Trolls in the lakes of Landås

Yesterday I went into the city to teach my writing workshop. As I bounced around the whiteboard, watching the students carefully scribe “Purdue OWL” and “no subject headers” in their notebooks, I felt as though every batch of kids that sits in there is one more buttress against the grammatically inventive, meandering, plagiarism-pocked papers bound to turn up in a month.

I was meant to check out a class on Norwegian literature, but I couldn’t face it. Instead I went up Landåsfjell, to gain some perspective and a view of the western edge of Bergen’s fjord. I climbed up and sat by one of the frozen lakes, dusted with snow, until a terrifying burbling noise startled me down the mountain like a jackrabbit. In afterthought, it must have been the ice settling. At the time I thought there was surely something under there trying to get out.

Wednesday evenings there is an organ concert at Storetveit kirk near Fantoft. I’ve only been once before, but the swell of solemn sound in that great stone kirk floods my imagination with Viking triumphs and troll invasions and faery dances. The solemnity with which everyone sits, head tilted, in their pews, bowed or uplifted beneath the weight of the music, gives a social quality to what is yet solitude. Walking home after through crisp frozen air, the bell tolling the hour behind me, I once more breathed the mixture of contentment and heroism that steals through life.

Today Anita brought marmite in for the class to eat, as a taste of Britain. She also brought me a Daim Freia bar. Now that is love.

We didn’t teach our adult class today—there was a presentation on students’ mental health that we had to attend, instead. I understood about forti prosent of the lecture, and just about all of the slide show (luckily, I’ve been reading a Norwegian book about a depressed writer this past week and had the vocabulary). It didn’t help that of the two psychologists presenting, one spoke a rapidfire Norwegian that bubbled out of him with little pause for breath or moments of clearsighted translation. And the other was Swedish. Still, I got the gist: fifty percent of Norwegian high school girls are dissatisfied with their bodies (so, glass half full or empty), tips on identifying depressed students, and there will be a special meeting for teachers of Uttøya survivors after. Tusen takk, UiB Norskkurs.

Movie recommendation: Upperdog. Intense, honest look at Norwegian life.

Låndasfjell

Culture Clash: Extra Credit

Led my high school kids in a rousing rendition of “Rule Britannia” today. I was prepping them for their shift to UK English next week. It was incredibly awesome that they just piped along after me; every time more evidence of my power over the class is shown, I get a huge impulse to abuse it by making them do something like lick the floor or kiss the goat (okay, camp holdovers). To curb the urge, I think we may start class every day for the next month with rounds of “Rule, Britannia.” That’s not too much like yanking puppets on a string, is it?

This was written on the bench at the Fantoft Bybanen 

stop. I checked it out, and surprisingly enough, 

it means “support Israel.” Take that, Bubby and Kim!

We finished up with Native Americans today, reading the short story “An Indian Princess”. While making my rounds during their group discussions, I stumbled onto a fascinating conversation. Four of the girls were talking about whether it’s okay to open a conversation with a stranger about their identity. What made it so interesting is only one is originally Norwegian. The other three are Russian, Somalian, and Chinese. The Russian was adamant that questions about identity lead to identity-reduction, while the Norwegian simply couldn’t understand it and the Chinese kid mediated and the Somalian smiled quietly and nodded occasionally in agreement with the Russian. I was really pleased with their frustration as they tried to get through to each other –how often do you get kids who care that much about something like this? Carefully, I worked them around to a point where they could understand each other’s point of view, and left them to hash it out.

I’ve been planning the lessons for this semester, and am a bit giddy at the thought of it all. I get to teach Victorian English! Of course we’re starting with Shakespeare, and I’m afraid I’m going to shock Anita, who has conservative plans—she wants them to memorize sonnet 18 and read through some Hamlet, but I want to give them a choice of sonnets, and make a speech contest with Marc Anthony’s “honorable men” and Henry V’s “once more unto the breach” and John of Gaunt’s “scepter’d isle”, and have them shout Shakespearean insults across the classroom (thank you, Guinan), and offer Stoppard’s R&G are Dead as extra credit for the Hamlet. There’s no point in simply boring them with Shakespeare when we can get them excited about Him and give them a taste that will send them gasping for more for the rest of their lives. Oh I can’t wait for Tennyson and the Brontes!

