Local Pillars of the Intellectual Community

I recently had an interesting conversation with my good friends Asif, Jeff and Yuhan regarding this very blog. They all seem to enjoy it and have much useful, constructive criticism to offer. One of the more perceptive comments – from Asif – regards my ‘orientalist’ tendencies and what he calls my ‘tolerant disdain’ for whatever subjects I happen to be banging on about. He was specifically referring to the way I talked about the Kyrgyz. I like this expression, tolerant disdain, and I do stand guilty as charged. As for me being orientalist…I can’t deny that, but it’s definitely more subconscious. I’m not going to say that I hope I haven’t offended anyone because I don’t care if I have. Damn, I’m ruthless.

But in the interests of fairness, I’m going to take this tolerant disdain that Asif thinks so highly of, and apply it in my discussions about life at this ‘university’ of mine. I’m going crazy here, having a terribly difficult time adjusting to college life once again. The problem is, at 33 I feel like quite an old man when surrounded by 18-21 year old whippersnappers. There’s no proper postgraduate programme here, so I definitely feel like an outsider. And although I’ve yet to learn a great deal in the classroom itself, I take heart from the old Oscar Wilde adage, which has always been one of my guiding principles in life: ‘It is well worth to remember from time to time that nothing worth knowing can ever be taught’. With that in mind, I’ve learned loads from my fellow classmates. All of the following I’ve overheard in passing these past couple of weeks:

That eating meat means no periods: ‘You know, I was a vegetarian for 4 years and then as soon as I started eating meat again, I didn’t get my period for a while.’

That college men are not nice: ‘I know he only got me drunk so he could sleep with me…’

That there is something seriously lacking in the New Hampshire education system. In class the other day:
Professor: ‘Who can tell me something about the Holocaust?’
Class: silence
Professor: ‘Does anyone know how many died in the Holocaust?’
Voices in class: ‘One million?’ ’50 million?’ ‘100,000?’
Professor: ‘Does anyone know the names of any of the concentration camps?’
Class: silence

And this college has a Centre for Holocaust Studies.

[I can’t even insert a witty comment here, this is just disturbing and tragic.]

That there is something seriously lacking in the New Hampshire education system, part II: In class the other day, playing a game in teams, where each member of the team had to go up to the chalkboard where there was a blank map of the 50 states. One at a time, relay-style, each team member had to fill in the name of a state. There were 3 teams. After each team had about 15 states filled in, people were stumped. They got the northeast, Texas, California, Florida and that’s about it. There was me, the nerd, filling out the rest. Before the time ran out, our team (or, I) had 34 of the states, the other 2 teams didn’t get above 20. (and yes, I would have been able to fill in all 50 if I’d had another minute. What can I say, I spend my free time looking at maps for fun.)

By the way, I’m doing a teaching certification course in secondary school social studies. That’s right readers: these are the future geography teachers of America! The motto of this tale? Don’t send your kids to school in New Hampshire.

That Sarah Palin’s daughter apparently attends Keene State. The other day in the student centre, where there are flags from various countries hanging from the ceiling, me being the geography nerd that I am, and also wanting to see what kind of reaction I would get, I asked two girls if they recognised a particular flag. I genuinely didn’t know which country it belonged to.
Me: ‘Hi girls, I know this is going to sound weird, but I was wondering whether you know which flag that is’, pointing to the flag.
Girl: ‘Geez, I don’t know, Africa?’

Let’s see if you know, because I had to look it up. Here’s the flag: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/flags/flagtemplate_wa.html

That clever, witty and somewhat subtle comments go unappreciated in the classroom. Or maybe I’m just not that funny.
Example number one: when discussing the use of rules in the classroom, it was decided that telling a student not to do something only leads them to doing it. For example, if you say to the students ‘No chewing gum’, then they’re more likely to chew gum. If you say, ‘don’t soil your trousers’, then they’ll more than likely soil their trousers. This is logical and makes sense. I then chimed in with, ‘sounds just like abstinence-only education in some parts of the US’. There were one or two chuckles in the classroom.
Professor: ‘I’m sorry, can you repeat that?’ I did. Professor: ‘I don’t see what relevance that has to this discussion’.

