Thanks, mom...

...for making me order my own food at restaurants, even when I whined about it.

Because now, thanks to your impeccable instruction, I am a fairly competent, independent adult.

Unlike the OBNOXIOUS undergraduate students who are incapable of 1) accepting responsibility for their own actions or 2) following simple steps to fix things that THEY MESSED UP.

Examples:
Of case 1: Today a student who skipped class yesterday came up to me and asked if it would be an excused absence because "I was confused and thought that classes were canceled yesterday." So, we had an ice storm. But not a blizzard. We're in college, we don't have snow days. Why on EARTH would it be an excused absence? I (relatively) calmly and with a (n almost) straight face told him that there are four absences built into the course for just such "misunderstandings." He was miffed. I internally rejoiced.

Of case 2: Today when I went to the computer lab to print out the 250 pages (yes, you read right, 250 pages...and really it's 500 because I put 2 pages per side to save trees and my print quota) of reading for tomorrow, I noticed that the printer was out of commission. This happens frequently because students don't report paper jams, preferring to leave and go to another lab. This tendency bothers me because it is quite easy to pick up the phone that is IMMEDIATELY ADJACENT to the printer, push the button that says "PUSH ME" and read "the printer is broken in Ballantine _____" from the script that is PROVIDED NEXT TO THE PHONE! So, I called before I even sat down at a station, and while I was sending my jobs to the printer someone came to fix it. I thought, "yay, now it will be fixed for my jobs to go through." The tech left. A girl in front of me in line grabbed her print job before it finished printing, causing a paper jam. She said "D*&%, now I'm gonna be late to class because I have to go somewhere else to print this!" and left. She did NOT call the tech to fix it. She did NOT bother to fix the problem she caused. So I called AGAIN and had the tech come. They had to reset the printer, which made it lose the jobs stored in the cache, mine included. I had to wait in line for a computer AGAIN, and RESEND my print jobs, then wait for them to print. This fiasco caused me to miss my bus, which caused me to not get home in time for Ben to catch HIS bus, which caused me to have to waste my reading time to take him to school which caused extreme frustration which caused RANTING ON MY BLOG!

Okay. I'm done being angry now. I'm going to go do my reading (yes, all 500 pages of it) before BeeBoo wakes up. (You think I'm joking....I really do read everything before she wakes up.....)

At least, thanks to my mother, I acknowledge that just as I CHOSE to be angry about the fiasco, now that I've chosen to be done with it I can go on and be productive.