Useful Things I Have Learned This Week

1. If you take three things to the copy center and and ask them to make 115 copies of each, and then you accidentally leave your lesson plan there, the copy center staff, ever diligent (and unable to read much English), will make 115 copies of your lesson plan. These can then be used for paper hats.

2. If, while making a serious point in class during which is it crucial to have the attention of all sixty students, you accidentally launch a glob of spit onto a girl in the front row, your serious point will be lost in a chorus of shrieking and laughing.

3. If your class of sixty students is shrieking and laughing, and one girl in the front row is jumping up and down and wiping her coat with a kleenex, it will take a minimum of thirty seconds to restore order.

4. If the students' Chinese psychology teacher happens, out of an interest in English, to drop in on your class and observe your lesson, the students' responsiveness and attention to said lesson will increase markedly.

5. If you teach a critical thinking class in which your definition of logic plays a central role, and the same students in your English class the next day cannot recall that definition, nor any of the words therein, nor even if there be such a thing as logic, you will be disappointed. Don't take it too hard. You probably did that to your teachers, too.

6. If a student fails a test, sometimes she will cry. This is a bit awkward, but pretending to receive a phone call and rushing from the room is not the wisest course of action.

7. If you steal a french fry belonging to your wife and replace it with a lemon slice of roughly the same size and weight, she will still somehow see through this clever ruse. I recommend that you try this with your own spouses and resport the results; perhaps mine is preternaturally alert.

8. If your sister tells you that she is planning to make an explosive device "just for fun" when she visits her friends over the weekend, and you point out to her that this is completely insane and on the level of someone who says she is going to learn to juggle flaming chainsaws over the weekend, your sister will think you are angry.

9. If your exercise routine for the past three months has consisted of strolling down to the kitchen to see if there are any brownies left, pushups are hard to do.

10. A word aptly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.

Dave

P.S. You didn't really think I did that to the crying student, did you? I gave her a tissue. I mean, what else could I do?