20 March 2002 ~ Does not work well with others...

The Kitchen Boys, a small group of young men who occasionally make pretty improvisational noise in the Fifth Floor kitchen, are playing tonight. They're all quite good, but I'm really in the mood for something a little more cheerful tonight than "What Pink Floyd would sound like if they played jazz with Godspeed You Black Emperor." I am playing "Here Comes Your Man" by the Pixies. It's been running through my head. It's a little happier than the Kitchen Boys.

Am going to Seattle this weekend to see Cat Power in concert. Hopefully, I will remember to wear fewer articles of clothing than I wore to the Modest Mouse concert. Hopefully, Louise and I can track down Brian and perhaps some of his friends; they're a good crew to hang out with when you're bumming around Seattle and you're not sure what to do first. I have a sneaking suspicion that, supposing we do all get to spend some time hanging out, Louise is going to fall madly headfirst in love with Brian. He's her type. She probably isn't his, but you never know about these flakey Gemini folks. *wicked grin*

My posters came in the mail today. Thanks, mom. Prior to today, I'd decorated a good section of my walls with nothing but cords I ripped out of my phone. A nice, industrial feel, especially with the creepy desk-lamp with the blue lightbulb hanging over the bed. Now, most of my side of the room is one enormous shrine to David Lynch. It's not that I think David Lynch is the only artist worthy of being featured on my walls; it's just that I kind of like the consistency. Yeah. And I'm leaving the wires and cords up, much to Louise's chagrin.

...So... since I know you all are wondering.....

I had my evaluation today. Evergreen kids don't get grades; we get evaluations. You go in, meet with your professor for awhile, shoot the shit a little bit, and then they send you on your way with a piece of paper that says: "Helena was a real bitch to have in class," or some such thing. They also award you credit based on the quality and quantity of the work you did. If your class is worth 16 credits, for example, they might only give you 15, if you missed a bunch of classes, or forgot to turn in some papers or something.

I flunked my final exam. I DID study, but I studied while I was drunk. Not too drunk. Drunk enough so that I shouldn't have expected to learn anything. I didn't turn in the right essays for my final portfolio. I wrote a lousy fucking "intellectual journal" (I HATE that term!) -- each entry took me about 20 minutes: two cigarettes' worth of time outside. Realizing that my work was actually really sub-par, I bullshitted a little bit about DesCartes in one journal entry, just to show I'd been paying attention. I know a little about that guy, so why not? Je pense donc je suis: the first sentence I knew in French. Why not abuse these things for all they're worth?

So, I pretty much expected not to get all of my 16 credits. I went to my evaluation feeling pretty forlorn. I like to send straight A's home, you know? I mean, there's really nobody to send them home to; my mom's proud and all if I do good, but sometimes I really think she doesn't pay a whole lot of attention to these things. Hence the slew of barely-passed math tests she used to keep on the fridge in full shining view. I'm not really anybody's kid anymore, and nobody's actually checking to make sure I'm making decent marks. I'm in it for me now, and nobody else. But still, getting 15 credits out of 16, or worse, 14, or 13, is just so, so depressing.

So I entered my professor's office with head bowed in shame. I was kind of shuffling my feet and crackling my knuckles. For some reason, she seemed happy to see me. I thought maybe she had some sadistic game planned: maybe she was going to tie me up by my ankles and beat me with a book on the history of European botany. Who knows. I probably deserved it for how little freaking effort I put into her damned class. For all the days I left her seminar room yelling to some classmate: "I fucking HATE this shit! I fucking hate how she gives us these completely subjective questions to answer and then expects us to answer them in HER way! WHAT IS THIS, A FUCKING CLASS OF FUCKING SEVENTH-GRADERS?" and then proceeded to go home and write love letters or draw ballpoint snakes on my feet instead of studying -- yeah, I didn't deserve a very good evaluation. I deserved to get punished.

["Um, Professor? I didn't do my homework... Um... my dog ate it... Are you going to punish me now?"]

So anyway, she was sort of grinning. And she said "hi" to me just a little too cheerfully. Maybe she was going to murder me. That sort of thing can happen in Washington, they say.

She said: "So, tell me what you thought of the class. How do you feel it went for you?"

Well, that pushed the "hyper" button on me. It was a nervous-hyper, because I didn't want to say: "I'd rather have taken a class in underwater basket weaving for special ed. football players." It was a nervous-hyper, but my voice came out sounding like Norman's happy-hyper voice, like when he's a little stoned and has this sudden explosive desire to discuss everything about the state of the world all at once. I said: "I liked the writing seminars. I'm going to be an English teacher someday. It was good to um... to talk to other people about their writing, and to see how much I could tell them they sucked, and when I had to hold back, and what I was missing, and..."

I started babbling. My instructor regarded me with hazy eyes. If her eyes were an article of clothing, they'd be a stupid pink sweatshirt with a stupid down-home-country olive-colored bunny appliquéd onto it. You can never tell what the fuck she's thinking. I don't like teachers like that. I like teachers who get really hyper sometimes, who become like little children in their excitement, and scream, "YES!" and "EXACTLY!" and then "YES!" again. I like teachers whose eyes are like grubby old green bandannas that have climbed a thousand mountains. I like teachers who wear sandals to class. I like teachers who look like they'd accept if you offered to buy them a beer, and who look like they'd probably offer you a nice topic for debate in return. I do not like stupid appliquéd-bunny teachers.

She handed me my written evaluation. I looked it over. Sixteen credits. And the evaluation begins with: "Helena is very bright." Weird. Even weirder? She recommended me to the head of the Writing Center as a tutor. I can't believe it. She was never NICE to me. She never SMILED at me. She never even LOOKED at me, except with those stupid sweatshirt eyes. And gahd knows, I HATE teachers who never get excited. Once, I wrote all over a page of notes: "You have no fucking soul, bitch." Why on EARTH would she give me a good evaluation? She doesn't have to! I mean, she can't flunk me, because you don't GET flunked at Evergreen, but she could have written that I'm a good writer, but I'm belligerent and I don't work well with others, nor do I work to my potential. She could have written that my handwriting sucks, and that I'm unappreciative of history, technology, or the dominant paradigm. She could have written that I'm a fucking freak for liking lox and hating sushi. She could have written all manners of mean nasty things. She DESERVED to hate me. Why DIDN'T she!?

She wrote "I love you, Helena" on one page of my notes. That was the page on which I blasphemed humankind in general. I even managed to quote Tom Robbins in that one. I would have torn that one in half if I was my teacher. Gahd! What kind of a lame-ass teacher has no idea what a pathetically bad student she had!?

Oh well. I'm pleased. Not much could be better about the world!

Off to do some real work...

Love,
~Helena*