otoh

…and hikin’ and climbin’ and canoein’ and RVin’! See you after the solstice.

I am not on vacation. I am on summer break.

For many people in “normal” jobs, the difference may be… um, academic. [smirk]

But here’s why I never refer to my time off in the summer as a vacation. I don’t get paid. I work a ten-month contract and I am unemployed for two months. After all, people that work Monday through Friday don’t refer to Saturday and Sunday as vacation days. They are days off. A short break before returning to work. It’s just a lot easier to stretch your paycheck through a weekend than it is through a summer.

“But,” I am usually asked when I make this distinction, “can’t you get paid in the summer?” Not really. Most school districts will withhold a percentage of your paycheck through the year and then give it back to you in the summer. If you have the self-discipline to put money in a savings account at least you would earn interest on it. As much as I love [cough] the school board, I’m not willing to lend them some of my money interest-free for most of the year….

So I’ve learned to budget. Sometimes I work other jobs in the summer. And I relish my breaks. Because even though I love my job, I also hate it. And I like being away from it for a while each year. I like having a lot of flexibility in my days when there is virtually none when I work. [A bell rings and I teach until another bell rings, and then a few minutes later a bell rings and I teach until another bell rings, and then a few minutes later....]

I am on summer break. I am not on vacation. But I will be taking a vacation soon!

I’ve got two words for you…

But today I’m celebrating two words I don’t expect to hear again until school resumes in August: “What page?”

Because I teach students how to make drawings, we don’t have a lot of traditional “book work”. But we do have textbooks as references and sometimes I find it valuable to assign some reading and even to have students write answers to questions based on the reading.

Me: “Read chapter 12 and write the answers to the review questions at the end of the chapter.”
Student: “What page?”

Okay. It’s a chapter assignment, not a page. And it’s chapter 12. If only the authors had thought to put them all in order….

I will often refer students to a textbook to answer a question, especially if it is an answer that A) I just gave them, B) should be in their notes, but isn’t, or C) was a research assignment. Usually I will even tell them which book to look in.

Me: “You don’t have that in your notes? Look it up in the Mechanical Drawing book.”
Student: “What page?”

Hmmm. If only there were some way to look that up, like an index or something….

Many of the drawings I assign are based on examples from one of our books. Typically, these are labeled with chapter-illustration numbers. So the tenth illustration in chapter 12 would be figure 12-10.

Me: “Draw figure 12-10 from the Mechanical Drawing book.”
Student: “What page?”

Aaarrrrggghhhhh….. Now, there is a specific page number that I could give in answer to that question. But the truth is, I rarely remember the page number. If I’m looking for figure 12-10 I find chapter 12. If I open the book to chapter seven I need to go further in the book. If I open it to chapter 15 I need to go back. (If I really want to show off, I’ll use that index thing to find exactly which page chapter 12 starts on!) Once I find chapter 12 then I find figure 10. If I see figure 12-3 I need to go further in the book. If I see figure 12-23 I’ve gone past it.

I guess I never realized what a tremendous skill that is. I should be a rocket scientist. [Or a brain surgeon. Or a double-naught spy. Or just about anything else besides what I am....] Until then, I’ll relish these two words: summer break.

Final Exams are over. The less said about work these days the better….

Anyway. Monitoring students while they take an exam can get pretty boring. I stand in the back of the room most of the time. I look over their shoulders. I walk around the room. I answer questions. Usually the answer is either, “Read the instructions,” or “Read it carefuly and choose the best answer….” If I had a nickel for every time I — wait. My salary is depressing enough. (I deliver these answers as clearly, concisely, and calmly as I can muster because mostly I desperately want to say, “goddammitreadthefuckinginstructionsyouidiot!” or “Ispentthelasttenmonthstellingyoutheanswersnowyoutellmethat’swhythisiscalledaTESTyouidiot!”)

I do not sit at my desk while the students are working on the test. I’m sure that some teachers sit at their desks and grade the previous period’s exams. I have done that before too. After all, students have two hours to take the test and we have an average of about three minutes each to grade them. (That’s time we get paid for. Most of us work many hours we don’t get paid for.) Pedagogically, it’s poor practice not to be vigilant during an exam. But so is having impossible deadlines imposed on us.

So. Yesterday. I was giving an exam. My mind wandered a bit. And if there was any stimulus that prompted this, I don’t recall it. Suddenly I had in mind “The Youth Fairy”. (My brain, as has been repeatedly demonstrated, has a mind of its own.)

There’s a poem or short story in there somewhere about youth being taken from us in our sleep without so much as a dime left under our pillows. And I jotted a few notes on some scrap paper. While I still think there is some potential there, I don’t think I’ll ever follow up on it. So. You wanna run with this one?

In preparing this post I found four quotes that I had duplicated in my list. It seems this thing has grown beyond practical wieldiness. Maybe I should consider better organization. But that seems too much like work….

Here’s a secret: Many of the quotes that I put in here come from the Writer’s Almanac, which comes to [one of] my email[s] every day and which I am usually days or weeks behind in reading.

I hope you enjoy reading these as much as I enjoy stealing gathering them!

There is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to man and beast, it is all a sham. ~ Anna Sewell

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things. ~ René Descartes

Passion destroys passion; we want what puts an end to wanting what we want. ~ John Fowles

Looking foolish does the spirit good. ~ John Updike

Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness. ~ Anatole France

Drama is life with the dull bits left out. ~ Alfred Hitchcock

Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it. ~ Alfred Hitchcock

One of television’s great contributions is that it brought murder back into the home, where it belongs. ~ Alfred Hitchcock

Give them pleasure — the same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare. ~ Alfred Hitchcock

Self-plagiarism is style. ~ Alfred Hitchcock

I never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with a lot of pleasure. ~ Clarence Darrow

There are many people who are always anticipating trouble, and in this way they manage to enjoy many sorrows that never really happen to them. ~ Josh Billings

Don’t take the bull by the horns, take him by the tail; then you can let go when you want to. ~ Josh Billings

When you grow up in a dysfunctional household, you quickly tune in to what’s going on under the surface. From age five or six, I was scanning, figuring out all the stuff not being discussed. ~ Sue Grafton

The important thing in writing is the capacity to astonish. Not shock—shock is a worn-out word—but astonish. ~ Terry Southern

It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both. ~ Niccolò Machiavelli

One of the wonderful things about being a writer is that it can be done at home. ~ Kaye Gibbons

Self-knowledge does not necessarily help a novelist. It helps a human being a great deal but novelists, as we know, are often appalling human beings. ~ Peter Carey

The higher up you go, the more mistakes you are allowed. Right at the top, if you make enough of them, it’s considered to be your style. ~ Fred Astaire

Physics is like sex … it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it. ~ Richard Feynman

The previous parts of this series are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. (If you’re keeping track, there are 395 quotes in rotation now and I’ve posted 300 of them in these entries.)

I had this sitting around in draft mode. Let’s assume I always intended to post it during the French Open….

• Free Man in Paris by Joni Mitchell
• He Went to Paris by Jimmy Buffett
• Paris by Dido

The song titles link to YouTube videos and the artist names link to their official web sites.