The Graduate

I am technically done with my work at Northwest College. I had my Capstone presentation on Tuesday and now have only to go to class today to see the presentations of the remaining five students. My active work is done. I am happy that after five years it's over but sad to be going; my college professors have become a sort of extended family over the years.

On the other hand, the University of Wyoming in Laramie is something to look forward to! Jeff and I will be moving down in about a week into our vintage trailer with the avocado green stove.

* * *

Now the celebratory mood begins!

On Tuesday night Jeff surprised me with a clean house, the dining table brought to the center of the room, and a candle burning brightly in the dim. He made me a spaghetti dinner on the sly, with an artistic vegetable plate, blood orange Italian soda, Cabernet wine, and huckleberry frozen yogurt for dessert. I grinned and hugged him for a good five minutes, thrilled that he'd do something like this. Quite a graduation present!

Next week I have a bit of tutoring left, and this week I wrap up my private sessions; I am glad, because this was a good run. Last semester the students tended to slack, but this one they have been quite dedicated.

Still, it will be a relief to go, as the difficulty of tutoring ESL students is far more of a strain than tutoring native speakers; I have to be a translator, cultural ambassador, and a dictionary all in one. I have to remind the students several times a session that I am not a trained teacher, only a tutor who knows a bit more about English than most other students because of the degree I am pursuing.

Because of my tutoring I have come to the conclusion that many students are sent abroad before they are linguistically ready to deal with a new language. I took three years of French before I visited the country, and though I was one of the best speakers in the group I also knew I was also woefully unprepared to live there longer than a summer. Many of these students here have taken English less than three years, so I can only imagine how difficult their classes are.

I also have come to the conclusion that not enough cultural training is issued by language teachers. Some of the international students are shocked when I know certain things about their individual counrties, and I don't quite know how to take that. I wonder if they think that Americans are largely ignorant of other countries –from their words of reaction I think that is so— and I wonder if that is because they have been taught this idea by their own country people or if they come to this conclusion after living in America for a semester. At any rate, they are both uncomfortable possibilities to deal with.

Many international students are largely unaware of the diversity of cultures within America. I often remind them how large America really is, when I say that I haven't been to New York (neither have they,) or don't like souped up muscle cars and techno music. I have a feeling that international cities, such as L.A. and N.Y. are held up as the bastions of American culture, and if Americans don't fit into those comfortable slots they are mystified.

This is not to say that all international students are like this. Many are well-informed and open-minded people, and these are refreshing to work with. I also wonder if cultural and linguistic ignorance isn't also factored by age; the students who seem to be more enlightened also tend to be a little bit older than the average student.

Last Monday

...Of all the bloody mornings for the college website to go down...

Yeah. The last week of school and formal classes and the Northwest website goes kaput. I'll bet it's a circus in Computer Services right now.

Anglish English

"Po-tay-to, po-tah-to."

Part of the challenge in tutoring ESL (English as a Second Language), is that many international students are coached in only one kind of accent. They are often told "Americans say it this way" while they learn inflection and accent. However, this does the student a disservice; as America is a nation of immigrants and native peoples we have many different dialects and regional accents.

I have been asked my several Wyomingites if I am from another country. When I tell them that I am from northern California and they become quite confused. Amusingly enough, my sister and I have both experiences with southern Californians asking if we are from Ireland. Apparently the nor Cal accent has many more dental and clipped consonants than in other parts of the country.

Many of the international students hear my nor Cal accent and become confused when I pronounce a word without the broader heartland accent that their Wyoming teachers have. I have to remind them that the sheer size of the United States contributes to several different accent regions, and in highly mixed populations, such as urban New York, they might find dozens of different accents within a hundred mile radius. I've described the southern drawl, the nasal accent of Queens, and the rough, bass accents of the Bronx and Brooklyn.

My own accent is compounded with a little bit of the Canadian and British accents; as a child I often watched the Public Broadcasting System in the days before America had its own version of the BBC. I picked up on their ways of saying "programme," "advertisement," and "schedule" rather than the usual American pronunciations.

I wonder why teachers of second languages often neglect to teach accent and dialects. These students often seem unprepared for encounters with actual languages.

When I was taking high school French from Madame Soper I was lucky; she taught about the regional accents of France and its outlying territories while simultaneously requiring us to speak with the Parisian accent. One Spanish teacher I knew of only required her class to learn the vocabulary; the accents of her students came out flat and obviously generic American.

Uno Mas

One more week of school left! I am taking the Capstone class, which requires a student to synthesize all of the information she's learned over the course of earning her degree. This means a fair amount of independent study and a presentation at the end of the semester. After Tuesday I will be done!

Of course, tutoring will remain, but for the large part I will be done at the college. I am not walking in the graduation procession; at 28 I feel I am too old for such "decorum est." Plus, it's a good $150 to participate in the ceremony, money which could be better spent on rent and groceries. Jeff says he'll plan on walking at his Bachelor graduation, but I myself will take off camping for a weekend instead.

