"Stop trying to pretend you're not old!"

On Tuesday nights, I have office hours from 10 pm - midnight. Nobody has stopped by tonight, so I decided to research dental insurance options.

A few minutes ago, one of my students walked by in hot pink leggings and a turquoise tank top that says "Miami." She stopped in my door frame and said, "Kim, you were alive in the '80's! Look, I'm 80s."

I then agreed and told her I remembered the eighteen months I was alive in the '80's very well. She said, "Stop trying to pretend you're not old!"

I couldn't even argue because I was researching dental insurance options.

She just walked in with a high pony tail and a yellow scrunchie and said, "Now I have a scrunchie!"

I love my job.

Backpacks and nouns

Thursday night is a big night in my building. Thursday is the night we conduct weekly room inspections. What does a room inspection entail, you might ask? Well, here's what I told my girls at the beginning of the year:

Your suites will be checked for the following items:Beds madeClosets organizedFloors swept/vacuumedTrash taken outBathroom chores completed

This is not an example of a passable room:

The piles of laundry and shoes aside, another issue with this room is that there are four backpacks in the middle of the floor. The rooms are double occupancy (two people living in a room) so the expectation would be a maximum of two book bags. Confused, I asked the residents of this room, "Why are there so many backpacks in the floor?" 

One roommate offered me the following explanation:

"This is my Monday/Wednesday/Friday backpack, this is my Tuesday/Thursday backpack, and this backpack has the books for my history paper."

The fourth bag belongs to her roommate.

I'm not sure what's more ridiculous: the fact that this girl carries three separate backpacks or the fact she has a separate bag exclusively for the sources for her history paper.
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Since room inspection takes more time than regular nightly room check, I have more time on Thursday nights to discuss important matters and questions students have. In one suite, two of my residents asked me what part of speech I thought the word "noun" is.

After debating its merits as a noun and an adjective, we concluded "noun" is a noun itself. Then, one of the girls supported our conclusion:

"A person can say 'I am feeling sad," but not 'I am feeling noun.'"

Ladies and gentlemen, this is what teenagers ponder.

Wet quarters

I work at a school where the state's best and brightest come to advance themselves academically. I'm talking classes like calculus 64 and physics 82; these kids don't mess around. My role in all of this is to help students adjust to living away from home and occasionally handling relationship crises.

One of the many new and exciting concepts students learn when they come to live at school is how to do laundry. Questions about colors, sorting, or how much laundry detergent to use are common, but one question I was asked tonight took me by surprise.

"Kim, do wet quarters still work?"

Yes. Yes they do.