A Glutton For Punishment
Yes, I'm doing it again. May 10th. I leave NY, drive to Maine to visit the parents, and then drive from Maine to Mexico (because when you are driving 3500 miles, what is an extra 454.19 more?).
There may be posts from Mexico this summer. In between dissertation writing. The dissertation is due October 1 and has to deal with all 87,142 cataloged artifacts (!!!), so there may not be much in the way of procrastination between now and post-dissertation-recovery.
While waiting for the final product, if you want to read the technical product of last years digs, you can find me here:
http://www.famsi.org/reports/06010/index.html
or for procrastination that has nothing to do with work:
http://www.blogthings.com/howmassachusettsareyouquiz/outcome.php
Thanks to Jessica for the last... I only scored 96%. Must've been those years in Canada...
Otherwise, life is good. BUSY. Job is totally fabulous (no sarcasm on this last). Very happy!
More soon. Maybe.... Or look for me on a highway near you!
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Sunday, December 09, 2007
FREE ADVICE: THINGS TO AVOID SAYING TO YOUR PROFESSOR ON THE DAY OF THE FINAL EXAM…
And other stories from the trenches….
O.K., so admittedly, I was, am, will forever be, a neurotic, compulsive nerd. Still, I find myself completely speechless at the “excuses” and “solutions” I hear from students around exam time. I refuse to believe that I ever sat in a classroom with people who came up with stories like I’ve been fielding this week, but perhaps I’m just in denial? The department chair at the University here claims it is a generational thing. She says that nobody over thirty can relate to the students we have now. I really don’t want this to be true. I want to believe it is this bunch, or me, or the class, or the culture, or something. Or maybe just that I’m not over thirty…
Down here in Mexico, we’re finishing up our semester. (I taught a course in historical archaeology this semester for the anthropology department…) My class had their final exams last week, and the excuses started at 9.30 the morning of the exam. For those of you reading this who are still students, or will be students again, I thought I’d give a rundown of things not to say to your professors before, during or after an exam. For the rest of you? Think of it as encouragement to increase your contributions to your retirement funds! Because if this is truly generational, the social security system is doomed!
Also, there are more updates below… I just need to get this off my chest first!
So here it goes…
BEFORE EXAM
In an email…
“Dear Professor, I’ve just discovered that the project I’ve been working on for another professor isn’t good enough. I’m going to skip the final exam tonight so that I can work on that instead. I’m busy tomorrow, but I’m free Friday morning. Let me know what time Friday morning between 9 and 12 is good for you, and where I should meet you. I will take the exam then…”
Silly me… I was operating under this ridiculous delusion that universities and professors set the time and date of exams! I guess this really is a learning process! Thank god my student clued me in to this early, or I might have spent my whole career trying to make students take exams at hours that were inconvenient to them!
For those still in school… This email will not win you points. Especially if you send it at an hour that means it will be the first thing your professor sees in the morning when she wakes up before she has had her coffee. I promise you, this isn’t a pretty time of day for anybody involved. You might want to moderate your tone a bit. If you don’t, you will receive a response that sums up as:
“You are welcome to miss the exam tonight and take a zero. Have a nice day and good luck with that other project.”
My day went rapidly downhill from there…
I have/had this student who stopped coming to class eight weeks ago, give or take a month. I wasn’t particularly worried about it because I’ve seen him around campus, most notably sitting in the courtyard in front of the classroom half an hour before class time and directly in front of my office. I figured, “Well, he dropped the class. No biggie. I mean he is here and he could come to class, or tell me if there is a problem, right?”
Wrong.
Beauty tip, guys… If you are going to skip class, don’t sit on the bench located halfway between the professor’s office and her classroom. She actually does notice!
This student, who I hadn’t spoken with in eight weeks and who’d missed not only eight weeks of classes but three class assignments in the interim, comes to my office 30 minutes before exam time. He sits down in the chair across from my desk and proceeds to launch into a series of vague excuses. Evidently, he had “some things to take care of” that had prevented him from coming to class “a couple times,” and “maybe missing an assignment or two?” And he knew the exam was that day and clearly “didn’t feel prepared to take it.”
Clearly.
Luckily, he had a solution!
They always have solutions…
Since grades weren’t due for two weeks, he cheerfully explained to me, he thought that what we could do is have private classes in the meantime. He’d come to my office, and I would summarize eight weeks of exams for him and when we were finished, he’d take the exam then!
And the assignments he’d missed! Well, obviously, he couldn’t be expected to DO them, but he was pretty sure we could “work something out that would be agreeable to both of us…”
Uh huh…
Oh where to start!?!?!?!?
O.K., so here is the thing. What I do, IT IS WORK. Like real work. I actually spend time preparing lectures and putting together slides. The assignments I give you? They are actually also work for me, and so I give them sparingly and for a reason. Going to class? I don’t always want to go either. Sometimes, it is really, really inconvenient. And when I’m not in class? I’m actually doing other work, work that is more important than your hangover last week.
I promise you. You will NEVER win points with your professor by suggesting that instead of holding you accountable for the work you should have done and the classes you should have gone to, she instead shows up and spends time giving you lectures one on one. This isn’t a good deal for anybody but you. This is just extra work that she has to do to make your life easier. She never asked for it.
Remember, please, that you are trying to make the life of the person who gives you your grades more difficult. Is this EVER a winning strategy?
After staring in disbelief over the audacity of the whole thing, I finally just smiled and said, “As I see it, you have two options at the moment. 1. you can drop the class. 2. you can take the test or not, but fail the class regardless. It is your call.”
He tried to argue the point, telling me that he couldn’t drop any more classes (has already dropped the max limited allowed by the university before they kick you out) and that he couldn’t afford to fail my class either. I told him this wasn’t my problem to fix, it was his, and I wished him the best of luck resolving the issue.
