman would react to Mr. Banality because he has a somewhat dry sense of humor (he apparently also has somewhat dry hands because she made him use the CORNHUSKERS' LOTION as well). The technician made me return to the waiting area, and I watched from afar as Mr. Banality cracked jokes and Ms. Technician tossed back her head and laughed heartily. Hmmm.

The FBI could not read my fingerprints. No, they couldn't use my prints from last time because I might have altered them since then. You know, on CSI, they can nail someone for a murder with just a few, incomplete, unintentionally-left-behind prints, but the Department of Homeland Security couldn't use the 10 fingerprints I very intentionally gave them after coating my fingertips with CORNHUSKERS' LOTION. I'm beginning to suspect that CSI might not portray some aspects of forensic science in a completely accurate manner.

I went back to the federal building yesterday to go through the process again. I had diligently prepared for this for weeks by slathering my hands with thick hand cream and putting on white cotton gloves each night before getting in bed. This has provided ample opportuniy for mime-related bedtime jokes. I can't get into bed because I'm stuck in a transparent box! Did you know that there's a staircase right next to our bed? Watch as I descend!

When I got to the fingerprinting office, I had to take a number, even though I was the only person there. A newbie did my prints this time, and her supervisor (the charming woman who did my prints before) announced, "She's a reject." Then three workers crowded around to look at my prints and give their opinions about my fingers' various creases. If my prints are unreadable yet again, I'll become a spy for the Soviets. Alternatively, my local law enforcement office can write a letter to the FBI that state that my background check is clean. The upside of the trip is that Mr. Banality and I had some really good pizza, he found a bunch of great toys for his new office, and I acquired one of these babies:

What? It's a work-related expense.

THE BANALITY'S TIME TRAVEL ADVENTURE: A TRIP TO 2008

I haven't been in a Best Buy for at least two years, maybe more, but Mr. Banality needed a portable external hard drive, so we stopped at one on our way home last night. Have you seen TVs lately? They're huge! And flat! And the pictures are so clear! And the iPods these days? They're tiny! I'm embarrassed by my ginormous iPod with its lame black and white screen. Ugh. I also watched some kid play Guitar Hero for a while, and I didn't quite understand the appeal, but then again, I didn't play it myself. I almost said, "I'm waiting for Theremin Hero to come out," but I didn't because just thinking it made me embarrassed for myself.

I'm in the early stages of the flu, with a temperature of 99.something and nasty stuff moving around my upper respiratory system. So, I'm headed back to bed for more feverish dreams. I'm hopeful that this time there will be fewer appearances by Johnny Rzeznik. Wish me luck.

Gotta get to work on my next self-help book . . .

It takes me a while to recover from my own personal Super Tuesday (which happens every week up in this hot mess), so my Wednesdays are usually somewhat . . . unproductive.

Sometimes I wonder what my former classmates are up to. I run into them sometimes at conferences or see their contributions to teaching discussion groups. Sometimes I Google stalk them. Usually on Wednesdays.

Apparently, this former classmate has given herself permission to live from her Sweet Spot. (If you click on this bad boy, be sure to have your sound on. You won't get the whole experience without it.)

http://www.visionarysoul.com/

I have to say: this is kind of awesome. I mean, if you're going to do this kind of thing, you might as well do it big. By the way, doesn't "sweet spot" have something to do with baseball bats?

(Seriously, though, Mr. Banality recommends her ADHD book to his clients. I'm pretty sure he hasn't read it.)

More Bulletty Goodness!

• Mr. Banality and I are in the process of completing an application for adoption (this will be the third agency for us). We have to write a couple paragraphs about why we want to adopt. Mr. Banality wrote them, and it's obvious that he wrote them while he was at work because they included such sentences as, "Because of our appreciation of the developmental process, we experience considerable joy in our interactions with children," which sounds a little, um, clinical. I totally get what he's trying to say, but I think an uninformed reader might read it a bit differently. "We have a strong interest in children," could come across as, "We have a strong interest in children and look forward to keeping one in a plexiglass box so that we may observe its many behaviors." He ended up softening it up a bit by changing "children" to "kids," and adding some contractions here and there, which resulted in maintaining its sincerity while substantially reducing its creepy factor.

