Final Draft

Today, I'm grading final drafts. Here's one from the student who's original intention was to write a paper explaining why homosexuality was "wrong." As mentioned in my previous posts, she seemed to have been swayed a bit from her initial outlook. Her final draft now confirms this. Here is a portion of her introduction:

As I started this research paper I had my self thinking it’s a choice. Homosexuals get to chose who they like and who they don’t like just as heterosexuals do and example is a girl not liking another girl but yet liking a guy or by vice versa. They chose who they liked and didn’t like. Throughout this research paper the sites I have researched on have overturned my decision. I now think it’s genetic. A homosexual can’t wake up every morning and say I’m sticking to guys/girls maybe I’ll change tomorrow. This statement threw my state of mind right out the window...

Interesting. But there's something else. Turns out this girl is a natural scholar. I've never told students how to conduct and write up an interview; I just suggest that they do it. The results, of course, vary. But they are always intriguing. This girl, is by far, the best at it. You may recall that she had written about her gay uncle in her revised proposal. I suggested she interview him. She did. And it's a marvellous write-up she's done. Best I've ever seen from an inexperienced interviewer/freshman:

Throughout this research time my uncle [name omitted] has been in my head the entire time. He’s one of my favorite uncles but he’s hasn’t had it easy. He’s a homosexual. He’s into the whole guy and guy thing. I’m not going to say I’m proud of him because I would be lying. I had my times when he lived with us that we would walk down the street in a group of 3 me, him, and his “boyfriend” I’ll admit I was ashamed. However, it was his sexual orientation and he was happy. I got a hold of my uncle and had him come down for thanksgiving and he agreed to participate in an interview. As me and my uncle sat at the table he began biting his nails I asked him why are you biting your nails? He replied I’m nervous, not very many people want to sit down one on one with a homosexual and talk about his sexual orientation none the less it being my niece. We shared laughs, then down to business. My first question to him was why be a homosexual? He replies, it’s something you can’t help it’s like a “straight” person and there opposite sex partner. We didn’t ask for it. It just happened....

Sure, there are so many technical miscues to pick on: The absence of quotes, especially. And the obvious lack of revision. But at this stage, who cares? This is just a dynamite write-up. And it gets even better!

Up, Up, and Away...

I'm no fan of David Broder, the so-called dean of the Washington Establishment Press. In fact, he should have been put out to pasture long ago; his gasbag editorials have all the relevance of stale mustard.

This editorial, however, is the exception:

College has become increasingly unaffordable to millions of middle-class and working-class Americans, and the rising barriers to attending are costing the United States in the international competition for a trained workforce...

Between 1982 and 2007, college tuition and fees rose three times as fast as median family income, after adjusting for inflation. In the past decade, there has been a 50 percent increase in the number of undergraduate borrowers and a doubling in the inflation-adjusted total of students' debts.

The affordability barrier to college is eroding America's standing in the world.

In 2005, when I entered the Education program on this campus, three credit hours cost $550.00. By last Fall semester, that same total had increased to $866.00 -- a whopping 57% increase in just three years!

All this should make one thing clear...the current economic meltdown was caused by more than bad debt and lack of government oversight. Over the past few years, builders of houses, manufacturers of autos, makers of pharmaceuticals, distributors of oil and gas (as well as dispensers of higher education?) decided if the middle-class could not keep up with the price bubble for mere necessities, they could all freeze in the dark and walk to work (or school) and back.

And now those same crooks are asking for -- and receiving -- handouts from the government like welfare had just become respectable again.

Well, why not? In South Asia, begging is considered an honorable profession.

Changes

I have been forced to make some important changes in my lifestyle lately, due to huge necessary overheads incurred by yours truly for behavior he would rather not discuss on this blog or anywhere else.

I am determined to quit smoking some day. As for now, let us admit that I have not quite succeeded; but I have been successful in cutting a 25-30 a day habit down to 6-12, depending on my willpower, which fluctuates with unceasing regularity. This drastic change in behavior, again, is due to economic reasons, not for reasons either altruistic or healthful. Quite simply, it's getting to the point where $34.00/week to maintain a habit is no longer feasible. If it weren't for that, I'd smoke like a chimney. Damned sin tax!

The Big Con

Glen Blalock once told me there's no such thing as academic freedom. I didn't agree with him -- on that, or a lot of other things either. Which got me into a lot of hot water, literally. (Fired, I think, is the accurate description.)

But lately I've come to agree with him. If you want to find steady work in a college or university, you had better (a) quickly discover the guiding philosophy of those in charge and (b) adapt that philosophy as your own. Because if you don't, it's all over for you, baby blue.

