Tears, Jokes about Tears, and Jokes about Jokes about Tears

I'm actually not proud that I have had a few students cry through the years (invariably upon the return of a test).  However, it is also true that I joke about crying a lot in class.  It is a running gag in my classes that I am cold, heartless and was drawn to the profession by the opportunity to make kids cry.  I think most of the students know I am joking but you never know... teenagers do tend to personalize everything.  One student told me this year: "You know, you are used to making these kind of remarks before you were masking and people could see you smiling while you made them, but now that you mask - we just don't know..."

So I was quite jealous when my colleague showed me that in her end-of-the-year loot, she had a mug titled "for the tears of my students".  What about me?  Isn't this my joke?  Well, when I got home I unpacked a gift from AS and was quite vindicated to see this gem:

Quite the meta statement, is it not?  That twist of capturing them warm... well, now that's just delightfully perverse.

I am so looking forward to sipping from the mug on opening day in the fall while laying out the syllabus in honors physics...

Graduation

 Well, the day finally rolled around: Isabelle has graduated from high school.  That seemed really fast in the rearview mirror!

Every year, the graduating class asks some of their teachers to march and sit with them ("marshals").  I've been to my fair share, but this year was obviously a bit different.  It turns out there are a lot of teacher-kids in this particular graduating class.  Here is a collection of parent-marshals:

Several former students came back to snap a picture after the ceremony.  Here's one picture with a cohort from the astronomy class that was shared with me:

And there were even some former students from farther back in time who popped out of the audience afterwards too!  For example, The Hive showed up:

Turns out, this was the first graduation Seb has ever attended and the first since her own that Irene had attended.  As I told a student who didn't want to attend, a big reason for the ceremony is actually for your family rather than for you!  I guess that might be what some call wisdom (at least for me it represents a more enlightened attitude to rites-of-passage and ceremonies in general as compared to how I thought about them in my youth!)

 

Sarcastically Yours

Years ago an administrator said to me "Sarcasm is not an appropriate form of humor when dealing with kids."  Now, he was talking about a different teacher, so I didn't say anything out loud but I thought to myself "Oh boy..."  I mean, I don't think I could make it through a single class without using sarcasm. I even give lectures on sarcasm sometimes!

Luckily most students seem to get it (at least by the end of the year!).  I was reminded about this valuable part of their education I provide by a recent gift from JS alongside an older (15 years ago?) gift from a former student ( I can remember her face and where she sat, but her initials escape me):

Dial it in; You control the dial

I was talking to my good buddy WW over the weekend.  In a far ranging conversation in which he shared the many interesting projects he has undertaken lately and some insights he has had about life, he turned to me and asked me what I've been up to.  After an awkward pause in which I mentally scrambled to come up with anything half as interesting as his endeavors, I finally lamely said "Lately I've had the realization that I oscillate between feelings of 'impending  doom' and a kind of internal 'unwarranted bliss'.  The interesting thing is that I think I can control the dial on that myself.  It seems like this is where so many self-help gurus, religions, meditative practices, etc. are trying to say in their own way and so I want to work on that myself to get better at controlling that internal dial."

His answer: "Yes, absolutely."

Ever since, I've had this image of an old analog meter with a single needle and dial that reads "Feelings of Impending Doom" on one side and "Unwarranted Internal Bliss" on the other.  I fed this sketch into an art AI and got this:

my rough sketch

AI generated art from the sketch above

Not exactly what my mind's eye sees, but I can just adjust my mental analog control knob and be happy about it...

From Blixa to Warren

From Her to Eternity is kind of a sacred song to me.  I associate it with a young Nick Cave - when he was a lot more rough around the edges - when Blixa was still a Bad Seed.  It was my introduction to Nick in the all-time-great Wenders film "Wings of Desire".

So, I finally got around to watching the entire Distant Sky concert footage and I was stunned when, 32 minutes into the concert, he breaks out The Line: "I want to tell you about a girl..." and into it he went... I was floored how energetic and intense his performance was after all these years.  But how were they going to replace/reproduce that iconic Blixa guitar howl/pluck/grind sound?  Why, with Warren Ellis abusing his amped up violin of course...  amazing.

From 1987 to 2017

From Berlin to Copenhagen

From Blixa to Warren

From Guitar to Violin

Blixa on the left (1987), Warren on the right (2017)

Nick is 30 on the left and 60 on the right.

Walk and Cry, Nick.  Walk and Cry.

Space Mission Reminds me of my kids

Today, JS was doing her quarter four presentation in astronomy on "The Future of Telescopes".  One of her featured telescopes is the SVOM being launched later this year.   The Space-based Variable Objects Monitor designed to investigate gamma ray bursts.

When she described it as a "Franco-Chinese"mission as the Chinese and French space agencies are working together on it, I called out from the back of the room "A Franco-Chinese mission: Just like my kids!" (Teachers make the worst students 'tis true).

Half the class laughed as they got the joke, the other half laughed because it just sounded weird.  The student I was sitting next to leaned over and said "are you French or something?".  Apparently I haven't been talking about myself enough this year!

Hot or Cold; Cooking or Cooked.

Today, an exhausted student (NM) told me in the middle of her test "Mr. Rideout - I'm cooked."

Now, last week, when she was tearing through a physics worksheet, she proudly proclaimed "I'm cooking!"

Makes me think about the oft contrasted generational uses of "hot" or "cool" which basically mean the same thing in slang, depending on your preferred decade.  

It's kinda fire to think about how hot it is to be cooking but how not cool it is when you're cooked, huh?Sick.