Patience

This week's teaching word has been "patience." I subbed a rando English class on Tuesday. The lesson plan called for a symposium on singular vs. plural verbs joy of joys. Besides clicking the Powerpoint I asked the students to write example sentences. I asked everyone to write a singular sentence that started with "She (verb)" in present tense. I gave several examples. I asked a girl in the back row what she wrote. She didn't. I said I'd come back. I did a couple minutes later. She said "I just suck at this, so I don't know." I said, "No, you don't. Any sentence at all. Try it." It was uncomfortable. It was quiet for a full minute before she creaked "She...jumps." Hallelujah. In that quiet moment I'm always like "Oh no, why did I do this?" But the answer is because they can all do it, and if they can't, with twenty seconds of coaching they can.

Yesterday in the Writing Center I had a guy who had to write a summary of an article about liver transplants. I asked "Okay, so what do you need help with?" He said, "I can't write." So I asked what the first sentence should be, and he said he didn't know, and then I asked again and he said something that was a pretty good start, so I was like "Awesome. Write that down." He had slow motor skills, penmanship like a 4th grader, but his ideas were solid. We went on that way for the full hour. He would write a sentence for two minutes. He would look up. He would say the next sentence outloud and then I'd nod, he'd spend another two minutes writing. I mostly sat and looked at my hands. I itched to pull out my phone while I waited and could literally hear the clock ticking behind me, but all he needed was someone to sit there with their full attention on him. Fine.

Today a young woman wild catted in. What does the author mean by X, I asked, I DON'T KNOW she cried HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW. She read the paragraph again and I asked her to explain it to me. She did. She knew. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO HAVE EXAMPLES ABOUT AMERICA WHEN IM FROM CAMEROON she yowled. Oh, well talk about that experience vs. the American experience I said, as if I'd just thought of it, she beamed a million filaments I CAN TALK ABOUT CAMEROON? Yes, you definitely can and should.

Last night I was almost off the clock when I spotted a familiar face. A student who was in my very first class I taught in Chicago. She just graduated with her Associates. She's gonna be a nurse. We hugged. I felt so ancient. I wait on students all day. My life blood draining out my seat. Patience feels like doing nothing, but, you know, it moves in its invisible way.

Fall Semester 2014 in 26 Snapshots

Graduated in May, but the semester life is far from over. This was probably the hardest semester of my life. Long train trips to the south side to bring a playwriting program to an underserved school, the neverending stream of late work from community college students, the lower paychecks, the higher rent, the days of inherent 4 mile walks, the beginning of the blistering cold nights. But I MADE IT. And, even, I am emerging from the swamp I felt I was drowning in back in August somewhat...victorious. Good student evals, a promotion, two new works on stage, opportunities to perform. There's gold in these hills, folks, and I am leaving the apartment everyday with my pickax and my bus pass, grammar books, and my hot pink mace.

HS boy with a high top explains how it hurts to hear men are jerks.

Screaming about soup with a vocal fry in the cabaret space.

Eating two baked potatoes across from my mom, janky steak house.

A billion cheese cubes in the VFW hall.

Droopy eyes at Bisque, Spiff dances wildly, Ogie the monster.

Bisque in the snow holding cocoa under the A. McMahon moniker.

"It could be so much better." I feel a mirror behind me.

Fall trot with Pookie to the shopletts on Broadway.

Sittin' at the southern kitchen table talkin' educational loans.

My dad takes photos of me getting the high score on Pac-Man.

The barefoot audition.

The Daily Burn, parfait, Friday Night Lights tradition.

Sneezing my face off in class. Gel making me use it.

Sitch and I are the annoying people on that Wednesday night bus.

Oopa! All the saganaki with aunt 'n' uncle.

Crying at what was to come in the New Mexico desert.

Kicking my feet in bed after opening the congrats email.

Using poofs as chairs for living room improv sets with Meat Gang.

Eatin' a ghost cookie on the hottest October (makeshift birthday) day.

The wannabe gym coach putting up his hood to read a poem in 100.

The quiet gamer pretending to flip a table in the 101 debates.

Ripping on the sweetie pies of Tuesday/Thursday.

The pros and cons of living in Saudi Arabia with my tutee at the library.

Wooden post painting where we are members.

The longest and most literal Labor Day ever.

The lightening machine at Science and Industry.

This list was so much harder to make than usual. I barely scratched the surface of things that are monumental because things are packed! Packed, I say.

Cheeze-It

Yesterday I spent all day at a Prison Education conference. It was extremely inspiring and depressing at the same time. Our country has a major problem with prison reform. I have been interning with a prison this semester reading inmates' creative writing and offering them feedback. I get to visit the participants in a couple weeks, and I couldn't be more enthused. These men are thoughtful, genuine poets. Working one-on-one with them will be a pleasure. Most of them take their work at least fifty times more seriously than the undergraduates I teach.

My beautiful school post-conference.

In addition to tutoring inmates, I have been reading several books on the prison experience from various viewpoints (short term, lifer perspective, cop stories etc.). Something I've noticed is that each inmate story I've read ends up miraculously feeling hopeful, grateful for what they still do have behind bars. This floors me. And even I, who has a good life, sometimes get grossed out by their Pollyanna attitudes. They have every right to believe in nothing and soak in seas of self-pity when most of them find a higher purpose and a sense of peace. It's...cheesy to say the least. But I've recently realized two things.

1. I'm never going to read a book by someone who runs off of bitterness. That person will never do anything. So that perspective, which is probably the majority in prisons, doesn't get scribed.

2. While it seems serving life is the lowest of lows, it is all relative. Once you're incarcerated, I'm sure you see how it actually could be worse. At least you're not insane. (Most prisons are full of mentally unstable people because mental health facilities are too full for them.) Although the only luxuries you have are over-priced Cheetos, at least you can work your 50 cents an hour job to earn them unlike the guy chained in solitary for forty years. Compared to that, even some prison terms suddenly seem livable. Cheesy, but true.

So, don't be too cool for the cheesy. You get places by being optimistic--no matter how stupid it might seem to someone on the outside.