Chilling at UiB

I got the semester’s first batch of journal entries back from my high schoolers. My Uttøya survivor wrote a very penetrating poem processing her thoughts, which I’m going to put at the bottom of this post. Another totally psyched me out—they were supposed to simply describe an object, and she described this present her mom had gotten her that “feels good, better than using your fingers, no matter who they belong to.” She strung me along until I was absolutely freaked out about how to respond, and then delivered the clincher in the last line—it was a head massager called “orgasmatron”.

Was chatting with a friend of mine at UiB who is trying to figure out what he wants to do after he finishes the last possible year of stipended education the government offers him (he’s on his 7^th now, one more to go). He’s originally from Stavanger, and completely torn about whether to return there, or stay in Bergen, because of his roots in both places. His dilemma seemed so comic to my American sensibilities. Since leaving my homeplace Ohio, I’ve lived in Elqana, Maryland, Jerusalem, and Bergen, and will spend next year in Toronto before returning to an as-of-yet-unknown city in the US (unless I fall in love with Toronto; I am a Canadian citizen). Fearing to start fresh, or overdeveloped nostalgia for past connections, simply seems silly to the American who makes friends casually and then moves on. I’ve picked up precious relationships and valuable cultural insights in each of those places, but am quite content to keep only the best and relegate the rest to a part of my history. The Norwegian attachment seems deeper, less fickle.

Haven’t had a chance to post for quite a while—busy with the start of term and friends’ visits. Just going to add on to the end of this post.

THIS is how great Norway is

I TA’ed my first master’s seminar this past week. The professor began explaining American lit in terms of the word “multicultural.” Everyone in the class seemed fairly interested, but I think I was the only one having my mind blown as my American identity shifted and twisted. She uprooted the English settlers myth I’ve always known, talking about Spaniards and Russians meeting in the middle of the continent and trying to decide how to divide it between north and south!

To start my high schoolers off with the UK, I decided to hold a trivia contest about the UK in the class (which countries are included in the “British Isles”? What is the meaning of “bangers and mash”? etc). They became verrry un-Norwegianly competitive. We finished with a Riverdance contest, which several of them were weirdly skilled at.

Anita has decided that some of them are too stressed by the journals that I assign them every week, and so we are moving it to every other. I was distressed by her decision, because I remember those weekly writing assignments as one of the best, most productive parts of my high school experience. When Anita made the announcement, I noticed, aside from part of the class’ gasp of relief, disappointment on several faces, but most prominently on that of the best writer in the class. I approached her after, and she told me that she was upset. She loved the writing. I said we’d work something out, maybe journals every week for extra credit. She jumped at the suggestion. But Anita didn’t.

“Great, excellent! It would be so good if the ones who wanted to kept writing every week. But I don’t think I can give them extra credit. It’s okay though, it’ll filter down into their grade because their writing will improve.” Surprised, I asked why we couldn’t award extra credit.

“Because it would put pressure on the ones who didn’t do it—they would feel bad.” Um, well, but then maybe they would do it? Which is good, right? And how can you not reward the ones who do put in the extra work? And why shouldn’t extra credit be used both as a motivator and as a reward? And aaaah, I don’t understand this system! Finally, Anita said, “it’s okay, I understand, you have the American perspective here.” Well yeah, since the Norwegian perspective seems to be lowering the bar instead of pushing others ahead, I’m happy to own the American perspective on this one. I’m just so frustrated—Anita is a really great teacher, but why isn’t she willing to push her students on this? In fact, I think the journals add a degree of discipline and demand that might have been missing from the class otherwise. Well. Just wait. When I rule my own school... or kingdom...

