Two Posts in One!

Did I mention here that I got a new computer? Well, I did! It was actually delivered last weekend, and so far after a week of using it I'm really liking it. I ended up just getting another Dell. I kicked around the idea of getting a Mac for a long time, I really did. But in the end, it seemed that everyone's opinions on Mac vs. PC were pretty equally divided. That, and I've been a PC user for over 10 years now and as much as everyone keeps telling me that Macs are more intuitive, apparently I'm too left-brained for Macs (and too addicted to the ability to right-click) because when I would play around on other people's Macs I wasn't finding them intuitive at all. You all know that I get extremely set in my ways and routines, and since I'm already trying to figure out so many new things, I decided this wasn't the time to try to start figuring out a new computer system. Plus all of my peripheral hardware is already compatible with PCs and might not have been with Macs, and my office computer at school is a Dell so why make things more complicated than necessary? And do you know what I really liked most about Macs? The built-in camera and the nifty design, which probably isn't reason enough to switch brands. But then I saw that for a little bit of extra money I could get a cute little colorful Dell laptop (mine is cherry red!) and personalize it to have pretty much whatever the heck I want, so Dell it was. Is. The computer was a gift from my parents for finishing my MA, so I'm excited to have a nice new computer that I didn't have to pay for myself, and I'm happy that my old Dell is still working just fine. I'm hoping to keep it working as a backup system in case this one ever has issues.

