Kate Duckworth
Ok, well that's over.
"What is that?" you ask, kind reader? That is my primary summer job teaching high schoolers in Berkeley, to which I have alluded several times before in these electronic pages. Friday was our last day and it came and went with the fury of an elephant escaped from the zoo, suddenly free to feast on the delicious flesh of man.
In class, the kids gave their final presentations and then, as a final send-off from Pre College Academy, we watched the episode of season four Simpsons in which Homer goes to college. Classic! Well..would have been if I had brought the right disc with me. But really, it was only fitting to go out in bumbling fashion. I have kind of got used to such mistakes. One of many lessons I learned this July was that, when teaching a new lesson, things rarely go right. So instead we watched the episode in which Homer becomes a heretic. Whatever.
So that was our last class. Looking back, there was definitely some fluff, but I was pretty fucking proud of some of my lessons. In the space of five weeks, we managed to:
-use Faraday's Law to make homemade speakers
-reverse engineer disposable cameras
-make homemade batteries and connect them to homemade motors
-take 3 field trips
-learn how to make and give PowerPoint presentations.
Anyways, that night (after a extended period at the campus arcade, trouncing some of my students at Street Fighter II but losing by one point in NFL Blitz overtime) was the closing ceremony. A lot of fluff there too, but the kind of fluff that I can get behind. Three of my students whom I nominated made speeches to the whole program about their experience . It really affected me. Part of it was seeing so much of myself in them. And I guess part of it was that I was just really proud of them. Such good kids.
I somehow managed to connect with one student in particular. Michael C. He's a strong case of what I mean by students reminding me of me: kind of dorky and shy, but pretty smart with all this latent enthusiasm. He was really into the engineering and you could just tell that he is going to make it. Anyways, Feather Two Pixel aficionados know that we don't waste too much energy tooting our proverbial horns, but I just have to post this card Michael wrote me. It fucking rules.
Yeah, that felt good. Signature and all! On a totally different wavelength was Leila's card:
"I'm sorry if I didn't meet your expectations"?! Jesus Christ, is this girl trying to break my fucking heart? Maybe she was just softening me up for final grades. We will never know. But this leads to another lesson learned this July: Getting through--like really getting through-- to one kid is enough. It has to be. I think their lives are way too complicated to really hope for anything more. Even one might be to many. I mean, maybe we got through to Leila too. Like I said, we'll never know. It was cool of her to make the card though.
OK enough about pretend teaching.
After being a good role model for five weeks, I immediately went and got more trashed than I have been since Junior year of college. Some of the other instructors and I headed out towards Kip's, off Telegraph Ave, right near campus. So I got to drink with a bunch of other people who had nowhere in particular to be: exactly what I have needed for a long long time. It was outstanding.
Now amazingly, I did do some planning for this ahead of time. You will recall that by some anomalous series of circumstances, I teach a human anatomy class on Saturday mornings. Up till now I have been shamefully been studying said anatomy the night before (or more often, the morning of) class. This week, I got it all squared away on Thursday night as part of my plan to have more fun on Friday night--my plan was to drink all I wanted and then to catch the last BART to SF. The last BART leaves at a pathetic 12:35 and at around 12:15, it was clear that I wasn't going anywhere. I don't know who ordered the shots, but they didn't really stop coming. Certainly not by 12:15. My T.A., Long, offered his couch and it all seemed perfectly sensible at the time. Closing time came and went and I somehow managed to lift by bike up three flights of stairs to Long's room and crash on his couch.
Now there is some vaguely funny stuff that I am leaving out here, but this is becoming way too much of a "you wouldn't believe how fucked up i was last night story" and I really want to cut to the chase. The chase being how my Saturday morning started.
I woke up late. Long was in his bed, naked, laying in what was either his own shit or his own vomit.
There! I said it. And I have to say, I am getting really nervous about prospects of the wrong people finding this blog. It's paranoid, I know.
So Saturday sucked sucked sucked. I was running late for Anatomy and the 27 bus was just not arriving once I got into the city. So I had to bike at top speed all the way Nob Hill with a terrible hangover. And really, that wasn't nearly as bad as the four hours of teaching afterwards. AT one point I had to run to the bathroom in the middle of the lecture to puke. Well, to try and puke. But I never puke.
My students all seemed to feel really bad for me and I think that they believed that I was actually sick, but that is my new definition of hell.
I pulled a rare midday hibernation well into the night. When I woke up, going to the multiplex seemed like a gentle, shot-less activity so Carly and I headed down to Van Ness theaters and caught Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It was a totally pedestrian movie but for reasons having little to do with its merits, it affected me in a really weird way. What happened is that I was still riding that strange emotional high of the closing ceremony, which had then been distorted by the intensity of the night before, the ordeal of the morning, and the extreme grogginess of a 5 hour nap. So I was literally crying when Charlie found his golden ticket!
Can you believe that shit?
And for good measure, here's my Sunday: I walked to the Pacific Ocean and listened to Eno on top of the Golden Gate Cliffs. Then I met up with Jill, Kerry, and Janine on Russian Hill and walked to the celebration of gentrification known as North Beach Jazz Fest.
I have to say though: as a slap in the face to the black community, North Beach Jazz Festival is not as overtly offensive as the Fillmore Jazz festival, in which white people parade around a neighborhood that actually did once foster a thriving Jazz community before they were pushed out.
But luckily, everyone was up for a stroll up to Coit Tower. You can never really go wrong with a walk up to Coit Tower.
