Observations to pass the time

* I find it amusing [and depressing] that many people do not know how to pronounce the name of our street: Sioux. The pronunciations that people create are interesting, to say the least. The most popular mispronunciation is "SI- UX." Today, the woman with whom I spoke on the phone commented, "American English is hard." I researched and found that the name is modified and has some Canadian French roots but....Um.... it's a Native American tribe.... shouldnt she recognize the name from somewhere??? ...

* It is funny that there is a guy at the gym with arms as "toned" as mine [i.e. not at all] who persists in wearing a sleeveless tee. That's actually a consistent thing with most men at the gym...the sleeveless tee...either purchased "pre-de-sleeved" or homemade via cutting the sleeves off. I don't get it. I revel in the fact that John is pretty muscular but refuses to wear those types of shirts.

*Even funnier than the abundance of sleeveless tees is WHITE Under Armour gear. WHITE. Enough said. Eek.

* A student asked me if I had ever heard of Lady Gaga. Even if you don't actively listen to new "pop" stars, if you glance at magazines or flip on the TV once in a while, then you will be up to date on your pop culture stuff. Me-- I read Perez everyday and own the album, THE FAME. My response to this student was a look, straight in the eye, and a dry "No, I live on Mars."

* The previous owners of this house were huge proponents of Jewish charities. At least 4 times a week, we get solicitations connected to Jewish charities. We also get snazzy catalogs such as THE RESOURCE FOR ALL THINGS JEWISH. No kidding...the title is something along those lines. They have a really cool plaque in which you can put some of the shattered glass from your traditional Jewish wedding.... and cool, artsy menorahs.

Sunday nights....

I detest Sunday nights.

Just the dread of starting the "work week"--- I hate the feeling hovering over me. I always say that I will get "everything" I need to get done for the weekend completed on Friday, thus leaving me a worry-free weekend. Completing all my work on Friday generally does not happen. I then have all these aspirations of getting the work done over the course of the weekend, in dribs and drabs... leaving work on Friday, my pseudo-briefcase is brimming with paperwork....so much paperwork that when I make a swift turn with the car, papers go flying out of the briefcase and land on the passenger seat on the floor.

Quick flash forward to our current Sunday night.

Those papers are still on my passenger seat floor.

Agh.

I'd grade them if they weren't shit. My students seem so incredibly unmotivated. I try to give them "meaningful" assignments. Recently, a student put me "on the spot" and asked about the purpose behind the class's weekly vocab assignment. I didn't get offended or angry; I simply told him the purposes of the assignment. He still hasn't handed in any of the weekly vocab assignments.

I feel like no matter what I do, some of these students will still be ridiculously unmotivated. I can't help but feel that some of us teachers have made students this way. We seem to "do everything" for them. I laugh when my colleagues give students a super-precise study guide that maps out the exact format and questions that will be on a future test or quiz. We're not really making them independent are we now?

Back to Sunday nights. They amaze me so much because they are full of procrastination. Depending on the "most important task" of the moment, it's interesting what things I will choose to do with my time other than the actual task. Case in point: i'd rather rake or run miles upon miles instead of doing "work work." And I'm not a fan of raking or running at all. It's just interesting how your mindset about something changes when that "thing" is the alternative to a "thing" you want to do even less.