We Are All City College & We'll Stick Together, at Least I Will!

I'd like NOT to be the kind of teacher who has lipstick on her teeth, but I am, and today I was a teacher with Super Glue on her fingers.  It worked!  That is, it worked on keeping my fingers bound tightly together.  It didn't quite work on the part of the earring I'd wanted to hold in place, the...Well, let's stop right here and have an ESL lesson, Earrings as a Second Language.  I see that's what they are to me.  According to Wikipedia, the types of earrings are: 1) Helix/Cartilage, 2) Industrial, 3) Rook, 4) Daith, 5) Tragus, 6) Snug, 7) Conch, 8) Anti-Tragus, 9) Lobe

Oh, but that's the types of earrings.  I want to know the parts.  It should be simpler than, say, a bicycle, shouldn't it? What do you call the thin wires attached to an earring--the part that goes through the earlobe but not with posts?  The the part I was trying to glue stuck was that wire, which I wanted to be at the top of the button I hoped to glue on, the button saying "We are all City College."  I even wore a yellow sweater and a red scarf to class today so I could match the matching buttons, but I'd used scotch tape, which we all know should be used exclusively for hemming clothes and things like that.  I had this vision of sewing the metal button onto the Hawaiian wooden hoops Vilma gave me.  But Katrina, who came out of her office when I was on fifth floor, had a better idea.  So after my classes, I went to Walgreen's to get the glue.

To be continued after some back-tracking. 

I was on fifth floor to turn in my first-day handout and my office hours to Erin, ESL reduced Coordinator, who wants each of us to be a resource instead of someone to manage, according to what Greg Keech, Chair, said on Flex Day.  While I was there, I was greeted warmly by two former students, who seemed so happy to see me that I almost felt I was not universally despised.  They, of course, had problems getting classes because of the ones that had been cut.

I had thought I'd lots of time on campus to get things done before my first meeting with my ESL 132 Tuesday/Thursday class, but I made it to class only five minutes early because of a stop at Duplicating, for one thing, where I saw our Wonder Woman Hilda looking as stressed out as I've ever seen her look.  More cuts in staff I assume.

I was tired of accidentally giving out information cards asking for the students' social security numbers, so I'd gone through all the cards and thrown those away, which resulted in my now having quite enough for the whole class.  But we all survived the first day business meeting, and the students seemed to be with me in spirit.  They liked my earrings (still attached with scotch tape).  So I bought Super Glue at Walgreen's on my way home, hearing but not quite heeding the clerk's words of caution, "Be careful it doesn't get on your hands," and a customer's suggestion that I use surgical gloves.  The result of my not being a better listener was that my fingers would not unglue.  I really thougth I'd lose a good portion of them.  They held tight to each other while that wire piece flopped around.  I was truly alarmed that the package said only "Keep away from children."  Later when I went online to find out how to get it off (once I'd actually cut the threads of glue to win my freedom), I saw that some people were mistaking Super Glue for eye drops!   I

I had cleaned up the study this morning, and while I was laying out some afternoon treats for my computer savvy tech help Efren (whom I met at the City College We All Are), I decided I'd pay him for an hour of tech help if he'd just help me glue the metal buttons on the earring.   But at 1:55 PM, he told me that he wasn't going to be able to keep our 2:00 PM appointment because he'd gotten a call saying his babies had a fever, so he had to pick them up.  The three of them would be glued together for the rest of the day.So I didn't add students to my mailing listserves at ccsf g-mail or with the buttons-into-earrings.  I let the first go and undertook the second.  Take a look.  Well, I can't post the photo now because "Microsoft Outlook Not Implemented."