Canary in a coal mine

Many of you don't know this but I have a reputation as a canary in a coal mine.

For what you might ask? For food poisoning.

And I lived up to my reputation this weekend after nearly two years free of bad food (okay, I've had crappy food but nothing that made me literally vomit at least).

Somehow I have developed a very fragile little ecosystem in my digestive tract and all of my happy little symbionts are VERY susceptible to food poisoning, making me equally susceptible to all of the loveliness that this involves.

Want to try that hip new Indian place? Great! Let's bring Erin! If she gets sick, we just won't go back...

In fact, several years ago I spent a fabulous New Year's Eve in the bathroom of the friend of a friend because my dear friend took me to that hip new Indian place for dinner and I got hit bad. I'm still convinced that her friends from graduate school think that I'm just a sloppy drunk.

And it's a shame too as it can really spoil and otherwise lovely place to eat. I normally have a bad meal once or twice a year although there was a year or so in graduate school where I was getting nailed by something every month or two. Only once has someone else been afflicted by the same meal.

This weekend was probably my own fault. Sunday I was running late on my way to the office and I wanted to grab something I could eat at my desk, so I stopped at a local Burger King. I even ordered a burger when it's normally the chicken that will get me at a fast food chain (there's a chance that the afore mentioned New Year's Eve was actually ruined by a sketchy chicken mcnugget). I finished my work and got home.

So I'm sound asleep when around 3am I wake up with the awful feeling that my run of good luck had just run out. Of course I had to lecture at 9am and I am so seriously behind my syllabus that there was no way I was cancelling class. Fortunately I managed to not run to the bathroom for about an hour before class so I went in and just hoped for the best.

There is probably nothing like your professor warning you that she could vomit at any moment (oh, but don't worry, it's just food poisoning) to wake you up at 9am on a Monday. Well, at least that's what the expressions on my students faces were saying even if they didn't say so.

Amazingly enough I made it through an hour lecture with only brief pauses to make sure I didn't need the trash can I had placed strategically next to the lectern. Of course I immediately went back to my office, told the wonderful woman in the office next door what the situation was and gave her permission to call me at home if students came looking for me, and drove home to sleep through the rest of it. By the evening I was able to hold down simple food and life was looking better.

Oddly enough I spent the next day with the stomach pain (but not the nausea it is important to note!) and hardly ate anything. However, Ruth suggested we meet up with someone from out of town for dinner. I ordered possibly the most idiotic thing I could have without getting a burger, a BLT with avocado and a giant order of fries for the three of us to share. I figured either I was okay or, failing that, sitting on the outside of the booth with a direct line of sight to the bathroom. Well it turns out that the pain was because I was so hungry that it was no longer recognizable as hunger and by the end of the 1.5 lbs of french fries, I was feeling surprisingly better.

Good times, good times...

The only bonus is that the head of my department overheard me laughing about it with someone else in the department and now thinks I am a stud for teaching under the circumstances. Of course I was just teaching out of fear that I wouldn't get through the material in time for the next exam but hey, I'll take what I can get.

Back to the grind

So I had a lovely spring break and I even have photos but I'll have to post those later.

Today I want to describe one of my classes for you. Several folks have asked me in the past to write about my experiences teaching. I must admit that other than the ever present slacker and brown-nosing students that are in every class, I haven't felt that I've had much to write about.

That was before this semester. This semester I have a lab class that is worth writing about (and no, not a single one of my students or TAs has the address to this blog, nor is it listed anywhere except by friends' blogs) .

Normally you get a good mix of all sorts in any group of students you teach. Sometimes you get groups that are so enthusiastic that it makes teaching a real joy and sometimes you get that apathetic group that is so soul sucking that you consider leaving academia all together. This lab class fits neither description.

But this one group I teach this semester is either so funny I can't help but laugh or so sad it makes me want to rip out my hair. I still haven't made up my mind which it is. This is the kind of class about which people write sit-coms. My students fit every possible stereotype and have formed little cliques that seems to accentuate these stereotypes. Now realize that I teach at a fairly selective school and that these students were definitely the cream of the crop in their high schools and generally do have a clue (of sorts) so all of these statements are relative.

1. I have the cute blond girls who must have been wearing some sort of short cheerleading type skirt not too many years ago. They spend a great deal of their time talking about anything but class. They are the last ones to arrive any place we need to go during class time (but always with an excuse). And they generally seem to look down on everyone else in the class (I'm fairly certain I am included in that "everyone else"). However you often hear them wondering out loud and VERY loudly if other students in the class are talking about them. So here you have the typical, cool but with a low self-esteem group that people probably love to hate (I would not be included in these "people" -I am a professional folks! And besides, they were probably the nerdy cheerleaders in high school so you can't really hate them).

2. Then you have the awkward, geeky kids that will never be picked first for anything and will never win a beauty contest plus the lone black student of the class (who is neither as brilliant nor as geeky as her clique-mates, in fact she's very cute but in a school as white as Wonder Bread, the black kids fit in where they can). These kids are very smart (even for this place) and will probably go far if they can ever develop their communication skills.

3. Next there are the stylish, alterni-girls who have wardrobes that most of us would kill for but with an edge. These are the ones who tend to shoot nasty looks over at the blond cheerleaders most days. By an odd coincidence, this is also the group that has the one student (there is one every year) who wants to have her hand held through every step of every exercise. This seems like a bit of a contradiction to me but perhaps it is just one of the joys of the selective liberal arts college.

4. Of course it wouldn't be a sit-com without the group that somehow manages to contain both the class clowns and the most uptight girl of the entire class. Much hilarity ensues as I'm sure you can imagine.

5. And then there is the seemingly catch all group that isn't really catch-all as it will reliably form with similar members every year. This is the group of the rather effeminate gay boys and the uber-self confident girls who don't wear quite enough clothing to avoid being labeled sluts regardless of their behavior.

6. Lastly you have the jocks who are never seen in anything but running clothes and are generally fairly outgoing and friendly to all of the other students but still manage to form their own little clique.

Now take all of these groups and make them form working groups limited to four people that then have to count bugs, grow plants, row out in small boats to take pond water samples and force their way through shrubbery to collect data. Obviously group 4 describes one of these working groups as the class clowns and uptight girls would probably avoid interacting under any other circumstance.

This last week we had our aquatic biology lab. This takes place out at the campus field station (just north of campus) and involves students using microscopes to identify a large number of pond organisms including leaches as well as the afore mentioned rowing of small boats. Do I need to even describe my day with this class? I'll just leave it to your imagination and then, just shy of students falling out of the boats, let your imagination go wild. You'll be fairly close to the truth.

Party!

Oh yeah. It's that time of year. As of 7pm today I am officially on Spring Break!


Woooo-hooooo!

Of course I am in complete denial about the large stack of homework and rough draft reports I have to take with me to Utah to grade. And I'm in even further denial of the three hour lectures on completely new material I have to prepare for the week following and the quiz, and, and...

And one of my students gave me the nicest send-off today by trying to get me to give him yet another extension on taking a make-up quiz that was really his fault (not illness or anything like that, he just missed the three lectures where the fact that there was going to be a quiz was discussed because he didn't feel he needed to be there). His current reason for the extension? He didn't study. That is one lucky kid that he has a good memory and he still pulled off an 'A.'

I just adore such opportunities to express what a terribly grumpy and nasty witch I can be sometimes.

Oh yeah. This Spring Break is gonna rock!

(I'll be in Utah for most of the week and will probably even spend some time not grading. If this happens, I promise photos.)