learning

My French teacher is totally adorable. I don't know how to explain it - he's this really great combination of self-effacing and competent, utterly engaging and genuinely nice. I'm always fascinated by how other people teach, and perhaps after beginning my second semester of law school I was a little hungry for nice. And I got it. In spades. Seriously, he asked if we would rather take our handouts with us or if we'd like him to hang onto them for us and bring them next time. I didn't have to carry anything! I love him!

He says things like, "And tonight on our French adventure," and "I promise not to scare you with grammar." My first reaction was, "What the hell? Learning languages is WORK and it's PAINFUL!" But I think with him it's really not. I hear people making real progress and learning all sorts of things that I know are not super easy to teach or learn. Things he says, they're sometimes cheesy, but it sets this tone of real gentle fun.

But the best part, the thing that has me sold, is that whether he does it intentionally or not, he has multiple layers to the class. So he plays these great Yves Montand songs for real beginners to hear pronunciation, but I'm learning and reinforcing all sorts of great vocabulary. And I can ask him really ANY question about French linguistics and he's all over it. He's the perfect French grad student, and he's so ultra prepared. He comes with handouts he made special for us, and power points he made, and CDs cued - he's a walking tech show.

It's a beginning French class and I don't even know why I showed up. I'm not a beginner - I can have conversations in French with people and exist solely in French in social interactions. But I'm so glad I did - to have this practice is sweet, and to relearn things I didn't learn right the first time. It's taught in the business school and it's no credit, so it's totally low stress. And I have really nice classmates, a couple of whom were my friends already, and it's fun. And when it's not fun and when I'm too stressed to take two hours a week, I can blow it off and have happy memories.

So let me contrast that to something six hours prior. In Con Law, the prof called on somebody who blew off answering. But instead of just apologizing and saying, "I'm sorry, I'm not prepared, may I pass today?" the guy wouldn't even really answer. Finally the prof said, "Do you plead the 5th?" "Yeah." The thing is, the answer to this question the prof had said 10 minutes before and we learned the last class - the point of the question was to reinforce, which is why he picked on somebody. For really new stuff, he waits for volunteers. So on to the next case, he called on the same guy, who said, "Me?" "Yeah. I thought maybe since you weren't up on McCulloch you would be on Godby." "I think it's pretty clear I'm not prepared today, so how about if you call on somebody else?"

WTF?! You come unprepared to class AND you give attitude? The prof could have not called on him again - I certainly have days where I don't feel well and can't answer simple questions - but WTF? After class that guy was talking to the prof, who was NOT impressed. Why on earth would you give attitude for being a jerk? Good grief! I felt like I was back in teaching.

And contrast it to one of my French classmates, who is, I believe, married to one of my law classmates (actually, one of the really most annoying people in all my classes and we all make fun of his nasal "like" but now I see he's a nice guy and I have to be nice and actually defend him). She teaches at public school here - and trust me when I say that no matter how bad I think things can be at other schools I've been at, there is no place nearly as effed up as the Recovery School District in New Orleans. It is atrocious. She teaches science and has NO lab equipment - not allowed to do any kind of labs because that would cost money. Of course there's not really textbooks either, so what she's supposed to do is rather unknown. When French teacher gave us worksheets we were working on, she looked up and said, "Wow. You are giving us work to do and we are doing it without any protest or threat or promise. I forgot what this looked like."

Sigh. I remember those days, and there's not enough money in the world to make me go back to it. I remember the kids in Elim BEGGING for worksheets instead of more creative learning.

And now, I do cover letters that are not going to get me a job because I'm not all that. But who knows - maybe somebody will find me oddly intriguing and beg me to come aboard. I guess I should try. 7 more to write, which is difficult after four nights of varying degrees of insomnia. But, the applications are due tomorrow. With my watered-down resume. Shrug. Not a lot of investment here, clearly.

Oh, and I am radioactive, which is more than a little cool I guess. I was really impressed with the professionalism at this hospital - they called me in exactly at the appointment time and she took me back and introduced herself and explained everything and told me exactly what was happening tomorrow. That's pretty darn cool.

And then tonight I went on another civil rights investigatory mission. It's starting to get hard on me, the lying. Today I have a live-in boyfriend. I asked my handler how long we've been together and she said about five years and I exclaimed in protest, "Well, then why hasn't he made an honest woman out of me!" Seriously though - I get a different personality each time, with a different back story, and sometimes it's hard to remember where I work. It's not that I get nervous or anything - I do know how to bullshit. It's just ... it's lying, and I don't like lying. Which is really hard because I really like the organization that I'm helping and I like channeling my rage about racism and I want to support. But it's lying. We'll see how much longer I can keep up living like Alias.