I was just walking to my room and I heard a door slam. Out of curiosity I turned around to see a girl very quickly apologize, whisper that she just had to go to the bathroom, and run back into your room. And that’s when it hit me…I’m a teacher. And apparently a pretty intimidating one at that. Because 10:45 means IN YOUR ROOM. A strange rule that did not/does not exist at “Winter School” at St. Paul’s but is apparently rigorously enforced during the ASP.
This is also when I realized that I haven’t written any updates for a week; it’s coincidentally been a week since the students arrived. Mr. Bazos was absolutely not lying during my interview when he warned me that this would be an 18 hour a day job. Love that six hours of sleep. Love it.
Soo…the day they got here. Me and the three other interns in Con 20 and our house supervisor* spent an incredibly long time brainstorming the “theme” for our door signs. My proposal was gangsta (some of you will be happy to know that I’m over my hipster stage and have move on/back to gangsta). This was also relevant because I was hoping we’d have a Con 20 “gang sign” that I could teach all the girls to flash at me instead of waving. Purpose: so I didn’t have to remember if they were in my dorm or not. This idea did not please the other interns who wanted us to be “classy.”
So after fooling around with: CONvent, CONstance, CON artists, and CONcentration, we settled with making our theme: the Con 20 CONstellations. Adorable isn’t it? I actually kinda wanted to puke in my mouth when I saw that we had a sign welcoming the girls telling them they were “Gonna be stars!” It reminded me of the cabins at Camp Coniston. When I was twelve.
The other interns were also apprehensive (told me I was not allowed to) about me showing the girls our gang sign. Which I thought was really creative: right hand fist, left hand peace sign, cross arms. Result: two – zero (=20) for the person looking at you. If you ask me…they’re babying these girls a little much. Like seriously…Hillary Shih came here from Hong Kong in third form for three months before returning home, these girls are coming here from New Hampshire after fifth form for five weeks.
Anyways, I was able to hold myself back and help them feel comfortable for about…six hours, before I broke out the gang sign. In my introduction though, I was sure to point out that the other interns did not feel comfortable with it because they wanted us to be a “classy” dorm and apparently the gang sign did not make us “classy”.
To which one girl pointed out that if you stick out your pinky finger it becomes classy. To which another girl pointed out that it was necessary for it to be your right pinky finger and not your left one … because that was decidedly not-classy/trashy.
And that was when I first fell in love with my dorm.
*Con 20 interns =
Hillary, a Smith ’08 grad and the World Religions intern. She’s also allergic to everything except for seeds and as such pretty much carries seeds with here wherever she goes because she just can’t get enough food. She’ll also be teaching third form humanities at SPS this coming fall.
Suzanne, a Williams ’09 grad and one of the Writing Workshop interns. My fun fact about her is that she puts up with the fact that I lost my card on the first day but was too embarrassed to admit it so I still haven’t gotten a new one so I borrow hers all the time.
Amira, a grad student at Columbia and one of the Shakespeare for Performance interns. She’s really artsy. Actually, most of my dorm is really artsy because it’s all the theatre kids.
House supervisor = Kolby, a Bates ’09 grad who was the Shakespeare intern last summer. She knows Amadi.
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