MY LEGACY AS A TEACHING ASSISTANT

                While in graduate school, besides taking courses, writing a master’s paper, working part-time at Walgreens, I was also a teaching assistant for two years.  For the first semester I was a TA for Sociology of Sexuality and mostly sat in the large lecture hall, graded lots of papers, and gave a presentation towards the end of the course.  My full TA experience truly started my second year, when I started teaching four discussion sections for course “Social Problems” with 25 to 30 students in each.

                A fellow graduate student told me once that being a TA was her favorite part of graduate school.  My favorite part was the in-depth discussions we had in our seminar course about class, gender, and culture.  Being a TA has been one of the more challenging experiences for me in my life so far.  I had to get in front of a group of students, who did not really want to be there, and talk to them for fifty minutes straight.  I was not use to talking to large groups, but this task forced me to overcome that fear to some degree.  Always the first discussion section that was the most difficult, but I would usually then fall into some kind of rhythm.  

                Let me tell you about my legacy as a TA, which started when I prepared a jeopardy style game for my students to get them ready for the mid-term.  I split the class into teams and told them the winning team would get a prize.  To this remark a smart ass dude said “is it candy”?  And yes, it was candy.  Flash forward to the final exam a few months later, here we are once again playing this jeopardy game.  However, this time I say the winning team will get the option of either choosing candy or what’s in the mystery bag.  The mystery bag was a brown grocery bag with a question mark written outside of it.  I remember one kid declared right away “whoever wins you choose the mystery bag.”  Of all four sections they all of course chose the mystery bag, leaving Ashley and I all the candy.

                I was a decent TA, but I was no John Keating from Dead Poets Society, but I like to believe a few will remember what they found in that mystery bag that day.  I recall that I started to laugh at the end of class when the wining team was about to find out the mystery prize.  A girl was like “why is she laughing.”   I was laughing for that the wining students were about to pull out of that brown bag their very own potato.  They looked confused holding a potato in their hands.  One said “what am I going to do with this” and another lucky winner offered to take his potato, because he was going to make something with it, I liked that kid.  Another student asked “what does the potato mean?”  Well, the potato did not mean anything, but I replied “if you can understand the potato, you will do great on this exam and in life.”   After my final class, I headed back to my office and found, Nik, a fellow graduate student, and told him how on this day I had created my legacy as TA.

We Live in Water

            First off, I must mention that for the last three years I have been writing in a journal a review of all the books I read.  I only count that books that I read from start to finish and I also include unabridged audio-books.  I have found that by making these entries I recall the tales better and it makes me examine my re-action to the story.   Secondly, you should know that I started a book club, the Short Stories Book Club, back in 2005 and we still meet on the last Thursday of the month.  For our July meeting we read We Live in Water by Jess Walter and it was one of the best books I’ve read in while, so I decide to share my review of it for this post. Most of the stories take place in Seattle, Portland, or Spokane and it came out in 2013.

            There are a total of 13 stories that cover varying situations from two drug addicts, who are in search of a wheelbarrow to transport a big screen TV across town and to a futuristic world where people are turning themselves into overly sexed zombies in order to escape the modern world and with government training them to not to eat cat.   In the story “Virgo,” a man seeks revenge on his ex-girlfriend by re-wring horoscopes, “keep an eye on the big picture,’ Virgo was supposed to read that day.  I changed it to: ‘One star: watch your back.’” (p. 62)  I felt the stories were a good mixture of humor and the complexities of human relationships.

 The title story, “We Live in Water,” is the most powerful story, which is told from both a father and son perspective in differing decades.  It starts in 1958 with Oren, the father, who is recently divorced, a drifter, and swindler.  Oren has stolen from the wrong man in a small town and takes Michael, his six year old son, to meet up with his friend, whom he hopes can help him out of this jam.  Then flash forward to 1992, where Michael is all grown up and we find him recently divorced and on a mission to find his father who went missing in 1958.  The story continues flashing to the past and then back to the present.  The closing lines are almost poetic, “he came back to that morning on the carrier, the blue sky and the ocean, and where they met, that endless line.  Everything that isn’t sky and water lives for a moment in that gray band.  Above and below it, the blue stretches forever.” (p. 40)    

The final story, “Statistical Abstract for My Hometown, Spokane, Washington,” is small autobiography of Jess Walter, put into fifty different notes about life in Spokane.  This essay gives you a feel of the authors own life and you can now draw connections into the fictional stories that proceed in the book.  Specific things I learned about Spokane it is the 104^th biggest city in the United States, that many adult men like to ride BMX bikes, that bikes tend to be stolen on a regular basis, , and the poverty rate is high.  To conclude, Walter stories are very well written and you connect to the characters that are all facing the hard realities of this world.  He also adds humor into the situations, which is always good in my book.  So I’ve given the book 4 out of 5 stars.  

