We do it 80 minITUES (rugger no spell! rugger drink!), 15 positions, no protection... wanna ruck?
Rugby is starting again! There was a meeting today to elect captains and introduce ourselves to new players. I didn't realize how much I missed those girls until I bust a gut laughing when one of our girls came to the meeting drunk. It was one of those, this is so our rugby team moments.
So... classes? They've not been too bad thus far. I know I was freaking out about my cognitive development midterm, but I ended up with a 95. I didn't finish the econ midterm, though, so I don't know what that means... (most people I talked to didn't finish and I was nearly at the end anyway, so it's probably hella curved in my favor).
Right now I'm taking a break from finishing my paper in history. It's been a tough assignment since the only source I'm interested in is this kickin' PBS interview with Nicholas Lemann. Everything else I can come up with about the SATs says pretty much the same thing--women, minorities, and poor kids get the shaft. Exactly how screwed you are depends on how marginalized you are by society in general.
Honestly, I went to tutor in West Philly and it was really overwhelming, but the moment the differences in equality hit me was when I was sitting at a computer next to this eleventh grade boy. I started to type an example of a thesis statement in Word for him, and he immediately exclaimed, "How did you DO that?" I thought he meant pulling an imaginary thesis out of thin air at first (it's all in the quality of the bull that does the shitting) but I saw soon he was staring at my hands. "How do you type like that? Did you have to take a class or something? Or is it just practice?"
That's when it got me. It wasn't just that he couldn't type, it was that he'd never seen someone close to his own age type well. Very limited access to computers. As I soon saw, no concept of how to effectively use a search engine. I'm pretty sure typing classes started in the fourth or fifth grade for me. I hand-coded a website in the fourth grade... my dad's a computer programmer. I've always been around computers, even when I didn't know how to use one, even when all I could do was press keys and make little yellow-green letters show up on the black screen. I'd try to make them into pictures. Kindergarten ASCII art.
Before you've really poked your head into an inner-city school, when all you see is teenagers with bad attitudes, you blame "parents these days" for raising such disrespectful kids. And it's true that a lot of these kids would be a lot better off if they gritted their teeth, stopped rebelling, and worked as hard as they could to go to a good college somewhere far, far away. But... wouldn't you be angry if you knew you were getting the shaft? They know they're not learning. They know that very few adults around them "have it together." They're frustrated. We can't fault them for not having the astounding levels of maturity one would need to keep cool through such insulting, second-rate treatment.
Wouldn't it kick ass if I got all As this semester? It wouldn't even have to be all As. Four As and a B would make me happy. I know things get harder as the semester progresses, and I know rugby practices have yet to start, and I know I just quit my job and haven't heard back about the one I want, and I know I just said that I shouldn't expect all As like in high school, but, I mean, I'm doing so well right now... if I just keep adding things one at a time, making sure I can handle each one before moving on to the next, then maybe a straight A semester isn't an unrealistic goal...
I need a rugby icon. Stat.
So... classes? They've not been too bad thus far. I know I was freaking out about my cognitive development midterm, but I ended up with a 95. I didn't finish the econ midterm, though, so I don't know what that means... (most people I talked to didn't finish and I was nearly at the end anyway, so it's probably hella curved in my favor).
Right now I'm taking a break from finishing my paper in history. It's been a tough assignment since the only source I'm interested in is this kickin' PBS interview with Nicholas Lemann. Everything else I can come up with about the SATs says pretty much the same thing--women, minorities, and poor kids get the shaft. Exactly how screwed you are depends on how marginalized you are by society in general.
Honestly, I went to tutor in West Philly and it was really overwhelming, but the moment the differences in equality hit me was when I was sitting at a computer next to this eleventh grade boy. I started to type an example of a thesis statement in Word for him, and he immediately exclaimed, "How did you DO that?" I thought he meant pulling an imaginary thesis out of thin air at first (it's all in the quality of the bull that does the shitting) but I saw soon he was staring at my hands. "How do you type like that? Did you have to take a class or something? Or is it just practice?"
That's when it got me. It wasn't just that he couldn't type, it was that he'd never seen someone close to his own age type well. Very limited access to computers. As I soon saw, no concept of how to effectively use a search engine. I'm pretty sure typing classes started in the fourth or fifth grade for me. I hand-coded a website in the fourth grade... my dad's a computer programmer. I've always been around computers, even when I didn't know how to use one, even when all I could do was press keys and make little yellow-green letters show up on the black screen. I'd try to make them into pictures. Kindergarten ASCII art.
Before you've really poked your head into an inner-city school, when all you see is teenagers with bad attitudes, you blame "parents these days" for raising such disrespectful kids. And it's true that a lot of these kids would be a lot better off if they gritted their teeth, stopped rebelling, and worked as hard as they could to go to a good college somewhere far, far away. But... wouldn't you be angry if you knew you were getting the shaft? They know they're not learning. They know that very few adults around them "have it together." They're frustrated. We can't fault them for not having the astounding levels of maturity one would need to keep cool through such insulting, second-rate treatment.
Wouldn't it kick ass if I got all As this semester? It wouldn't even have to be all As. Four As and a B would make me happy. I know things get harder as the semester progresses, and I know rugby practices have yet to start, and I know I just quit my job and haven't heard back about the one I want, and I know I just said that I shouldn't expect all As like in high school, but, I mean, I'm doing so well right now... if I just keep adding things one at a time, making sure I can handle each one before moving on to the next, then maybe a straight A semester isn't an unrealistic goal...
I need a rugby icon. Stat.