Example two:
Professor: ‘So, you must learn to use plenty of additional resources besides the textbook. The textbook should not solely be used to cover the material. Leave the covering of the material to cats.’
I burst out into riproaring laughter. The rest of the class was silent.

That only idiots like me are interested in public transportation in small towns like Keene: at the bus ticket office the other day, upon finding out that there’s no way out of this God-forsaken hellhole, the ticket agent said, ‘Dude, this is America! You gotta get yourself a car.’ Thanks lady.

That there are some main streets yet to be invaded by Starbucks. And that not everywhere in America features over-the-top, fake customer service. The other day at the Brewbaker Café, I was interested in a scone or a bagel. It was 3.30pm:
Me: ‘Have you got anymore scones or bagels?’
Girl: ‘Uh, this isn’t lunchtime, lunchtime was 3 hours ago, we’re not serving food anymore’. (there were decrepit, stale-looking muffins behind the counter)
Me: ‘Oh, sorry, I just haven’t eaten in a while. I’ll just have a coffee then’.
Girl: ‘This isn’t Starbucks you know’.
Me: ‘What, so I can’t have a coffee either?
Girl: ‘You can, you just can’t have any food’.
Me: ‘Fine, a small coffee then’. Which was lousy and lukewarm. I’m now boycotting this place. Surly bitch. I didn’t realise that Starbucks had a monopoly on selling food outside of regular mealtimes.

That there’s a massive campaign on to get people to travel outside of America. At the post office, there are signs everywhere advertising passports: ‘Apply for your passports here’ and ‘Get your US passport here’ and ‘Go somewhere with great public transportation and crap customer service, get your passport here’ and so on and so forth. There were two tellers. Three times each teller asked each customer whether they wanted to apply for a passport. I walked up to post a letter.
Teller: ‘Good morning, how are you today? Would you like a passport application?’
Me: ‘No thanks, I just want to post this letter.’
Teller: ‘Okay no problem’ (why should it be a problem?)
Me: humming nothing in particular
Teller: ‘you know you can hum all you want if you go to Europe. Would you like to apply for a passport?’
Me: ‘no, it’s okay, I’ve already got one’.
Teller: ‘oh, okay. Would you like to apply for another?’
Me: ‘No thanks, one is enough.’
Teller: ‘Okay. Can I get you anything else today? How about a passport application?’
Me: ‘No, it’s alright, thanks very much.’ I walk off.
Teller, shouting after me: ‘Wait, where are you going, don’t you want a passport application?’

That life in college is crime-ridden and dangerous. The weekly student newspaper posts a Campus Safety Report Log each week, rounding up the week’s most violent, heinous crimes. These are week one’s highlights:

31 August
11.41am: Keene Police Department requested for a Campus Safety Officer to meet him over on Ralston Street at the Hot Dog stand.
2 September
5.41am: Campus Safety received a call from a male student who wanted to report that someone urinated in his room.
3 September
10.54pm: caught subject urinating on lawn.
5 September
8.17pm: Girls called reporting a skunk in the parking lot. They were scared of getting sprayed.
6 September
12.33am: Student receiving harassing phone calls.
1.50am: Intoxicated subject in front of Randall Hall.
4.11am: Suspicious people hanging out around Randall Hall.
6.14am: Bitter, cynical postgraduate student more used to life in third world hellholes complaining outside student centre that he can't find anywhere to buy a kebab.

That was only the first week. The second featured such nuggets as ‘odor investigation’, ‘skateboarders making lots of noise outside the library’, ‘student is sick in the men’s bathroom’ and ‘female asked for someone to bring over a mouse trap to remove a mouse from the apartment’.

