November 10, 2011

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.

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