Some coursework went from a focus on diversity into very specialized per flavor. Visiting professors and seminars brought the world to university. I even got to take a course on South Africa! The professor was kind in explaining, This is really different, so don't beat yourselves up if you struggle. Through lecture and literature we were able to see from afar both another nation and culture plus begin to understand how a culture authors a person. It was a form of immersion though not the same as learning the language and living some place else. The professor was really hungry to learn too and this led to all of us being superengaged. Our discussions often led us into the waters of critcal thinking about self in the world. And thinking about un-named topics like...Relating to a character in the book The Life and Times of Michael K; is it empathy? Is empathy different than sympathy? Are we relating to just parts of the character? Is that what makes the story literature? How can a culture so clashing and contentious still be unified? The questions would mount up and over meals people would realize no matter the specialized look at humankind there were universal themes, universal issues. That much liberality in acknowledging "other" made some people excited.
Although there was job shortage and stiff competition for "good jobs"(work with meaning, we called it), there was also a consistent pulse to workstudy. Might be internships, maybe foreign exchange, possibly a route via grad work, more-advocates-than-recruiters would explain about work less defined than the dwindling supply in the newspaper's Classifieds. Travel was becoming more regular after hot war and cultural moshes.
My own parents heard me out on some ideas, but my mom was astute on each one of her kids' true readiness for big undertaking. Not sure if you're ready became her way of urging no without an outright no that might make someone, ah maybe rebel against a no. But you have no idea how much I have been learning. That's true, I'm sure it's a lot. But you are also only ten years past being ten years old Missy. And the world is big. I guess so.
Others started to get assignments and posts. Even as there were several people congratulating a favorite student (brains and charm) on really going to teach, overseas I couldn't keep my own mind from cut-to-the-quick questioning. She had some elevator-speech-like answers for some questions. There's no way to know everything ahead of time, she insisted to others. She was tall and just gorgeous or that's how my eyes were seeing her that day (along with myself as little and not much older than a ten year old), and she searched my face. Any more questions? It was hard to ask the one I'd wanted to ask. But before she put the last item back into her briefcase I asked quickly, Are you scared?
12,000 Latinos, what could go wrong?
The school has 12,000 people?
Fortunately I don't have to teach all of them at once. At least, not at the start. I think.
We hate to lose you.
I really wouldn't have thought so. I can be really loud and tudey when necessary.
We'd laughed about the new word "tudey" along the way. And she'd fashioned a sort of poem in the air about feeling, sometimes, the women of her family and flavor speaking through her.
Sometimes it is necessary.
Will you come back and visit?
Maybe, but you won't be here! You will graduate and go onto different projects!
Thanks. You'll do so good!
Take care.
After classes, after work I caught up with Beth. She called it mining the day. She was at a different school and the City was the journal between us. I was very on-campus-oriented so most of my stories about the day seemed just homebody. But relaying news and events and pulling bits out for potential lyrics made it seem like anything might be important. We came up with part of a song called Tudey but the working on it kinda fell apart in overtired laughter.
Yeah, she was the one who got us to dance like chickens!
Like chickens? Explain.
We'd gone to help youth at a center or something. I'm sure I wrote down where we were. The day started with food and exercise. But one guy in a suit, no tie, got all arms crossed and standoffish.
About what?
Said something like, I'm not eating THAT that's chicken food.
Just listening so the story had to play out.
You know how you can make a blunder funny? Like with kids, you can turn it funny?
Cha.
Well, he didn't. And what he said just laid there like a dead soccer ball. And, she went over to the table, all tall, and was really dramatic about how lovely what we had was. She didn't talk, but made a plate and ate it with her hands and licked her fingers one at a time like Deliciosah! Then she threw out the paper plate and started to act like she was turning into a chicken!
She did?
Cha. At first it looked like she was choking or poisoned, but she got it going on until she really looked like a chicken. And then people started laughing. Some got food and did the same. Some just started flopping around, all of us dancing around like chickens.
Did it help?
It did, it broke the ice and limbered us up for the activity. And nobody even fought with that guy.
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