First Days of School: The Pierce Curse Is Back

I survived the first two days of school. There were a couple of moments, though, in which I thought that I might not make it through.

Day One

First of all, I'm used to English majors. It, frankly, is going to take me a little while to get used to all of the Bible majors, though I'm sure it will happen, and will be good. But for now...

What happened is this. I was in my first class, Introduction to the Old Testament. We were supposed to talk to the person next to us for exactly four minutes and tell them about yourself and include a meaningful experience from the last summer. Then, that person was going to introduce us to the rest of the class.

So, I talked to the fellow next to me. I couldn't think of much of anything that I wanted to be told to forty strangers, so I said that I'd made the final decision to come back to grad school at ACU. He asked why I'd done it. I told him that there were a lot of reasons for my decision. I explained to him some of them, one being something that I did a post on back in January. That is, I told him, I had sensed in my freshman students back at Tech that their primary obstacle to learning (which is what I was concerned about) was a tragic vacuum of meaning. They had no sense of truth or of any sense that it should or could be pursued at all. The most they could imagine of gaining from their educations was a higher paycheck. I, therefore, felt that there was little use in teaching language until they had could grasp a larger meaning for their presences in the classroom. I basically told the grad student that, in almost exactly those words. I was here, in part to learn how to convey a sense of meaning to people.

So, we got to the introductions, and the guy who was introducing me told my little introduction like this: "John did his undergrad at ACU and did a Masters at Texas Tech. While he was there, he learned that his students knew everything already about language. What they didn't know about, he found, was they didn't know their savior Jesus Christ. So he's here."

I cringed and cringed and cringed. I would have curled up in the fetal position from the pain, except that I had to introduce him, which I did very quickly so that maybe, I hoped, people would forget the introduction of me. That was really one of the more painful moments of my life. I'm overly sensitive, I'm afraid, to sentimentalism, and that was some dang powerful sentimentalism that this fellow put in my mouth. It did not taste good. The professor gave me a funny look.

I also found out that I'm 170+ pages behind in reading for that class. Not that anybody could have been caught up. The professor in there assigned reading for the first day of class, even though nobody was going to get the syllabus until that day. We'll just have to make it up.

Day Two

I had to wake up at 7:00. I'm no good that early in the morning, so I've always avoided 8:00 classes. I couldn't avoid one this year though. Despite being too sick to eat anything that early, though, that class went ok.

Except that I'm about 50 pages behind in there. Same trick as the first professor.

It was the next class, Greek, that really got me. Evidently, three weeks ago, this professor sent out an email to the class, saying that we should memorize the Greek alphabet and pronunciation and read the first chapter of our book by the first day of class.

Guess who never got this email. Me, of course. There were several people who never had gotten the email, but most of the others had had Greek as undergrads, and so they remembered the alphabet, if nothing else. I, of course, had never seen a Greek alphabet. It was sort of difficult to write my memorized Greek alphabet on the board in front of everyone not having ever seen it. That sucked.

All in all, though, the first two days of classes didn't go as badly as I had expected. That's the great thing about being a pessimist, I guess. I think I'll survive, just barely.

Back to School

Last week, I was at the orientation thingy for adjunct instructors over at HSU. Everything had gone extremely smoothly. I was feeling all nice and prepared. Things were going swell-ly.

And then, I heard one of the more shocking things of my life that changed it all.

"Oh yeah, I forgot to mention it. The dress code. Y'all know that noone's allowed to wear denim don't y'all."

No, I did not.

No denim.

The problem is this. I don't really own anything but denim. Denim, for me, is dressing up. When I was teaching up at Tech, I wore a shirt with a nice collar on it the first day of class, and after that, I wore whatever. I taught in shorts and t-shirts and sweat shirts and I wore my cap. I often came to class looking stoned after staying up all night for the second or third night in a row of writing without having bathed or eaten for several fortnights. It hadn't mattered much. I had resolved already at HSU that I was going to wear jeans, and then they were out.

So it goes.

I have now assembled something of a presentable wardrobe. Three pairs of non-denim pantaloons. Shirts with collars (85% of which are blue).