DURING EXAM
Walking into the exam, I foolishly thought that I was done with the “drama,” and that we would be able to settle down to business. With this level of naiveté, you’d never know I’ve either been taking or giving exams for ten years straight now!
I hand out the exam, the students settle in to take it after the usual expressions of dismay over the difficulty of the test. Halfway through the test, somebody’s phone rings. My cross to bear yells, “S**T!” and leaps out of his chair while frantically digging through his bag. Instead of just turning off the phone, as I was expecting him to do, he announces to the class, “I’ve got to take this…” and, before I can say anything, runs, at top speed, out of the room.
The students and I look at each other in disbelief while he stands right outside the door of the classroom and has a loud and completely audible conversation with one of his buddies about how the test is going and what time he thinks he’ll make it to the bar.
Then, evidently not realizing that his conversation had been overheard by all, he comes back into the room and says, “Sorry, it was really important, but it won’t happen again.”
“No,” I reply, holding out my hand for his phone, “It won’t.” But at this point in the day, I’m feeling impatient, intolerant, and even a teeny bit vicious. So, with a straight face, I add, “In revenge for the interruption, I passed your test around to the rest of the class and allowed them each to change one answer. You might want to take the time to review their answers…”
I hadn’t, of course, but the two minutes of panic it caused him made me feel a bit better.
On more than one occasion, I’ve found myself mystified by student behavior during exams. I mean, who actually thinks it is o.k. to take a phone call, any phone call but especially a social call, during an exam?!?!?!
Once, a few years back, I was giving a three hour final exam. During the exam, I had to step out of the classroom and have a conversation with a student who had finished their test about some work they needed to do. When I had finished, I stepped back into the classroom to find the six people still working on their exams deep in conversation with each other.
One of the students looks up at me and says, “Oh, we’re just taking a chat break! We’ll get back to work in a few more minutes.”
A “chat break”??????????????????????????????????? You don’t get to stop and exam and have a cocktail party! But there they were, sitting around, ostensibly discussing motorcycles…
AFTER THE EXAM
O.K., I’m going to cut this short, having relieved my feelings, with one final story. This is my all time favorite post-exam email.
Upon receiving a grade that she didn’t find agreeable, one of my students emailed me and said:
“Dear Elizabeth, When I got my exam back, I was shocked to discover how low my grade was! I really enjoy this class and I feel my grade should reflect that. I would like to meet with you to discuss how we could raise my grade to better reflect the enjoyment I have for the class.”
So, first of all, a bit of context. I was just a lowly teaching assistant for the class in question, and so spent most of my time in the back of the classroom keeping an eye on the students from behind.
Tip—For those of you who are/will be teaching assistants, you may look like you are setting a good example by sitting in the front row, but if you sit in the back behind all your students, you’ll learn a great deal more about them. For those of you who are still students, if your TA is sitting in the back row, watch what you have on your computer screen. She CAN see it!
So there I was in the back of the classroom. The student in question rarely came to class, and when she did, she sat in the back row, hooked her computer into the wireless internet, and spent her time surfing the web. Her exam grade was the lowest in the class, and I wasn’t surprised by this at all.
I simply emailed her back and said that I really didn’t have the “power” to change her grade and suggested she speak with the professor, but what I REALLY wanted to write back was something along the lines of:
Dear Student, I really enjoy baseball, but the Red Sox won’t be calling me to pitch any time soon. Enjoyment does not equal skill, ability, or hard work.”
I enjoy the class so therefore I should get an A???? Is that really how this generation works????
Sigh….
O.K., done venting about students…
In other news, I’m frantically getting ready to leave Mexico. I’ve got 13 days before I head out for a four night/five day vacation on the Pacific Coast beaches (Merry Christmas to me!!!). From there, I start the drive home, or to Long Island anyway. Things have been very, VERY busy here because I have to get all the things I need to study into some sort of digital format. I’ve done pretty well, though I’m still trying to finish up a few things.
But so far, I’ve catalogued nearly 20,000 artifacts and written the first chapter of my dissertation. There are another 35,000 or so, but I’ve hired somebody to finish those for me and send the data in the coming months. I’m trying to learn and internalize the idea that I can’t actually do everything completely by myself. It has been rough going at times, but I’m getting better about it!
That is pretty much it (or all and more than I have time for…). At the moment, I have no life. Other than leaving once a week for exams, I sit at home and count artifacts...
Speaking of, I should get back to work counting and photographing tiny bits of things. If you have time for a vacation this spring, come for a visit in the Hamptons. I’ve found a beautiful house to live in on the water in Sag Harbor. And if you were sad to miss out on a chance for a vacation in Mexico, come stay with me here next summer! I’ll be teaching an interdisciplinary course on the Mexican Hacienda next June, and then using July and August to put the finishing touches on the final draft of my dissertation (I hope….).
And other stories from the trenches….
O.K., so admittedly, I was, am, will forever be, a neurotic, compulsive nerd. Still, I find myself completely speechless at the “excuses” and “solutions” I hear from students around exam time. I refuse to believe that I ever sat in a classroom with people who came up with stories like I’ve been fielding this week, but perhaps I’m just in denial? The department chair at the University here claims it is a generational thing. She says that nobody over thirty can relate to the students we have now. I really don’t want this to be true. I want to believe it is this bunch, or me, or the class, or the culture, or something. Or maybe just that I’m not over thirty…
Down here in Mexico, we’re finishing up our semester. (I taught a course in historical archaeology this semester for the anthropology department…) My class had their final exams last week, and the excuses started at 9.30 the morning of the exam. For those of you reading this who are still students, or will be students again, I thought I’d give a rundown of things not to say to your professors before, during or after an exam. For the rest of you? Think of it as encouragement to increase your contributions to your retirement funds! Because if this is truly generational, the social security system is doomed!
Also, there are more updates below… I just need to get this off my chest first!
