School's a-comin' =(

So what’s been happening? Well, I finished my junior year in college and in just a few days, I’m going to embark in my senior year in college, and with a teacher whom I don’t really like, but am forced to learn from nevertheless. I will forever dislike her -- sorry ma’am, it’s a personality thing. I never really thought you liked me anyway, but thanks for accepting me into the program, you don’t know how much that means to me; heck, it’s because I always thought you could care less about me and might have even thought had no potential in your class (I know I didn’t impress you one bit). But you still accepted me into the teaching program. I don’t know if it was my grades for every other class other than the one I had with you that made you turn, ever so delicately and unexpectedly for me, for I certainly didn’t shine very well whenever you tested me in your class. I made a fool out of myself in my shy ignorance and inexperience compared to all the other English teacher wannabe’s who were already ahead of me in the game (they were all already in the program whereas I wasn’t yet at the time because I had applied late. That just means I’m going to graduate an extra semester late). Or maybe it was pity that led your mind toward my acceptance? What did Will say from Fresh Prince? He was always behind, rollerblading with one skate but then the Banks family helped him with another. I guess I should say thanks but I know you still hate me for Lord knows what reason. Darn, I will never know. Perhaps our student-teacher relationship will mend itself in due time; come on, I’ve got three more semesters and then grad school for my masters.

So anyway, besides her, I want to talk about two other professors whom I love for their ways of teaching. They are Professor Haralson and Professor Scheckel. I think they are the best professors I’ve had in Stony Brook because I love their teaching methods (not to hard and yet not too easy) and I love their enthusiasm in literature and their entertaining personalities.

You know what Professor Haralson did on the first day of school last semester? It was raining and he came in with a big, yellow raincoat matched with what looked like a fisherman’s rubber boots and a huge opened umbrella. He walked down the aisles of desks shaking everyone’s hand, engaging in small talk around the whole room with each student he passed by. Then he made a sarcastic joke about the lousy weather while standing on top of his desk, still carrying the opened umbrella, that is of course until he threw it across the floor. Did I mention that he is quite an old man? Probably in his high fifties. I’ve taken his several of his courses before. The semester before last, you know what he did on the day of our final? He wore a Hawaiian shirt (with sunglasses hanging from the collar) with white shorts and sandals, all accompanied with a hat that looked like a sombrero. He wanted us to finish the final already so he can sit in the sand grading whatever bs we had come up with (it must have amused him; he’s a light grader, which is also why I keep taking his classes) during those last two hours of his class sitting for the final essay. What did my teaching all add up to? -- I bet he was asking himself that while enjoying the summer beach.

It was not only his personality that kept me coming for more, it was also the material he taught. He made me absolutely love contemporary short stories. He made me love short stories period. And how? Being an old man with many years of experience in teaching college students, he learned how to keep us entertained. He made us read short stories with sexual content in it. I know it’s kind of implicit that most college students and really, come to think about it, teenagers and adolescents, think about sex a lot more than older adults. I must admit this with my own experience backing me up. And it wasn’t totally rated R because it was literature; there was substance in addition to that sexual content. Like a mother giving her baby medicine in their apple sauce. It’s a disguise that works. Who said sex had no meaning in it anyway? Writers are very creative, I realized, in the different ways they described it, in the different ways they used it to convey other themes that aren’t necessarily about love. Or they described it in ways that made you truly think about what love actually means to the specific character, what’s boggling the narrator’s mind. I can remember him saying in his jocular way, “So your homework is to read this three times before you go to bed, ha!”

So anyway, that’s Professor Haralson. Professor Scheckel’s a whole other story that I’ll save for another blog.

Freakin’ school’s about to start in just a few days (next Monday to be exact) and I’m absolutely dreading it. Excuse the minor curse word, it’s just that when I’m in summer mode, I absolutely HATE the thought of going back to school mode. I mean deep-seated distaste. I can’t lie, the start of school cramps my summer style. I once told Steph that school bothers me. That is until it becomes interesting and (oh, you know I love using this word) entertaining.

I stay for the juicy short stories that I get to read in some classes -- the stories with broken or uneven love relationships that become unraveling maps to nowhere really (in the air, up for interpretation - somewhere there; you catch my drift); but, if they're lacking, I'm likely to fall asleep or slip if it were not for my robotic ability and last minute desperation (oh procrastination, what a shocker) that jumps in on time to save me from an absolute, total wreckage that is a pure failing grade, or even worse -- a sinking reputation.

Wow, that's one long sentence!

And it seems that I’ll be getting less of those short stories and more classes based on teaching. It’s a shift that’s bound to happen. Once we learn the literature/grammar part, we have to learn the ways to teach it.

So yeah, school and I don't mix until about the second or third week in, where I'm forced to share my life with it.