Drunk as a Skunk, Strewn like a Raccoon

My last post is an example of how writing in the middle of the night produces some crappy writing. I immediately spot a bunch of typos that I just don't have the desire or time to fix. Worse yet is that I realize I forgot to mention one of the funniest parts of class, which I will try to make up for now.

At the beginning of class, my professor admitted to being a bit flustered and disorganized because the principal who was set to be the next day's speaker had just called and asked to come in a couple of hours instead, so ey was trying to switch activities quickly. One of our activities involved looking at a chart about things specific schools did that resulted in higher standardized test scores. After each person made a point, the professor would say something along the lines of "so let's pretend that if a principal from such a school were to be coming, what would we ask him about that?" To my neighbor, I whispered, maybe louder than I thought considering I was drinking, didn't the professor already mention that a principal was coming in a couple of hours? My memory was confirmed, but the professor continued to have us prepare questions for this hypothetical principal. Either ey thinks we're entirely stupid, or the more likely alternative is that ey forgot that ey mentioned it at the beginning of class to justify eir rare showing of disorganization.

On our cigarette break (I still don't smoke, but no longer do this activity), I initiated a conversation with my peers about how ridiculous this hypothetical principal scenario is. We all agreed that we felt our intelligence was being insulted because even if the professor had never mentioned the principal at the beginning, the hinting to prepare for the scenario was so blatant that we would have figured it out anyway. I compared the technique being modeled to a fourth grade classroom learning about a raccoon. "So if a raccoon were to show up in our classroom, what are things we would want to know about it?" The class then brainstorms a list of questions and then - WHOA! - someone from the nature center magically appears as a surprise with a raccoon. Before re-entering the graduate class, we prepared our best raccoon questions. "What does it mean to be nocturnal?" "Do you hibernate?" "Can I pet you?"

When the principal finally arrived (who'd have guessed?), we all discreetly bet each other to ask a raccoon question to him. I never worked my way up to asking one, but that doesn't mean I didn't embarrass myself anyway. I was drunk-slumped in my chair the entire time he spoke, fidgeting about, and was wearing my homemade "I'm Not White Trash, I'm Caucasian Rubbish" t-shirt. After the principal's speech, my professor announced that the "other surprise" was that this principal actually had some job positions available, so he was going to stay for the next hour to talk to potential candidates.

Okay, that's not fair. I need a job. But I'm drunk. You can't just not tell us about a potential job opportunity without at least a day's notice. I would have worn something nicer than a puffy paint shirt with racial humor and, you know, not gotten drunk. Some information is too relevant to be kept a secret.

So I didn't even bother speaking with the principal. And no, you can't pet em.