So here it goes…
BEFORE EXAM
In an email…
“Dear Professor, I’ve just discovered that the project I’ve been working on for another professor isn’t good enough. I’m going to skip the final exam tonight so that I can work on that instead. I’m busy tomorrow, but I’m free Friday morning. Let me know what time Friday morning between 9 and 12 is good for you, and where I should meet you. I will take the exam then…”
Silly me… I was operating under this ridiculous delusion that universities and professors set the time and date of exams! I guess this really is a learning process! Thank god my student clued me in to this early, or I might have spent my whole career trying to make students take exams at hours that were inconvenient to them!
For those still in school… This email will not win you points. Especially if you send it at an hour that means it will be the first thing your professor sees in the morning when she wakes up before she has had her coffee. I promise you, this isn’t a pretty time of day for anybody involved. You might want to moderate your tone a bit. If you don’t, you will receive a response that sums up as:
“You are welcome to miss the exam tonight and take a zero. Have a nice day and good luck with that other project.”
My day went rapidly downhill from there…
I have/had this student who stopped coming to class eight weeks ago, give or take a month. I wasn’t particularly worried about it because I’ve seen him around campus, most notably sitting in the courtyard in front of the classroom half an hour before class time and directly in front of my office. I figured, “Well, he dropped the class. No biggie. I mean he is here and he could come to class, or tell me if there is a problem, right?”
Wrong.
Beauty tip, guys… If you are going to skip class, don’t sit on the bench located halfway between the professor’s office and her classroom. She actually does notice!
This student, who I hadn’t spoken with in eight weeks and who’d missed not only eight weeks of classes but three class assignments in the interim, comes to my office 30 minutes before exam time. He sits down in the chair across from my desk and proceeds to launch into a series of vague excuses. Evidently, he had “some things to take care of” that had prevented him from coming to class “a couple times,” and “maybe missing an assignment or two?” And he knew the exam was that day and clearly “didn’t feel prepared to take it.”
Clearly.
Luckily, he had a solution!
They always have solutions…
Since grades weren’t due for two weeks, he cheerfully explained to me, he thought that what we could do is have private classes in the meantime. He’d come to my office, and I would summarize eight weeks of exams for him and when we were finished, he’d take the exam then!
And the assignments he’d missed! Well, obviously, he couldn’t be expected to DO them, but he was pretty sure we could “work something out that would be agreeable to both of us…”
Uh huh…
Oh where to start!?!?!?!?
O.K., so here is the thing. What I do, IT IS WORK. Like real work. I actually spend time preparing lectures and putting together slides. The assignments I give you? They are actually also work for me, and so I give them sparingly and for a reason. Going to class? I don’t always want to go either. Sometimes, it is really, really inconvenient. And when I’m not in class? I’m actually doing other work, work that is more important than your hangover last week.
I promise you. You will NEVER win points with your professor by suggesting that instead of holding you accountable for the work you should have done and the classes you should have gone to, she instead shows up and spends time giving you lectures one on one. This isn’t a good deal for anybody but you. This is just extra work that she has to do to make your life easier. She never asked for it.
Remember, please, that you are trying to make the life of the person who gives you your grades more difficult. Is this EVER a winning strategy?
After staring in disbelief over the audacity of the whole thing, I finally just smiled and said, “As I see it, you have two options at the moment. 1. you can drop the class. 2. you can take the test or not, but fail the class regardless. It is your call.”
He tried to argue the point, telling me that he couldn’t drop any more classes (has already dropped the max limited allowed by the university before they kick you out) and that he couldn’t afford to fail my class either. I told him this wasn’t my problem to fix, it was his, and I wished him the best of luck resolving the issue.
DURING EXAM
Walking into the exam, I foolishly thought that I was done with the “drama,” and that we would be able to settle down to business. With this level of naiveté, you’d never know I’ve either been taking or giving exams for ten years straight now!
I hand out the exam, the students settle in to take it after the usual expressions of dismay over the difficulty of the test. Halfway through the test, somebody’s phone rings. My cross to bear yells, “S**T!” and leaps out of his chair while frantically digging through his bag. Instead of just turning off the phone, as I was expecting him to do, he announces to the class, “I’ve got to take this…” and, before I can say anything, runs, at top speed, out of the room.
The students and I look at each other in disbelief while he stands right outside the door of the classroom and has a loud and completely audible conversation with one of his buddies about how the test is going and what time he thinks he’ll make it to the bar.
Then, evidently not realizing that his conversation had been overheard by all, he comes back into the room and says, “Sorry, it was really important, but it won’t happen again.”
“No,” I reply, holding out my hand for his phone, “It won’t.” But at this point in the day, I’m feeling impatient, intolerant, and even a teeny bit vicious. So, with a straight face, I add, “In revenge for the interruption, I passed your test around to the rest of the class and allowed them each to change one answer. You might want to take the time to review their answers…”
I hadn’t, of course, but the two minutes of panic it caused him made me feel a bit better.
On more than one occasion, I’ve found myself mystified by student behavior during exams. I mean, who actually thinks it is o.k. to take a phone call, any phone call but especially a social call, during an exam?!?!?!
Once, a few years back, I was giving a three hour final exam. During the exam, I had to step out of the classroom and have a conversation with a student who had finished their test about some work they needed to do. When I had finished, I stepped back into the classroom to find the six people still working on their exams deep in conversation with each other.
One of the students looks up at me and says, “Oh, we’re just taking a chat break! We’ll get back to work in a few more minutes.”
A “chat break”??????????????????????????????????? You don’t get to stop and exam and have a cocktail party! But there they were, sitting around, ostensibly discussing motorcycles…
AFTER THE EXAM
O.K., I’m going to cut this short, having relieved my feelings, with one final story. This is my all time favorite post-exam email.
