Goodbye, Dr. No.

This is a brief note to express my gratitude to Dr. No. His blog, Acadamnit helped me to see the lighter side of being a college professor. I loved that he gave personalities to various fonts on Microsoft Word. And that many people could relate to his love/hate relationship with his job as a professor. He showed that being a professor is not only a job, but it is a way of life. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, but it's always better with a smile.

Is all of Generation Y Lazy?

Today I'm going to gripe my ass off about my students. Maybe it's partly me, being tired of grading and tired in general and stuff. But, seriously?

I have required my students to write a 5 page essay about a popular trend, explaining the trend and 3 possible causes of it. Then they needed to choose the most likely cause and argue for it. So, this paper requires a bit of background and a bit of arguing.

I have read about 8 papers so far and not a single one has followed the directions. I gave these directions written, orally and in a model that we did together in class. Some classes even did a practice one themselves.

The papers I got are about 60% quotes and they read like articles on that trend. Then they interviewed their sisters about the trends so they could get up to their 4 required sources. 7 of them have no thesis. The one with a thesis does not state that they will discuss the causes of their trend.

Do I still have to grade 70 of these? OMG OMG OMG.

I should post the assignment sheet here so you can see that it's not unclear. Crap.

It's more expensive to be poor

People write sometimes about how it's expensive to be poor and they ususally cite something about the high fees for cashing checks and buying money orders. People in poverty still need to do some of their own banking even when they no longer can afford to have a bank account. For them, what's the point of having a bank when they live their week based on how much cash they have? Why just put it in to take it out again?

Personally, I have thought about this as well, but I have too many bills to deal with the hassle of money orders.

Here is another reason why it's costly to be poor. I just found out that my type of government heatlh insurance is not being taken by my OB-GYN. My baby is coming in one month. There are now NO doctors who will take me because I am too far along. Trust me, I called, and they don't want to mess up their little schedules for me.

So now I am stuck at the only place which will take me... the office with the doctors who work at the hospital. This place is loud, dark and kinda dirty. I will have my baby in another hospital from the one I planned on. I will have to share a room there with someone else for 4 days. Originally I was going to have a room, dvd, couch and WHOLE SPACE all to myself. Not now.

Also, I cannot get in to see those new doctors yet. So my baby is missing his non-stress test this week. Hopefully its sorted by next week since this kid is a comin!

Such a situation has or will cost me stress, more time, and perhaps a bit of monitoring of the baby. This all happened because someone didn't check out my insurance well enough. When I started going to their office 3 years ago, it was all fine, but they tell me that something changed.

I'm not sure anything changed. It's still more costly to be poor. Don't even get me started on the costs of buying things in bulk so that you can save money on them in the long run. Or on coupons that make you buy 2 of the products in order to save money.

"With what scholars now call hyperbolic language..."

I'm going through old essays to find an example of how to use various sources together to prove a point. I'm afraid that my students will get stuck on my academicese, which already sounds weird after 1.5 years out of grad school. Historical modes of production anyone? The terrain of aesthetics? Virgil’s arguably inauthentic background? A glossy poetic? O What does it really mean!

The DMV and you. Or, More Crap to Pay for

Today, after remembering my near-200-dollar bill for renewing my license plates, I freaked out. And rightly so. All I could do was pay for 30-day car tags to keep my 2 gas-guzzling buddies on the road, then hope I would be able to come up with more money within 30 days. Oh, don't worry. I won't forget that date. I get reminded everytime I walk up to my car.

My husband hates to look at the looming deadline so much that he refuses to put the paper plate in the car window where it goes.

So sure I'm broke which leads me to think about how much I need is a baby shower or diaper party. My mom *was* going to have one for me. She lost her job. She said that we didn’t need to rent the hall that we were going to get. Probably those two things are connected. Or else she doesn’t believe in showers for second babies. Which is why it was going to be a diaper party! Hello! And we are dirt poor and already got rid of baby stuff! Hello!

She said we could still hold one at my house. But the toilet and faucet in the bathroom, oh, and the bathroom light, all only work sometimes. I can’t have people over when it’s like this.

With no party, I’m short many things for the baby. Even buying these second hand seems so far off when my post-DMV bank balance brought me to a stunning $40 available for gas, bills, and other essentials for the next 12 days.

I’m starting to think I should come out of the poverty closet on facebook. Then everyone would know and maybe someone would help. But then I would be embarrassed and look needy.

My family all think I must earn about 30-50K since I am a “professor” now. Try adjunct. Cripes.

Introduction

I wanted to start off with a discussion on what it's like to be cultured and poor. I walk among two worlds in which no one knows realizes that I also belong to the other world. My students think that surely a professor makes a lot of money. My colleagues bring in huge canisters of coffee for the kitchen while I bring in none and drink up anyway. On the other hand, the people at the food donation center today seemed to pity me because I am pregnant. Pregnant, Poor, Professor. That's me.