A Snapshot

Youtube is banned here now. Social media is bad media. It makes the country look bad. Indeed. I subbed a class today that partially depended on youtube working, so I did a last minute overhaul of the foreign lesson plan. It went fine until halfway through when the students started throwing tiny wads of paper at eachother and giggling. I ignored it. They just want to be treated like adults, students frequently tell me. Not like children. Right. These students will hopefully be voting in the local elections on Sunday. Every day lately, vans blaring uplifting music shadow me around the city, begging anyone within earshot to vote for the candidate plastered on the side of the van. Sometimes two competing vans will pass each other right in front of me and for 5 glorious seconds no other sound in the world can be heard. The prime minister has been campaigning, too. Apparently there's a video of him yelling about how awful social media is at a rally, but he had lost his voice so he sounds like a high pitched squeaky teenager. I'd like to watch that video, but I can't. Because social media makes the country look bad.      

Turning over a new Eleaf

For one day last week, a student that I hadn't seen in over a month returned to class. She was here for the first two weeks, then just disappeared. For some reason, the main thing I remember about her is the way she held her coffee cup. Very few people here carry travel mugs around, so it stuck out to me. Something different, unique, akin to my own coffee habits. During class, she'd hold it with her left hand curled absentmindedly around it, as if she was so absorbed in whatever she was reading or writing that she forgot the mug was there, yet couldn't let it go. Like it was a part of her. Slowly savoring and draining its contents throughout class. For two weeks, she and her mug were a part of class that I liked. Then she and beloved mug disappeared. When she returned last week, I almost didn't recognize her. Her head was covered with a scarf. Her clothing was traditional and conservative. Her demeanor was obedient and small. She said hello to me and sat down at her old desk and took out her pen and paper. Her coffee mug was gone. I stammered out a hello and before the other students arrived, I carefully told her that she had failed because she had missed so much class. I know, she said. I just want to learn. To improve myself. Her hand twitched emptily on the desk and her smile stretched a little too far. This is not me, I could hear her thinking. This is what I've been told to be. This is what my father asked me to be, what my mother wants me to be, what the government thinks I should be. So just let me be.

I let her be. As the other students arrived, they gave her pitying glances and spoke to her in hushed tones. I tried to give her all of the handouts she had missed and tried, in 10 minutes, to teach her how to write a 5 paragraph essay, and explain how to do the book report so she could catch up. She tried, at first, but by the end of class was doodling pictures on the handouts. Her left hand still empty, still twitching. After class, she gathered up her things, smiled and said see you tomorrow, and never returned.

If only we could all just drink our coffee and have our dreams and never feel wrong about any of it.
     

the brain

is such a bizarre and fragile little thing.

Question

Who existed first: the student or the teacher?

Looking Up

Normally, the cervical curvature of the neck forms over time as a baby gains strength and builds muscle to lift its head. Babies start life without a convex curve in their neck. If, however, a particular baby's neck, while developing in the womb, is formed with two of the vertebrae, the C4 and C5, pushed slightly further inward than normal, making the neck already very slightly convex, the baby would never know. Neither would its parents. The baby would grow and be healthy and normal. Its neck muscles would develop around the tiny deformity, the spine would adjust and adapt over time to minimize any negative impacts the overly convex neck might have. The only signs of abnormality would come in the form of mild neck and head aches. The miracle of the human body overcoming the limitless problems that the formation of life entails. The effects, however, would be seen elsewhere. As the baby grows into a child and an adolescent, she would find it more comfortable than her peers would to sit with her head tilted back, gazing up at the sky. She could spend hours staring up, comfortably tracking stars across the night sky, calmly monitoring the clouds' conglomeration into a storm. She would like this about herself. She'd hear stories about how people don't look up enough, about how people who look up more are dreamers, creative thinkers. These stories would make her happy to be herself, a person who otherwise did not stand out, was not creative. She would never know that her own favorite character trait was caused by a deformity rooted long before she took her first breath. As people are prone to do, she would seek out the tiny glimmers of individuality that would make her feel unique, she would find them, and she would think no further about why she loved to look up at the sky.