Lettuce

I have always resisted moving back to the states, because I figured teaching in the public schools and dealing with all the discipline problems would drive me mad. And teacher friends' letters do nothing to reassure. But as my university digs ever deeper into the gene pool for students, behavior problems are increasing. I was listening to the BBC and the commentator was interviewing one of the scientists responsible for mapping genomes. (I don't really know what that means.) But he said that most people would be shocked and embarrassed to learn that humans and lettuce share almost 70% of the same genetic material. I am not shocked, I see it every day and wonder if there is not some way to increase the ratio, my students would be better behaved.

This one girl, brought her hair dryer to class, plugged it into the wall and was drying her hair. I told her to stop that. Same girl next week brought her curler set and plugged that in and was curling her hair. Same girl walked into class carrying a cup of the "cup o' noodles" stuff and was slurping and I mean slurping away. I told her to finish her breakfast (it was 9:00 am) and then come to class. She came back about 10 minutes later and when class finished I was walking in the hall and saw that she had left the cup of the "cup o' noodles" sitting in the hall. SHe could not be bothered to walk the 10 steps down the hall to throw the thing away. Bad enough, but someone had kicked it over spilling curry soup all over the hall.