The Tip

The bottom of an ice cream cone

The first two weeks of teaching have been great. We flipped our family schedule upside down, and even though I never slept in, for the first time in four years, I started using an alarm clock. I wake up at the crack of dawn, 5am and run on the treadmill. 

This week I opted to watch TV rather than listen to music while I ran. I started The Age of Adeline. I am not sure why because it's a movie I knew I wouldn't like, and sure enough, I had to stop watching it after putting in one hour, two runs. Whats appealing about this movie is the attractiveness of the cast, Lively is a living Barbie doll, her man, Michael Huisman, oozes sex, and Ellen Burstyn is the definition of gorgeous. I had to quit it when I realized Adeline was going to be cured from her disability after deciding to be in a relationship, the moral of the story being, a woman will become normal, living a happy life, after allowing a man to take ownership of her.
After realizing I couldn't make it through another thirty minutes of The Age of Adeline I picked out The Man In The High Tower. It's interesting to see that in an imagined world where the US was taken over by Germany and Japan, Americans still refuse to learn another language. I won't commit to the series because I need something a little more lighthearted than shoot outs and torture chambers at 5 am. After the run, I get ready, play with the kids for a bit, and then leave for work.

In my first class, there is one student who is so kooky I can only smile when I see his bruised and tired face, he's had a black eye this week. Our class starts at 7:30 am, and when we all pile in the room he lets me know how tired he is. Then he takes his seat in the front row where I can see his running shoes that look like gloves for feet. After five minutes of lecture he puts his head on the desk and takes a nap, during intermission he gets a coffee and usually stays awake the rest of class. The information must be going into his sleeping head because he got a hundred percent on the first exam. Maybe it has to do with the shoe gloves.
In my next class there is a group of men in the back who are engaged and smart but they can get a bit obnoxious because of their running criticisms. So yesterday, when one of them came up to me and said, "I have a tip..." He followed it up by telling me that I should make a handout explaining a deck of cards instead of verbally explaining it to the class, since its a waste of time to the people who know about cards. He is at least twice the age of average student in my class. We're covering basics of probability, and many examples deal with a deck of cards. In these times, where people use idle time to surf Facebook or play candy crush there is a lot of people who don't know cards. When I ask, what's the probability the second card you pull is a queen given the first card you pulled is a two, some of them look at me like I'm speaking Swahili. So in the beginning of class we take two minutes to talk about a deck of cards.
His tip was so condescending, I didn't know what to say, except, "Thanks for the tip," in an equally condescending tone. What I wanted to say was, "Get the fuck out of my face, man. If you were half as smart as you thought you were, you'd have known just how stupid you sound." I was mansplained, and I got the look from a couple of the women in the front of the class that said, "been there!" Oh, the joys of having a grown man explain to me how things ought to be done.
Regardless of his superiority complex, I still like this student because he participates in class. Another student came to me after getting a D- on the first exam, and with a doe-eyed expression and a shaken voice, asked me if she'll still be able to get an A in the class. She frequently comes to class midway through, and told me a few days before she wasn't able to do the online homework because her computer acted weird. I didn't know what to tell her besides "a weird computer" isn't a legitimate excuse for not submitting what amounted to 14 assignments.
Was it her pretty face clouding her judgement? I'm not pretty-person shaming, but does she get these passes in her other classes? In this case, anyone would realize getting an A requires turning in homework and demonstrating a strong understanding of the material, and at this point getting a B would require a hard-work-hail-Mary, not a quivering chin and stream of tears.
There's another girl who has Woody Allen levels of anxiety. She forgot her TI-83 one day, and apologized, saying she'd never do it again. I said, "don't worry about it." I didn't let her know there are probably a couple people who will try to take this class with a Casio table calculator, and their final will look like a Basquiat painting, each paper filled with number and symbol scribblings where they hope the answer is somewhere in the chaos.

When I picked up George from preschool yesterday, Dr. Diane, the lady who runs the ship, said, "George is getting more comfortable. He's still rowdy at times, but he's talking a lot more and enjoys doing his jobs." I think as the weeks pass, there will be some more interesting personalities that emerge. People will get more comfortable. I'll also find a more suitable show for my 5 am viewing pleasure. I will look into a nice light hearted comedy. Thats a helpful tip, start the day out laughing. Well, maybe coffee, then laughing. Either way, I can count of the people in my class to entertain.