Well, had what I consider a good old bônenkai here last night with my second year students at a bar/restaurant in town. My policy generally has been that I am not against going out for a beer or two with former students, but I've never gone out with current students here in the States. We did it all the time in Japan and in grad school every Friday afternoon a group of grad students and profs met at the bar on campus for a few pitchers of beer to celebrate Aloha Friday. Somehow the northern New England culture doesn't seem as conducive to that. It's too bad, really.
Anyway, this particular class has been gunning for me to go out for drinks with them and found a loophole in that one of the guys is graduating this month and will therefore no longer be my student anymore and if we don't all go out together now, we'll miss out on the chance forever. Fair enough.
They were really responsible about the whole thing. Since not everyone in the class is old enough to drink and they didn't want to be exclusive, they decided we should all meet and have dinner first, then the non-drinkers would be driven back to campus (which is a couple towns over and about 10-15 minutes away) and the of-age folks could continue with the drinking portion of the evening. One kid was the designated driver and stayed out with us the whole time so he could drive us all back home at the end of the evening. We met up at 6:15 and I got home at 12:30. I figured I'd be out to 10 or 11 at the latest.
It was a really fun and funny and relaxing evening, actually.I definitely got and maintained a good buzz all night, but no one got sloppy or out of control. I feel okay this morning, too. I know around here in this day and age it's not such a normal thing for a professor to go out with her students, but students are people and some of them are interesting people. It was fun seeing the quiet ones (non-drinkers, btw) come out of their shells. And maybe it becomes part of their "college experience" that they remember and take with them long after what they learned in class has either been absorbed or forgotten.
I spent about an hour this morning skyping with one of my favorite people on the planet, although we are an unlikely alliance. It was my old karate teacher, or shihan as I call him. Its been a few years since we've been in touch, but I have a student who is moving to Japan in a few months and he wants to train at shihan's dojo, so I emailed him to let him know.
The shihan is a piece of work. I've never met anyone else as single-minded and ballsy as him. He lives and breathes fighting arts and it makes him tough to deal with at times, but the two years I spent at his dojo taught me a lot about how to be tough and how to keep my head cool under the pressure of an adrenaline rush. That particular skill has served me well outside of the dojo.
It was kind of ridiculous that I even ended up there in the first place. I was just walking down the street one day and saw a sign board announcing a new dojo opening that taught kids classes. My girl was five and I thought it might be good for her. I went in to check it out and ended up signing myself up to. I started by going to the kids, later renamed "kids and ladies" classes, but after about half a year I started going to the regular night classes too. It's a mixed martial arts style, based on karate but also incorporating ground fighting, kickboxing and even capoeira. I was 35 years old when I started.
I didn't want to hit people at first. It's not nice for girls to hit. Once I got past that I also learned I was pretty good at taking hits (or kicks) and minded it much less than being thrown, as is the case with judo or aikido. I had tried both of those arts for a year or so, as well. Aikido takes too long to be practical and I just plain sucked at judo anyway. I had always wanted to try karate but figured it was too hard core.
I was going through some of the toughest and shittiest times of my personal life during the years I spent at the dojo. It ended up being one of the few places I really felt I belonged when I was in Japan, which is pretty funny considering it was a world of macho guys. But the shihan and I became good friends. It's never been about anything romantic between us. We click on a different level. One that actually means more to me than the romantic one. (I'm pretty sure romantic love is really just an illusion caused by hormones and body chemistry. Fun, but not permanent.) Shihan is one of the few people who actually gets me and doesn't think I'm some kind of freak. I respect him as well.
I hope I can send my student along to him. The kid is already a good fighter and I know he would love to have some bouts in Japan. It's also really nice to know that, although I may never take advantage of the opportunity, if I ever wanted back into that world, I could show up there anytime and the door would always be open.
This is what three of my students submitted as a final project for their third-year Japanese class.
It's not perfect (by far) but it's pretty funny. I like their creativity.
I could say I'm old because I just want to stay home tonight and relax instead of driving down to Cambridge to see The Queers and some other punk bands play at TT The Bears. But age doesn't really have anything to do with it. My sis (4 years older than me) is going down there with a couple other friends who are older than her, and the band is also a good 10 years older than me, at least.
I just don't feel like driving (or even being driven) down there to hang out in the same old scene, which is more my sister's scene than it is mine. The band is okay. I like the guys in it. I'd rather stay home and read a book tonight.
In other curmdgeonly news-- My university sent out some newsletter with a feature story about developmental psychology studies that deal with how memories affect decision making. Which seems like a really fucking obvious point to me. No shit experience, which leads to memories, influences subsequent decisions. I need a PhD. Maybe I should find some really friggin obvious point and "study" it. Social sciences are a racket.
*Perhaps she is.
According to my favorite wacky astrologer Michael Lutin what I'm feeling is just par for the course these days, but I'm really feeling like I need to bust some kind of move career wise so I'm making money that is more commensurate with what I do and what I know.
