Fried Knitting
Today were my last two classes – a continuation of Combination Knitting and Interesting Intarsias. Let’s just say that the intarsias were less than fascinating by the time 2:00 rolled around! I was so tired, so fried, so at my wits’ end – and my students were pretty stuperous, too!
I felt terrible that one of my students – either overwhelmed by me, the material, or both – left the class when we moved from one room to another. Damn.
I struggled on, teaching in a turgid, thick way – ick – and my students, so dutiful and so tired – relentlessly mixing colors and duplicate stitching. We all worked so hard to cut through the afternoon haze.
At the end of class, for some unknown reason, I was overwhelmed with emotion and began crying. Perhaps it was the fact a student had left, perhaps it was my belief that I hadn’t taught as well as I might have, perhaps it was one of those tears-will-pop-up-at-the-oddest-times mother-loss moments. Who knows. What I do know is that I have never been – nor will I ever be – an attractive cryer.
On to dinner, where I met two very delightful women, one of whom had studied Chinese history and culture (which fascinates me). I loved hearing her go on about the subject. What a great dinner! We stayed in the dining hall chatting until about 7:00, when I left to clean out my classroom and pack the car.
Then on to the lounge where I watched Fox – Malcom in the Middle, The Simpsons and Arrested Development – all the time listening to a woman next to me (“I never watch TV except for HGTV and CNN”) complain about what “crap” the shows were.
I told her I thought The Simpsons was one of the best written show on TV, and she became very quiet. At that moment there was a terrific intellectual sight gag on the show, she laughed out loud and was converted. It will take a bit longer to bring her around to Arrested Development (she said it was “modernist crap”) but I felt a minor victory.
And finally, after all that, a deep and wonderful conversation with two other teachers about the meaning of fiber education in life – our goal as teachers to grow our souls as we enlighten our students, and other stuff that would sound like so much bull if we weren’t all so sincere. It was the kind of conversation one can only have when one is pretty fried. The kind of conversations I used to have all the time in educational theatre (an oxymoron if there ever was one!)
And now we sleep – ah, dorm life…