Crocheting on the bybanen: the closest
I get to a kippa

Tomorrow’s my first cheider this semester. I’m going to discuss how the nation's origins in slavery was meant to teach sympathy with others who are oppressed, have the kids divvy up the ten commandments into chunks for a debate, and then research and build the beit hamikdash and role play with it (you’re the king, you’re the prophet, you’re the priest, you’re the invading army… go!).

This evening I went out for coffee with a visiting friend from high school. A woman came over to take an extra chair from our table, and then looked at my buddy's kippa and said, “shalom!” She had worked on a kibbutz twenty years ago. I think I really miss out not having a way to flaunt my Jewishness.

Just something cool: I was skyping with a friend of mine from home, whose birthday is one day and 69 years earlier than mine, and she mentioned that she just got a new walker. It’s Burberry. I want to be like her when I grow up.

My student's poem:

Sure you can ask me a personal question

Oh, so you see my button?

Yes, I'm in AUF

If I was there?

Yeah, I’m okay, I guess.

No, I’m not a communist.

No, I don’t want revolution.

Yes, I’m a feminist.

Why?

Because women are burned in India,

the women of Iran get stoned to death

and here I am doing whatever I want to do.

No, I don't hate men.

Yes, I believe in equality.

So you know someone that know someone

that knows someone that was there?

Yeah, sure you know how it feels.

Yeah, you’ve read the news.

Yes, he’s a monster.

You feel like you can relate to me?

You feel sorry for me?

Yeah, it was awful.

It’s hard to imagine, I know.

No, I love life.

Yes, I cry myself to sleep.

Do you want to shake my hand?

You feel better now?

Do you feel like it’s you duty as a Norwegian

to ask me all these questions?

Sure, I'm okay.

It’s a part of my identity now.

If I get tired?

I’ll make it.

Yeah, that’s what most people tell me.

I want to live, not just survive.

Nerds, you say? Intellektuelle badasser, sier vi.

With my high schoolers

 Well, teaching is starting up again and I’m rushing from orientation to orientation. I already started at Katten last week. We’re finishing up with Native Americans, and just to trick my students I gave the ones who finished their classwork early an article on Nacerima culture. It’s all about a society in which people are convinced their bodies are ugly and prone to disease, and the terrifying and ridiculous lengths they go to, performing painful superstitious procedures to keep themselves fit. Of course, at the end, one of the kids (both of whose parents are professors of anthropology, so she had a head start) began to figure out something was up, but nobody’s cottoned on yet to the fact that “Nacerima” is “American” backwards.

I got my yearbook from Katten. My favorite bit was the slogan: Nerds, you say? Intellektuelle badasser sier vi. Yeah! My high schoolers are the coolest class—they all dressed up as hippies for their class picture. Adorable. There was a list of top reasons to attend Katten, and “lærerne er koselige” –roughly translated as “the teachers are cozy” was on it. You know, right above “Asiatiske jenter.” Asian chicks. On the last page were the pictures of two students who died at Uttøya and the words “vi minnes” – we remember. It’s heart-wrenching to see their names and then the years 1990-2011, and 1993-2011. No high school yearbook should have that.

 

Explaining the difference between
realism, regionalism, and naturalism

I have big plans for this semester. Besides my regular writing workshop, I’m TAing a master’s seminar in American travel itineraries: we’re ranging from Mary Rowlandson’s captivity (gosh, I’m so glad God wrote a whole book about suffering before He plunged me into mine so I’d have something to read while Indians oppress me) to Absalom, Absalom! (damn those snotty Yankees) to something called Tripmaster Monkey that I’ve never read before. I’m also in discussions with one of the librarians about starting a real writing center for the university… hopefully, with the full force of the Eng dept and humanities library to back me, I’ll be able to take on the Authorities. I have an upcoming lunch with the Rektor (equivalent of the university president) in February, and want to have my whole pitch ready by then.

I’m also figuring out what classes to audit this semester. Right now I’m signed up for a geology course, digital cultures, Scandinavian Government: the Welfare System and Gender, and Scandinavian 20^th C Literature. And, of course, Norwegian. My Norwegian’s been growing by leaps and bounds. While my friends from the States were here, an old Norwegian guy accosted us while we were out on a walk, and was really impressed with my skills—he told Michele she should take lessons from me. Yeah!

