Envy

Being a teacher is fun. It really is! Granted, I haven't fully assumed the role of teacher in the traditional sense (I am not the one providing the majority of the content in my classes) but students ask me if they can go to the bathroom...so that has to mean SOMEthing.

However, I will say that I miss being a student. I miss going to class in sweats and a t-shirt. I miss getting to relax my face and not emote when I'm learning whatever it is that I am learning. Going to my ISU classes are kind of a nice break from feigning enthusiasm during some moments at the high school. It's a lot harder to feign enthusiasm when I am not speaking (I do speak some of the time, but I am not given a ton of opportunity to do so yet). It's a lot like when I'm working at Flarget or, indeed, anytime I am just IN Flarget. I feel obligated to smile at least a little bit all the time, so it's ready whenever a guest approaches me. That's just part of my job. Here, though, more hangs in the balance than where a particular sweater is.


((There are so many comic/blog hybrids out there that I read and I know you do too. I have an HP tablet through the school where I'm interning and I thought I'd try it out. Sadly, not even technology can make me a better artist.))


On the other side of the same coin, being a student in a classroom is AGONIZING after being a teacher in a classroom. Even the spatial difference is significant: Up, walking around, speaking loudly versus sitting in a desk-chair (that really is too small for people my height) listening to someone else speak, constantly thinking to msyelf how I would teach what I'm supposed to be learning. I want to be just as active as the teacher but then (even in college) I would be the teacher's pet, and you don't want that label, no matter how removed from middle school you are.

Hermaphrodites

Sometimes, when we're young, we are introduced to words that we are unfamiliar with and someone clarifies them in a memorable way.

When I was younger, my parents watched X-Files. A lot of X-Files. The theme song was essentially my lullaby. One episode that I walked in on late one night had a terrifying worm-person in it. From what I remember (I could look this up but it's more fun this way), the worm-person couldn't reproduce sexually but rather by multiplying itself.

Having just learned what sex was...more or less...I deduced that this worm-person wouldn't be able to make little worm-children and that would be unfortunate for it. So I stepped in to help this worm-person have sex the only way I knew that sex worked, "Well, is it a boy or a girl?" My dad replied, "It's both. It's a hermaphrodite."

And then the camera panned into a sewer drain and we suddenly saw the elusive creature and I was granted an image that will forever be stuck in my head when I think of the word "hermaphrodite":
















Thanks dad.