I love teaching.
There is a certain pleasure you gain from teaching a required course; the knowledge that you're audience must listen to you. They can't run, they can't hide.
They're stuck with you.
I hope that in some way I have been able to combine teaching and entertainment.
My mother always said that you will attract more flies with honey than vinegar.
I interpret that as meaning I can get my students to be more engaged in what I'm talking about if I make it interesting and entertaining. . .
. . .as opposed to as dry as a popcorn fart.
I have never understood how come some professors want to, even seek to, be as dry and boring as humanly possible.
Or try to scare their students on the first day so they won't come back.
I teach a course that's required for majors and honours students in criminology.
Meaning, if they choose to leave, eventually they're gonna have to come back: you can run, but you can't hide!
My favourite teachers and professors were always the ones who were engaging and entertaining.
Learning and laughing.
Simultaneously.
Imagine.
I, too, find my students entertaining. In eleven years of teaching, I have read some wild and strange things.
For example,
The student from my deviance course, who wrote in their paper that "Jesus was scared." I believe he was.
I think this student meant,"sacred."
All for the want of being able to proofread.
The group in my introduction to qualitative research methods course who submitted a draft of their first assignment, where they outline different research questions they could ask based on a problem statement they devised.
Their question: How do morals come into play when the ligths are turned on?
In my head, I ran through ALL sorts of possibilities, none of which I dared assume was what they meant.
In 11 years of teaching this course, this was the first question I encountered where I had absolutely NO IDEA what they were asking.
Or at least I didn't want to know.
Now I know.
If anyone gets it, I'll give you a prize.
But you can't be from the intro methods class.Another incident, again in my intro qualitative class, we were talking about what we can learn about people by looking at what they wear, carry with, etc.
I used the example of bookbags, knapsacks, sports bags, etc. Asking permission, I reached into a student's bag and. . .
. . . pulled out a half full liquor bottle.
Really. . .I knew that I can sometimes be difficult to deal with, but erring on the side of intoxication seems a bit extreme . . .
One of the other reasons I like teaching is because I'm convinced I was a stand-up comic in a previous life.
The problem: in this life, its hard to do when you're a single parent of three children.
I have more material than I know what to do with, but, alas, there seemed to be no time and no where to share this material.
Hence, teaching.
Captive audience, or audience held captive.
Either way, they can't leave.
My children don't appreciate it when my students, and their friends, actually find me funny. Pookie says things like, "Don't encourage her! She'll just keep trying."
Speaking of funny. . .
Last evening, I was nursing a bit of a buzz. . .
Brought on my going over my self-imposed limit of one glass of white wine.
Where would I have access to alcohol at 4.30 in the afternoon?
Why, the university of course!
And surely I would have had drink several glasses of wine to facilitate such a buzz?
Nope.
Just one glass over my one glass limit.
For you non-math majors that equals two.
Two small glasses of white wine, on an empty stomach, and I was experiencing the world through alcohol addled brain that accelerated my already-too-easy-to-accelerate-inhibitions,
forcing Emily to stare me in the eye at the theaters, before checking her hours for the week, and firmly state, "You will stand here, still, and talk to no one until I get back" then giving Stephen the okay to forcibly remove me from the theater if I was too loud, while Keith attempts to mask his fear of oh-gawd-my-mother-is-here-and-she's-hard-enough-to-deal-with-when-she-isn't-tipsy while serving the hoards of customers wanting into the movies for $5.99 a ticket, when his mother is mouthing, "I love you Pookie!"
Let me just state that I was in no way incapacitated, out-of-control-falling-down-and-urinating-on-myself-drunk.
Those days, thankfully, are way behind me.
And I never urinated on myself.
I was just feeling a bit giggly.
Happy.
Loving the world.
And like all enjoyable things when you become older, it was finished too soon.
Once we were back in the car, on our way home, me ensconced in the front seat while Stephen drove, the effects were already starting to wear off.
Leaving me ready for bed at 6.30.
Knowing I could easily go to bed at 6.30 and sleep through the night, didn't mean I should go to bed at 6.30 and sleep through the night.
Not really wanting to do anything, I decided I would check out these amazing cable channels we have, with some trepidation, let into our home.
Trepidation, you say? How come? What could be so wrong with a few cable channels?
Because I can become absolutely enamoured with things I would normally never become enamoured with.
Last evening, in an effort to not go to bed at 6.30, I turned on the television and met someone I would never meet in a 100 years.
Because I just wouldn't be that lucky.
Bill.
The Exterminator.
A&E, which seems to be more about entertainment than art, was running back-to-back episodes of Bill the Exterminator.
I love it!
Donnie, that's me, according to my children, if I was older, thinner, with the Louisiana twang, and a bouffant hair-do straight out of the 1950s!
Plus, we're both afraid of snakes.
Bill's hair, too, is a marvel of nature. Long in the back, spiked on the sides, and two long peices framing either side of his face.
It's hard to take someone seriously when they look like they had their hair cut, with the lights off in the dead of night, by a giggling gaggle of 5 year old girls.
Nonetheless, I am hooked tighter than a rattlesnake in a snake tong.
And apparently, I can watch as many episodes as I want, because we have free Rogers on Demand.
For now.
Just what I need: another television obsession.
I'll be talking Louisiana twang for weeks!
Title Lyric: Exterminator by Primal Scream
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