It Does Not Escape Me

“…irony does not escape him: that the one who comes to teach learns the keenest of lessons, while those who come to learn learn nothing.”  (Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee)

“He” is a (fictional) professor - the passage goes on to say, “It is a feature of his profession which he does not remark to Soraya. He doubts there is an irony to match it in hers.”

Coetzee was referring to a hooker, but the passage made me think of my last week of classes. Possibly because I can’t help but think how much we never remember from classes. Possibly because I feel so keen, so insightful from all of my lessons learned this semester. And (most) possibly because some of the students in my class are really familiar with hookers. Some so familiar they are doing time for spending too much time with them. I doubt there is anything other than literary irony to match prison life.

Some of them tried to sneak US Weekly’s inside of their textbooks and I’d say “Put that crap away – I am spitting knowledge over here.”

An older, wiser inmate would say, “they have all these pictures of movie stars getting arrested for drugs – like the Paris and Melinda (he was old, he didn’t know) Hiltons – and all their partying gets glamorized but nobody ever thinks about people doing serious time for getting them drugs…look at us… someone was buying…”

And I’d be like, “wait – are you Paris Hilton’s drug dealer? Sweet!”  Kidding. I wouldn’t say a thing (other than – that would make a good essay topic). It’s not my time to organize a radical uprising, not to mention one inspired by an US Weekly.

It is my time to announce that as of this evening, I just got more time. Free time until mid-January. I’ll miss lecturing and I’ll miss handwriting comments that I have to cross out because my spelling skills fall in the bottom third of the class I am teaching, but for now I am ok that I’m down to one job – well two, if you count being a human.