Does life get any more exciting than this?

That I am missing a lot by not going to fraternity parties: the following is a conversation I recently overheard between two girls in at the student centre. To my very best ability, I’ve tried to recreate it as accurately as possible (I’ve kept the actual names):
A: I was so drunk the other night, I can barely remember what happened.
B: Well, Luke and Anna were making out, they were totally drunk and then you started making out with Anna…
A: Oh yeah, that was like, totally weird. I was so drunk.
B: Yeah, so Luke and Anna were totally going at it and you just went over and started making out with Anna. Luke totally didn’t know what to do.
A: I was so drunk. I don’t think I even drank that much. I can’t believe I made out with Anna.
B: Girl, you were hilarious.
A: It was so much fun. We totally have to do that again.

Maybe I ought to start experiencing a bit more of college life outside the classroom.

Where the hell do I go from here?

Or, what have I got myself into?

After 7+ years of living abroad, I’m back in America. Small-town America. More specifically Keene, New Hampshire, a small college town of just over 20,000 people near Vermont. I’m already starting to regret this.

I won’t get into any clichés about culture shock, reverse culture shock or what-have-you, but there hasn’t definitely been some serious cultural ‘readjustment’ going on in my head and body.

The more immediate concern is, where do I take this blog from here? I’m flattered that people have enjoyed stories of my shenanigans in Central Asia, interspersed with anecdotes from similarly exotic locales, but surely I’m going to have a tough time bigging up Keene, New Hampshire, aren’t I? At the very least, this will definitely test all my creative powers. You see, I’m the type of person who identifies with ‘all things morbid and evil. I love the splendour of decay, the foul beauty of corruption’.* I don’t think I’m going to find much of that here.

Time for yet another arcane literary reference to justify my existence

In The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera speaks of graphomania: a mania for writing, or to have a public of unknown readers; isolation breeds it. It becomes an epidemic where there exists:

* an elevated level of general well-being, where people can devote time to useless activities
* a high degree of social atomization or general isolation
* the absence of dramatic social changes in the nation’s internal life (for example, there are many more novels written in the UK and France than in Israel), though in this case I’ll substitute ‘person’ for ‘nation’

I think all three of these situations apply to me. What does that mean? Probably that there are no excuses for not writing a lot. I’ll have to really dig deep for material, however, so any and all suggestions are welcome. Please send along any interesting ideas or angles I could pursue.

First off, why am I here?

In a nutshell, in order to get my teaching certification in secondary social studies. The aim is to get this over and done with as painlessly as possible. My course ends on 9 May 2010 and I plan on having a one-way ticket to somewhere far from here departing on 10 May.

Okay, so I’m being a tad melodramatic. It’s not all that bad. Yet.

Cultural adjustment 101 – the things I’d forgotten about

After years of living in various 3rd world hellholes, there is much about America that takes some getting used to:

* the general orderliness and omnipresent rules and laws. Case in point: having to wait for the blasted green man to cross the road. My first day in Keene, whilst flat-hunting, I was ticked off by a policeman for jaywalking. Later, a car honked at me from some 200 metres away for not waiting to cross.
* at sporting events, the artificial noise and music pumped into the stadium to juice people up.
[in a somewhat related note, I’ve often wondered why in America the national anthem is played before domestic sporting events. This has long been a fascination of mine. I thought America was the only country where this happened, but I found it to be the same in Israel, just before a Beitar Jerusalem-Maccabi Haifa match. I can understand it being played in Israel, which faces a justifiable existential threat. But why here?** I should also add that Emma has alerted me to the fact that the national anthem is also played before [ice] hockey games in Russia, which ruins the thesis I’d been working on.]
* the lack of public transport outside of major cities. I’m completely isolated without a car in Keene, and I generally abhor driving.
* the language barrier. Seriously. Most of the time I find it harder to communicate here than places abroad. I’m not sure I can properly explain this, but it somewhat relates to my next point:
* the overly hospitable to the point of excessively annoying and obnoxious and overwhelmingly perfunctory customer service in restaurants. It starts with the greeting, which never fails to rile me up: ‘Hey, how you guys doing, my name is Ashley and I’ll be taking care of you this evening. What can I get you to drink?’ Why do they always say that they’ll ‘be taking care of us’? What are they, babysitters? It’s enough to make me miss the surly, insolent customer service characteristic in the former Soviet Union.
*the fact that you can’t buy individual pens and nor can you test the pens before buying them as you can just about everywhere else. My father points out that by this stage in my life I should know which pens I like, but I can never remember and I inevitably end up buying the wrong pens. This happened to me recently when I was shopping for stationary.