All excited about Of Mice and Men

I’m planning lessons for cheider this semester, as well. I chose Jewish history as the theme, after vetting some options with my boys. I think I’m going to have them each create their own time line book throughout the course of the semester, as well as have to research and present a period. That way they get stuff to take away from the course, and personal investment. It’s fun being completely in charge of a class—I love getting to plan every little bit, from semester course to individual lesson plans. Makes it come together more holistically.

I finally got my Canadian passport off to the States, and am just praying that all the pieces of it come together. Of course, now that that's done I have to apply for a frikort, and start learning megillah for purim, and prep my Fulbright presentation at our seminar in February. Plus I owe the guy who teaches salsa dancing here at Fantoft a favor (he helped me move a couch) and will now be taking salsa lessons. But compared to Canada, that's a piece of cake.

P.S. If you didn't see them, make sure to check out pictures of my magnificent fjord trip with friends!

Happiest Country in the World

Well, the 2011 UN Human Development Index is out, and surprise surprise, Norway is number 1 on the list. Happiest country in the world. Happiest country in my world.

Bergen in the snow

So, Norway is happy for a variety of reasons, but it also makes me, personally, happy in a satisfying-my-soul way that is different from Ohio’s nostalgic effect, or Maryland’s patriotic vibes, or the miserable climate of Israel. It’s the first place I’ve lived that I love because it matches me, not because I was raised with it or in it. It has my weather, my manners, my opinions. Not in everything, but in enough that I can nestle comfortably into the place and feel like I belong.

Over the past few months, I’ve struggled with prepositions. A third of the edits I make to my students’ papers, at all levels, is correcting “with” to “from” and “of” to “by.” My Norwegian prepositions have been equally confused—there seems no particular order to the way in which they decide what prepositions go where when, either. And yet, I’ve discovered something: never yet have I been unable to understand something because it had the wrong preposition in front of it. Sure, meaning becomes a bit vaguer when you’ve “decided to stay from the house,” but it’s nothing a clever reader can’t decipher. And so, I’ve decide we ought to abolish prepositions. Not all of them. Just most of them. We can pick the ones we like best, and use those in any manner of situations. After all, “by,” “at,” and “near” really needn’t be differentiated between—we could just use “with” for everything. And with now with, I will.

Wednesday I struggled up Løvstakken to go to a stitch n’ bitch in Bønes. Bergen was incredibly beautiful in the evening fall of snow. My shortcuts had all been covered in snow, and I either slid downhill on ice, landing on my tush time after time, or slipped backwards to face plant into fluffy snow in the struggle up a slope. Still, I got there okay, and when I pulled out the kippah I was working on everyone oohed and aahed over the delicate workmanship. “What a cute little hat!” only wanted an explanation to turn into “what a cute little Jew-hat!”

On the way back, I made it to the bus stop exactly as the bus pulled up. As I stepped towards the bus, I skidded and nearly fell, catching the door to pull myself back up. When I looked up, the bus driver was laughing and saying something that sounded like, “kjempegod.” Nothing like bonding with your bus driver over klutziness. 

This morning I woke up early, very, very early for a meeting with Anita. I’d asked her to give me feedback about my teaching, and wanted to spring a whole ton of ideas. We were going to talk for hours. But I arrived at Katten, and sat, and graded, and waited, and wondered. Usually she’s there by 6:30 am, so my 8:00 arrival ought to have been greeted with a cheery “god morgen, hvordan går det?” Instead of which I spent a while helping one of the other English teachers decide on a version of Hamlet (we went with Dame Judy Dench). Finally, the principal came rushing into the room.

“You! No, not you, you, Hannah!” I knew he meant me even as the other English teachers looked up. “Anita’s sick.”

“Okay, no problem, I can take the classes.”

“Can you do it? And we will pay you.”