Upon receiving a grade that she didn’t find agreeable, one of my students emailed me and said:
“Dear Elizabeth, When I got my exam back, I was shocked to discover how low my grade was! I really enjoy this class and I feel my grade should reflect that. I would like to meet with you to discuss how we could raise my grade to better reflect the enjoyment I have for the class.”
So, first of all, a bit of context. I was just a lowly teaching assistant for the class in question, and so spent most of my time in the back of the classroom keeping an eye on the students from behind.
Tip—For those of you who are/will be teaching assistants, you may look like you are setting a good example by sitting in the front row, but if you sit in the back behind all your students, you’ll learn a great deal more about them. For those of you who are still students, if your TA is sitting in the back row, watch what you have on your computer screen. She CAN see it!
So there I was in the back of the classroom. The student in question rarely came to class, and when she did, she sat in the back row, hooked her computer into the wireless internet, and spent her time surfing the web. Her exam grade was the lowest in the class, and I wasn’t surprised by this at all.
I simply emailed her back and said that I really didn’t have the “power” to change her grade and suggested she speak with the professor, but what I REALLY wanted to write back was something along the lines of:
Dear Student, I really enjoy baseball, but the Red Sox won’t be calling me to pitch any time soon. Enjoyment does not equal skill, ability, or hard work.”
I enjoy the class so therefore I should get an A???? Is that really how this generation works????
Sigh….
O.K., done venting about students…
In other news, I’m frantically getting ready to leave Mexico. I’ve got 13 days before I head out for a four night/five day vacation on the Pacific Coast beaches (Merry Christmas to me!!!). From there, I start the drive home, or to Long Island anyway. Things have been very, VERY busy here because I have to get all the things I need to study into some sort of digital format. I’ve done pretty well, though I’m still trying to finish up a few things.
But so far, I’ve catalogued nearly 20,000 artifacts and written the first chapter of my dissertation. There are another 35,000 or so, but I’ve hired somebody to finish those for me and send the data in the coming months. I’m trying to learn and internalize the idea that I can’t actually do everything completely by myself. It has been rough going at times, but I’m getting better about it!
That is pretty much it (or all and more than I have time for…). At the moment, I have no life. Other than leaving once a week for exams, I sit at home and count artifacts...
Speaking of, I should get back to work counting and photographing tiny bits of things. If you have time for a vacation this spring, come for a visit in the Hamptons. I’ve found a beautiful house to live in on the water in Sag Harbor. And if you were sad to miss out on a chance for a vacation in Mexico, come stay with me here next summer! I’ll be teaching an interdisciplinary course on the Mexican Hacienda next June, and then using July and August to put the finishing touches on the final draft of my dissertation (I hope….).
Below is the draft of the brochure for the course I'm going to teach. If you know anybody who is interested, send them to me for more info on how to sign up! (That part hasn't been written on the brochure yet, hence the "blah, blah, blah...") It'll be a six credit course transferable to the states. Taught in English, but the fieldwork will be in Spanish...
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Sunday, September 02, 2007
Monday, August 13, 2007
COW LEGS AND
CULTURE SHOCK
Or
"Why you probably shouldn't trust me with your children...."
I survived my month of teaching in the Anthropology Lab, had a few blessed days off with Carol (who made a scenic detour on the Road to Rev via Puebla, Veracruz, and Mexico City with me), and then plunged into a new hell. In a moment of weakness and, to be perfectly honest, greed, I agreed to teach for an American program (which shall remain nameless to protect the marginally innocent) that was bringing 180 gifted adolescents to Mexico (for the program's first time). Enter the Culture Shock (cow legs follow shortly...).
I realize that, as an American, I shouldn't experience culture shock when faced with Americans. But I did. Oh and how I did! The program descended, with 180 students and 40-some staff members and brought with it a tidal wave of American culture. And it wasn't the usual American culture you encounter at Mexican universities, the sort that comes with a sort of unwashed backpacker, laid back, take the experience as it comes flavor. Rather, it was more the panicked "The meeting began at 9:00 and it is 9:03, where is everybody!?!?!?!?!?!?!" kind, with a strong seasoning of ice-breakers, role-playing and team-building.
Shudder... I'd forgotten what that can be like here in Mexico!
The first full day of the program was the first of three days of "staff orientation" leading up to the arrival of our students. We spent that first day, eight hours of it, locked in a room "building team spirit" while being lectured on sexual harassment and cultural sensitivity. About 15 of the employees were Mexicans, and the saving grace of the day was the (empathetic) entertainment of watching these poor young Mexicans trying to understand what was going on. At one point, we got a thirty minute lecture (for the benefit of the Mexicans, I imagine) on not using the word "gringo" because it can be offensive.
At the end of this thirty minutes, we were invited to ask questions. One of the Mexicans raised his hand and said, "I don't understand why you have to be offended by everything! I mean, sometimes when somebody says "gringo" they mean it as an insult, but most of the time, we just say it descriptively. All it means is "American." Why can't you just assume we mean it kindly because most of the time we do!"
I sympathized with the young man, but this question got us a 45 minute review of the cultural sensitivity policy followed by another hour of examples of just how hurtful words can be....
At the end of this first day, I came home, crawled into bed, and lay awake all night wondering if it was too late to quit... I decided I couldn't bring myself to walk out on them at this point (and probably I had signed something that wouldn't allow me to do so anyway....). So I stuck it out.
On the second day, we went back for a "nuts and bolts" day of figuring out how things were actually going to run. It was at this point that we were informed that none of us were going to have textbooks for our students. There was mass panic among the instructors. Everybody had planned their classes around having their textbooks and here they were, the day before the students arrived, finding out that the textbooks hadn't arrived and nobody knew when they were going to show up.
I, however, was feeling secretly and insufferably (I'm sure) smug about the entire thing. I wasn't in the least bit surprised the textbooks hadn't shown up, and had planned my class so I could go ahead without them. You see, while I was in the "hiring process," somebody had mentioned to me that they were mailing all the textbooks to Mexico.
