I’ve been angry ever since Saturday night when I really wanted to go to the Pumpkin Festival in Keene but couldn’t because I had too much homework. I was at work on my presentation for my Monday 8:30 a.m. class in Adult Education. The festival in Keene is a big deal around here. Over thirty-thousand pumpkins have been carved and are illuminated along the streets. It’s the biggest such event anywhere. Even Boston can’t rival it, so it’s the source of much local pride. I’d thought it would be a cool thing to see and to photograph.

But first I had to get this report done. I’d spent the past week researching Mexican immigration in America and was surrounded by books, taking notes, searching on my VERY slow Internet for photos of Cesar Chaves and Dolores Huerta and all kinds of things. I wanted it to be good. Then I found some incredible Farm Security Administration photos and decided I need to do a PowerPoint instead, to show the pictures best. I did a lot of extra research into that. I read a whole chapter on Mexican history with relation to the US. I made the presentation solid on content, thorough, interesting and beautifully illustrated. I even went and grabbed on of Ruben’s cartonerias for the last page. I shifted things around and polished and rewrote and perfected, all the while watching the hours roll by. “If I can finish in the next hour, I’ll still be able to go, even though it’s dark already.” I came to this task directly from the presentation I had to do for Monday afternoon.

But it wasn’t cooperating. I worked and I worked and I worked, but I wasn’t finishing. So I finally realized I wasn’t going anywhere that night. I was pissed. All I ever do is work. That’s okay to a point, but I have to have SOME life. My classmates do, and if I don’t I’ll go crazy. I was REALLY cranky. But at 1:00 am I finished my report.

Monday morning rolls around. I get up early, check to make sure my presentation is saved in a variety of formats, pack up and get to school in plenty of time. I go to the computer and install the PowerPoint on that, and check it to make sure it’s working. It is. I’m all set.

I’d brought along some realia with me, too: Mexican music, and two objects from Mexico. On the way, one of them broke.

So the presentations began. Elizabeth asked how much time everyone would need. Everyone said five minutes. I said ten, just to be safe. She said she’d keep an eye on time to keep things on schedule. So off the presentations went, one after the other. A few were five minutes. Most were ten. One, from the big talker in class, was fifteen. Not only that, it was filled with misinformation. I knew because it’s one subject I knew something about. On and on and on she went, redundant in and some cases wrong. Follow-up questions. Time was running out. Two of us left to present. Elizabeth turned to the one who wasn’t me and told her to get up. She finished when there were four minutes left of class.

Elizabeth asked if I wanted to present now, or wait till Monday. I was livid. Time management would have allowed us all to speak. It wasn’t an intentional slight against me, but still it felt like that, to be the one person left out. I said, “No point in doing it now. Class is almost over and everyone’s burnt out and has to leave.” “Is that okay with you?” she asked? What the feck was I supposed to say? “No?” I had ruined my weekend to get this done on time, I had worked my ass off on it, I had put thought and artistry into it, I had broken one of my treasures to get it here, and there wasn’t time for my turn. Our next class isn’t for a week, by which time the momentum of the experience is long over. “Is it a problem doing it next week?” she asked. “By then I will have forgotten everything, but oh well.” And one more time, “Are you okay with this?” What the feck am I supposed to say? I said, “I’ll live through it.” It was a crappy situation because, to everyone who didn’t know the backstory it probably just seemed like I was being spoiled and cranky. But I wasn’t willing to make nice about it, either, because it wasn’t okay with me, but what could I do. I was livid all day, thinking how I should’ve just led some kind of real life instead of slaving over this stupid project.

I write this all here not just to vent, but to make an important observation about teaching: If you’re going to ask students to have something done at a certain time, you’d better be sure you collect or otherwise process it. Otherwise, it’s not honoring them as much as you’re requiring they honor your rules. It has sapped my enthusiasm. It makes me reluctant to take deadlines seriously. Even just this one event, because it had was rooted in an extreme situation, makes me dislike the class. Further, if you are going to have people do presentations, don’t leave one person out. No matter how mature and confident they may be, it still feels like shit, and you put them in the awkward position of having to be nice about it or expressing their feelings at the risk of seeming spoiled to the others.

Correct homework on time. Collect homework on time. Maintain the same expectations for yourself as you do for your students. In a class like this where people had SAID they didn’t need much time but went way over, it is the teacher’s duty to keep things on track and schedule. I’d said I’d need ten minutes because I felt I’d probably need less and wanted to be conservative. I was trying to be accurate. I wouldn’t have gone over. But that, too, backfired.

And finally, tonight when I got the same teacher’s feedback to a journal entry about listening, I felt further invisible and even more cranky. I read the assignment that we were to observe all the occasions we had to listen to English in a given day. Maybe I read it wrong, maybe not. So I wrote about all the language I heard. Her comment was that she was surprised that I made no mention of birds singing to their mates, wind howling that winter is coming, etc. Now, really. She knows I am a radio producer. I am also 55. Does she really think I’ve never thought of those things? Audio has been my life. It was insulting. The title of my paper was “English I hear every day,” even. It just was another thing that made me feel invisible, and it insulting my intelligence. Of COURSE of thought of those things, for Christ’s sake. Duh. I feel like I should go back and check the assignment to see if it WAS English we were listening for, or just sounds. But whatever.

Today has been a bad day. It’s the kind of day I was afraid I’d have a lot of. I hope this isn’t a trend. I was storming around later when talking to Kim and Lauren, and swearing and stuff as we tromped through the woods after class, and Kim backed up and said, “I sure don’t want to get on Ginna’s bad side!” I didn’t know I was that ferocious. But when I’m mad, I’m mad.