Haute for Teacher

Sometimes, I wish I were a guy. It’s not because as a woman I still only make 87% of what a man makes. And it has nothing to do with the peeing while standing up thing. (I’m lazy; I’ll sit whenever I can.) It’s because if I were a guy I’d have my whole English professor look down. I’d totally go for the tweed jacket, scruffy beard, unkempt hair look. Kind of like the guy on the left I found on thesartorialist.com.

I feel like he and I could discuss psychoanalytical interpretations of Hamlet all day long in his Norton Anthology-strewn office.

There’s no such romanticized look for female teachers, is there? Sure, there’s the pencil skirt and the bun, but it comes off as more uptight than intellectual.

So in a quest for my English teacher look, I extensively studied my options, and here’s what I found.

Which is your fave?

Ask and You Shall Recieve ... Eventually

I am more than just an English instructor. I’m a bitch, I’m a lover, I’m a child, I'm a mother, I'm a sinner, I'm a saint, and I am also the IDEA Center coordinator on my campus. I know it sounds like a creative gig, like I am paid to sit in lotus position and beget one brilliant idea after the other, but IDEA is an acronym for Individual Development Educational Assistance. Basically, I run the center which offers the students more personalized help. I mostly help students with writing skills, study skills, boyfriend issues, and time management.

But, lately, the fact that I am the campus time management go-to person seems to make as much sense as hiring Ashton Kutcher to be a marriage consultant or Mel Gibson to run anger management courses.

Since school started this quarter, for some reason, I have been terribly unorganized. That, my friends, is why your much-appreciated requests for particular grammar lessons have up until now gone unaddressed. But I would like you to know that they haven’t been forgotten. I’ve been storing them in my cheeks like a chipmunk.

So starting with my next blog post, I am going to cover the following:

Hyphens for Mykuljay at Perception Is Reality Corner

When to capitalize north, south, east and west and when to capitalize planets for Stephen T. McCarthy at Stephen T. McCarthy's STUFFS

Supersede/Supercede for my friend Jennifer

Presume/Assume for my friends Emily and Travis

While you've got me focused, any other requests?

Where Have All the Cusacks Gone?

Bill Maher said, “Any teacher that says, 'I learn as much from my students as they learn from me' is a shitty teacher and must be fired.”

If he’s right, then I am an extra shitty teacher: I don’t learn as much from my students as they learn from me; I learn more.

Judging from the research essays I’m in the midst of grading, my students haven’t learned anything from me at all. They’re not citing their sources correctly, they're sticking apostrophes in non-possessive plurals, they’re comma splicing like WE DIDN’T GO OVER IT A MILLION TIMES.

I did, however, learn something fascinating from them yesterday. One of my male students bragged to the class that he scored a date with a girl because she was impressed that he asked her out in person rather than by text.

I learned that a young man asking a young woman out in person these days is as rare as a student starting an essay earlier than five minutes before it’s due. Apparently, the preferred methods are text messages and Facebook.

Not only are texting and Facebook ruining this generation’s grammar; they are depriving them of life-changing, potentially wonderful, definitely awkward interactions. And you know what that means: the screenwriters from this generation are going to write terrible romantic movies.

Imagine: In their version of The Notebook, Noah and Allie would Facebook each other. Jerry Maguire would simply text Dorothy, “You complete me.” And in Say Anything, Lloyd Dobler would tweet Diane Court a link to “In Your Eyes,” (which would be a Justin Bieber remake).

