powered by SignMyGuestbook.com
powered by SignMyGuestbook.com
Recent News... Just for Pope Gregory... |
2003-03-13 - 12:26 p.m. Becoming a Don Let me tell you about the Math Mafia. My friend, Jenny, teaches high school math. Her vocation is still funny to me because I used to tutor her in high school math - algebra, geometry, trig, calculus, differential equations - for four years, we did it all together. And, math, was so *not* her favorite thing. Still, those who struggled to master a subject truly to make the best teachers. Anyway. Her department protects themselves by operating like a Mafia. They all decide, together, how things will work and unify behind their Senior Don. The senior don presents their objections and demands to the administration. Junior dons take their leads from the senior dons. Nobody breaks ranks. The Math department always protects their own and pretty much does whatever the hell they want. It�s great. Jenny�s been a junior don for the past several years, since she started at the school. But this year, through a combination of a lot of retirement and that high school president thing that haunts you forever, suddenly, she�s it. Her department named her Senior Don (Math Chair). Whenever she talks about administration meetings, or maddening fights with parents, I picture her in dark glasses, with slicked back hair and a broad shoulder suit, walking into a room at the head of a phalnax. She sits down, while her junior dons stand behind, flanking her. She pulls off her sunglasses and stares across the table with her soft brown eyes. And she says in her dulcet voice, as she said to me so often while we were growing up, Look, this, this is just dumb. (No, the comment wasn�t always directed *at* me. Though it often involved my brother.) You have to have some fun with the assignment, because they certainly don�t raise your pay or give you more work hours for extra duties. Hm. Envision Havorc or EduCait as leaders of the English mafia. She�s young, like me, barely thirty, to suddenly be in charge of so much. I told the senior project engineer my age last week, and he nearly dropped his drink. I�m much younger than the average engineering lead. How strange, my best friend since 2nd grade, on a parallel path. Yesterday, I realized I was correcting some of the engineers that mentored me, who are now working for me. Even had one of those �closed door� moment, where I told one of them to get his shit together. This is the same guy that taught the scared 19-year old summer student I used to be. It was jarring. When did I surpass him? Suddenly, I feel old. Time to pick up my sunglasses, and head for the third meeting of the day. Good thing the Sopranos soundtrack is in the truck. Woke up this morning, and got myself a gun� � � � 
|