Celebrations

Celebrating Beebs' birthday with artichoke pizzas at Union Pizzeria (sooo delicious!) They have a huge beer menu - I finally found one that I can say I actually like (Lambic). It only took me twelve years to find one! I don't know if it was the alcohol talking or what, but we all found the way they identified the leftovers on the boxes hilarious. I am Woman with glasses Artichoke. :)



Celebrating a friend's wedding at A.Fusion - the food was okay (fairly typical Chinese & Thai food), but the wedding cake was amazing (so moist & fluffy!). It was one of the best wedding cakes I've ever had! The bride was beautiful, the groom was corny (in a cute way), and everyone partied until the early hours of the morning. :)

Classroom emergency

I took my class into the WAC lab to work on a project last night. Midway through the class, I heard a loud thunk from across the room, followed by some gasps and a few OMG!s. I rushed across the lab (there are two connecting rooms - I was in the other one) to see what had happened and found that a student (not from my class) had fallen from his chair and was having a seizure. I told one of the students to move the chairs away from him and ran out into the hallway to call for security & 911 (there's an emergency call button outside the lab). The paramedics showed up a few minutes after the student's seizure had ended - as soon as he saw them, he got up and tried to run off, but his knees buckled and he went down again. The paramedics tried to help him, but he kept yelling about how he didn't want any help. After about ten minutes, he was able to get up again - he pushed through the crowd and took off out of the lab (he even left his stuff). The paramedics said they weren't going to do anything further because he was combative, so they left. The lab manager and security looked for the student throughout the school, but couldn't find him.

My class ended shortly after that and I ended up leaving without knowing what had happened to the student. I heard this morning that he came back an hour later to collect his things and didn't want to talk to anyone; I also heard that last night was the third time the student had had a seizure in the lab and the third time he refused treatment (apparently, he once got into an argument with the paramedics and additional security had to be brought in to diffuse the situation). A few of the lab assistants who were there during the other times said he doesn't have any health insurance, so that's why he always refuses treatment. Another mentioned that he once said that he doesn't trust doctors. Obviously, this information is coming from secondhand sources, so who knows what's really true... regardless, it was all very scary and sad (and if the insurance part is true... could we please get some damn universal health care going so that things like this don't have to happen?!?)

RBOC

• There are still posters with L's picture on them (covered in handwritten notes from the students) plastered around the school; otherwise, things at Large College are mostly back to normal. I know that life goes on, but... well, it's just so weird to think that he's really gone. He started at LC a few terms after I did, so I've seen him on a almost daily basis for almost four years. It doesn't feel right to not see him.
  
  
• Four more weeks left in the term, which means there are only eight more times I have to get up at the buttcrack of dawn. Woo-hoo! My students are still fantastic (I will so miss this group when they graduate!), but they are struggling... they're coming in later and later each day. It's disruptive and annoying, but I have to admit that there's a part of me that fully understands. A few of them live in the southern suburbs - it takes them almost two hours to get to school (via multiple trains) each day. I wouldn't want to have to get up at 4:30 to go to school (especially considering none of them signed up for an early-morning class - it was originally a late-afternoon class).
  
  
• The snow. Sigh. I have absolutely no use for snow after the holidays. It's no longer pretty or festive. It's dirty, crusty, and annoying. Go away! This is why I need to move to California.
  
  
• This is the time of the year in which I always have a major case of the blahs. I've been working out at least five days a week and I can say that it's helping, but overall, I still feel... well, just yucky. The weather is gross, it's dark when I leave in the morning and dark when I get home from the gym... it's just always gloomy in my world. February always brings an unrelenting sadness (though I'm not depressed about anything in particular). For it being such a short month, February really seems to drag on and on.
  
  
• Dear John Mayer: I love you. Please stop saying douche-y things. Seriously, WTF is wrong with you?!? [full interview here] 
  

Loss

It has been a rough week at Large College... we found out on Monday that a student died last week (cancer). The news was quite shocking for most of us, as we didn't even know he was sick. We all knew he was an alcoholic and just assumed any health problems/erratic behavior had to do with his issues with alcohol - we never imagined he also had cancer.

Although he occasionally had to be sent home (when he came to school drunk or hungover) and sometimes made inappropriate comments, L was a popular student. He had a great sense of humor and was always up for a debate. He was also the type of student every instructor loves to have in class - the one who always participates and makes interesting/thoughtful points during discussions.

We learned about his death via email... we were also asked to spread the news to the students. I wasn't too thrilled about announcing it during class (1. I don't deal well with death & 2. It just didn't feel right), so I pulled aside a few students I knew were close to him and shared the news (cue crying from everyone). Ugh. It was all so sad. :(

This is the first time I've had to deal with a student's death; hopefully, it will be the last. It's just so weird to think about how he was sitting in classes just a few weeks ago... and now he's dead.