Finite Jest

I saw this pop up on facebook today - it's a site that tells you which famous writer you write like.  I just plugged in some stuff from here and prayed for a cool name to pop up.  I got David Foster Wallace!  Hahaha, Ladyfingers will be furious, as he worships the footnoted ground on which DFW walks.  I highly doubt the legitimacy of facebook apps., but it made me laugh just the same.  At least is wasn't Dr.Seuss.  Or Thomas Friedmann.  Or either of the Brontes.  Damn it, how do I make an umlaut?  (On a new computer that is giving me fits.)

Ladyfingers and I had a contest last year about who could have the most meaningful final class with their students.  Since he had seniors, and students who actually try at school, he kind of had the upper hand.  But, I had a lot of misfits who had actually started to read by the end of the year.  (I was really hoping to see how my most difficult student was affected, as he had revealed that my class was like therapy, even though we had a very rocky start where he had some sort of boundary-testing outburst every five minutes.) 

Ladyfingers decided to read DFW's commencement speech (probably 20 mins long?), because he loves to hear the sound of his own voice.  I opted for a Bukowski poem (uh, it was a tame one, and remember, these kids don't read so it's not like they will be corrupted) for two reasons:

1. I never got around to teaching poetry because trying to talk about poetry makes me uncomfortable.  Yes, this is one of my many teaching failures.  But, I also got them ready to write for (community) college, which is a decent tradeoff.
2. I found a clip of Bono reading it, which got me out of reading it aloud to a bunch of eye rollers.

I printed up copies of "Roll the Dice,"  passed them out, and then waited for the video to upload.  My school has one dial up connection, so things like this can take awhile.  Laptop crashed.  Then the projector had to be rebooted.  Then we had an effing fire drill!!!  We finally got back to class with three minutes left and things started to come together, but at this point they were just staring at the clock, which I could kind of understand.  The last thing they cared about was my goodbye message.  But I had spent a lot time putting this together, and I wasn't going to give up now.



The bell rang with about 5 seconds left in Bono's reading, and I made them sit and listen to it!   (I would have soooo hated me if I had me as a teacher.)  I told them to take the poem with them and to re-read it every now and then.  The difficult kid threw his in the trash as he walked out without saying goodbye. 

Of course, Ladyfinger's DFW reading was a smashing success, even though he'd broken his cardinal rule of never using a writer/book that you actually care about, because when the students tell you they hate it, you can't help but take it personally.  This year he read the speech again and his students blatantly yawned in his face; he contemplated jumping out the window.  I didn't even bother with a final "lesson."