The teaching gig is great, but I run the friggin program in my field and get paid the same as other lecturers who just show up, teach the courses they are assigned and follow the set curriculum of their programs. I create the curriculum, implement it, advise kids on study abroad, write a million recommendations for jobs and grad school every year, advise on job hunting. And apparently I do this all with enough effectiveness that it earns me the added aggravation of having to tell the same students multiple times that they cannot major in Japanese at this college. It doesn't exist. You can't have a major staffed by one lecturer. Duh!
And the thing is I only have an MA, not a PhD, which means if a tenure line position ever is created here, I won't be eligible for it due to lack of a PhD. I've been poking around at some possibilities and I think the easiest and most most effective way for me to get a PhD would be to go back to Hawaii and carry on where I left off. I may have enough credits and residency from my MA that I wouldn't really need to spend time on campus. Maybe just a few well timed visits to meet with an advisor and plan out the dissertation and stuff like that. I'm pretty sure they'd take me back. All my profs encouraged me to stay on for the PhD when I finished the MA (with a 4.0 GPA!) but I was about to have a baby and needed to take the time to be a mom, then go back to Japan and work to support my family and endure a stupid marriage.
So, one strategy would be to go finish the PhD and then be ready and waiting if and when my school comes around and decides to set up a tenure line job in my field. Of course, that may never happen and even if it does happen and I have the credentials, they might not hire me for it anyway. So then the whole PhD nonsense would basically have been for ego gratification. I don't think I want to work that hard just to put those letter after my name.
My second idea is to transition into interpreting. I know a few people who do that, in addition to translation. It seems like it pays just as well, involves less carpal tunnel pain and is more interesting than sitting my ass at a desk for hours and hours every day. The travel could be a drawback or a benefit depending on how you look at it. Anyway, my girl is a high school freshman now, which means in a few more years I won't need to be mom on the scene all the time because she'll be off to school anyway. I've been eyeing up the summer intensive interpreter training at Hawaii. They have a 6 week program offered every other year. The next one will be in 2011. The last one was $1,600 for the session, which I believe I could deduct as a business expense.
I suppose it comes down to whether or not I want to stay in academia. I love teaching, even though freshmen annoy the shit out of me sometimes. Then again, they annoy the shit out of everyone. They're freshmen. At least next semester they will be second semester freshmen and not quite so clueless.
There's no denying the "holiday season" has begun. It's really not my thing. It's not like I'm a scrooge or anything. It's just always kind of been irrelevant to me. My family is Jewish so Christmas was never a major deal. I lived in Japan for a dozen years and survived that whole time without a "proper" holiday. There are things I like about the season, but I don't like the pressure to buy lots of presents. I really don't have the money for it this year now that I'm paying for the girl's school tuition. She gets a lot of financial aid and my folks help out too (but not her father), but it's still a few thousand dollars a year I didn't have to budget for last year.
I'm getting better about it. A few years ago I took it on as my responsibility to buy presents for the boyfriend's family. Last year I wised up and left it up to him and he's taking care of it this year, too. Sometimes I fall too much into that "wifey" thing even though I am not a wife. (I've finally owned up to my belief that marriage is really not a good system for me.)
I've already got a few things for my girl and a few things for my guy. I'm not even planning on knocking myself out by knitting gifts for everyone like I usually do. I've got a couple of requests for knitted items that are pretty easy-- a hat and some flip-top mittens. Both those items should only take me a day or two to finish.
This semester has been kind of hectic. I just want to cruise through to the end of it and the holidays.
This week was seriously crazy. Early in the week I got an email from the British bitch who works in the study abroad office informing me that our school has been cut off by our go-to study abroad destination in Japan and I should help them identify and evaluate other programs to replace it.
Fuck her. That was a great program for our students and the only reason we lost it is because bitch and her coworker are incompetent and changed the terms of the agreement without ever communicating such to the partner school or even responding to their inquiries, which lead them to get fed up and drop us. After a couple hours of pretty much straight up rage, I wrote back to her and her boss and said she needs to send an apology to the school in Japan and accept responsibility for failing to comply with the standing agreement between the schools. She won't even acknowledge that she and her useless coworker did anything out of line. She writes back shit about having to follow the rules of this university and then tries to act like part of the problem is that I haven't been doing her job for her. Stupid bitch thinks her accent makes her qualified for her position. Unlike an alarmingly high proportion of people around here, a British accent in and of itself casts no magic spell upon me.
After making sure my boss and I were on the same page I told dumbass (in a professional way, of course) that I'm not doing her job for her and she fucked up a good thing for our kids without even having a back up in place and I think that sucks and she should apologize and try to fix the situation. Fuck her if she thinks it's my job to ignore her fuck up and then do do her job for her. I swear I wish I could just punch her in the head.
