Flourescent adolescent

Well, I can't seem to wake up today. :-( Woke up late. Got to work late. Moving slow . . .

I think I'm still on LA time, frankly.

Yesterday one of my students kept staring and smiling at me. It made me feel weird and uncomfortably girly. After class another student said it was because I wore a dress. Really? It wasn't even a particularly interesting or sexy dress. Just a dress. :shrugs: The student said I "flipped the script" on them because they are used to seeing me in trousers or jeans, and one week I wore a suit and tie because I had a meeting earlier that day. But ok. Well, I guess I should say it is a mark of my own privilege that I can embrace dressing in ways that fluctuate wildly without much internal emotional turmoil. But that it causes conflict for other people? I find this fascinating in a "Did I push a button or unseat an assumption I didn't mean to?" kind of way.

It never ceases to amaze me when I get strong reactions to what I wear - mostly because the reactions I get always surprise me and aside from a few select pieces most of my stuff comes from Old Navy or places like that. On Sunday I wore the wig and makeup (too much, looking back at the pics) to the Tovey event because I knew I would wind up in lots of pictures and thought it would be a good idea to dress up. soulsister said I looked very "gothic lolita" which made me laugh because it was kinda true in retrospect, but not anything I did on purpose. Just a reworking of my regular clothing (plus the silver belt which is new).

These kinds of observations make me feel like I'm a teenager again, and it occurs to me that I really do change my look much more often than other people I know.

I'm trying to figure out what to wear to my meeting tomorrow with the researcher.

Teaching my Tuesday night class is becoming a challenge because it's such a weird class. It's in the evening and everyone is tired. But worse than that, it's like my class is split down the middle between "gifted-and-talented" students and "remedial" students with no one in between. So I've started introducing basic concepts and enlisting the smarter students to fill-in-the-blanks to keep them engaged.

They expressed some confusion over my syllabus, so I gave them a primer on adult learning theory, and explained to them how I structured the class for adult learning where they will get a basic broad overview from the lectures but can read to their own interests for deeper understanding. Their response? "We're not used to being treated like adults."

Wow.

Is it any wonder I witness such immaturity at times? Educators like to complain that students these days want to be spoon-fed information. But by doing so, do we encourage them to regress? I have three students in this class who freaked out so badly over handing in the first paper they wrote me and begged for extensions. Now I see it's because my assignment challenged them to think critically rather than regurgitate. (They had to write on the concept of privilege and how heterosexism and/or cissexism forms the basis of oppressive policies).

I find it particularly striking because many of the community blogs and individual LJs I read discuss these concepts in-depth and very well. But then, it's reaffirmed to me over and over again how true it is that oppressed people are repeatedly under the burden of educating their oppressors and raising general awareness.

Some days, it just feels like we are all adolescents in one way or another. And thanks to anyone who made it this far. This entry is definitely a tl;dr one!