"What is that?" you ask, kind reader? That is my primary summer job teaching high schoolers in Berkeley, to which I have alluded several times before in these electronic pages. Friday was our last day and it came and went with the fury of an elephant escaped from the zoo, suddenly free to feast on the delicious flesh of man.
In class, the kids gave their final presentations and then, as a final send-off from Pre College Academy, we watched the episode of season four Simpsons in which Homer goes to college. Classic! Well..would have been if I had brought the right disc with me. But really, it was only fitting to go out in bumbling fashion. I have kind of got used to such mistakes. One of many lessons I learned this July was that, when teaching a new lesson, things rarely go right. So instead we watched the episode in which Homer becomes a heretic. Whatever.
So that was our last class. Looking back, there was definitely some fluff, but I was pretty fucking proud of some of my lessons. In the space of five weeks, we managed to:
-use Faraday's Law to make homemade speakers
-reverse engineer disposable cameras
-make homemade batteries and connect them to homemade motors
-take 3 field trips
-learn how to make and give PowerPoint presentations.
Anyways, that night (after a extended period at the campus arcade, trouncing some of my students at Street Fighter II but losing by one point in NFL Blitz overtime) was the closing ceremony. A lot of fluff there too, but the kind of fluff that I can get behind. Three of my students whom I nominated made speeches to the whole program about their experience . It really affected me. Part of it was seeing so much of myself in them. And I guess part of it was that I was just really proud of them. Such good kids.
I somehow managed to connect with one student in particular. Michael C. He's a strong case of what I mean by students reminding me of me: kind of dorky and shy, but pretty smart with all this latent enthusiasm. He was really into the engineering and you could just tell that he is going to make it. Anyways, Feather Two Pixel aficionados know that we don't waste too much energy tooting our proverbial horns, but I just have to post this card Michael wrote me. It fucking rules.
Yeah, that felt good. Signature and all! On a totally different wavelength was Leila's card:
"I'm sorry if I didn't meet your expectations"?! Jesus Christ, is this girl trying to break my fucking heart? Maybe she was just softening me up for final grades. We will never know. But this leads to another lesson learned this July: Getting through--like really getting through-- to one kid is enough. It has to be. I think their lives are way too complicated to really hope for anything more. Even one might be to many. I mean, maybe we got through to Leila too. Like I said, we'll never know. It was cool of her to make the card though.
OK enough about pretend teaching.
After being a good role model for five weeks, I immediately went and got more trashed than I have been since Junior year of college. Some of the other instructors and I headed out towards Kip's, off Telegraph Ave, right near campus. So I got to drink with a bunch of other people who had nowhere in particular to be: exactly what I have needed for a long long time. It was outstanding.
Now amazingly, I did do some planning for this ahead of time. You will recall that by some anomalous series of circumstances, I teach a human anatomy class on Saturday mornings. Up till now I have been shamefully been studying said anatomy the night before (or more often, the morning of) class. This week, I got it all squared away on Thursday night as part of my plan to have more fun on Friday night--my plan was to drink all I wanted and then to catch the last BART to SF. The last BART leaves at a pathetic 12:35 and at around 12:15, it was clear that I wasn't going anywhere. I don't know who ordered the shots, but they didn't really stop coming. Certainly not by 12:15. My T.A., Long, offered his couch and it all seemed perfectly sensible at the time. Closing time came and went and I somehow managed to lift by bike up three flights of stairs to Long's room and crash on his couch.
Now there is some vaguely funny stuff that I am leaving out here, but this is becoming way too much of a "you wouldn't believe how fucked up i was last night story" and I really want to cut to the chase. The chase being how my Saturday morning started.
I woke up late. Long was in his bed, naked, laying in what was either his own shit or his own vomit.
There! I said it. And I have to say, I am getting really nervous about prospects of the wrong people finding this blog. It's paranoid, I know.
So Saturday sucked sucked sucked. I was running late for Anatomy and the 27 bus was just not arriving once I got into the city. So I had to bike at top speed all the way Nob Hill with a terrible hangover. And really, that wasn't nearly as bad as the four hours of teaching afterwards. AT one point I had to run to the bathroom in the middle of the lecture to puke. Well, to try and puke. But I never puke.
My students all seemed to feel really bad for me and I think that they believed that I was actually sick, but that is my new definition of hell.
I pulled a rare midday hibernation well into the night. When I woke up, going to the multiplex seemed like a gentle, shot-less activity so Carly and I headed down to Van Ness theaters and caught Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It was a totally pedestrian movie but for reasons having little to do with its merits, it affected me in a really weird way. What happened is that I was still riding that strange emotional high of the closing ceremony, which had then been distorted by the intensity of the night before, the ordeal of the morning, and the extreme grogginess of a 5 hour nap. So I was literally crying when Charlie found his golden ticket!
Can you believe that shit?
And for good measure, here's my Sunday: I walked to the Pacific Ocean and listened to Eno on top of the Golden Gate Cliffs. Then I met up with Jill, Kerry, and Janine on Russian Hill and walked to the celebration of gentrification known as North Beach Jazz Fest.
I have to say though: as a slap in the face to the black community, North Beach Jazz Festival is not as overtly offensive as the Fillmore Jazz festival, in which white people parade around a neighborhood that actually did once foster a thriving Jazz community before they were pushed out.
But luckily, everyone was up for a stroll up to Coit Tower. You can never really go wrong with a walk up to Coit Tower.
posted by Jon at 11:40 PM
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