Laughing In The Face of Past-Chase and Gay Stuff

Hahahahaha....you...you really thought you could post every day.  You dumb bastard.

It turns out writing a blog post every day when you actually have stuff to do proves fairly difficult.  By no means do I have a full work week with 18 hours of classes to teach, but that doesn't count the commute, time between classes, and lesson planning. 

But it doesn't matter.  It's worth it.  For one simple reason.  I love my job.  Like actually enjoy it.  Not the type of enjoyment that comes from doing an easy job, in which you relish in the amount/lack of work you get away with doing.  But the type of enjoyment characterized by an excitement to ride the bus to school every morning.  A spring in my step as I leave the building knowing that I've given my students something that they'll probably take with them for the rest of their life.

This feeling has been pretty strong recently, especially in my newspaper reading classes in which we've been discussing gay marriage.  It's really something special.  Imagine having a conversation about gay marriage in which the topic of religion NEVER COMES UP.  Although the debate becomes infinitely more simple and quite less emotional, it becomes a bit more difficult to dismiss typical ignorant concerns as a symptom of religious zeal. 

The ignorance in China regarding gay marriage is rampant, by the books, run of the mill ignorance.  Most of these students do not know any (openly) gay people and have never really talked about the concept of homosexualtiy, let alone the legalization of gay marriage.  This true ignorance is of course in stark contrast to the "ignorance" that the liberal elite (myself sometimes included) like to use in the place of calling someone a stubborn bigot, religious drone, or right-wing nut job.

It's getting to sit down and talk with each student about what they know about homosexuality, what they know about gay marriage, and how they feel about gay marriage that is truly the best part of my job.  I'd by lying if I told you I wasn't also trying to sway some opinions while I'm at it, but I'm making sure to reward each student for simply stating their opinion.  Even if this opinion is firmly stating the homosexuality is strange and they don't want to be around it.

You should all be happy to hear that about 85% of my students are in support of gay rights. Before celebrating too much, I made sure to acknowledge the fact that I was only dealing with a small sample of the young and college-going population.  Not exactly the most conservative or traditional crew, but it is a start.

So I will try and perhaps post a little more than every two weeks.  I kind of got psyched out by not doing it for so long...but that ends now!  (For at least a couple of weeks.)

And I promised a long time ago to post the ocean-trifecta of Pringles.  And here they are:

Seaweed, crab, and shrimp.  All three at once is a mindfuck.