Day 7
One of the things I love about my job, besides the presence of squirrels and baby athletes en masse on this campus, are the crazy kids that I get to instruct/interact with. One particularly brilliant student from last year had just finished constructing his own language for fun (with great care in attending to syntax, vocabulary, linguistic nuance and all) and was beginning his second. Wildly articulate and knowledgeable, he had a more sophisticated vocabulary than many college professors I know. A child in my class this year is all of 13 and taking calculus come fall. We were simultaneously reading Ender's Shadow, and his precociousness, coupled with his tiny size, baby cheeks, and propensity to attach himself to his sister and sometimes myself made my heart strings all confused as he unwittingly reminded me of the kids we were reading about in Battle School. A girl from my first residential group four years ago (also a student in my class last year) was precociously cool- at present, self-identifying as a bisexual, agnostic, riotgrrl- listenin anarchafeminist. Intelligent, individualized, and aware, they are a lot of the things I could've been at their age had I not been so occupied collecting denim miniskirts and taking frequent trips to the mall. As such, it is singularly gratifying when one or a few of these girls tell me I'm their role model or their hero- even more so when they reiterate the statements months or years later, in indication that it's not just a fleeting utterance of youth.
Health note: perpetual fatigue has turned into actual exhaustion.
8 AM: rise/ morning stuff/ breakfast
9-4: classroom
4-6: nap/eat
6-7: teach
7-11: nap
11-3/4/5: lesson plan
3/4/5-8: sleep
tired throughout
Eating three meals a day, sometimes four. Which is twice as many meals as I usually eat, but they're healthier. Cottage cheese and salads, eating in the twilight zone of gastrointestinae.
Social note: Still opting to avoid all co-workers in favor of napping and reading every book in the Ender's Game series. (Probably nerdier now than when I attended this camp myself). Will go out every night come Thurs, explore a bit this weekend. One kind of cute co-worker here, but he does capoeira and I decided long ago that I'd never go there. Doesn't matter anyway, I feel too tired and dull and busy to do anything much. Still missing Ryan; of course I do, I'm totally tired.
Lesson plans:
6/15- Conceptualizing Mental Illness: Perspectives & Orientations. Topics: Biopsychosocial Model, Diathesis-Stress, Statistical Models, Definitional Models, Graded & Binary/ Continual/ Dichotomous Perspectives, Surgeon General, DSM.
6/16- "On Being Sane in Insane Places" (Rosenhan 1973) and "On Pseudoscience in Science, Logic in Remission, and Psychiatric Diagnosis" (Spitzer's critique, 1975). Reading and discussion.
6/17- ? Alternative Gender Identity and Gender Identity Disorder
This makes me want to become a teacher solely on the bases of:
a) liking it
b) pains me to think I'll never get to use these bloody 6-hour-in-the-making ppts again.