4/26: What I Accomplished Today

1. Graded two sets of papers. Prepped for tonight's class. Taught tonight's class.

Had a situation in which an online student was rude to me, so I was rude back, and then I realized that was really dumb so I apologized, and then the student apologized to me and gave me what I needed in the first place, so now it's all good.

2. Printed out all the paperwork on my Arthur course so I can get it signed tomorrow when I'm on that campus.

3. Finished an issue of The New Yorker. There was an article about bipolar disorder in children; it turns out that some of the onslaught of over-diagnosed ADD and ADHD may have been bipolar (not all, and now bipolar is also be over-diagnosed, but that may be part of the issue, anyway). When I was in California over 10 years ago, I taught for a few years at a newly-formed private elementary school (long, not terribly interesting story; I suppose we'll probably get there eventually), and because we were new and had no reputation, we had a tendancy to get quite a few children who simply couldn't succeed in a public school classroom of 35 or 40 kids; not all, of course, and all of the children were just delightful, don't get me wrong, but we had a higher-than-average concentration of students with learning disabilities, and quite a few of our students were on Ritalin and various other medications (we had a joke that the receptionist, who was normally in charge of meds distribution, almost needed an assistant to staff the desk and answer the phone, because meds distribution was close to a full-time job).

Anyway, it was clear to me, as a reasonably observant, reasonably caring adult that some of these children were helped by their medicine, but others didn't seem to be; there was one boy whom we almost thought was just keeping dopy so he'd let his mother sleep (she worked nights). Right before he was to take another pill, as the morning one was wearing off, he was a bright, charming, friendly, enthusiastic little boy; most of the day, he was a zombie.

The saddest situation from my perspective was a little kindergarten girl who just--I'm going to say she just wasn't right when school started. I taught computers and music, which were usually the two most popular times of the day, and this little girl just couldn't be bothered. We'd be sitting in a circle singing a song, or taking turns strumming the guitar, or doing activity songs, and she'd just give a goofy little smile, flash her underpants at, eventually, everyone around the circle, and then giggle. Sometimes she'd just get up, walk around the circle, and start patting us all on the head as she walked around behind us. If I smiled and asked her to sit again and sing with us, she'd sit for a minute, but the concept of participating in the activity the rest of the group was doing seemed rather odd to her. (And don't get me wrong; I do not think lack of group participation in and of itself is necessarily a bad thing. But most kids want to play along at least some of the )

She had the same problems in computers. Usually each child had a certain game to play until a certain goal was reached (for the kindergarteners, this would usually be maybe a ten- or 15-minute goal), and then they'd have the rest of the half hour to play; frankly, I think that was as important in different ways as using the computer to demonstrate successful mastery of counting or phonics or patterns. For most of the kids, the activity I asked them to do at first was pretty fun, and then their own play was even better. This little girl would start the game, but then she'd wander off and start walking around the others, or sit and point, or just act goofy. I'd usually try to find finagle way to get her to finish the activity so she got her playtime, too, but it was a challenge; I couldn't always do it, and it isn't fair to everyone else if she gets to play without meeting the goal if they had to meet the goal. (I know, I think I sound like somebody's really quaint great-aunt, too, but nobody's more concerned about justice than kindergarteners, and it's cruel to mess with them on that front so soon.)

But about February or so of kindergarten, she was added to the meds list; she was given some Ritalin. And oh my gosh, the child we had for the rest of that year was such fun! She was smart and attentive. She raised her hand for everything. She participated and even asked if she could lead the activity. She had a wonderful sense of humor, and was sophisticated enough to sort of play with that with adults. She was usually the first done with her goal, and before she'd begin her own playtime, she'd often try to help those around her--in such a way that didn't irritate them or send up a flag for me that I needed to sit her back down and focus her back on herself before she got decked. She was just a dream child. I sit here 13 years later and smile about that little girl at the end of that year.

And then over the summer, her mother told us, she had some sort of medicine crash.

I don't know what that means; I just know the bright-eyed, funny little girl was gone, and the fruit loop who replaced her was worse than the merely silly twit who had gone before (don't get me wrong; once she was medicated, it was easy to see how the little girl was related to the silly twit). Prior to medication, she'd been in La-la Land, but she hadn't hurt anyone, but aside from being very mildly disruptive, sort of like a fly you occasionally had to brush away, she didn't actively bother or hurt anyone. Now she was not only flashing constantly, but she was directing it at the other kids more pointedly and was louder about it and had several whole new techniques for just being AT people all the time.

The most frustrating part is that occasionally there'd be a flash in her eyes, and you just knew for a microsecond that that fun, sweet, bright little girl was still in there and couldn't find the way out, and we couldn't find a way in to get her. I don't know how many times her meds were changed that year, but to no avail; we never got her back. That was a long time ago (oh, geeze, if she's not a graduating senior this year, she started college), and I'm still having trouble not crying with frustration at knowing she was capable of learning and playing and having friends, and she seemed to want to do these things, but we weren't able to get to her, to help her, to lead her out ("educare: to lead out").