Tomorrow begins my Last Week Ever at Northwest. I am jazzed to be going and also a little sad to be leaving the people whom I feel are like family. Fortunately, I just found out that someone whom I care about very much may be going down to UW next year. I hope to meet up with her there.

Next week comes the sorting, the packing, and the discarding. It will be good to pare down even further on possessions with old history.

Twitter Me Timbers –or– I'll Be a Steampunkin' Baby Bump!

Being an English major, I've fallen into the habit of speaking with good grammar as much as I try to write with such. However, when I am relaxed and happy I speak with double negatives, shoddy grammar, and drop my endings, such as in "gettin'." It's become teasing fodder for Jeff, but I think it's only fair, as I try to guide him into saying words like "host," and "boat" to hear his wonderful Wisconsin accent.

(That said, the "mouse in the house" easily comes out of him this week. Lovely!)

As an English tutor for several international students, I find myself being a sort of cultural and language ambassador. Most hard for me to explain are the slang words; I don't use them that much myself, as a) I am older by 10 years over most of the students and b) meanings of slang words change so fast that they're hard to keep up with. I'm better at the vernacular sayings, such as "see you later, gator/pigeon/sugarplum," "how goes it?" and "'chupto?"

Lately there have been words and slang entering the American English language that I cannot stand, and I grit my teeth whenever I hear them. Fortunately, gritting teeth can often be mistaken for grins, so I don't cause too much public dissent.

Below is a small list of the ones that annoy me the most:

• baby bump – I used to think this was cute, but as time goes on I find myself realizing the irritating nature of the phrase used to describe the maternal swelling associated with pregnancy. "Baby bump" makes me think of some horrible disease that afflicts only infants: "Did you hear about Karen's new son Evan? He's got the baby bump!" I think that reverting to "pregnancy belly" or "baby belly" is fine. In general, bumps are not seen as harbingers of great joy.
• steampunk – For the love of all that is holy, can someone finally tell me what this actually means? I get the steam, but where does the punk come in to the equation? Many steampunkers don't seem to listen to the music and just like the brass-and-gears look. As one phile of the aesthetic put it, "I like the look of steampunk but hate the name, and I don't like much of the music. Why don't we call the style [itself] neo-Victorian or Victorian fantasy?" Amen, brother.
• twitter – Okay, I get the fact that it's a gadget. I get the fact that is truncates everyone's lives down into less than 200 words. I get that it's another electronic device that allows for communication. I just don't like "twitter" as a verb. Not that I don't expect people to put down their technology and go back to the ways of the telegraph and smoke signals, but the next young pup to ask me: "Do you twitter?" is either going to get an eyefull of mud or a ten-minute lecture describing how I am not of avian descent.

Bird Buds

The winter weather broke yesterday, mid-morning. Today people are cautiously going about in t-shirts, and I saw one brave soul in clam-diggers and a tank top. Of course, she was folded in on herself and shivering, so I was glad I was a wuss and wore my Guinness hoodie.

Yesterday Jeff, Dally and I took advantage of the maybe spring weather and went to the Ralston Reservoir to watch birds. My mother had treated us to a bird watching class in April, so we celebrated May Day with our newfound birding prowess.

The Reservoir was a great choice. We ran down the bank brushy with willows and cottonwoods to emerge onto a plate of grassland. The grass is so tall it almost feels like swimming through the leaves, and indeed Dally had to bound through it like a land dolphin. The Reservoir is shaped like a great shrimp, with a skinny tail pointing west, flowing into a great round head also pointing west. At the eastern end of the hairpin back is a cattail swamp, fueled with water from the famous Garland Canal.

Jeff made the first find beyond the usual robins and starlings: a yellow-headed blackbird.

In total, we saw:

• yellow-headed blackbird
• yellow-rumped warbler (Jeff's favorite)
• American coot
• ruddy duck
• canvasback
• northern shoveler
• sandhill crane
• American white pelican
• whooping crane? (rare)

There were also the uaual myriad of mallards, Canadian geese, robins, and grackles. The white crane perplexes me the most; whooping cranes are very rare birds but this was also one of the classic mirgating areas before their populations suffered from human development. The visual I made matched up the information found in the Sibley Field Guide to Birds, but with their numbers estimated at 145 individual birds, maybe I saw something else? Perhaps an albino sandhill? No egrets should be here in Wyoming, so I am rather confused.

We also saw several marmots cruising about the canal like water bears. It was strange to see the water flowing rich and green where Jeff and I walked on thick blue ice in January.

Mousie Housie

I saw it. I saw the mouse. It's a cute little thing, a light, creamy brown with rounded ears. She looks a lot like Dally.

It's hard, because now I've seen it's face, but we'll need to trap it tonight or tomorrow. Then we'll put it out for the kesterels to enjoy. It's the ciiiiircle of liiiiife.