Random Bullets of School in Which I Prove Just How Geeky I Am

• Tomorrow's the day...school starts for the Kid, and for lots of others in the blogosphere. I think the Kid is mostly ready to go back; we had two great vacation trips over the summer, but he really hasn't seen his friends much, and he needs to be around people--people besides me who will listen to him talk and respond with more than nods and uh-huhs. It's not that I'm not interested in what he has to say, it's just that I'm an introvert and his extroversion wears me down at the end of the day.

• But school brings getting up early and even worse, homework. I hate homework now far more than when I was a kid. I mean, I just did it. Of course I procrastinated, but fear of humiliation meant that I could not would not did not turn up with assignments not done. The Kid apparently has no such fear of humiliation. Ho hum....homework missing? Oh well. Oy, it's frustrating. He's a smart kid, that's not the issue, he just hates to do written work. He promises to do better this year. We'll see.

• I loved school when I was a kid. And when I was an adult. Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that I have spent 28 years as a student. Can that be right? K + 12 + 1 year of college + 4 more years of college later + 7 years in grad school + 3 in seminary. I'm hard pressed to say which was my favorite part. It's easier to say what I didn't like:
• 3rd grade when we moved for the first time, and I got my first bad grade--a C in handwriting. My new school was really different from where I'd started school, and I missed my friends and my grandparents. My teacher in the new school had this policy she called "reseating"; she assigned our seats by grades each marking period. Yes, that's right. The desks were in long rows and the rows were numbered. The first seat in Row 1 went to the kid with the very best grades, and it went on from there. I was always in Row 1, but never in the first seat, but that was okay. Two other things I remember about that: the boy who had the first seat in Row 1 started missing a lot of school. We knew he was really sick, but we didn't know what was wrong. Within a few months he had died from leukemia. And the girl who had the last seat in Row 4? She had Down Syndrome (although we didn't call it that then). She was a sweet girl, and I don't think anyone was unkind to her, but there were no special services for her, no special classes or teacher's aide, or anything. She was just there. And always had the last seat...
• My senior year of high school; it was such a waste. I needed two credits to graduate--senior English and Civics. I had a totally crappy teacher for Civics and it was a totally boring class. I started the year with two really excellent teachers, one in English and one in Advanced Composition; by Thanksgiving one was promoted to an admin job and the other was so sick she had to take the rest of the year off. The only bright spot was my advanced bio class, which was fun most of the time. Senior year was depressing, too, because everyone was applying for colleges--except for me. My mother's mental health issues were in full bloom at the time, and my parents refused to fill out any financial aid paper work for me and told me that I'd have to live at home and go to the local state college. I should've applied to other schools anyway, but I didn't have enough self-confidence or gumption to do it. I had good grades and good test scores, but my mother and my sister just kept coming up with reasons why I would never be accepted at this place or that place, and I bought it. Four college degrees later I can look back at this with some detachment, but I was angry about this for years.
• The last three years of grad school. I just wanted to be done, but my research was lagging and I was teaching a full load between TAing and adjuncting at the community college (hey, I needed the money!). But it all worked out and I was Phinally Done after seven long years. Edited to add: When I was applying for grad school my undergrad advisor kept telling me that grad school would be the best time in my life becasue I would be able to study what I was most interested in and do the research I wanted to do. In fact, grad school was not like that for me at all; perhaps that was a clue that I wasn't in the right field. Or perhaps I didn't enjoy it because there was so much other stress in my life. Who knows?
  

• I loved most of the rest of it. Yes, I griped and complained like everyone else, but I really did love it, especially my undergrad years and seminary. I don't miss teaching now, but I do miss being in an academic environment.

• And from jo(e)'s school meme:
• Smells that remind me of elementary school: Magic Markers, chalk, mimeograph sheets, fall leaves
  
• Things that remind me of elementary school: Kiddie lit, bulletin boards, 3-ring binders, jumping rope, fat pencils
  
• How much milk cost when I began school: Three pennies. And ice cream was a dime (same as for jo(e).
• Scariest thing about school: Gym class--I was always so bad at sports, it was humiliating, plus the nasty gym suits we had to wear (shudder).
• School clothes, favorite or otherwise: In fourth grade, I had three dresses and I rotated them. I was always glad for a snow day so I could wear pants to school. In seventh grade I had a dress that my mother made me and the first few times I wore it I got 100 on a test that day--can we say superstitious behavior? I made sure to wear it every test day for the rest of the year.
• Strangest thing: jo(e) wrote: Whenever a kid vomited on the floor (and this seemed to happen fairly often), the janitor would come in with this bag of weird orange stuff, almost like kitty litter, that he would sprinkle all over the mess. This happened throughout my entire school career. It was some kind of weird vomit tradition that all janitors had sworn to uphold. I always use to think, "Why doesn't he just get the mop and clean it up?" I have this exact same memory, and I can still smell it--eewwww
• A significant elementary school memory: It was late fall in the fifth grade. All the 5th grade classes were in the large room where we had assemblies to begin practicing Christmas Carols (we went to a nursing home to go caroling, and yes this was public school back in the day.) One of the sixth grade teachers came to the door and beckoned to my teacher who went out into the hall. When she came back into the room, she was visibly shaken and she told us that President Kennedy had been shot.
• Favorite teacher(s): Mrs. Teal in 1st grade because she was sweet. Mrs Step in fifth grade because she let us read Tom Sawyer instead of a boring reading book. Mrs. Turner in sixth grade because she was awesome in every way. Mrs. Boeh my 7th grade English teacher and 8th grade Latin teacher because she taught us to diagram sentences and I still understand grammar b/c of it, and because she could write on the board while facing the class.
• Best seasonal memory: I always loved walking to school through fall leaves. Fall and school just seem to go together.
• What I wanted to be when I grew up: Depending on the year, a senator, an architect, a doctor, a marine biologist, a librarian, a geneticist.