Appalled, I said, "You're doing what?"
They explained that they were mailing all the textbooks (about $8000 worth as near as I can calculate) via DHL and, "it'll be fine because DHL is reliable."
I suggested gently that this might not be the most reliable mode of transport for such a vital aspect of the program and explained that, while there is no tax on books imported for personal use, when the large boxes with the high monetary value appeared in customs, somebody there would surely hold onto them and refuse to allow them to pass on. I told them that it was likely that the only way they would actually get the textbooks is if somebody drove to Mexico City with a whole lot of money for bribes.
In horror struck tones, they told me that I was being "overly-judgemental" and "unrealistic" about life in Mexico. After all, how could I possibly know! I just dropped it.
But just amongst us friends and family, I have to say that really, I find it much more culturally offensive to pick up and go off to a foreign country and just assume that everything will run EXACTLY as it does at home. Which brings me back to our first day of orientation. The intriguing thing about our "cultural sensitivity" training was that it was directed entirely at how the Mexicans should make the Americans feel more at home. Nobody, for example, mentioned that it might be polite and prudent for the Americans to dress conservatively when visiting the churches of Puebla. I guess being sensitive to other cultures doesn't extend outside US borders and is, perhaps, less about diversity and more about assimilation.
So, the news about the textbooks made me smile. Petty as it was, I enjoyed the moment.
The textbooks, incidentally, were released from customs on the final day of the program...
Leaving the program aside, the kids were fabulous, and I had a great time working with them. We had a crazy intense schedule of 12-14 hour days in the classroom and on field trips, so we got to spend a lot of time together. Happily, they were a great, enthusiastic group. And even more happily, archaeology lends itself to all sorts of weird, hands on, time consuming activities.
Enter the cow legs! (as well as the part about maybe not wanting to trust me with your children...)
Just before the program started, I was talking to the department chair in Anthropology about it all, and giving her a run down on what the program was about. I told her about the schedule and she said, "Oh, so you need activities that take lots of time!"
And I said, "Yep! Sure do! Any suggestions you have on that front would be most welcome!"
She sat back and thought for a moment. "Well.... I used to do this one activity with the students... For their homework, they'd need to go out and find some broken glass and some river cobbles and a cow leg. Then, they'd come to class, and I'd give them an hour to skin the cow leg with the glass and extract the marrow with the river cobble.... You know, to give them a feel for how hard such things are with primitive tools...."
I was delighted. I loved the idea. Like really LOVED it! My mind started running through the plans I had. We were doing stone tool making in week two... So maybe I'd have the kids make stone tools and then use them to butcher the cow legs?
I ran with it. Much to the horror of the program administration.
Luckily, my cleaning lady's brother works at a slaughter house. So the week before I needed the cow legs, I came home to find my cleaning lady and said, "Uhm, I have a somewhat odd request."
She looked at me expectantly, wondering what the crazy gringa was going to do now!
I explained I needed 6 cow legs.
And she looked relieved and said, "Oh yeah, sure, the plastic ones, right?"
I said, "What? Plastic ones? No, I need cow legs!"
Plastic Cow legs? I was envisioning some strange new lawn ornament in the tradition of the pink flamingo, but weirder....
"Yes, yes," she said patiently, "The plastic ones, the buckets, do you want a red one?"
To this day, I have no idea what we were talking about...
"No, no!" I insisted, "I need the legs of a cow!!! Six of them! Not six cows, but six legs."
"Wait," she said, "You want cow's legs?"
"Yes!" I exclaimed, relieved that communication was reestablished.
She looked at me as if I'd lost my mind. She pantomimed a cow walking "So like the cow walks in, moo moo, and then" she pantomimes cutting her own legs off, "they cut. And you want this part?" pointing to her feet.
"Yes!" I exclaim happily. "That is exactly what I need!"
She laughed, harder, I think, than I've ever seen her laugh before and, shaking her head, said, "O.K."
And she came through! The following week, the cow legs were delivered to my house the night before I needed them.
So the next day, I loaded them into the back of my pickup (thanking the heavens that I don't drive something little, sporty, and enclosed--cow legs stink!) and drove to the campus. They sat in the back of the truck all morning in the sun getting good and smelly, and after lunch, I took the kids out to the parking lot and let them choose their cow legs out of a bag.
As you can imagine, with 12 kids between the ages of 14 and 16, there was much screaming, squirming, horror, drama, etc. My teaching assistant and I were laughing so hard, we were doubled over with tears running down our faces. The kids, working in groups of two, took their cow legs over to a grassy area and set to work. Once they discovered just how hard a task this was, overachievers that they all are, they stopped the drama and settled in with serious concentration. They got completely into it and, I think, actually enjoyed the challenge! By the end of their allotted hour, they were joking about how they now understood the attraction of the cult of Xipe Totec (for those not up on Aztec Iconography, he's "Our Lord the Flayed One" and his priests spent their time flaying humans for rituals).
I sent the students back to the classroom, walking across campus with the TA, and drove my truck, the bed of which was full of cow gore, to the nearest dumpster, and then headed back to meet them myself. As I walked up to the classroom, I ran into the academic dean (my boss), who looked at me nervously and said, "All done with the cow legs?"
"Yep!" I said, "They are in the dumpster! Nothing to worry about!"
She smiled and shook her head. I laughed and said, "Really, I'm just trying to make sure you never offer me a job again."
She laughed, hard.
Just then, the kids arrived. Very hyped up. One of them ran up to the dean and I and, vibrating with enthusiasm, said, "Elizabeth! That was the coolest lab EVER!" And went racing into the classroom.
The dean grinned at me and said, "You might want to consider changing your strategy...."
