hola peeps. i have been drowning in work, so there isn't much time for blogging. Basically the election ruined my life for months and now i'm making up for all the things i didn't/couldnt' do because i was mentally incapacitated with anxiety about "our future." But now i feel better and it's all very like "is that all there is to electing Obama?" So i wanted to note a few things

1. Finals season is coming up. When i was a student i used to think that finals were like the epitome of all that was wretched in the world. Now i am a TA and i realize that NO NO NO, grading finals are in fact the most wretched thing in the world. The only thing that comes a close second is teachign section to a bunch of privileged rich college kids who coudl give two shits about economic disparities and the achievement gap. so anyways my students have their final papers due tomorrow and they have been bombarding me with drafts to read, and coming to office hours and making appointments. I've lost interest in my own story, but the point is that i feel really sorry for all the times that i turned in crappy, night before written papers to my TA's. Now that i have to take time out of my personal work schedule to read 60, 13 page papers, 75% of which are bull shit i realize that i was for sure in that 75%. It's like...it's called a run on sentence! learn about it! Or sometimes i had to include comments like "this sentence needs a verb." For serious. Also liek i said, 90% of my students are rich white girls, and when they write about issues like "black underachievement" and inequity in teh schooling system they refer to their own personal experience like this. "In my experience, i came from an upper class family. Even though my parents didnt' have time to help me they knew my education was important so they hired tutors and got me the finest education. Poor people tend to not value education because their kids do badly in school and tehy dont' even try to help them. In my experience it has nothign to do with social class and has everythign to do with how much parents value education, and poor parents just don't value education." i read this and was like...where do i even begin!!! I have gotten a lot of personal stories liek this in their papers, about why their success in life has had NOTHIGN to do with class.

2. Nick is back from the election trail which has been nice. He's been living in my apartment, which is kind of like living in sin, only it's temporary and not official But we spend most of our time outside in coffee shops and such doing work (me my student emails and him applying for white house jobs) so we dont' really get the whole "cute couple cohabitation" thing going on. Not bad at all. But alas he is trying to get a job in the white house (as is everyone else) and so he'll probably be leaving pretty soon. It's the curse of my attraction to men with big dreams.

3. I went to this dinner party this weekend which included me (daughter of taco trucker), Nick (son of environmentalists middle class michiganders who like to argue alot), Adam (law student/ self described hippie from Maine), a natural resource phd (whose dad is a writer), a canadian natural resource guy (who studies bird migratory patterns), A mixed black girl of kenyan heritage (like barack obama!), and my roommate (who has harvard educated phd parents). Oh and Alex (the poet liar, who is pretty middle class too but likes to talk about henry james alot). Anyways it was an odd assortment of people who just wanted to talk about marxism and economics and how they were reading Moby Dick for fun. When they asked me waht i was reading i was like, "well in between perez and jezebel, i dont' get too read much but i'm really looking forward to reading Twilight next week on my flight home." Their response, "what's twilight?" SERIOUSLY!! sometimes i really hate the circles that i run in. Another response "why dont' you get your news from a real source." i do bitches!! Also i really enjoy perez not just for the gossip but for the fact that he is able to filter important news to the masses. News that that average americans wouldnt' normally access, like he links to nytimes articles and stuff. I find that interesting that by way of reading gossip he has gotten peopel interested in social issues. Did anyone at the table care about this???? no, to them it was just stupid celebrity gossip. ugh snobs. so instead of having a deep discussion about something not deep, we ended up talking about 3rd world farming patterns and how someone was writing their thesis on indigenous farming practices that they studied during their backpacking trip through central america. It was like a not funny version of stuff white people like. After 3 hours i took a hit of hooka and just passed out on the couch because i couldnt' deal with the convo anymore. Oh we also listened to Nigeria 70, which is an obscure collection of Afrobeat music. I have listened to the cd before because my roommate gave it to me and honestly it sounds a lot like latin music, but of course, africa is way cooler than latin america on the obscurity scale.