As I flipped from Extra! to Inside Edition to Entertainment Tonight, trying in vain to find ONE gossip show that doesn't embarrass itself with attempts at serious election "news," I couldn't help but wonder: How many of the Hollywood for Obama folks are actually going to vote? I mean, are there polling places in Santa Monica with spa-like facilities and buttery leather chairs for people to wait in? Are there private voting booths that have been swept for hidden cameras and equipped with sparkling water? Is there a special parking area where Mercedes (Mercedeses?) and special edition Priuses are guaranteed to be safe from the dings and indignity of sharing space with our '96 Corollas? Is there any end to my class resentment lately?

Nyuk, nyuk.

But I really do wonder. Of course, there's always absentee voting, but I have even more trouble picturing Justin Timberlake or Angelina Jolie opening and sending mail. John Cusack--sure. I guess we'll know for sure when US Weekly does its November 4 spread on Celebs: They're Just Like You and Me!

9 to 5 -- well, actually, 8:15 to 12:25

I've been torn between wanting to write all about my job, and worrying that a past, current, or future employer--or worse, a parent--will somehow read it and end up hating, firing, or suing me, respectively. I would never share personal information about a student. It's mostly the blatant admissions of moral and professional turpitude that I'm afraid of exposing.

But that's what makes this new job something worth writing about: the surprising lack of turpitude it inspires. For example, just now, when I decided to use the word "turpitude," I actually looked it up in the dictionary to make sure it was appropriate. It wasn't quite the word I was looking for; I thought it meant "laziness." I'll leave it in in case you didn't know that.

Anyway, when preparing lessons for the classes I'm teaching, I find myself able, and even inspired, to keep working until the job is done. I am committed to making sure we cover all of the course objectives, and to making sure that every student is meeting them as we go along. No more putting off grading for weeks on end until papers are so piled up that I decide not to count the assignments. I've actually started grading papers the day they're turned in and returning them promptly the next day. Amazingly, the students read my comments and ask how they can get better grades! No more throwing in a lesson that has nothing to do with the previous topic of study because I'm too tired to write a new one or want to watch Lost. Maybe this will all change in January (when Lost is back on), but for now, I haven't been watching TV at all except for the debates.

Part of this may be pure fear: if I lose this job, our only hope will be getting picked up by a political campaign as a sob story illustrating the failure of the American economic system to reward higher education. (Don't you get something for appearing in campaign commercials, like maybe no-questions-asked food stamps?) Also, our program is the only accredited degree in the country for this population, and accreditation depends on meeting objectives, maintaining college standards, and the like. To be the one who brings down a desperately needed flagship educational program would be a career lowlight, for sure.

But it's mostly due to an amazing fact--amazing because it is so obvious, yet so ignored by the practitioners and administrators of public education. I care because my students care. In teaching, you hear a lot about the reverse of that maxim: Students only care when we care. (And showing Stand and Deliver will make them care, ese.)The assumption is always that if only a teacher cares enough, he or she can make the students buy in...and topple institutionalized racism through calculus.

But so much depends on the students. I will never be as charismatically inspirational as Edward James Olmos, or Meryl Streep, or Michelle Pfeiffer, or even the crackhead played by Ryan Gosling in Half Nelson. (Though Ryan Gosling sure inspires me, if you know what I'm sayin. Heh, heh.) Heck, the best I can hope for is the bumbling Steve Coogan in the brilliant Hamlet 2, and even that's a stretch. Probably 5 percent of all teachers have that innate gift of inspiring with their personalities, rather than with fleeting coolness, fear, intimidation (by discipline or grading on a curve), bribery, or painstaking, exhaustive preparation. And when your classes gleefully trounce your preparedness day in and day out, with their drunkenness or their smirks or their attempts to start fistfights or fires in your classroom, it's easy to decide not to prepare anything at all.

But when your students appear to be listening to every word you say, make eye contact, ask for help, email you when they miss class to ask for the homework, and seem so earnestly committed to overcoming their limitations, it's pretty hard to spend four hours watching Sarah Palin-mocking videos instead of modifying tests, writing those Jeopardy questions that all students seem to love, emailing extra instructions to a kid who didn't get it, or memorizing notes for tomorrow.

No, any more than 2 hours of Palin videos would be turpitudinous.

simple carbohydrates

I had a lovely birthday yesterday; thanks for the calls and Facebook messages! I should probably be posting this there, but ever since I started feeling obligated to become friends with the Mean Girls who hated me in high school, the boys who ignored me, and people not so far removed from my students, I've started trying to keep the personal info to a minimum. So I'm not linking to Missy Mussy from my profile. What a budding conspiracy theorist I am.

Anyway, here were the highlights:

• Started the day with half a leftover doughnut from Ben's Sunday sojourn to Winchell's.
• Taught Nutrition class. This would only become more ironic as the day went on.
• Got my Washington driver's license. Gift #1: I waited less than 20 minutes, compared to the 2 hours we spent when Ben got his, and the lady was nice to me! Sadly, the mean lady I'd noted last time took my picture. After the first one, she grunted, shook her head, and signaled me wordlessly for a second try.
  
• Had lunch at the German deli next to the DMV: marinated vegetables, a salami-and-buttercheese sandwich on that European wholemeal bread that you never find anywhere else, and the cutest tiny waxed paper bag of potato chips. I felt like Frances with her mini shaker of salt.
  
• Picked Theo up from school to take him to gym class. He was so excited to see me, if I do say so myself, probably owing to the fact that I am willing to humiliate myself by pretending to be Roo from Winnie the Pooh every time we play.
• Played.
• Had a birthday dinner of pizza & Chardonnay (my two favorite food groups, cheesey carbs & white wine), followed by......
• DECORATE YOUR OWN CUPCAKES!!!!!!! Theo was so excited about the stuff they had chosen at the store--candy corn, pastel mints, and sugary birthday letters, it was hard to not be awash in childhood delight. He carefully arranged as many mallowcreme pumpkins and mints as would fit on each cupcake, then ate one bite and proclaimed himself done eating, proving my sister's philosophy that if you don't limit candy and sweets, kids will naturally stop themselves when they're full. Levi happily smashed his face into a cupcake and got frosting up his nose. Gift #2: A friendly reminder from the heartstrings to the old baby machinery: Let's get crackin'! I can't wait to start my brood and name the first one Prig, or maybe Squirt, out of admiration for our potential new first ever female Prez! [Aside: Ben and I made a pact that if Marge McMoosemunch becomes Actual President, we will consider moving abroad.]
• The night was capped off with Gifts # 3 and 4: a box of powdered sugar donuts (guess who picked that out?) and a UW sweatshirt from Ben, "to keep my Mussy warm." We had already shopped for wine glasses over the weekend, having given away the wine glasses he gave me two birthdays ago before the move.
  

Awww. I am very warm indeed.

And today is the last day I eat nothing but leftover pizza, donuts, and cupcakes. Tomorrow I'll try to weave in another food group, especially since we're starting food diaries in Nutrition class, and I just couldn't live with the hypocrisy.