They Say Tomato; We Say Tomato

On my drive to work this morning, I found myself thinking about the movie Love Actually. I can’t quite pinpoint how my stream of consciousness led me to a movie I haven’t seen in eight years. Perhaps it was Colin Firth withdrawals or the impending holiday season, but for whatever reason, I spent my morning commute thinking about all of the movie’s storylines. I eventually made my way to the Billy Bob Thornton as the misogynistic U.S. president part, and from there, I do remember my stream of consciousness. Come along for the ride:

Love Actually really painted the U.S. president as a big bully. I can see why; America definitely has that reputation. It especially did during the Bush years. Isn’t it ironic that Britain considers America a bully when originally we considered Britain to be a bully? It’s pretty interesting to think about the differences that have emerged between U.S. culture and British culture since the U.S. won its independence. Like why do Brits prefer tea and we prefer coffee? Why are Brits celebrated for their dry wit while we are more known for slapstick comedy? Why are they more civilized than we are? You know what? Maybe these differences don’t really exist. I mean, I like tea. Fawlty Towers is full of slapstick. Civilized is the last word that comes to mind when I think of Russell Brand. When it comes down to it, we’re all just people. John Lennon was right. We should all just live as one. This asshole in front of me should learn how to drive.

But even if the cultural differences are just stereotypes, there are definitely some linguistic disparities that have developed between Britain and the U.S.

For example, we deal differently with collective nouns.

A collective noun is a word used to describe a group of objects. In fact, the word group is a collective noun because in order to have a group of something, it must be made up of more than one. Other collective nouns include committee, troop, herd, and society.

In the United States, we tend to treat the collective noun as a singular noun, so we use a singular verb.

Congress has decided to consider collective nouns singular.

In Britain, they tend to treat the collective noun as plural, so they use the plural verb.

Parliament have decided to consider collective nouns plural.

I have always been interested to find out how and why American English is different from its British origin—not interested enough to actually do the research, but interested enough to form my own unfounded theories.

My theory regarding the difference between the ways the U.S. and Britain deal with collective nouns is that the U.S. decided to consider a group as one singular entity to stress the fact that we are united, as suggested by the name of our country.

My theory about why Americans use the term french fries instead of chips is because we believe that if it’s French it can’t make us fat.

And my theory about why Americans use the word line instead of queue is because, let’s face it, we have enough issues with spelling.

Fancy a Quickie?

I am aware that there is a time and a place for a quickie, but overall don’t you think that the experience and the result are more satisfying when we take our time?

And I’m not just talking about you know; I’m talking about the way we go about things in general.

On the one hand, we do seem to value the idea of taking our time with sayings like “stop and smell the roses” and fables like “The Tortoise and the Hare.” But on the other hand, we are a culture of multi-tasking, microwave dinners and George Clooney’s relationships.

Many of my students think they are “bad” writers because it takes them a long time to write an essay. I tell them that good writing usually does take a long time. Snooki’s bestselling book wasn’t built in a day, I reassure them. In fact, one of my favorite sayings about writing, which I include on my syllabus, is this one from Enrique Jardiel Poncela: “When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.”

There’s the brainstorming of the essay, the organizing of ideas, the first draft, the proofreading, the looking up of grammar rules you’re unsure about (I know, and Snooki actually wrote her book), the final draft, the proofreading, the having someone else proofread it, the next revision, and then the having it notarized and emblazoned with the family crest.

So I feel like such a hypocrite when I give my class an in-class essay. I am, aren’t I? Should I nix the in-class exams? Or is there a place for timed writing?

If I Could Be Anyone...

Due to underfunded public schools and the fact that most teens curl up with an iPhone rather than a good book, many high school graduates don’t possess even the most basic writing skills. And as many of you know, a lot of these students end up in my college English class.

Because I sincerely care about my students’ education, I carefully construct lesson plans to keep them engaged. I write extensive comments on their essays. I use a purple pen instead of a red one because I heard that red ink intimidates students. I stay after class to help. And now I am grading the final essay—the essay I urged them to take seriously and proofread over and over because it represents the progress they made over the quarter –and guess what? THEY’RE STILL MAKING STUPID, CARELESS ERRORS!

Several students aren’t capitalizing the word I. They are sticking their semicolons in more random places than Tiger Woods stuck his, um, golf ball. One student even wrote that she doesn’t judge people based on their “raise.”

OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!

To balance out the terrible essay writing, Talli Roland's wonderful writing is being released today. Buy a copy of Willow on Amazon UK for £1.71, or on Amazon.com for $2.99.