As for my classes…

So far, uh…it’s early days yet, I’ll give it time. The first week is never a good indication of how things stand. At least I hope that’s the case. But I’m not terribly encouraged by the early signs.

My first class, which deals with exploring teaching as a career and is intended for freshman (for non-Americans, that’s first-years) who aren’t sure whether they want to pursue teaching as a career, really led me to question what I was doing here. Why I have to take this is beyond me, but I have no choice. There are 24 students in the class: me, another boy, and 22 18-year old girls, all with nose studs, and all named either Katie or Rebecca. I quite like both names, so I hope this doesn’t taint my associations forever. For most men, this wouldn’t be a problem. For me, it was downright terrifying. Especially as I constantly got picked on by the professor as the old, wizened man of the classroom.

After the professor introduced himself by playing an agonizingly cringeworthy guessing game of ‘How old am I? How long have I been teaching? What do I teach? How often do my wife and I have sex?’ that lasted 15 minutes, the two teaching assistants, who are second-year students, introduced themselves as follows:
‘Hi, I’m Steph, I’m a sophomore, I’m on the dance team, yay!, I study blah-blah-blah…’
‘Hi, I’m Katie, I’m a sophomore, I’m a cheerleader, yay!, go Keene! I study blah-blah-blah, my boyfriend and I blah-blah-blah every night…’

We then engaged in inane group activities which reminded me way too much of teaching English activities with teenagers. I even got to work with the same type of irascible, churlish girls that have proven to be my bête noire in the past.

God help me.

[I thank my good pal Asif for recently sharing his fortune cookie with me. We decided that it will be my motto to guide me through these dark times at Keene State: ‘When you have no choice, mobilise the spirit of courage.”]

Bizarre flashbacks and unwelcome déjà vu that remind me of my age

It’s been a long time since I was an undergraduate, and I’d forgotten all sorts of other niggly little things. But I’m also not certain what’s new and what’s different. Hell, when I started university back in 1994, we barely had the internet on campus! We certainly didn’t have mobile phones if memory serves correctly (fellow Tuftonians, am I right here? Did anyone have a mobile? Can you verify this?)

Other observations from my first days:

* I must be the only person on campus not wearing jeans or shorts.
* I’m one of only a handful of males that doesn’t wear a backwards baseball cap.
* the usual, annoying endlessly dull conversations that consist of question: ‘Oh my God, you went to --------- high school? Did you know so-and-so?’ and answer: ‘oh my God, he’s like my boyfriend’s little brother!’
* Poster sales! With the same selection as 15 years ago, including all American college students’ favourites: Dave Matthews, Reservoir Dogs and Che Guevara. Doesn’t this shit ever change?
* Girls wearing pajamas to class. This will never change.

But fret not friends, there is hope

Most of my readers know my fondness and at times downright obsession with t-shirt slogans. I didn’t expect to see too many funny ones here, assuming that people would be a bit more conscious of the message they’re trying to get across. But I spotted a classic one the other day on the back of a girl’s shirt:

‘The front view is even better’

Maybe this place won’t be so bad after all.


* Sylvester Viereck
** Michael Billig, in Banal Nationalism, touches upon this theme