So that was my July. Or most of it anyway. At the end of the month, I waved the kids off with much sadness and waved the program off with feelings of relief and joy! The next day, I hopped on a plane and made a whirlwind tour of the Northeast US. I'm now back in Mexico preparing to teach my fall course (which begins tomorrow). I should get back to my syllabus, but I'll write more soon! (ha!)
CULTURE SHOCK
Or
"Why you probably shouldn't trust me with your children...."
I survived my month of teaching in the Anthropology Lab, had a few blessed days off with Carol (who made a scenic detour on the Road to Rev via Puebla, Veracruz, and Mexico City with me), and then plunged into a new hell. In a moment of weakness and, to be perfectly honest, greed, I agreed to teach for an American program (which shall remain nameless to protect the marginally innocent) that was bringing 180 gifted adolescents to Mexico (for the program's first time). Enter the Culture Shock (cow legs follow shortly...).
I realize that, as an American, I shouldn't experience culture shock when faced with Americans. But I did. Oh and how I did! The program descended, with 180 students and 40-some staff members and brought with it a tidal wave of American culture. And it wasn't the usual American culture you encounter at Mexican universities, the sort that comes with a sort of unwashed backpacker, laid back, take the experience as it comes flavor. Rather, it was more the panicked "The meeting began at 9:00 and it is 9:03, where is everybody!?!?!?!?!?!?!" kind, with a strong seasoning of ice-breakers, role-playing and team-building.
Shudder... I'd forgotten what that can be like here in Mexico!
The first full day of the program was the first of three days of "staff orientation" leading up to the arrival of our students. We spent that first day, eight hours of it, locked in a room "building team spirit" while being lectured on sexual harassment and cultural sensitivity. About 15 of the employees were Mexicans, and the saving grace of the day was the (empathetic) entertainment of watching these poor young Mexicans trying to understand what was going on. At one point, we got a thirty minute lecture (for the benefit of the Mexicans, I imagine) on not using the word "gringo" because it can be offensive.
At the end of this thirty minutes, we were invited to ask questions. One of the Mexicans raised his hand and said, "I don't understand why you have to be offended by everything! I mean, sometimes when somebody says "gringo" they mean it as an insult, but most of the time, we just say it descriptively. All it means is "American." Why can't you just assume we mean it kindly because most of the time we do!"
I sympathized with the young man, but this question got us a 45 minute review of the cultural sensitivity policy followed by another hour of examples of just how hurtful words can be....
At the end of this first day, I came home, crawled into bed, and lay awake all night wondering if it was too late to quit... I decided I couldn't bring myself to walk out on them at this point (and probably I had signed something that wouldn't allow me to do so anyway....). So I stuck it out.
On the second day, we went back for a "nuts and bolts" day of figuring out how things were actually going to run. It was at this point that we were informed that none of us were going to have textbooks for our students. There was mass panic among the instructors. Everybody had planned their classes around having their textbooks and here they were, the day before the students arrived, finding out that the textbooks hadn't arrived and nobody knew when they were going to show up.
I, however, was feeling secretly and insufferably (I'm sure) smug about the entire thing. I wasn't in the least bit surprised the textbooks hadn't shown up, and had planned my class so I could go ahead without them. You see, while I was in the "hiring process," somebody had mentioned to me that they were mailing all the textbooks to Mexico.
Appalled, I said, "You're doing what?"
They explained that they were mailing all the textbooks (about $8000 worth as near as I can calculate) via DHL and, "it'll be fine because DHL is reliable."
I suggested gently that this might not be the most reliable mode of transport for such a vital aspect of the program and explained that, while there is no tax on books imported for personal use, when the large boxes with the high monetary value appeared in customs, somebody there would surely hold onto them and refuse to allow them to pass on. I told them that it was likely that the only way they would actually get the textbooks is if somebody drove to Mexico City with a whole lot of money for bribes.
In horror struck tones, they told me that I was being "overly-judgemental" and "unrealistic" about life in Mexico. After all, how could I possibly know! I just dropped it.
But just amongst us friends and family, I have to say that really, I find it much more culturally offensive to pick up and go off to a foreign country and just assume that everything will run EXACTLY as it does at home. Which brings me back to our first day of orientation. The intriguing thing about our "cultural sensitivity" training was that it was directed entirely at how the Mexicans should make the Americans feel more at home. Nobody, for example, mentioned that it might be polite and prudent for the Americans to dress conservatively when visiting the churches of Puebla. I guess being sensitive to other cultures doesn't extend outside US borders and is, perhaps, less about diversity and more about assimilation.
So, the news about the textbooks made me smile. Petty as it was, I enjoyed the moment.
The textbooks, incidentally, were released from customs on the final day of the program...
Leaving the program aside, the kids were fabulous, and I had a great time working with them. We had a crazy intense schedule of 12-14 hour days in the classroom and on field trips, so we got to spend a lot of time together. Happily, they were a great, enthusiastic group. And even more happily, archaeology lends itself to all sorts of weird, hands on, time consuming activities.
Enter the cow legs! (as well as the part about maybe not wanting to trust me with your children...)
Just before the program started, I was talking to the department chair in Anthropology about it all, and giving her a run down on what the program was about. I told her about the schedule and she said, "Oh, so you need activities that take lots of time!"
And I said, "Yep! Sure do! Any suggestions you have on that front would be most welcome!"
She sat back and thought for a moment. "Well.... I used to do this one activity with the students... For their homework, they'd need to go out and find some broken glass and some river cobbles and a cow leg. Then, they'd come to class, and I'd give them an hour to skin the cow leg with the glass and extract the marrow with the river cobble.... You know, to give them a feel for how hard such things are with primitive tools...."
I was delighted. I loved the idea. Like really LOVED it! My mind started running through the plans I had. We were doing stone tool making in week two... So maybe I'd have the kids make stone tools and then use them to butcher the cow legs?
I ran with it. Much to the horror of the program administration.
