It's Raining in Amsterdam

I don't know what it's like to be a teaching assistant. It looks like a pretty crappy job. Sorry TAs, but it does. I don't know anything about the students around me, but I don't think there would be a better way to intimately acquaint myself with them then by reading the essays they give to you. You have a scary window into your students. You look inside of their heads and for every time that you see something that re-affirms your faith in humanity, there must be three or four that make you wonder whether the count down to the end of the world will be counted in days and not decades. Not every essay can sparkle with wit and intelligence and a charming insouciance like mine, I know, I know.

I also respect your decision to only give me a 75% because if you knew the depths of hell I had to plumb to finish that damn fish wrapper you would have probably reduced the grade just cuz. It was a flawed essay. I did not feel satisfied at any point while writing it, which is a worrying feeling but I find, even more distressingly sometimes that when I write something that I think is only worthy of being coughed up by a diseased cat, other people like it more than I think they have any right to and this worries me because it downgrades my expectations of people and of myself and I know that you are always your harshest critic and I know a lot of people are always aw shucks it isn't very good you don't have to say that when really all they want you to do is keep kissing their ass some more but with me when I say no way you really think it's good it's because I really do think I have just crapped up a bunch of words and this time no way any one is going to dig it and it definitely isn't fishing for compliments because I take compliments like punches to the gut and they just make me feel uncomfortable and yeah, people who can't take a compliment do blow but it's even worse when you can't give someone a compliment without feeling like a big perv who's about to be hauled away for sexual harassment because I really like what you did with your hair it looks really tasty I just want to smell it and touch it is that ok? While reading that last line ideally you should have been mouth breathing and pushing up your glasses. I guess I didn't make that clear.

Man speaking of essays there's this other one due in two days and it's going to prove a lot harder because it's supposed to be ten pages minimum and I have to base it off a book that I should have started reading like a month ago but of course I didn't do that because only friggin keeners get a head start like that and if I die tomorrow I will die knowing that nobody ever confused me for being a keener while at university, thank you very much. Keeners. Maybe you call them brown-nosers but I'm not crazy about that term. I think keeners and I think big jerks with big white smiles and pastel sweater vests and disgusting chipper attitudes and book bags and the really with it ones probably carry their ivory iBook's with them every where they go and always do the assigned reading at least two days in advance and have their essays finished at least a week early so they can send it to the TA for spell checking and don't hesitate to go to the office hours when they have a question because that is the kind of person they are who don't think twice about raising their hand in lecture to ask really deep and insightful questions that they probably spent hours preparing back in rez so that they can show the professor just how much they understand the material and so they can have their secret orgasm when the professor stops and says, that's a really good question except what's the point because the professor doesn't even know who you are unless you have front row season tickets and it just occurred to me that the front row of every lecture ever is probably composed entirely of keeners and maybe the occasional cool dude who showed up late and couldn't find anywhere else to sit because normally cool people sit farther back so that if the urge strikes them they can just fall asleep, not that keeners would know anything about that because I'm pretty sure they all go to bed at 10 so that they can wake up bright and early so that they can check on their stocks and eat halved grapefruits. God dammit.

That was like pure unadulterated jealousy right there. I just know if I did half of those things my GPA would do happy jig on its way out of the dog pit because right now the only way my GPA could be lower was if I never did any of my work, as opposed to my current policy of only doing most of my work except for the ones that are stupid or sometimes the really hard ones but at least I have the good sense to feel really guilty and distraught about it like I just ran over your cat or something.

I just ran over your cat. But it's not my fault. I'm still learning how to drive. Nineteen young and still can't drive, I know, Horatio, you are thinking, I am starting to question your status as Ladies Man Exra -Ordinaire.

Question for you dear reader, when you learned to drive, did you do it standard? I'm guessing not, unless you're some kind of fruity European, but if you did, do you sometimes lie awake at night and wonder why you didn't just be a normal person and find yourself an automatic beauty rather than trying to ride that damn pole like you were a dowdy stripper on her first day? My parents got together nineteen years ago and made a conscious decision to spite me by both going in for standard models. They save gas and whatever but they are hella hard to start. You have to release the clutch and push down on the gas in some kind of complex mating dance that my clumsy feet have yet to master, and it's funny when you're in a car and the bozo next to you stalls his car in the middle of the road but it really loses it comedic effect when it is you who has stalled the car for what you would know was the 26th time if you hadn't stopped counting after the 14th conk out and your dad is sitting in the passenger seat a storm of confused, patient anger because you would think that the law of averages or something would dictate that I would figure it out after enough attempts, but I guess Stats never met me huh.

Hey I could keep this up all night. It's really easy once you get into it and then hit cruise control and the words just come out all automatic like rat tat tat, boom boom boom, let's see how far he can go without a period. There are period shortages in Africa man. What do you think all the stress and guns in Darfur is about? Just doing my part to save the planet, dogg.

H. Halpern