“Er, you know the US government does that, right?”

“They pay you to teach with Anita, this is a different responsibility, now you’re officially a substitute. And after that first time, you'll make enough that now you need to get a tax card.” Erggg! More bureaucracy.

“Okay, I got it, the tax place by the main bus station, I’ll pay it a visit.”

“Will you be okay with the class?”

“Yep, no problem, I have a lesson plan” (four of them).

“You have a key, si?”

“Si.” His face shot up hopefully.

“Do you speak Spanish?”

“No, only a tiny bit, why, is that teacher sick, too?” He nodded hopefully at me.

“Sorry, no, my Spanish is pidgin.” Reminds me of when I used to sub for my Jewish Studies teacher back in high school. The principal nodded glumly and tramped out, no doubt nervous that my kids would set the school on fire with only me to look after them. Which, considering it's covered in snow, would have been a considerable feat.

But instead, they had a really great discussion about George and Lennie’s relationship in Of Mice and Men, and then about the novel’s representation of the American Dream. I played lots of tricks on the kids, getting the quiet ones to speak up. It’s fun to play at so many different levels, honing the thinking of the kids who are already articulate and maneuvering the rest into speaking through a mixture of humor (“You guys aren’t allowed to even think the words Jante Law in here, I’m an American!”), comfort-zone creation (“Absolutely not what I was looking for and yet a brilliant answer, keep ‘em coming even if you’re not sure they’re right”), and force (“Ah, M had something to say about that when we spoke before, what was it, M?” –Cue doleful look from M, but then speech).

As S, my star pupil, trooped out, she stopped in front of me.

“This was really great. Thank you.” It’s funny, but I think she may be as eager to communicate approval as I am. It means a lot to me, coming from a bright student like that.

My adult students were more difficult. I hadn’t read the selection that I was supposed to teach, or known it was the topic until that morning. Luckily, they like to read things aloud in class, so we learned about the oppression of the Native Americans together. At the end, we segue-wayed into a discussion about what gives a person rights to a land, what makes them part of a country, and ourselves responsible to them. We ranged over the history of the Sami to current immigration. Finally, they decided that if someone pays taxes –puts something into the system—they deserve to get something out of it. I liked the answer, though I tend to think that if someone is a human being they have a claim on all the rest of us human beings.

As they shuffled out, the cheerfully tousled redhead who sits in the front row waved bye. “Hannah, du er flink.” Regardless of the fact that I’m supposed to be teaching her to say that in English, it felt good.

I’m given to understand, from my sister, that her friends back in CTA (our old high school) enjoyed my blog the other day. The exact quote on her fb wall says, “your sister Hannah became a decorated CTA veteran yesterday when we spent a whole AP Comp class reading her blog.” Now, I’m not sure whether they were reading it with the permission of the teacher or not, but I do know this: I started the war, kiddo. So stop handing out posthumous (err, post-graduate) medals. 

Big Plans: A Writing Center in Bergen

Extras from Dublin

While talking to a group of my high schoolers today, I discovered the fact that I was the first American they’d ever met. Apparently, the Americans shown on tv are either fat, gun-toting farmers or rich, snobby, city celebrities. I was relieved to be told that I’m neither. But I think I’m going to have recruit all my American friends here in Bergen to stand up in front of the class and represent the diversity of America. Walking out of the class, I felt the first wave of homesickness I’ve felt surge over me. Suddenly I wanted to be home with the awesome friends whose regional quirks I’d been describing.

Dazed with awe: Felicia Hemans!

I met with Lene yesterday to discuss plans for next semester. Apparently there’s some small print somewhere that states I must do something connected with America, so moving on to the Britlit class that all my American lit students from this semester will be taking isn’t going to work. Too bad; I love the Victorians. I’ll still run a writing workshop for that class, though. Lene asked if I’d be interested in TAing her masters seminar on American travel narratives. I said “hellz yeah!” (you actually can, to Lene) and am so excited to work with her. She seems the best teacher of the profs I’ve worked with here at UiB and, like Auchard back at UMD, I think I can learn tons just by following her around like a puppy dog and listening to all she says. We spoke about the class a bit, and then I made my pitch.

