Weetbix, No Shame and the Teenaged Boy

Today was my first day back at uni. Naturally, just as I stepped out of the car it had poured down with rain. Naturally, as a mother and a mature-aged student I was the only person with an umbrella.

Everyone else was too cool for umbrellas.

 

As this story will show, I am not too cool for anything.

Before long the tutor asked us to get into groups to discuss the readings. Very few of us had actually done the readings, and even fewer understood them. I had good intentions and certainly eyeballed them, but when faced with this:

Few Platonic moments are better known in literary studies today, but copious

deconstructive attention to its metaphysical thematics registers little of the ethical

force of Plato’s argument, nor does it unearth the questions of signature which implicitly

 guide the equation of discursive responsibility with the presence of the subject.

I must admit I felt my eyes begin to wander, just a little…

Bleugh.

But because I had technically done the readings, I was moved to sit with a group of young guys, possibly in their early twenties but more likely in their late teens.

The angle I was sitting at meant I needed to use my peripheral vision, but there was something obstructing my view. So I took off my glasses to rub my eyes. Nope, the blur was still there.

So I looked inside my glasses.

And plastered in a chunk the size of a five cent piece, was solidified Weetbix, obscuring the lens and caked like concrete around the rim.

What else should I do –I began to chip it out with my fingernail.

Then I realised that one of the guys was watching me with a look that nicely blended disgust and incredulity.

‘Weetbix,’ I whispered. ‘My baby put it there.’

He nodded weakly and nudged his chair away from me.

I remember exactly when Baldy did it. She had been eating with her hands as usual, and as I crouched down near her high chair to clean the larger chunks of the floor she had reached over and grabbed a bunch of my hair, then pulled off my glasses. I ran shrieking to the Bombshell, handing her a brush and asking her to brush it out of my hair.

‘I’ll do my best,’ she said gamely.

I later went to get dressed, and changed my glasses - rather vainly - to match the dress I was planning on wearing. No one would have even noticed the switch in glasses, but it did give the Weetbix ample time to solidify nicely before I changed glasses again a few days later.

Later that night, after I had been to the art gallery and dinner with friends (and school drop off and pick up and playgroup and the shops), I came home, had a quick shower and got ready for bed. When my brush got stuck in my hair I attempted to look at the top of my head in the mirror.

Weetbix!

 

The Bombshell hadn’t brushed it all out and I had been walking around all day with a chunk of chewed up cereal in my hair.

Three days later, and the Weetbix was still haunting me.

So this was how I began my first day back at uni: encrusted, unashamed and with wet feet.

I wonder what will happen next week?

Help Me Please

My apologies for dropping off the face of the cyber planet for a few weeks there.  I have been dreadfully ill and in no fit state to write.

I know that if I was a real writer I would have taken my head out of the toilet for a few minutes to blog, because writing is my life etc etc, but in all honesty I am sure none of you wanted to hear about how crook I was.  I am literally sick, of being sick.

But now I need your help.

I have returned to uni for second semester, a Feature Writing Course which I am thoroughly enjoying and my first assignment is due in a week.  I need to write an opinion piece, 500 words, of sufficiant quality that I could submit to one of the worldly publications such as Time, Vanity Fair or Rolling Stone (sure, no pressure).

Anyways, my problem is this: I don't have any opinions.  I'm still too sick to care.

I don't care about the carbon tax or the fact that an Aussie won a bike race.  I don't care that another Royal got married or that the US can't pay its debts (join the queue!). I am shocked and sad about the shooting in Norway but cannot see myself writing about it.

When I was younger I used to think I was quite a passionate person.  I cared about things, got worked up about causes.  I volunteered at the AIDS Council for a year and worked as a carer for a young person living with HIV.  I would bore my parents silly with lectures about various issues I felt strongly about, although I probably would not have understood what I was talking about.  Hell, at one stage I even invented my own religion.

But I seem to have lost this passion.  I am ignorant and apathetic about issues that I should be concerned about. I watch Masterchef rather than SBS.  I read the West Australian rather than Time.  (Actually I do read Time, but I tend to skip all the articles on world politics and economics.) My world has shrunk to a small bubble of kids and family and house and uni.  Paying the bills, doing the washing, cooking dinner. It seems ironic that as the world has become more connected, our lives somehow become more insular.

Forgive me, but I do not think I am alone.  Why are we so lazy with our opinions?  Why are we so uninformed?  Moreover, why do we want to be uninformed?  Who wants to change the channel when the World Vision ads come on TV?  Or use that as a good time to get up and make a cup of tea?

Is it because I have always had it relatively easy?  I never had to see my dad or brothers go away to war.  I have never had to break down gender or race barriers?  I have always had the right to vote, to an education, to drive a car.  As a female I was always told I could do anything.  I certainly never had to prove myself to anyone.  I have never had to sit through a bombing raid, or watch family members die from starvation, or a disease that could have been prevented with a simple vaccination.  I have never been forced out of my home, or raped by soldiers. I have always had food on my table (and in my fridge and more in my cupboard).  My children will never want for anything.

So why don't I care?  Why can't I think of something to write about?  Help me please.   

The Great Class(room) Divide

It was inevitable really.

Last week at uni, forced to do group work with girls barely half my age, the expected finally happened.  I'm just surprised it took three weeks.

'So are you coming to the Tav after class?' says young blonde Number 1.

'Totally, I'm so glad it's the weekend.  It's been a long week. I need a drink,' says young blonde Number 2.

Ignoring the fact that this was a Wednesday and as far as I can tell weekends still start on Saturday (or possibly Friday night) I had been waiting for the conversation ever since I enrolled in uni late last year.