One of the several reasons my foray into elementary education couldn't be sustained.

I don't know if she was a misdiagnosed bipolar child, but I can't rule that out.

Aside from that magazine, I skimmed about 100 pages in the Oppenheimer. The HUAC nightmare has begun.

5. We watched Letterman on the Regis & Kelly show; it was Philbin's first day back after his heart surgery. Letterman's act was fun; he never, ever does anybody else's show, so we knew this had to be important to him. At one point, he and Regis were comparing the scars on their legs where the arteries had been harvested. Even celebrities can have pasty pencil legs--and it's okay. (I think I'd have been disturbed if either of them hadn't had pasty pencil legs.)

We also watched My Name is Earl on Tivo. Again, I think we watched some other stuff, but I don't remember what it was, so it can't have been that interesting.

6. Got another 20% done on my Pogo badges.

7. Got my Human Paladin to level 21 in World of Warcraft.

A few years ago, at my previous job, I was promoted at one point from being a phone tech support rep to being a supervisor. A lot of the people who worked at this call center played a lot of role-playing games. When I was promoted, all the existing supervisors and managers were sent a weblink by somebody on the floor that was supposed to determine our alignment. I had played some other games (notably Pool of Radiance and several of the Might and Magic games) that dealt with alignment, but I took the quiz. Somebody was sort of keeping track of my doing this and sort of hollered out, "So what's your alignment?"

And one of the tech leads, without looking up or breaking stride, said, "Oh, she doesn't have to take that test. She is obviously Neutral Good." And he was right; I was, in fact, Neutral Good.

For each word, there are three choices for a total of nine possible alignments. The choices for the first word are Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic. "Lawful" indicates a strict adherance to rules for rules' sake; from my perspective, it's rigid and often self-righteous, but of course, that's largely because this isn't my point of view. "Chaotic" means "charge in and think later"; again from my perspective, it's that teenage tendancy that what we have is so bad that anarchy must be better (anarchy often seems like a good idea, particularly to the young, until it's your best friend who's murdered, your iPod that's commandeered, and your sister who's raped). Neutral is somewhere in between, obviously: you don't follow rules for the sake of following rules, but you don't intentionally violate them just for the sake of violating them. It's essentially a response to authority or order. (I do not seek authority, but when it's given to me, I don't usually reject it unless I don't think I can wear it lightly, like a cloak that's neither crushing me nor blowing away.)

The choices for the other word are "good," "neutral" (again), and "evil." I think this one is fairly self-explanatory. I attempt to use my powers for good.

World of Warcraft doesn't actually have an alignment setting (well, I suppose most "good" people will be Alignment, and most "evil" will be Horde). Interestingly, from my very limited perspective (and I haven't played any Horde yet, although I suspect I'll play a set when I get my Alliance set fully leveled), it looks to me like the Alliance players are often Chaotic, and the Horde are often Lawful, which seems counterintuitive to me. I think there's sometimes a certain smugness in "I fight for the side of goodness and light," and so it's been my observation that they often don't take time to strategize or think things through; they just sort of charge in and assume All Will Work Out For the Best; we are good and pure and wholesome, and Destiny will not permit us, her favorite children, to lose. In my limited exposure, it looks Horde players will actually stop and plan and think, so they tend to have a higher success rate.

8. The BigFishGame for today didn't look like anything, so I didn't download it. Instead, I used my April BigFish credit to buy the stupid Apprentice game; I really enjoyed it, and after two days, I was still thinking about how much I enjoyed it, so it made sense to buy it. I've finished the nine challenges and gotten to the final round, but so far, I've been defeated twice. I'll get it eventually with time and practice. The last round would actually be a very good game for the Diner Dash people to investigate to get ideas for #4. I play that pretty well if I do say so myself (the last I looked, my story mode score is still in the top 200 at the Playfirst site), and the Apprentice's last round is a brutal, brutal challenge. It's really fun; when you can coordinate time-management games like that, I find the experience almost Zen-like, and I'm on an adrenaline high for a little while afterwards.

9. Put a water on the counter.


When I got home from work today, I saw that there was a thing on the counter I wasn't familiar with. As I investigated, I saw that it was eight pint cartons, like milk cartons, all shrink-wrapped together; I guessed, correctly, that this was probably a Costco item. I couldn't figure it out, though; we don't drink anywhere near that much milk, and Costco milk is too big to go into pint bottles. I asked my Co-Vivant, "What are these little cartons?"

And she said, perfectly sensibly, "Hash browns."

I live in world where you can buy eight pints of hash browns in cartons. I'm not convinced that's right.