Frustrated? Why, yes!

(teaching week....oh whatever it was 10/12-10/15)

Frustrations are, of course, to be expected if one wants to treat the Act of teaching as a dialogue or dialectic. There will be misrepresentations, false starts, and questions of authority. And, as goes the quantum theory that at any one moment there is a slight but significant possibility that you could end up putting your hand through a door when attempting to knock on it--given a random ordering of atoms and their constituent parts all deciding to be somewhere else simultaneously--there is a signficant and not so slight possibility that student entropy will occur all at once as well. Particularly when certain environmental factors push the student-atoms to one side in a convincing manor (Motion, says Papa KB, not Action!).
So when only twelve students appeared in class on Thursday, and only a slight majority of those appearing had done the rough draft for peer reviewing, another rare, but significant event spurred by environmental factors ocurred. I stopped playing the "believing game" (Elbow) and started doubting the hell out of just about everything. And I got just about as pissed off as I ever do at students; as a pacifist and social justice promoter, I rarely find myself doubting humanity's ability to create together, but this must have been a final straw. Nice, forgiving, patient Teacher Amy (who is, some how, much more patient with students than with family or friends) removed the students sans essays from the room and proceded to reward those who remained.
Hence, the stratified due dates. Those appearing in class on Thursday will have an extra three days to write the verbal portrait. After all, they have feedback to work from.
Oh, the complaints! Amy has logical fallicies, they say! Those who have done work need less time than those of us who haven't started yet! And, in the standard Western philosophy, the premise of this argument is sound. But because my purposes are more abstract than simply producing essays, the two arguments talk over/under one another.
At least, I think I'm feeling better. My sleep habits don't make sense to anyone but me anymore, but I guess to a certain extent that doesn't matter. If my body wants to sleep from 6 pm to 3 am, I guess that's what it needs. My reading makes more sense to me at 3 am. My energy is peaking around 8 am...which is problematic for that 3:30 Romanticism class, but disability is about negotiation. Give and take.
Humans are not immortal; we are all "disabled" in the sense that our bodies are fallible. What the masses can do, however, is what is considered "normal human ability" despite the internal variations of that ability. We recognize this, and the relatively healthy do not have to negotiate consciously; it is built into our society.
Those of us with differing abilities must actively negotiate, however, and because we are less in certain areas, we must make choices that sacrifice one aspect or another. Those of us not stuck in bed--The doctors can't believe I'm actually succeeding; their surprise is offensive and flattering--are the ones who negotiate successfully because our particular abilites and disabilities can be managed within certain categories. I can go to grad school because I have the flexibility to sleep when I need it; I have a fairly good brain that has been adapting to physical pressures since 1986; my work can be done sitting or standing, and more and more from home via the internet.
If I chose a different occupation, I would seem more disabled. What would you do if you were cured tomorrow? The answer hasn't changed in 10 years. I'd quit grad school and be a journalist in Boston.
This negotiation, the give and take of energies and abilities, has become so engrained (what a weird metaphorical word) in my habits and speech that when students fail to meet my expectations--and, particularly, when it happens all at once--a part of me does not understand. How can healthy beings not manage the tasks I've set? If I did it, they should be able to, too.
It's in those moments that I hate myself. My friends joke that I have no compassion, and it is in this sense they mean it; I have plenty of compassion for the oppressed, the dispossessed, those suffering from ailments of body, mind, or nation, but when I see people wasting their abilities on things I deem frivolous, that I've had to deem frivolous to maintain my sense of self worth I become some Other Amy.
Not that these negative feelings are all bad. The students are there to learn, and it is, apparently, my job to make sure they do learn something. Anything. And it's hard to do that when they seem to have given up on the class, and, by extension, me.
It's enough to make one descend into anime so deeply that one never emerges. Too bad I've got three papers due this week.
Enough "woe is me." I slept from 9pm to 1 am, and am now working on three projects at once. It's invigorating, a reminder of what I am capable of when healthy. And who knows why I'm sicker now than I ever was in undergrad. It's the random arrangement of electrons. Entropy and all that.
Burke never talked about ability. Addiction as Symbolic, yes (it's not that "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is about Coleridge's drug addiction that he didn't have yet; it's that both are symbolic expressions of something else. Why didn't Burke think about Coleridge's vaguely defined "rheumatic pains" and pain's ability to incite symoblic reActions?). He can't help me here. Be quiet, Burke! In due time!