I JUST MET A GIRL…

            A few years back an acquaintance told me that a friend of hers wished to be named Maria, because of the Beck song called “O Maria.” I had never heard this particular Maria song.  After a listening it’s not a bad song, but not the best Maria tune.  Having had this name for 32 years now, I’ve come to discover there are lots of songs about a girl named Maria.  Actually, few years back my wife made me a mix cd filled completely with songs about Maria, from Michael Jackson, to Patti Smith, to Willie Nelson, to Rage Against the Machine, and even one by Men at Work.  My favorite song is “My Maria,” by B. W. Stevenson; I would catch this country style song on the radio now and then.  However, it took me many years to find out who was the artist and to finally get a copy of the tune.  I think having to hunt for the song, made it a challenge, and I enjoyed the lyrics, “I’m a lonely dreamer on a highway in the skies.” 

 Adam Duritz the lead singer of Counting Crows has mentioned a woman named Maria in four of the group’s songs and two times in his previous band the Himalayans.  Why are there so many songs about Maria?  Well, Duritz explains that for him: “it's through the eyes of a girl, but it's someone very much like me struggling at the edge, not sure if she's going to fall off on one side or the other. It's a theme that's stuck through songs. So she keeps popping up.”  I am not sure why there are so many songs about my name, but over the years I have come to place specific songs with particular moments in my life. 

MARIA- From West Side Story

I've just met a girl named Maria,
And suddenly that name
Will never be the same
To me.
Maria!

            This is the song that most likely people will break into song with when I tell them my name.  Especially middle age men seem to enjoy this particular song.  There is one particular man I think of when I hear this tune and that was my computer teacher in middle school.  I have distinct memories of him singing “I just met a girl name Maria” in front of the class a few times.  I was pretty darn shy at this stage in my life and would mostly just sit there and smile, as I was being serenade to in front of the class.  At the time I was embarrassed to have any attention being drawn to me, but looking back now it makes me glad that he did break into song.  I usually felt unnoticed in school and mostly kept to myself.  In that class all I remember was learning the home-row and that we got to play Oregon Trail for the last ten minutes.  I never made it to the sweet land of Oregon, damn you dysentery and snakebites, and I lost a lot of good people to you. Flash forward to present day, Keishla, my 24 a year old co-worker breaks into the Santana’s tune “Maria, Maria, she reminds me of a west side story.” It has been over fifteen years between these two songs played a role in my life and I have still managed not to see “West Side Story.”  I will have to correct this soon. 

TAKE A LETTER MARIA – By R B Greaves:

So take a letter Maria..address it to my wife
Say I won't be coming home..gotta start a new life
Oh Take a letter Maria..address it to my wife
Send a copy to my lawyer..gotta start a new life
You've been many things but most of all a good secretary to me
And it's time like this I feel, you've always been close to me

From my early grade school days to the start middle school my favorite radio station was the Oldies 95.7.  I loved Motown and all music from 50s and 60s era.  While I was still listening to Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, my father was getting into Nirvana and Pearl Jam before I was.  Every so often while listening to the Oldies this catchy little number would come on.  I enjoyed the music, but even then the lurking feminist in me had a problem with the lyrics that describes a man leaving his wife at one moment and then hitting on his secretary the very next second.  Today, I hear the song and part of me thinks sexual harassment in the work force, but not too surprising that it came from the era of Mad Men.

MARIA – By Blondie

She walks like she don't care
Walkin' on imported air
Ooh, it makes you wanna die

Maria, you've gotta see her
Go insane and out of your mind
Regina, Ave Maria
A million and one candle lights

            Doing some research on these songs I learned that “Maria” was the first hit single for the band Blondie, since 1982, the year I was born.  My father had a few albums of the bands early stuff and I had become a fan myself over the years.  This particular song came out in 1999, when I was in my senior year of high school.  It was refreshing to hear a more hip Maria song and sung by a rocking front lady.  I’ll admit at the time I did not relate to the Maria described in the song who was driving people wild.  When I started my sophomore year of high school, my doctor informed I that my scoliosis was getting worse and they thought it best to put me into a back brace.  I was already a shy kid and now I have to wear baggy clothes to hide the brace.  These years of being introvert gave me a good understanding of who I was and a glimpse of what I wanted in life. Close to the end of my senior year I able to remove the back brace off and bought a very tight black tank top from Starship and wore it to school.  For that moment I was “walking on imported air” down Wauwatosa East.  Blondie and that black tank top gave me faith that things would be better in college and that it was up to me to be that change.

HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE MARIA- From The Sound of Music

Many a thing you know you'd like to tell her
Many a thing she ought to understand
But how do you make her stay
And listen to all you say
How do you keep a wave upon the sand

Oh, how do you solve a problem like Maria?
How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?

            I had seen The Sound of Music maybe once as a child, but did not watch it again until I met Ashley, my then girlfriend and my now wife.  She had been a huge fan of the musical growing up and so when she would occasionally into song about “how do you solve a problem like Maria”?  When we got married a few years back we had joked that I should have walked down the aisle with the wedding processional version of the song.  Watching the movie now I can see why Ashley and many others love this film, it has some of the best musical songs ever written.  I personally like the film adaptation of Maria von Trapp, this free spirited woman who the nuns could just not seem to get under control.  In this song the nuns are debating with each other what type of woman is this Maria?  Well, us Maria’s of the world we are complicated and no one has yet figured out how to “hold a moonbeam in your hand.”