'Maybe you should have just plagiarized this part...'

It has come to my attention that grad students (history anyways) at Trent are a little bit different from those at other universities. I was talking to a friend on the weekend who attends another university here in Ontario who is doing a Master's in Bio-Chem-somthing...I didn't really understand it. He was in the process of marking first-year lab reports and was voicing some frustrations concerning the inability of 17 year-olds to use proper sentences and simple math skills. When I asked him how the TA's at his university responded to this total lack of academic aptitude he explained that changing majors, dropping out of university and careers in McDonald's are frequent suggestions that his colleagues blatantly spell out on failed lab reports.

Educators have long struggled with the question of how to cope with inept students in their classes.

One math teacher chose to arrive to fourth period classes already three sails to the wind.

A history teacher told us not to feel too badly when we handed in an atrocious essay, because he would just host a dinner party and use it as a conversation piece.

I had a high school teacher who motivated us in math class by telling us that the poor dog sleeping under his table would get kicked every time that we made a calculating error in our assignments. Incidentally he was also the high school teacher who, with a straight face, told a student that, "yes, Mike, of course there is also a left bisector...".

A Phys. Ed teacher explained that we had better learn our sex ed because he didn't want to be teaching our illegitimate children in fourteen years.

Another gym teacher had learned that yelling at fourteen year-old boys was highly ineffective and resorted to hurling basketballs at the adolescent miscreants instead.

At Trent, it is frowned upon to take extreme measures with extremely unmeasurable inadequacy in the classroom. Tearing up essays, hitting, posting grades publicly and using the dunce chair are all options that we are instructed to avoid if at all possible. As a result, when I approached a student about a hastily thrown together assignment, instead of suggesting that he avoid careers with either written or verbal instruction involved, I simply asked if he may have kind of left it till the last minute and then just picked up the first three books that he found and then sort of fabricated a topic out of that.

The scary thing is that I am only a few months into a possible career. At any time I could become an alcoholic, dog-kicking, dinner-party-throwing, basketball throwing, tyrannical educator. And then who would tell students that, "due to an apparent lack of personal qualifications to properly cut and past an essay from buyanessay.com they should probably get a friend to do it for them."

Fortunately I have a support group of several other TA's who are in the same boat and who are more than willing to help me shake my head at students.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

Reading week came not a moment too soon. This year I really needed it. Peterborough has been caught in the clutch of a Dickens' Winter since late November and it can be a little dreary on the Trent campus when the wind howls down the Otonabee River. No matter how well I may have thought that I had bundled up against the cold, the wind in Peterborough always finds a way to make me wish that I had doubled up on my long-johns. I would say that I now know what the Siberians feel like now except that they are, in all likeliness, pitying us this year.

Much as I am enjoying a new school and new friends in an old and familiar town, I did need a bit of a break. As a a result I jumped at the chance to go and help Laura's dad do renovations for a couple of days last week. Painting and laying flooring never felt so good. Great meals from Laura's mom, a chance to hang out with some old house-mates and watching more curling than is healthy didn't hurt the experience too much either.

The fun did not stop there either. I made the drive back to Peterborough Friday morning and repacked (actually more approved Laura's already packed choice of wardrobe for me for the weekend...It's funny, because she is passive-aggressive I only know what shirt she wants me to wear when the rest of them have suddenly gone missing and there is only one item of clothing hanging in my closet. Needless to say all of her favourites had made their way into the suitcase). After a hasty lunch we were back on the road and headed to Brockville to stay at a friends farm and catch the tail end of Winterlude. I know that this paragraph is full of run-on sentences, but my whole reading week was a run-on sentence of activity.

For those of you who do not know, I spent most of my teenage years before high school graduation working on a dairy farm. There are reason why this did not become my career, but I have a fairly good understanding of how farms work. Laura did not. After dinner, we got a tour of the barn and Laura and some of the others learned how to milk a cow by hand. Prior to this moment in her life, Laura did not do any math on just how big cows hooves are, or just how much solid and liquid waste an animal of that size is capable of producing. Don't worry, she was not harmed, just terribly frightened and some of her clothes needed washing. I'm almost a hundred percent certain that all of the fecal matter on her clothing was from the cows.

On Saturday we drove to the capital, walked through the markets, toured the National Gallery, skated the whole Rideau Canal and checked out some amazing ice sculptures. To top off the whole experience we also ate beaver-tails. Amazing.

Well, time to get back to work. Good luck to Laura. She has given up desserts and sweets for Lent. Actually, after she reads this blog, it is quite likely that I will also have given up desserts for Lent, at least.

tot ziens