Luckily, my cleaning lady's brother works at a slaughter house. So the week before I needed the cow legs, I came home to find my cleaning lady and said, "Uhm, I have a somewhat odd request."
She looked at me expectantly, wondering what the crazy gringa was going to do now!
I explained I needed 6 cow legs.
And she looked relieved and said, "Oh yeah, sure, the plastic ones, right?"
I said, "What? Plastic ones? No, I need cow legs!"
Plastic Cow legs? I was envisioning some strange new lawn ornament in the tradition of the pink flamingo, but weirder....
"Yes, yes," she said patiently, "The plastic ones, the buckets, do you want a red one?"
To this day, I have no idea what we were talking about...
"No, no!" I insisted, "I need the legs of a cow!!! Six of them! Not six cows, but six legs."
"Wait," she said, "You want cow's legs?"
"Yes!" I exclaimed, relieved that communication was reestablished.
She looked at me as if I'd lost my mind. She pantomimed a cow walking "So like the cow walks in, moo moo, and then" she pantomimes cutting her own legs off, "they cut. And you want this part?" pointing to her feet.
"Yes!" I exclaim happily. "That is exactly what I need!"
She laughed, harder, I think, than I've ever seen her laugh before and, shaking her head, said, "O.K."
And she came through! The following week, the cow legs were delivered to my house the night before I needed them.
So the next day, I loaded them into the back of my pickup (thanking the heavens that I don't drive something little, sporty, and enclosed--cow legs stink!) and drove to the campus. They sat in the back of the truck all morning in the sun getting good and smelly, and after lunch, I took the kids out to the parking lot and let them choose their cow legs out of a bag.
As you can imagine, with 12 kids between the ages of 14 and 16, there was much screaming, squirming, horror, drama, etc. My teaching assistant and I were laughing so hard, we were doubled over with tears running down our faces. The kids, working in groups of two, took their cow legs over to a grassy area and set to work. Once they discovered just how hard a task this was, overachievers that they all are, they stopped the drama and settled in with serious concentration. They got completely into it and, I think, actually enjoyed the challenge! By the end of their allotted hour, they were joking about how they now understood the attraction of the cult of Xipe Totec (for those not up on Aztec Iconography, he's "Our Lord the Flayed One" and his priests spent their time flaying humans for rituals).
I sent the students back to the classroom, walking across campus with the TA, and drove my truck, the bed of which was full of cow gore, to the nearest dumpster, and then headed back to meet them myself. As I walked up to the classroom, I ran into the academic dean (my boss), who looked at me nervously and said, "All done with the cow legs?"
"Yep!" I said, "They are in the dumpster! Nothing to worry about!"
She smiled and shook her head. I laughed and said, "Really, I'm just trying to make sure you never offer me a job again."
She laughed, hard.
Just then, the kids arrived. Very hyped up. One of them ran up to the dean and I and, vibrating with enthusiasm, said, "Elizabeth! That was the coolest lab EVER!" And went racing into the classroom.
The dean grinned at me and said, "You might want to consider changing your strategy...."
So that was my July. Or most of it anyway. At the end of the month, I waved the kids off with much sadness and waved the program off with feelings of relief and joy! The next day, I hopped on a plane and made a whirlwind tour of the Northeast US. I'm now back in Mexico preparing to teach my fall course (which begins tomorrow). I should get back to my syllabus, but I'll write more soon! (ha!)
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Mexico: The Fifty-First State (And Other Inanities)
This week, for reasons way too long and uninteresting to explain here, I had to transfer money from a bank account in Mexico into my US bank account. To do this, I needed both a wire transfer number and an international wire routing number, or some such thing. I thought, “Oh, this shouldn’t be such a big deal, I’ll just call my bank and ask!”
After about thirty minutes of “pressing or saying one”, I was finally released from voice automated purgatory and put through to an operator. I explained the situation to the operator and asked if she could give me the two numbers I needed.
“Well,” she responded oh so helpfully, “I’d be happy to give you the wire transfer number, but you don’t need the international wire routing number. That is only for international transfers!”
Momentarily confused and then assuming she’d missed that part of the explanation, I responded, “Oh, uhm, yes, but I’m in Mexico, so I’ll need both the numbers….”
She responded with a condescending chuckle, saying, “Well now, history may not be my strongest suit, but I’m pretty sure that Mexico is part of the United States, honey….”
I was speechless. After a moment of gasping and stuttering, I finally managed, “Uhm, well, I’m here IN MEXICO (articulating carefully so as to be certain she didn’t think I was saying NEW Mexico), and it is definitely a foreign country.”
“Well,” she responded complacently, “It may seem that way, but I assure you that you don’t need any foreign authorization numbers from within US borders….”
Big sigh on this end. “Well, the bank seems to think I need the number. Will it do any harm if we just give it to them anyway?”
“Wellll nooooooo,” she responded.
“Good, then why don’t we just give it to them, even if it is (silent wincing) unnecessary.”
She agreed to this, and we both went on our merry ways. I imagine she went back to doing her nails, or some equally complicated task. I went back to the bank and spent the rest of my day wondering about how it was she missed the whole “foreign country” part of Mexico. It raised so many disturbing questions…. Leaving aside the fact that the people in charge of handling my money are unaware of Mexico’s status as a sovereign nation, I wondered exactly what she thought all that fuss over immigration reform reported so frequently in the papers was about. Does she, I found myself wondering, think you need a visa and passport to cross state lines?
I may have been a bit impatient with her. It has been a long and busy couple of weeks here! I’m teaching a course for the Anthropology Department that runs from 8 in the morning until 5 at night Monday through Friday. In the middle of my day, I get to set the students up with projects and take off for two hours lecturing on the Politics and Economics of Modern Mexico. After five, I get to write my lectures and brush up on assassinations, economic collapses, uprisings, and general bad PRI (Mexico’s ruling party until 1997/2000….) behavior. Somewhere in all of it I squeeze in about four hours of sleep. I’m looking forward to the end of all this very much!