Each department has its own agenda, designed to perpetuate a certain hegemony, as dictated and sustained by those at the top of the food chain. To keep your place in the pecking order, you must say, do, or write nothing that clashes with that agenda. In other words, you, as a person, are not allowed to question. You go with the flow; and if you don't, the flow leads out the door. Blalock provided that valuable education by setting an example -- of me. It was an effective lesson. And a disheartening one too.

But the experience, rather then instilling humility, can better illuminate the "writing on the wall" the next time it happens. And since I tend toward the provocative in the way I teach, what I write, and what I say, I'm certain there will be plenty of "next times." People never know whether I'm serious or kidding, and it makes them uncomfortable. No one likes to be put in the position of guessing.

In the preceding couple of years, I have finally amassed the confidence to accede falsely to no one, and have spoken my mind, risking disrespect and oblivion at every turn. But that's the price one pays for a less muddy conscience.

Sh, Don't Tell the Principal

My dual-credit student who's researching gays and lesbians recently wrote me this, as part of a research journal on a source she found:

...I found this page searching through the yahoo search engine on our school computers. I was searching for the homosexual choice. I clicked on this link except it was blocked so I had to go around it through a proxy. Sh, don’t tell our principal. I picked it because it has a professional view on the homosexual choice. It was very difficult decision to use it or not I didn’t want to but I thought it would be good to use this article...

Just reading this causes me to smile and resolve to cease my customary cynical outlook -- for at least a day.

The Things They Learn These Days

Anyone here ever live in Idaho? Ever visit the place? I just wondered because of this

Excerpt:

...Whoolery and his wife couldn't believe it when their second and third graders got off the bus last week and told them what other students were saying.

"They just hadn't heard anything like this before," said Whoolery. "They were chanting on the bus, 'Assassinate Obama. Assassinate Obama'...

The Whoolery's explained to their kids what assassinate means then contacted the school about what was happening. "I think the thing that struck us was just like, 'Where did they get the word and why would they put that word and that person together?'" said Whoolery...

The Secret Service must be wondering likewise.

Impaled: Confessions of a Groupie

I've written some unkind things about Sarah Palin lately. However, I’ve taken time to re-think my position. Day after day, Palin’s name is persistently in the news. Will she run for president in 2012? Will she appoint herself senator? Will she leave politics for show business? Will she do this, will she do that? Why just yesterday, Matt Lauer and the Today Show invaded her kitchen just to watch her make a halibut and salmon casserole. Is she gearing up to replace Martha Stewart?

On a strictly personal note, I should have seen where all this was leading; but I guess it was inevitable. At last, the constant drip, drip of Palin's face and voice on my TV screen has become like some monstrous variation of Chinese water torture. As a result, my internal resistance to her gibberish has been shattered. And I am like a junkie with neither a prayer nor hope. I can no longer assume responsibility for myself or my actions. In short, I have become a Sarah Palin groupie.

How did this transformation come about? Let me try to explain: Remember that scene in The Music Man where Professor Harold Hill is deciding how and when to put the make on the unsuspecting Marian the Librarian? He commences with a song -- “The Sadder But Wiser Girl for Me” -- and vows that “no bright-eyed, blushing, breathless baby-doll baby” will ever put her hooks in him. He only has eyes for the smartest gal in River City, Iowa: Maid Marian. Well, as far as I’m concerned, Professor Hill can have her.

With apologies to “sadder but wiser girls” everywhere, allow me to state the following facts. Men are not interested in sad women. Men are not interested in wise women. Men want girls who are happy and dumb. The less complicated they are, the simpler to get along with. The less intelligent they are, the fewer arguments to put up with. Believe me, I know. I’ve had smart, and I’ve had dumb; and dumb is incomparably better.

I realize some of you are thinking that this is, to use the new cant, "objectification" of gender, that all this is yet again some sordid male-fantasy vision of women perpetrated by a disciple of Ian Fleming or Hugh Hefner. Well, Sarah Palin is no fantasy; she’s for real. Sarah Palin is the original Stepford Wife – nice, simple, pleasant, devoted, always impeccably dressed and groomed, a nice hostess, great in the kitchen -- AND always available. She’s the Playgirl of the Year who teasingly complains that she wants to be appreciated for her mind and not her body. Well, maybe she does have a little something up there. After all, who else could think up such clever names for her children -- names like “Piper” and “Trig” and “Bristol?” I don’t know about you, but it turns me several shades of chartreuse.

As far as politics goes, Sarah’s job isn’t to put on airs in a public forum and make herself look smart. Oh, no. You see, part of Sarah’s charm is her authenticity. And in that respect, she is authentically clueless. And for that reason alone, I have fallen for her -- and in a big way too. The way one loses their heart and mind to a rising rock star. She was – and is – the new American Idol; I am now 100% behind her. And the view is terrific!


The Lady With Glasses and a Gun