Pooping as Procrastination

Five weeks have passed since Mardi Gras break, and tomorrow is the day when the students can finally go home (or at least somewhere other than our building) for a well-deserved break. As I am sitting in my office writing an assignment for class, two students are on a couch stressing about calculus. Referring to her earlier British literature homework, one of them just said,

"Earlier, I took like...a twenty minute poop. I was just like, 'My stomach hurts really bad right now, but this is way better than reading that stupid poem.' That was my train of thought."

Welcome to the mind of a delirious pooping high school girl at a school for gifted and talented students.

Influenza, Typhoid, and Tuberculosis

I was just sitting in my office with a few students, and we were discussing some exciting new ideas for hall themes for next year. Some of our brilliant ideas were: Safari; Crime Scene; Hotel; Wal Mart Wonderland; Construction Site; Ancient Civilizations; Influenza, Typhoid, and Tuberculosis; 1491: Before Columbus; The Mafia (incorporating Hotel and Crime Scene) and Egyptian Hieroglyphics. Just as I was about to propose From Russia with Love, loud shrieks echoed through my office and into the hall. Within just a few inches of two girls' faces was the scariest thing to happen to our floor since the work service students forgot to empty the mop water.

That's right, a ginormous spider:

After successfully capturing the spider in a bottle and giving it a few air holes, we continued to brainstorm for 2012-2013 hall themes.

Other suggestions since starting this post: Pizza, Cats, Cats and Sarcophagi, Bosnia/Herzegovina, Sweden, The Olympics, The History of Buttons, Raj Patel/Nicki Minaj, and the LSMSA Basketball Team.

Since publishing: Chins, Famous Dictators, Not-So-Famous Dictators, Obscure Presidents, Billionaires, Victoria's Secret, Obscure Super Heroes, League of Nations, Movies,  Breeds of Monkeys, Medieval Torture Devices, History of Pascal ("Not only was he a famous mathematician, but did you know he invented the roulette wheel AND the syringe? Think of all the heroin addicts in Vegas who don't know who Blaise Pascal is!"), Janitorial Supplies, a History of Socialism in England, France, Kanye West Songs, Space Exploration, Medieval Popes, Fashion Through the Ages, Deep Sea Creatures, Types of Parties, Cephalopods, Giraffes Running, Kangaroos Birthing, Volcanoes, Types of Hats, Types of Clouds, and Types of Swamp Monsters

"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.

Tuesday Night Studies

I am currently studying for chemistry with multiple students.

Connor just said, "You know what I had for dinner?"

"TWO RED BULLS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

This Is Just Like Mean Girls

Living with high schoolers--not my biological children, but forty 15-18 year olds for which I am responsible thanks to in loco parentis--means lots of funny little moments, and someone needs to document them. Today's moment, and the inspiration for my blog title (and the blog itself) is as follows:

When my students leave to go home for a long weekend, I hide the trash cans so they will not fill them up and leave me with several tons of trash to take out.

This weekend, however, my students outsmarted me by leaving six bags of their trash in the hallway...or so they thought.

Tonight at room check, I held a meeting with the students on my hall and put on quite a show. I began the meeting with the question, "Does anyone have any idea why we're having a hall meeting?" and one student guessed, "Because we left the hall messy?"

Then, I picked up a large gray trash bag and dumped the bags of trash left on my hall onto the lobby floor.

"This was left on our hall," I said. Then I held up an opened trash bag. "I was going to go through it all and figure out whose trash this was, but there were used tampons in here, and I didn't want to touch them."

There was some conversation about finding out who had a period last week. Then, I asked the question of the day: "Who here thinks it's acceptable to leave trash in the hall?"

Of course, nobody raised her hand.

"Nobody? All right, then. Whoever did this needs to own up to this. The punishment is two days without social privileges; if nobody admits to it, I'm taking social privileges from everyone on the hall."

One girl, Connor (side note: names will be changed to protect the guilty), spoke up and said, "I can claim three of those bags," and proved it to everyone by showing off her discarded applesauce container and PopTart box to the rest of the hall. Eventually, Connor decided to take one for the team and claim all six bags.

As Connor was bagging the trash to take it to the dumpster, Elizabeth spoke up and said, "Kim, this is just like Mean Girls."

Biggest compliment ever? Definitely.

After that, I simply said "Bethany made out with a hot dog. Now go upstairs, and make good choices."