You may ask me three questions, no matter how personal or strange, and I will answer them honestly. However, if you ask, you must repost this in your journal so others may ask you…
You may ask me three questions, no matter how personal or strange, and I will answer them honestly. However, if you ask, you must repost this in your journal so others may ask you…
1) What area of the world holds your heart?
2) If I were your student…what would I need to do for an ‘A’?
3) What do you think about trained monkey’s picking tea leaves in China?
1) What area of the world holds your heart?
I really don’t know. I have found beauty and see positives and negatives to everywhere I have been. Places don’t really have much of a draw for me, people do. It is the main reason I am still in the bay area. I need my people.
2) If I were your student…what would I need to do for an ‘A’?
Well, it is a mathematical formula really… there isn’t just one thing. 30% of the grade comes from essays, 30% from tests, 30% from participation, and 10% from homework.
I have explained to my students that homework is really about them having practice at something and I tend to give full credit if it is done. Participation is *easy*. All you have to do is talk, do work in class, and generally act like you have a clue. Essays and tests are harder, though my tests are not too complicated. I do not create a test until after the review session so that I can be certain that I am testing on exactly what we covered and agreed in class that we covered. Often, questions come verbatim from the review. If you pay attention to the review… you are golden. Essays are the scariest I think for my students, but I give them the option of turning it in early so that I can give them recommendations for revisions to improve their grade. Really, I am doing everything I can to make the learning process accessible and to give them the opportunities to have a high grade if that is their focus.
3) What do you think about trained monkey’s picking tea leaves in China?
That it is no different from riding horses and using oxen to plow fields. Humans have been utilizing animal labor for centuries and I don’t have a problem with that. If they now have laid off all the humans who were doing the labor and those people are starving due to lack of other job options… that is where it gets harder. Social justice is a sticky and complicated beast. I am a capitalist. I believe that capitalism is the best system for everyone involved, however there are drawbacks to it. There are to any system really. I would have to say that in and of itself, I have no problem with monkey’s picking tea. I don’t know enough about the far reaching effects to judge how I feel about the other implications.
What is your favorite color?
What is your strongest good memory?
What fictional character do you most empathise with?
What is your favorite color?
Pink!
What is your strongest good memory?
Having Tom stroke my hair is the most positive memory I have. I don’t have a specific time in mind, but that action was by far the most reassuring thing I have found in my life to date. I think that the desire to stroke my hair must be a requirement in the next person I date.
What fictional character do you most empathise with?
There is a book, Walk in my Soul by Lucia St Clair Robson. I am on my second physical copy because I completely wore out the first one. It is the story of Tiana Rogers who was a Cherokee Beloved Woman (like a medicine woman) through the period up to The Trail of Tears and the forced immigration of the Cherokee to Arkansas. The novel is a fictionalized accounting of an historical person. She was involved with Sam Houston in various ways all through childhood and adulthood. This book is by far one of the most heart-wrenching books I have ever read. It is tragedy at its finest. There is hope and love and destiny all mixed up with the powers of evil outside forces. It is an amazing look at character development. I cannot recommend it highly enough.