It has been an interesting couple of weeks. For example, I discovered that none of my ten students, Americans and French, had ever heard of the 1968 student massacres in Mexico City, the Zapatista Uprising of 1994, or, more recently, last years drama in Oaxaca and/or the drama surrounding the presidential elections. I was shocked and depressed by the lack of current events knowledge until the Bank lady gave me a realistic measure of my student’s awareness. I’m heading into class tomorrow grateful that my students are at least conscious of the fact that they are currently in a foreign country!
My other class in the Anthropology department has mostly been lots of fun. I’m training five archaeology majors in the identification and analysis of animal bones. We are using the collections from my digs, and so I’m getting my dissertation data processed in return for many, many hours in the lab. For the most part, the students are doing a great job, and I expect to have all 4,000 or so bones identified, analyzed, and entered into my database by the end of this week. (Hooray!)
The only fly in all of this ointment is that my cross to bear has returned from last year. Those of you who have been following this blog since the beginning made his acquaintance last year when I was frantically trying to think of something that would minimize his interaction with other human beings.
This year, I figured it would be easier because we’d be in the lab…
HA!
So, for those of you who don’t know how the animal bone thing works, basically, what you do is:
1. You clean the bones with old toothbrushes and write teeny tiny numbers on all the little bits of bone. This takes days, weeks, or months, involves the use of foul smelling chemicals which get you high, and is very important. It means when you dump all the bones out of the bags into big piles, you know where the bone was originally taken from. (i.e. everything with number 134 on it was taken from the southeast quadrant of the 10 cms of earth above the floor in Room number 21.) My students were total rock stars and got this nasty job done in four days!
2. You then take all the bones and divide them into boxes by body part (so all the femurs, regardless of what they are from, end up in a box together). This is easy with complete or mostly complete bones. It gets trickier as the pieces get smaller. Once they are no longer “easily” identifiable, you pull out the comparative bones (complete skeletons of recently dead animals) and try and match the bits and pieces to the whole based on things like the line or curve of the bone, the interior structure, the placement of foramen, and the patterns of muscle attachments. This gets easier as you spend more time doing it and you build a mental image database of lots of minute markers.
3. You take a box of body parts (gruesome, isn’t it…), and figure out species of what you’ve got using comparative specimens when available and books when not.
4. You record everything on a data sheet. In my case, I record: species (or as close as I can get to species), body part, symmetry (right or left side of the body), if the bone ends have fused yet, if it is weathered, burned, butchered (and if so how is it butchered, what kind of marks, and how many of them), or marked by rodents and/or carnivores, and the weight of the bones.
5. Then you put all that into a database and the fun of playing with data begins.
The students are currently on step two. When you are new to the process, this takes a ton of time because you have to compare every fragment with every possible bone in a skeleton, and then check for variation between species. With the exception of my cross to bear, the students have been patient, thoughtful, and hardworking.
To ensure accuracy in the final analysis that goes into my dissertation, I’ve been checking every ID the students make. So they take a bone fragment, compare it with everything, bring it to me with the “match” from the complete skeleton and give me a justification of why it is that bone, why it isn’t any others, etc. Sometimes they are right and sometimes I send them back with a few suggestions of things to look at. Four of the students are doing just this and working hard at it. My best bud, however, has a different method. It goes like this.
He picks up a bone fragment. He looks at it. He sighs heavily. He wanders aimlessly around the lab for a few minutes staring into space. He puts the bone down, goes outside, and has a cigarette. He comes back in, picks up the bone, and resumes his wandering. After about half an hour, he comes to me and presents me with what is clearly a femur. “This is a rib!” he says proudly.
I say, “Uhm, o.k., well, why do you think it is a rib?”
“Because it looks just like a rib,” he says proudly.
“Well, can you show me a comparative specimen that looks just like it?” I ask.
“I don’t need to do that. I know it is a rib.”
“Well, uhm, I’m not sure that it is a rib, so how about you look at the comparative materials.”
He looks at me with pity. “Elizabeth, clearly this is a rib. There is no need to look at the comparative materials.”
My patience thins. “Why don’t you try checking the femur and the Humerus and see if it is one of those.”
“That would be a waste of my time, Elizabeth! I know it is a rib.”
“It is NOT a rib and you need to check the comparative materials to see what it is,” I say firmly.
He blows out an exasperated sigh. “I’m trying to avoid doing that Elizabeth. Besides, you are wrong, it is clearly a rib. I know it is because that is what it looks like!”
We go back and forth for a few more minutes until he finally admits defeat and goes to compare things. Eventually one of the other students takes pity on him and helps him with the id. He then moves for a new bone fragment and the entire process starts all over again.
He has been subjecting me to this round of “negotiating” for a week now, ever since the students finished numbering the bones. Miraculously, I haven’t given in to any impulses to do physical damage, but I have been getting shorter and shorter in my responses.
This past Thursday after lunch, we were sitting around the lab working. All was quiet except for a very enthusiastic peacock outside the window calling loudly (there are peacocks everywhere on the grounds of the university… part of the landscaping… the library hasn’t been given funds to buy a book in three years now, but you can have your pick of any number of breeds of peacock…). My cross to bear sighed loudly and said, “Elizabeth, may I have permission to take a break and go out and kill the peacock.”
“No,” I said, “We have enough dead things already, there will be no killing.” (Not entirely certain that if I accepted this as a joke he wouldn’t get up and go outside to kill the peacock.”
“But it is annoying me and deserves to die,” he said.
I looked at him hard and said, “I don’t think it is in your best interest to set the precedent of killing things that annoy us!”
We passed the rest of the afternoon in blessed silence while he pondered that!
Well, I should probably stop procrastinating and write a lecture on the 1994 Zapatista uprising and ethnic politics in Mexico!
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