Separation Anxiety

While my students were slaving away at their final exam, I took time to look at each and every one of my students (while not being TOO obvious) and say goodbye to them in my head. Normally I'm not sentimental; the circle of life goes on, and every new semester saddles me with a new set of students who manage to both inspire and repulse me at the same time.

Yet this time is different. For now, I say goodbye to teaching and go back to being a full-time student.

So goodbye to my talkative students. I've learned so much from you, and I hope you have learned a little from me.

Goodbye to my quiet students. You've never given me any problems. I wish I knew more about you, but I respect your silence.

Goodbye to my troublesome students. My sarcasm needs practice every now and then. A game of darts always needs a dartboard.

Goodbye to the students who laugh at my jokes. Please don't repeat them to anyone else.

Goodbye to the students who pester me with questions. You've kept me on my toes, and restored my faith in your generation of thinkers.

Goodbye to the students who have been tardy both in work and attendance. I've learned to zip it and count small blessings. Better late than never, right?

Thank you to those students who come to office hours when they say they will. A professor can only take so much surfing on youtube.com in the dank, dark cubicle.

Thank you to those students who can remember my name correctly. You should be knighted, canonized and awarded a Nobel Prize.

As the bard Louie Llamzon, este William Shakespeare so eloquently put it "parting is such sweet sorrow."

The Priceless Haircut (Literally and Figuratively)

Last Monday was the day that I had been waiting for my whole life. It was the day of my hair appointment at the Bb salon in downtown NYC. Now before y’all chastise me about the frivolous expense when I am supposedly living on a graduate student budget, let me tell you this: IT WAS FREE!

So you see, this is how it works. They have a “University” in the downtown salon where hair guys and gals from all over the world learn the latest techniques in haircuts. Thing is, they need a constant supply of models – real hair to practice with. By signing up on the website, one is invited to a model call, where one’s hair is assessed by a Bb professional, and then to a cutting class suited to one’s hair type. I attended a model call about a month or so ago, where a man who was a lot prettier than me declared that I was a “long hair girl” and promptly assigned me to a long layers cutting class. I was actually invited to a color call as well, and stupid me, I decided to skip it. It would have been great to arrive at my University reunion with funky colored hair.

And so this is how I got here in this chair, in this minimalist salon with large windows facing the Hudson. This place is so hip, it hurts. The men and women of this salon were so impossibly impeccably groomed. Sometimes, I hate coming to this area of the city -- I always feel plain and underdressed. But free haircuts are free haircuts and I am going to get my free haircut even if it kills me (i.e. my pride).

K., my stylist, was unlike any stylist I had ever had in my life. First of all, he was wearing a goth shirt with skeletons and blood – very unlike the artsy-fartsy West Village vibe that the other stylists gave off. Secondly, he had a good sized Swiss Army backpack. I’m willing to bet that there was a Mac Book Pro inside it, and that he is into network gaming. He wasn’t very chatty either, although he was very personable young chap. He reminds me of some of my A-students – they don’t speak unless spoken to, but they turn in extraordinary work. I decided to put everything into his hands. I have had the same haircut for five years – anything was better than this. And if worse comes to worst, hair grows back anyway.

I was amazed at the technical stuff jargon that the stylists used in talking about my hair options. I actually heard the word “occipital” three times while K. and his educator (the-very-attractive-but-would-never-look-at-me-twice-because-he’s-gay N.) discussed how the back of my mane should be cut. They measured the curvature (seriously, they used these words) of the front of my head to determine where the bangs should start. The sections of hair were so precisely measured that I actually asked K. if he was being graded on his shit (he said he would be critiqued later so...pretty much).

K. did a lot of work removing weight from my hair. My ponytail is so heavy that it actually hurts when I tie everything up (oh wait; maybe those are the migraines I am getting from checking my students’ exams). But it never really hit me until I saw all of my hair on the floor and my stylist (who has been cutting hair for a few years) tells me “Yeah, you have a LOT of hair.” Thanks Einstein. Tell me something I don’t know.

K thinned out some of my hair by using broad strokes with a straight edge razor. When he put the razor in front of my face to cut my bangs, I literally froze in place. One false move by either of us, and we would have had a restaging of Sweeney Todd, Demon Barber of 13^th Street. (I wonder if any of these chairs have trapdoors underneath.).

I ended up keeping the length of my hair, but the new layers give it a lot of movement. The bangs are a bit long, but I can sweep them towards the right or to the left. I don't even have to really blow dry...I just zap my hair with a bit of warm hair to take out a little bit of the moisture, then I twirl random sections until they're dry. I must say, I think K. did an excellent job. He said that the best thing he liked about the cut was that I looked a lot different than before I sat in the chair (he has the “before” and “after” pics to prove it too). Most of his “professors” praised his work. My bangs are sooo cute (I haven’t had bangs since grammar school) and I love my sassy new haircut. I’ve been road-testing the haircut this week, and I’ve must have gotten no less than 7 compliments, mostly from guys, mwahahahaha! Batch reunion, here I come!

Now my problem is that my Holy Grail stylist is based in the West Coast (dammit!). What am I going to do now if K. is in California? (Sob!). So if any of you guys are within traveling distance of the Umbrella Salon in San Jose (umbrellasalon.com), look for the Asian guy with the Swiss Army backpack. Tell him that the girl from NYC with the insane amount of hair sent you.

Photo taken from the Bumble and bumble website, I think.

Random Graduate Student Notes

Last Friday, Roomie and I attended a Graduate School Awards Ceremony. Of course, we were excited about getting our certs (and the tres chic free totes and pens that came with them) from the President of the University. Being the most observant (i.e. nosy) people in the world, we noted a few small but very telling things. The first thing we noticed was that the crowd here seems to be pretty different from the crowd in the graduate socials. If our Department's contingent had the most colorful (and if I may say, most stylish) attires in the room, it must be an extra-dowdy affair. Seriously.

Another thing we noticed was that in spite of the abundance of relatively good food and alcoholic drink, we were the only people who stuck close enough to the buffet table to be within easy reach of the cocktail shrimp and the fancy canapes. No one else seemed to be eating or drinking, in spite of the President's exhortation to party hearty. Was there a pre-awards ceremony cocktail hour that we were not invited to? Are these people really grad students? Because if they were, they would have wrapped five of those mini potato cakes in a table napkin to last them for the rest of the week.

We also noticed that the Departments whose names start with P seem to win a large number of these awards. Therefore, on Monday, I am going to visit the Chair of my Department to try to convince him that the only way for us to corner more of the University Funding is to add a P to our Department name. P__________s. Yep. Excuse me while I bang my head on the whiteboard.

Aside from these issues, I wasn't really paying attention. Most of the time, I was staring at the Dean's jewelry, all the while thinking that my necklace sitting at home was better than hers.

On an interesting note, our tiny little contingent was talking about the buildings on campus and how some of them are extremely old. Roomie (scaredy cat that she is) commented half-jokingly that there might be spirits walking around these buildings, particularly since these buildings were once (and some continue to be) residential structures. I told them that there is a priest on campus who holds a talk every Halloween on The Exorcist because he starred in and served as a consultant for that movie. In fact, a scene in the movie was shot in a particular room in one of the dorms.

Suddenly, a knife and a couple of pieces of cheese fell with a loud noise, startling us out of the conversation. Examining the scene of the crime, we could not see why the knife and the cheese just suddenly jump off the buffet table. No one was nearby except for us, and we were standing closer to the tasty quesadilla-like hors d'oeuvre rather than to the cheese plate.

Insert Twilight Zone theme here.