I am going to wear my tennie shoes though.

Coolness

This is all over the internet. It's definitely kind of cool though.

A conversation overheard this weekend. My sister and her husband. It made me laugh. They are silly.

BJ: I lost my earring on the day of the wedding, and I hate this one that I got to replace it. It's too big; I feel like Mr. Clean.
Kalyn: Yeah, you do look like Mr. Clean, except for not having any muscles.
BJ (playfully insulted): Yeah, that's like me saying you look like a model. Except that you're shorter and not as pretty.

I hate commercials.

I hate commercials. They're stupid. They make me mad. And in-articulate.

I can only think of one series of commercials on TV that I like at all at the moment (the Geico celebrity commercials), and I wouldn't buy the product they're selling (because it's a rip-off).

So, I've decided to boycott the following companies, at least for the next several months (until either newer and better commercials are unveiled or (even better) the companies decide to stop advertising at all), because I have to keep my remote control in my lap because I involuntarily cringe and grit my teeth whenever I hear one of these commercials coming on and I have to press mute to protect myself. I cannot afford emergency room or dentist bills.

Anyway, do join me, if you will, in boycotting these stupid companies.

1. Starbucks - I hate military-like chanting, particularly if it's subject is stupid and cheesy and about having success in the corporate world. The dancing is worse than in the Westside Story, too. The "Glen" commercial (sung to "Eye of the Tiger") was annoying, too.

2. Burger King - The "Big Huckin' (or "Buckin'" or "Something Else"--there is much debate evidently) Chicken" commercial is one of the worst and most unbearable commercials of all time. I'm not sure exactly what audience they were trying to attract, but I definitely wasn't part of it. The other commercial they have, about the fellow turning into a chicken, is horrible, too.



3. Stacker II - Hopefully, you haven't seen this commercial. I only see it on ESPN. It's the one about the military wife who once was fat but now is not, and she was really embarassed when her husband lost weight and made a commercial about it, and so when he went to Iraq, she lost a lot of weight on Stacker II. The worst part is when she says she now has energy, and the husband looks her up and down, as though he were about to rape her, and says that now she's going to need that energy now that he's home. This is my least favorite commercial ever.

4. PetMeds - That lady is way too perky. I don't like her.

5. Army - Even if I weren't a pacifist, I wouldn't join the army because of their stupid commercials. They all seem to feature a guy coming back to see his friends, and they end with the soldier guy looking through all of his friends, giving them a smug look that so clearly means, "You guys are all such losers." I don't like that.

6. Kay Jewelers - "Every kiss begins with 'Kay.'" - That has to be just about the worst slogan ever. Buy her jewelry, and you may get some.

I saw Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth a while back. It was pretty scary. It was hopeful, too, but definitely scary. And well worth watching.

There were several really impressive things about it. First, I've looked for decent refutations of the arguments made in the film, and I just can't find them (Glenn Beck (who's even more stupid than Nancy Grace) comparing Gore to Hitler just doesn't quite cut it for me). Second, Gore addressed all of the normal arguments against the reality of global warming (i.e. that the earth goes through natural warming and cooling cycles, that scientists don't unanimously agree on global warming, and that things wouldn't really change that much) very, very strongly it seemed to me. Third, Gore himself was impressive. He typically seems so stiff and withdrawn. Not so, however, in this film. Somehow, he conveyed his humanity and sincerity.

Anyway, I recommend this.

Well, I’ve not blogged much in a while. I’ve been busy.

First, a friend’s father died, and so I had to go down to Menard for the funeral. Then, the next day after the funeral, Dad’s heart went out of rhythm, and so, I’ve spent some time in Menard helping Mom and Dad do their jobs. We also went to the doctor, and though this spell was bad at first, Dad’s health situation is mostly under control right now.

I’ve also been reading a good bit, getting ready for teaching in the fall.

So that’s it for now. I guess not too much going on. I’m going to try blogging a little more.

By the way, my sister’s started a blog that’s worth checking out. Many Tony stories.