Help Wanted

I struggle to explain to people what exactly UNH pays me to do, other than sit in my office and try to look busy a few hours a week. My boss gave me a small assignment this week which has resulted in a lot of busy work: mostly things like removing staples and scanning documents--all the things that my master’s degree failed to prepare me for. In exasperation yesterday, I asked my boss if I could hire an undergraduate as an assistant to do my busy work for me so I could focus on my real job (not tipping my hand, of course, that I’m not sure what my real job is). To my surprise, he said that I could hire an assistant. Apparently there’s money in the budget for that sort of thing. I’m excited. Finding something for my assistant to do so he or she looks busy will give me something to do so that I can look busy too. I love academia.

Future Professors

Griffin asked Laura and I if Harvard was a college or a high school. When we told him it was a college, he asked if it costs a lot of money. We told him yes, and he said he's going to start saving his money, because he's going to Harvard.

Later, Griffin told me he wants to be be a paleontologist, so he needs to go to the best college possible so he can be really smart. I told him it isn't the college that makes a person smart, and that I knew a lot of smart people that went to crummy colleges and a lot of stupid people that went to great colleges (he asked which stupid people I was referring to, but I assured him he didn't know any of them).

"But if I want to be smart and go to a great college," he said, "I can still go to Harvard, right?" I told him yes--that's what his grandfather did.

Miles then declared that he wants to go to Yale to become an archeologist. I proposed that someday all of us could be professors at the same university. "Yeah," said Miles. "We can eat lunch together and talk about our cool discoveries. Well, Griffin and I can talk about our cool discoveries, and you can...what do you do again? Do you just teach? You can talk about that, I guess."

Chip off the Old Block

Griffin hasn’t quite picked up on what a nerd his daddy is. He’s always asking me about the sports I used to play. A few weeks ago he asked me where I played college football. I laughed. “Boise State,” I said. “Where else would I have played?”

But when Laura’s within earshot, I have to be a bit more honest and tell him I didn’t actually play any team sports, per se. On the way to his baseball practice, I told him the only real sport I did was track. I did my best to make it sound cool, leaving out the polyester micro-shorts or the fact that I only made the team because I had a valid student ID. Kids don’t care about those details. I told him I used to run long distance.

“And then what?” He said.

“And then nothing. We ran. Really far.”

“Oh,” he said. “Like a race. That’s cool.”

He didn’t sound convinced.

I told him how I won a high-jump competition, leaving out the part where there were no other competitors or that the bar was literally as low as it could go without actually touching the mat, and even then I kept knocking it down.

“But when you played soccer,” he said, “you were on a team with a coach?”

I told him it’s a gray area. I had a friend who used to play soccer. His mom was the coach, and sometimes we would play in his backyard and she would make us Kool-Aid, so it was kind of like I was on the team.

I bought Griffin a contraption the other day—my brother had one growing up and we called it a “pitch back.” It’s like a vertical trampoline you throw a baseball at and it bounces back to you. I felt nostalgic putting it together, thinking of our old house on Woodland Drive and my brother, Jeff, spending hours pitching the baseball at it (and myself spending hours bouncing He-Man and Star Wars figures off of it). Griffin crouched next to me and helped string the net in place, and it was one of those proud moments when I saw so much of myself in my little son.

But then Miles came outside wearing a pair of goggles, knee-high socks, and a light-saber tucked into his belt. “Cool,” he said. “This can be our spy base.” And I remembered Miles is my son, and I have no idea where Griffin came from.

Recital

Few things embarrass me more than watching people perform live, especially when music is involved. I attended the kids’ piano recital last week, and I was a nervous wreck the entire time. The first performer played a few notes and then froze. She looked at her teacher who encouraged her to continue. That’s it, I thought. I’m going to have a stroke before this thing is over. The girl started over, and I had to put my head between my knees and take deep breaths.