• I stayed up late last night and watched about 20 TV shows at the same time. Included in the mix was Keeping the Faith. Wow, that is one bad movie. Ed Norton (who also directed) plays a priest, Ben Stiller plays a rabbi, and Jenna Elfman plays the clergymen's childhood tomboyish pal who returns as a hard-driving (yet sassy and sexy) workaholic. Ugh. In one scene, Norton and Stiller are strutting along a New York City sidewalk in their leather jackets and shades, high-fiving members of their congregation as they pass by while "Smooth" plays in the background. I was so embarrassed that I had to switch over to that Bret Michaels Rock of Love show. And the dialogue. Oh, the dialogue.

"Hey, remember when we had that shoplifting club?"
"Yeah, and you had to shoplift to get into the club!"

WTF?

• Luckily, Sixteen Candles was also on, and that's always a winner in my book, although it is getting a little dated:

Ted (The Geek): Do you know what floppy disks are?
Samantha: No.
Ted: Well, they're really expensive.

• During class, I often ask, "What questions do you have? Is there anything I haven't explained clearly? What else are you curious about?" Note that the framing of these questions demonstrates that I assume they are inquisitive and interested in the material and that if they don't understand something, it's totally my fault. I know, it gives me a little nausea, too. Usually these questions are met with complete silence, save for an occasional student who wants to ask how his or her psychotropic meds will affect whatever psychological phenomenon we're discussing. During my most recent morning class, it was business as usual, but during the afternoon section, someone actually asked a question. Then the flood gates opened. I spent 30 minutes answering questions. I'm not long-winded, so this amounted to maybe 25 questions. Then we took a five-minute break, and students lined up to ask me more questions during the break. When we reconvened, they continued to ask questions for another 10 minutes. It was one of the weirdest experiences I've ever had.

I am über unreasonable

Overheard behind me as I walked back from my intro class yesterday:


Student 1: Oh, there was some class . . . psychology? Yeah, I think it was psychology. They had a test, and then they had to go back to class after the test to watch a movie! OH MY GOD!

Student 2: You're kidding!

Student 1: No! Someone . . . oh, it was Josh . . . Josh said, "I just had a test, but I have to go back to class at 2 to watch a movie." Can you believe that? They took a test and then had to go back to class after the test!

(Josh is one of my advisees, by the way.)

Student 2: Just to watch a movie?

Student 1: Yes! Can you believe that?

(Both students laugh incredulously, as though this is the most absurd thing they've ever heard.)

Me (over my shoulder): Actually, it was a short exam, so it was perfectly reasonable to expect them to come back to class. And they'll be tested over the information presented in that "movie." (Incidentally, I originally hadn't planned to test the students over the video, but suddenly, it seems like a fantastic idea . . .)

The students stop talking, but I can hear them trying to contain their laughter. We split off as I go toward my office, and they rush ahead, more than slightly embarrassed.
************************************************
Yeah, so instead of giving few exams that cover a load of information, I give more frequent exams that cover less information. These exams take most students 40 to 50 minutes to complete, so instead of having them leave after they're finished and losing three hours of class time during the semester, I have them come back to class to start on the next set of material. Poor, delicate students. Has our recent damp and foggy weather led them to be taken with consumption? They must be absolutely spent after 40-50 minutes of exam-taking. Yet I demand that they come back to class! It's like Abu Ghraib up in here!

And don't get me started on the perception that videos are useless time-fillers. I spent more than an hour previewing that video and creating discussion questions for it. Perhaps in the future, I should just watch videos in the comfort of my own home while sitting on my couch in my pajama pants, drinking a beer, and then I'll just lecture about the videos during class. Maybe that would seem like less of a waste of time to them.

I guess the incident bothered me. Just a little.