I've been seeing a chiropractor for a couple of weeks to deal with my back and hip situation. I think it has unblocked a chakra or something and unleashed a whole new wave of energy that I am using to try to get all the people in positions of authority to recognize the bitch at study abroad is incompetent and attempting to foist off her failures and responsibilities on me. My boss back me up and says do nothing for the study abroad organization unless they are going to pay me for it. The professor in charge of Asian Studies is trying to be a mediator and keep us focused on fixing things now. He has asked me a couple of time to meet with him and the study abroad people. I said I will, but laid down conditions. If bitch tries to bring up her fake issues, I'm standing up and leaving the room. (How the fuck does she think it's my job to get the college to fund a course that students need to fulfill a requirement of the major her organization oversees? I'm a lecturer! Even if the funding were there, I wouldn't want to teach the class anyway.)
I turned all this crazy energy to good yesterday by somehow managing to Facebook befriend and get a promise to come speak at my school from the guy with the new book out about the yakuza. Dude! He was on The Daily Show! That gets me to one degree of separation from John Stewart! Anyway, I was just being my usual dorky self on Facebook, but managed to somehow come across as witty or something. That wasn't even my original intent, but it would be sooooo incredibly cool and would be a such a boost to my cred both among students and the administration if I can arrange for him to come here. I just liked that he was another Jewish kid who went to Japan back in the day dreaming of studying literature and finding enlightenment.
All week I've been feeling like my motor is running too fast and hot. I try to breath deeply and go to the gym and get outside in the sunshine during the day, which is hard when the sun starts sinking before 4 pm around here. More sex isn't taking off the edge either. Last night I finally did what I knew I needed to do. I went over to my sister's house, smoked a good amount of very good weed, and then sat around watching HGTV with her and talked about all kind of stuff including bringing our old band back to life or starting again as a totally new one. I listened to our old stuff at the gym the other day. I hadn't heard it in a long time, but there was something to it. We may not be super shredders, but we have a nice sound.
I have been down and out with the flu for the past few days. It's been a drag.
It has also left me a lot of time for watching tv and movies. Yesterday my girl suggested we watch "Twilight" since neither of us had seen or read it and it was $2.99 on the pay per view. I figured what the hell.
First of all, I was so distracted by their makeup half the time, so it was good that the actual plot line was so thin. Why is Edward's neck always four shades healthier and darker than his face? Couldn't the makeup artists take care of that? I was watching on a regular tv. How did that look in HD or on a big screen?
And why did Edward and Bella's lipstick have to match so perfectly? Why did they both look really rosy and healthy on that night when they went out for dinner at the restaurant? Because it was night so he was vampire safe and they both felt the rush of love? He's undead. Shouldn't he always be clammy looking? I feel like there is a dissertation's worth of makeup analysis in that movie. (Has someone already done this on Metaphilm?
I understand how it is such a perfect teenage girl fantasy film, but damn, is it shallow in there or what?
Of course, The Girl loved it and then spent that whole evening IMing with some boy in her school who looks a lot like Robert Pattinson, the actor who plays Edward. I saw that kid at school a couple of months ago and asked her who he was. At the time I told her I bet every girl in school was in love with him because he looks like that guy. Now she is all flirty crush-crush on him. It's kind of cute.
I used to work with Craig in Japan. Sometimes we'd go out for beers and shoot the shit. Back then his now ex-wife was his girlfriend and I never imagined he would end up in his current situation. It's a shame that the Japanese government allows his ex-wife to keep him from his daughter and that he is stuck in the situation he is in.
When a significant other wishes ill on something that really is important to you, while claiming that you mean a lot to him (except for that thing you love, which he hates, which in this case happens to be my dog) which message is the real one?
You don't vocally wish for something bad to happen to your loved one's pets. Particularly not when the pet is obviously sick, which is what led up to the bf's outburst in the first place.
BF is now all drama-y because I told him, in response to his "I hope he has to get put down, I hate that dog", that if the dog goes, I go. But it's true. If we wants the dog out of the house, then I will go, too. It's not like I'd give up the dog I've had for over 6 years (pre-dating this relationship) because BF now decides he "hate(s) that dog so much I hate all dogs now."
For the record, the dog is not destructive. He doesn't chew up shoes or furniture. He has had one accident in the house ever (which was yesterday). He occasionally barks at things. Everyone else thinks the dog is sweet and adorable. And he's also my daughter's dog.
Recent Comments
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An Ex-Expat said:
So what is Northern NE culture conductive to in this case? From one who has not wandered very far north... read more
on Breaking Boundaries aka 忘年会 -
An Ex-Expat said:
Guess I'll have to check it out then. Thanks. Sounds like your in-laws in Japan are a lot more net-saavy... read more
on Reconnect -
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Vox Hunt: Don't Worry Be Happy
Show us something that always makes you laugh.
Northern New England culture is conducive to old Yankee stand-offishness, where I stay out of your business and you stay... read more
on Breaking Boundaries aka 忘年会