It isn’t just that I’m embarrassed for the performer, but I also feel like I need to apologize for how embarrassing the situation is. When the teacher announced that the next performer, a twelve-year old girl, would be singing a Taylor Swift song, I wanted to turn to the folks behind me and say, “This really isn’t my fault. I didn’t know there would be singing.” She belted her way through “Love Story” with the off-key gusto only a lovesick pre-teen can muster, and I sunk lower and lower into my seat. I felt like the whole audience was staring at me. What would compel this girl to actually sing in front of a gymnasium full of people? Did she even consider my feelings when making this decision?

She finished. People applauded. I started breathing again.

The next kid to get up was five. His first song was one note played six times. It literally went, “Bom, Bom, Bom, Bommmmm, Bommmmmm, Bommmmm.” He still found a way to botch it, but the crowd applauded furiously anyway. I think—like myself—they appreciated his brevity.

Surprisingly, though, I wasn’t embarrassed when Miles and Caleigh got up to play their duet. I knew Miles would be fine. A few weeks ago, when we loaded our out-of-tune piano onto the U-Haul, he stood there for an hour and played every song he knew as loud as he could. As neighbors walked by, he would hail them over with a dramatic arm-gesture, like a circus ringmaster beckoning folks into the big-top. I don't even know where he got the tip jar from. I offered to drive around Farmington while he played, and he was genuinely bummed to find out I was kidding. Knowing that the kid has no shame, I had no reason to feel embarrassed for him, no matter what happened. And, as it turns out, he did great. So did Caleigh.

After the twins performed, I thought I might actually make it through the rest of the recital without developing any new ulcers, but then the next student, a young teenage girl, sat down, positioned the microphone, and started singing.

Back on the Grid

I just finished my seminar papers and mailed them off to my professors, which means my semester is officially over and I can return to the land of the living.

I wrote seventy-three pages and then whittled it down to fifty-six. My fingers hurt and I'll probably have weird dreams tonight.

What is my Problem?

I don't know how I did it again, but I ended my technical writing classes a week too early. I even checked the school's calendar this time when I wrote my syllabus.

Man of the People

One of our technical writing instructors had to take a sudden medical leave, and I was roped into taking over her class for the rest of the semester. The first thing that occurred to me as I looked at the instructor’s syllabus was that I don’t assign my students nearly enough homework. In a typical week she had a couple of quizzes, two or three writing assignments, student presentations, and several chapters from the textbook—compared to my typical week, which is to show a Scrubs episode, ask the students to talk amongst themselves about what the connection is to technical writing, and then cancelling class the rest of the week for no particular reason.

I had told the instructor I would try to stick with her syllabus to not upset the students, but one thing I’ve learned over the years is that every assignment I give my students just means more work for me.

I was nervous when I walked into the classroom today. The students were genuinely bummed when I told them their teacher wouldn’t be returning. A student asked if they would still have to take the quiz today. I apologized to them that some of my teaching philosophies weren’t in synch with their previous instructor’s, so they would have to go the rest of the semester without quizzes. This cheered them up rather quickly.

I put my new course schedule on the overhead, and a student noticed that the reading and affiliated writing assignment were no longer due on Monday. I explained that I wanted them to focus on their big team projects (which they’ll be working on for the rest of the semester), and I didn’t want to distract them with busy work. This elicited a few more fist pumps and whoops. I felt like a politician who was finally finding his groove and connecting with the crowd. I then pointed out that one of my conditions for taking over the class was that I wouldn’t teach on Fridays, so they would only be meeting twice a week from now on instead of three.

The whoop-whoops and cheers and high fives continued to escalate as I unfolded my vision for how the semester would end, including no more textbook readings, and cancelling a round of student presentations next week. Three girls were crying, yelling, “We love you, Mike!” I finished by revealing that I was cancelling the portfolio requirement. The crowd roared, and a couple of students hoisted me onto their shoulders. I held out my arms and fell backwards onto the rabble of cheering students. They passed me around the room, chanting, “Mike! Mike! Mike!”

It was pretty cool.