The Cruel Governess

is what I've become. I learned this week that I have no patience for mediocrity. I thought I'd be more understanding, because I'm a slacker myself, but it's maddening enough when they can't grasp the straightforward concepts that I'm ready to beat someone with a cane if, on top of their natural difficulties, they're not even paying attention. I think that's what pushed me over the edge; before my attitude was, "If they're here and they don't make an effort, that's their loss, their summer gone to shit for nothing. It's not my business."

So what pushed me over the edge? When the kid is reasonably well-behaved and focused, but simply has no fucking clue what I'm talking about. For example, today we read Rappaccini's Daughter by Hawthorne. If you've read the Scarlet Letter, you know that reading Hawthorne's symbolism is like getting beaten over the head repeatedly with a blunt object - so naturally I thought it would be a slam dunk. But when I posed the simplest of questions like, "What is the setting? Why is Giovanni at the University of Padua?" I just got this blank, terrified silence. What am I supposed to do with that? Some of the kids were really trying, so I couldn't really bite off their heads, and instead just tap danced for them til we all fell into numb despair.

But of course: then a student waltzes in late and says, "I couldn't finish the reading, I did about a third but then my printer broke," while her cell phone vibrates every 20 minutes. That's when you think, "You want a piece of this? Let's throw it down right here."