Moving on to Part II, let me finally fill you in on what was going on in my Tuesday afternoon class with Crazy Girl since the issue has finally been resolved. The whole thing escalated for several weeks, beginning with the first day of class.
On the first day of class, this girl walked in, sat down, looked around the circle at the other eight of us in the class (keep in mind throughout that this is a small, discussion-based class) and said, "Why am I always the only one?" So Dr. Hyper (Dr. H. for short...I don't think I've nicknamed this prof yet) said, "The only what?" and she replied, "Oh, nothing, I'm just thinking out loud." The thing is, the obvious conclusion that I jumped to was that she was the only African American student in the class, but she could have been thinking something else, like "Why am I the only non-major in this classroom?" (although frankly even though she was the only person not majoring in my subject, she wouldn't have been able to tell that right off the bat). The rest of that particular class was fairly uneventful, other than the fact that Crazy Girl muttered to herself several times and each time she was asked to clarify, she responded with some variation of, "I'm just thinking out loud."
The second week of class, it became quite clear that she did, in fact, have a pretty major chip on her shoulder when it came to race (or, as Kiki put it when I told her this story, "That's not a chip, that's a whole plate of nachos!"). I'm wary of treading into this topic, so keep in mind as you're reading this that
a) Yes, I am a WASP who feels some amount of..."guilt" is not quite the right word, but something akin to that...for being born white and by most of the world's standards relatively wealthy.
b) I was raised in a place where as an Anglo I was very much in the minority. I do think this gives me a different perspective than an Anglo raised in, say, Idaho (Idaho is pretty white, right?), but I don't pretend that this means I truly understand what it's like to be part of a racial/cultural minority group in this country.
c) I realize that race is still a touchy/problematic issue and anyone that tries to pretend it's not an issue at all has his head pretty far up his ass.
d) I am not trying to discount this girl's feelings, despite how the rest of this entry may come across. I am trying to be as sensitive as possible.
With all of that said, let me continue. The second day of class, several things happened. First of all, this girl arrived fifteen minutes late (to an hour-long class) and then had the audacity to state a few minutes later, "I just want to make sure I'm getting the most out of my time in this class." She interrupted the class countless times. She interrupted other students when they were talking to make her own comments. She mumbled to herself and once again made many more commments about, "Sorry, these are just thoughts in my head," [so keep them in your freakin' head!]. She kept dragging the class terribly off topic. The most awkward thing she did was snap at the professor--for no reason at all whatsoever--"Well, do you REALLY want to hear my opinion? Because most of the time professors ask for opinions but then don't actually care about what the student thinks." I wish I could express her tone in writing, because it doesn't look like much here, but the way she said it in class made the rest of us all kind of suck our breath in and look at each other like, "Whoa, why is she attacking Dr. Hyper?!" Actually, wait, that wasn't the most awkward thing she did. The most awkward thing she did was state, "Well, I'm going to do my project on [Topic Related to Africa], but it's not because of who I am. I could do my project on [Dead White Guy] or [England], or ANYTHING. I didn't choose my topic just because I'm Black."
Needless to say, the rest of us in the class didn't even respond because we were all caught off guard. I know I for one was thinking, "First of all, who even remotely implied that you can only talk about certain things because of your race? Of course you can talk about anything you want. Nobody said otherwise! Nobody in this room even THOUGHT otherwise! And second of all, we're not even supposed to be talking about our projects right now!!"
So Dr. H. broke the awkward silence that followed that statement and talked about how of course nobody thinks that she can only write about certain topics because of her race and race/gender/sexual orientation shouldn't prevent anyone from researching whatever they want, in fact. Dr. H. is currently doing a lot of Hindu studies but she's not Hindu or even religious at all, blah, blah, blah. Basically, Dr. H. deflected the weirdness, but not before Crazy Girl implied that Dr. H. was racist which, trust me, is not at all true.
The whole thing was way more awkward than it is appearing in this text box, and there are so many things that the rest of us thought about and talked about in the grad offices over the next week. Personally, my biggest issue with the whole situation was that Crazy Girl was making a huge issue out of a problem that only existed in her head. I should point out that first of all, this school is actually very diverse. And while this school is certainly not perfect, I also think she should check out some of the schools like the extremely white one where I did my undergrad (and probably the majority of smaller colleges in this country) and get some freakin' perspective. And second of all, the Tuesday afternoon class itself may not appear to be very diverse outwardly, but it includes a gay man, a lesbian, a Chilean citizen, a Jewish guy...so if you feel like playing that game, more than half of the class is part of a marginalized group, and if you consider the fact that the rest of us are women, with just a bit of a stretch you can say that we are ALL prosecuted people to a certain extent. So Crazy Girl really needed to chill.
Basically, it just drove me crazy that she walked in on the first day and automatically assumed that people were going to be judgmental. I tried to put myself in her shoes, I really did, but no matter how I look at it I just keep coming back to the fact that none of us are judgmental people and I was frustrated that she was projecting her own paranoia onto us. [As a side note, this is a character trait that some people have that just makes me crazy in general. It's one of the things that Phil and I were always most likely to fight about back when we were dating, actually. He had some insecurity about the fact that he stayed in our hometown to go to college while most of our circle of friends went away to shool, and because this was something that bothered him, we could never really talk about my college experience because so much of what I said got misconstrued in his mind as me judging him for not being able to have the same going-away experience that I did. Which was just in his head and not my feelings AT ALL. I was (and still am) proud of him for going to school, period, and as long as he was happy, I was happy for him. But he projected his feelings onto me, and it caused some pretty big fights over the years. I understand why such projection happens, and I try to be sympathetic, but that doesn't mean I like it. And that's just one example of many I have encountered. So yeah, I really hate when people play the victim and automatically assume that everyone else is judging them when in fact no one is.]
Anyway, Stacy started feeling like Crazy Girl was causing her grades on assignments to be negatively affected because Crazy Girl's pushing of her own agenda left Dr. H. with very little time to explain the assignments each week. Personally, I think this was a bit of a stretch on Stacy's part, but whatever. Stacy was upset, the rest of us felt uncomfortable around Crazy Girl because you never knew when she was going to lash out at you in class, and that brings us to last week.
Last week Anna had to bring her child to class. Now, I'm not saying that this should be condoned, but in this case it really was an unavoidable situation. Anna's officemate is supposed to watch the baby for an hour on Tuesdays and last Tuesday he didn't show up. Anna couldn't very well leave a toddler alone in her office, and the only other person in our office wing at the time was my officemate, Straight Mate, and to say that Straight Mate isn't exactly a kid person is the understatement of the year. So Anna came to class with her kiddo and explained the situation to Dr. H. and offered to miss class if Dr. H. didn't want the baby there. It's Dr. H's class, and she was well within her rights to say, "Sorry, Anna, but you're just going to have to miss class and suffer the consequences, your childcare issues aren't my problem." She could have said that, but instead she cheerfully said, "Bring him in!" She seriously didn't mind him being there at all.
But Crazy Girl threw a fit about the whole thing. She started with the passive aggressive under-the-breath-comments about how "Isn't this a lawsuit waiting to happen? What if he cracks his head on a desk, I have taught at many universities and we've never allowed a child in the classroom,etc." Finally Dr. H. said, "Actually, we're not breaking any school mandates by allowing him to be here, and yes, he could get injured here but he could also get injured at my house or Anna's or anywhere, so we're just going to continue with class." But the under-the-breath comments from Crazy continued, and she was being a real bitch. At one point she even said that the baby smelled bad. WHO DOES THAT?! (And for the record, he's a very clean kid, I carry him around all the time because I think he's awesome and he doesn't smell bad at all and even if he did he's a year old, for god's sake! He can't use a toilet!)
Eventually Anna left the room in tears. She was stressed enough to begin with. When there's still a fight to have total gender equality in academia, no woman wants her child to be seen as a problem or a burden. It's definitely not an early impression she wanted to be making. So she already felt horrible, and then Crazy Girl made it a million times worse with her comments. So Anna did in fact beg Straight Mate to watch the baby (when she went to get him after class, Straight Mate had covered him in Post-It notes that said "Money is my God") and she came back in time for Crazy Girl's ten minute tirade on education, full of comments so patently absurd that I'm not even going to attempt to write about them here.
Suffice it to say, it was one of the most uncomfortable hours of my life, and I wasn't even directly affected by her comments. After class Dr. H. stayed to talk to Crazy Girl, and apparently following the conversation Dr. H. came to her next class half an hour late looking visibly flustered and upset. None of us know what happened in their conversation, but it obviously wasn't anything positive.
And here's the kicker: she was dominating the class, making the rest of us feel uncomfortable, accusing the professor of things that you don't just throw around lightly, and she was just supposed to be AUDITING the class.
Anyway, I'm not sure exactly what happened last week, other than the fact that Anna, Stacy, Nicole and I wrote a letter (at Dr. H.'s request) explaining the situation to a person that handles student discipline and this Tuesday when we got to class and began setting up, Dr. H. said, "We only need nine desks," and Anna said, "No, don't we need ten? There are nine of us, plus you," and Dr. H. very pointedly said, "No, NINE. We'll only need nine from now on."
So she's gone!

The whole thing was really bizarre, but I suppose in a way it was a good learning experience for how to deal with a problem student. I'm definitely happy that she's gone, but I also have to admit that there's a part of me that will miss the drama. But only a very tiny part.