There's no handle on this door!

I want to start a writing center at UiB. A cross-departmental English (and perhaps later Norwegian) writing lab, where students can take their papers for help on any subject. It wouldn’t take much, just a room and some tutors and a good online program to sign up. Why not use the Fulbright ETA to organize and run the center, since the US government is paying them anyhow? No skin off the uni’s nose. The biggest issue, I think, will be finding grad students to tutor. In the States they’re all dirt poor and eager to tutor for a measly ten bucks an hour, but here in Norway, on their student loans and with free education and health care and all, that’s less of an incentive. So I’m going to draw it up from the resume angle and fight it through thus. Lene said she’ll help me set up a meeting with the head of the department, to pitch it. Then I’ll try to build up the center over the course of the semester, and just let the Norway-US Fulbright foundation know that whoever gets placed in Bergen from now on needs to have serious writing capabilities. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Oscar Wilde looked pretty scary

At the student center this evening, all the lit masters students ordered what is apparently traditional Thursday dinner in Norway. It’s potato balls that look eerily akin to matzah balls minus the soup, some kind of carroty mush, and strips of meat. They gobbled it down happily, but I did not feel at all bad that I could not join in this particular Norwegian custom. Later that night, the UiB profs complained about the UiB administration, and my favorite American prof told me that he was fed up with his mac because it didn’t work now that he’d spilled tea on it, and he was going to get another computer soon. Careful to keep my expression neutral, I asked whether PCs react better to liquids. Luckily, we were interrupted by Zeljka exclaiming about dialect differences in Norway. Interesting conversation since, in America, having a particular dialect quirk often indicates a class difference—those without a clear dialect are generally of the upper echelons of class. In Norway it’s much more to do with region, though the slopes of Fløyen apparently do boast a socialect different from the regular Norsk.

I’m utterly exhausted. I have not had much time for sleep since Dublin—what with grading my high schoolers’ big project and learning their online educational system, prepping my review sessions for my lit students’ final exam, creating a presentation on ekphrasis and Rita Dove, and trying to figure out the orthodontia system in Norway, plus organizing various cheider-related complexities and returning to contact with all the friends who felt neglected while I was in Dublin, I’m a bit overwhelmed at the moment. Looking forward to shabbat. 

I Write and I Understand

As a high school student, I always wondered what my English teacher, Mr. G, thought of our journals. He had to grade endless quantities of teenage angst and sooth our ruffled insecurities into grammatical English. Well, now I know: I’ve been grading journals for the past few months, and IT IS HILARIOUS! My students keep rocking me back from the page with peals of laughter. They write things like, “that was the day I was going to participle in my first volleyball tournament,” and one of the boys had me rolling on the floor with what he wrote about the “hot flushes” of menopause. Of course there’s the one student whose work I read with awe; her metaphors shock me with their poignancy and the spins she puts on my assignments surprise me each time I pick up her essay. I wonder if she knows that the reason her journals are always returned last is because I save them for last, to take the edge off of stale writing and Norwegian grammatical twists to the clean American word. Really, I must mix up my papers.

Recently, I made a tremendous mistake. I gave my students the prompt of writing a Day in the Life of a Teacher—from the perspective of the teacher. Not necessarily me, but any teacher they have. Curious about their insight, I skimmed their journals. Nearly all had written about nerves as they stand in front of the classroom, of eyes dissecting their outfit and  students quietly laughing at them while they assign monikers worse than anything I was called in high school.

Now, I’m a pretty confident teacher. To be honest, I love the attention. Having twenty-eight pairs of eyes on me and modulating my every tone and gesture for best effect gives me a high better than whatever they’re smoking in Nygårdsparken. But as I read student after student simulate a private meltdown from my point of view, I realized that this prompt was exactly calculated to psych me out. That, and that I must get my kids to do more public speaking—their fear of it is so great that they project it onto whomever must stand at the head of the classroom. Also, I’m going to have to clarify to them that at no point during the day do I think of them as “brats,” “ignorant teenage jerks,” or “the enemy.”

