help me help you

It’s been a Jerry Maguire kind of week.  One student came to the office today.  ‘Help me teacher’.  Kid, I want you to help me help you.  There were three kinds of students who came through the doors of academic uncertainty this year;  the best students don’t worry about failing, but they want a hundred percent in everything and I admire that but it’s unrealistic.  Chief, the grammar is good, the spelling works, but we need to work on your linear occidental logic.  Then there are the borderliners who have a right to worry but will probably pass.  They come in and want me to find a way to assure them they’ll pass.  Too tired to study anymore, they've hit their ceiling so watch a movie, write down words you understand.  Forget what they’re blah blahing about, concentrate on what you understand.  Then there are the kids at the bottom who ought to be there.  Sickness, motherhood and an English level that is so beyond where they are, they plead and bribe and I tell them it is criminal if I help you pass when you shouldn’t even be here.  I can’t do it , I won’t do it.  The next day I see them and they’re fine.  What a show, yet to fail is never pleasant even if they know they don’t know they know they shouldn’t pass but that is the tragic circus I worked in for two years.  You should pass if you make an effort, it doesn’t matter if the engineering college courses eat, chew and spit you out, right? 

I watched three movies today and I can’t remember when or if I've ever done that except for six seasons of the Sopranos in four weeks.  A colleague gave me Paddington two months ago to show the students if there ever was a time and there wasn’t, then it was the cinematographically stunning Gravity which I saw on a plane but at the desk this time and American Graffiti which I had never seen from beginning to end.  George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola, some magic cinema there, like two kids with a gift and having free reign to show the world what greater films were to come.

And we’re locked in for departure.  I can’t remember the last time I was in Amsterdam in the summer.  Ah the weather should be nice.  I look forward to it.  And what about a trip down to Lueven, it’s tempting me but we’ll see.  All I need is a preface, really, a justification for putting Paul’s books after Revelation.  It doesn’t have to be a scholarly defense, does it, no it just has to be convincing and it would be nice if I had some fourth dimensional transmission to give it what it needs. 

It is a lot easier to die when you’ve lived alone for a long time.  People you know will only have old memories of you.  Death, the last great adventure.  Will something come between me and my next destination, damn, it better be good and it better not be health related.  Ha, is that a contradiction, no, I’m ok getting blown up in Kandahar but I’ll be pretty upset if I break a leg on the way there. 

A colleague took the car out for a spin today and will tell me tomorrow if he wants it for the price I asked.  There is another colleague who expressed interest, an Emirati who offered money on the spot for the car and a student who wants a car right now.  If all these deals fall through I will drive it to the airport on the night of July 9 and leave it in a lot. 

                               She loved the farmer's markets.