I SWEAR THIS WILL BE THE LAST RANT ABOUT WORK

I was with one of my favorite classes Friday afternoon. They are favored because they are generally respectful enough to listen as I lecture and yet they possess enough energy to make that whole instructor/student dynamic interesting. But hey, I won’t fuck around with you. They are also my last class of the day, and that helps too.

So I'm dancing around the dry erase board telling these kids a nifty mnemonic I learned that might help them remember the three trigonometric functions, sine, cosine and tangent. One student chimes in, B, the tallish boy that always wears his green John Deere hat slightly askew, says he has a mnemonic of his own but won’t share it because it’s probably not appropriate. I praise his sound judgment, “yeah, you probably should not share it if you don’t think it would be appropriate.” As I turn back to the white board I hear him say, not whisper, to his classmates, “Some old (w)hore, caught another (w)hore…”

I spin around and stop him before he has a chance to finish. At the same time I’m thinking, are these guys aware that when they say things like that, they are perpetuating a stereotype about their age, their class, and their future occupation that’s completely unflattering? I can’t believe they don’t even have enough common sense to refrain from saying something that might insult their teacher simply because she is the one grading their tests! What a bunch of meatheads.