Where's Waldo? Can you spot the escaped
chickens through the leaves?

Curiously, I found another pattern in the journals. At least four of them started with me asleep, dreaming that I’m lying on a beach with my lover, and rudely awakened to the school day by my alarm clock. I’d hate to disappoint them by explaining that my most common dream is being unable to locate a particular vegetable in the grocery store (actually, that’s my second most common dream; my first is that I’m walking down the front walk of my house and I trip, but since that’s barely a two-second dream, I don’t think it counts). Anyhow, I’m going to chalk it up to an unaccountably glamorous aura and just sigh in relief that only one person imagined their teacher slipping drinks under the desk.

I hear and I forget;

I see and I remember;

I write and I understand.

Woman Finishes Grading Papers, Whole Town Celebrates

Two missionaries knocked on my door one evening as I was preparing dinner. They were quite friendly, and almost shy, so as I cooked, I told them pleasantly that I was already part of a congregation (okay, so I didn’t tell them which). One pushed a pamphlet about Isaiah into my hands, and I looked at it and gently informed her that I had already read Isaiah. If I’d had more time, I would have enjoyed some missionary-baiting, and seen which of us knew more about the contents of the bible, but dinner awaited.

The expression, “goes down swinging” came up with my high schoolers, and nobody knew what it meant. So I asked students to guess. One of the students, who moved to Norway from Russia and is having a bit of trouble getting accepted into the class, but is full of energy and always ready to volunteer an answer, made a wild guess.

“Excellent guess,” I told her, “and creative thinking, but not the answer.” The “cool” boys in the back of the room (the ones who once tried to come in through the window and secretly love to write) chuckled.

“M!” I called out to one of them. “What’s the answer?” He stopped laughing, his face blank. “Erm, I don’t know,” he said shyly. After a little more give-and-take with my class, H, a laidback yet clever fellow, offered the right explanation.

“Right. To go down swinging is to fail, but fail while trying. For example, to attempt to answer a question, even if you have no idea, is to go down swinging,” (encouraging smile at E), “while simply giving up” (I looked pointedly at M), “is failing without even trying.” I’m not sure what the ethics are behind using students as examples, but I checked with M later and he seemed cool with it, and said I should absolutely please call on him whenever I want (subtext: he’s too cool to raise his hand but really wants a shot at speaking). Ah, the complexities of high school!

An upsetting headline in the Washington Post: “Three Women Win Nobel Peace Prize!” Imagine a headline that read, “three men win Nobel Peace Prize.” Everyone would be like, um, yeah, duh, give us more. But apparently being female is enough of a distinction by which to designate the three Nobel Peace prizewinners. Not “Three Activists,” which shows what they did, or “Three Africans,” which is how other winners are usually designated, by nationality. Of course, to some degree their gender is really relevant to their peace work. Still, that choice of description seems telling in a world in which sexism is often called a thing of the past. But congrats to them! 

While grading paper after paper for my American literature seminar, I noticed myself struggling increasingly with the word “unnecessary.” For some reason, by the millionth time I’d written it, I couldn’t spell it properly. An extra a and c kept sneaking their way in. I also got snarky in the margins: a student wrote, “one could ask if it is possible for human beings to become perfect,” and I responded, “but one shouldn’t ask. Not in the middle of a paper on Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography as an expression of the Enlightenment.” Ugg. I might get fired. Still, it’s more interesting than the “how is this relevant?” and “connect this to your main point” I’ve been slamming all over the papers.

On the other hand, grading these papers makes me realize just how much of my professors’ language I’ve swallowed. I find myself regurgitating things like “deft incorporation of …”, and “methinks this needs…” and the oblique “say more,” all trademarks of former teachers of mine. Sometimes I feel like there’s a tiny little me in the back of my mind, waving its hands and trying to be heard through all the other people who have colonized my brain.