To be honest though, to call it a conversation gives the distinct impression that I was included in it.  I wasn't.  The young blondes were tolerating my company, and taking advantage of the fact that I had actually done the readings and knew vaguely what I was talking about.

I wasn't being asked to come to the Tav, but I was finally having that moment when it became blindingly clear that I was a mature aged student, and the only place I would be going after class was to collect my children from daycare and then home to cook everyone dinner.

And I am quite happy with that.

For the half hour we were in our groups (approximately three minutes of which was spent discussing our readings) the girls talked about going to the movies, boys, other classes they were doing, their enormous workloads, their part time jobs and a litany of other equally fascinating topics.

Listening to them (as I wasn't expected to participate) it occurred to me that the primary difference between them and me, was not our ages or our life experiences, where we were heading after class, or whether we knew the difference between memoir and personal essay, but the fact that I really wanted to be there.

They were all working their way through their (first) undergraduate degree.  This course was a core (compulsory) unit, one of four they were currently undertaking.  They had not chosen to be there, and they seemed to have little desire to be there. 

Please do not think I am being too harsh on these girls - I remember feeling exactly the same way about some of my anthropology and psychology units about 14 years ago. In fact, the more time I spend with them, the more I understand my own younger self.

And I like them, I do.  I even admire them.  Spending an entire three hour class on Facebook without getting caught is surely an impressive feat of tenacity.

For them perhaps, going to class is a chore, equivalent to going to work or some other important but un-fun event.  But for me, going to class is an opportunity, a window to a new life, a possibility, freedom. I am glad of this, but I also know that I would never have been able to come to this conclusion now had I not been just like those girls in the past.

First Day at University - Will This Be on The Test?

Today was my first day back at uni, and I already feel like the archetypal poor student. After coughing up $9.50 for three hours parking I went to a cafe to observe students for a while.  That quickly got boring so I went to find my classroom.

In my small class of about 20 students, I am one of four mothers (including the tutor) and one of four people over the age of 30. Needless to say, the four people over 30 are the mothers.  I think two are even grandmothers! The rest of the (predominantly female) class are young.  Very young.

One of the conversations I overheard included:

'I love your tattoo!'

'Yeah, I love yours too.  Did it hurt?'

'Naaaa. Awww a bit. You?

Many of the girls reminded me of me when I was in my 20s.  They meant well, had big ideas and were terribly pretentious in their idealism and anger. They call themselves 'jaded' and 'feminist' without ever substantiating it and spent half the lesson attached to their mobile phones. One young girl stank of smoke and I wanted to tell her off, but thought it might not be appropriate since I wasn't her mother.

The class I am doing is Creative NonFiction - a hybrid of literature and non-fiction, a marriage of journalism and storytelling.  What you would get if you threw Four Corners and Playschool in bed together.

We did a number of writing activities today but one of them struck a chord so I am going to reproduce it here.  We were asked to write a paragraph about six roles or identities that we play in public or private.

My primary identity at the moment is that of MOTHER.  I have two little girls and it is difficult to escape the duties associated with mothering, although I am still coming to terms taking ownership of the identity mother.  The activities swamp my day and sometimes I feel I don't get to 'play' out any of my other roles, yet it still feels foreign to take on the title.  Being a mother is the single most rewarding thing I have ever done and a primary reason I am here today being a STUDENT.

From today I am a STUDENT again.  This is my 4th degree and I had vowed never to do another one after finishing a Grad Dip of Medical Science (Education) back in 2005.  But writing will be a way of life for me, one that can fit around my other identities especially MOTHER.  If you love it, it's not work.

I have always been a SISTER but since becoming a MOTHER I have felt the pull towards my sister a lot more, especially as she had children around the same time as I.  We have really discovered each other in the past few years and found out we share many secrets and desires.  I am fortunate I get to see my SISTER regularly as part of my MOTHERS GROUP.

As a member of my MOTHERS GROUP I am one arm of a tight group of mums who have been meeting (with and without children) for almost four years.  We are honorary family members, babysitters, gym buddies, Kindy mums, coffee drinkers, recipe and battle-story swappers, someone to bitch about and bitch to. I am the organiser of the group, the list maker, planning all the rosters and parties.  Sometimes I hate that, but I love my group.

Recently I have been a RENOVATOR.  It's a process much akin to getting pregnant and having a child except that having a baby is quicker, cheaper and less painful.  We are about to finish significant second storey additions and I am currently interviewing painters and blind-makers, the finishing touches to our new house.  I am eagerly awaiting my new study, very attic-like and a perfect space for a new writer.

But before all of this I was a WIFE.  We have just celebrated our 11th anniversary and have known each other half our lives.  I met my husband on the first day of university back in 1995.  We have essentially grown up together and he is very supportive of all my roles, especially my becoming a student.  Again.

After I finished writing this I was somewhat surprised to see that I had not included WRITER as one of my roles.  I guess that will come in time.  At least I didn't have any difficulty coming up with 6 roles.  I had half a dozen more on the tip of my pen that I could have included.  At least being a mature aged student comes with some benefits - two of the twenty year olds in my group couldn't come up with more than 4 roles and identities.

The sad looking mature aged student in the corner - will be me!

I am used to being one of the youngest people in a crowd.  When I did my Masters in 1999 there were only three of us under the age of 30.  At work, at uni, even in my Mothers group, I have always been one of the youngest people.  But now as I prepare to embark on a new postgrad course at University next year, I have discovered that the first unit I have enrolled in is actually an undergraduate course.  Which means that I, at the ripe old age of 33, will be studying with teenagers who could potentially be about half my age.

These kids will have been born in the 1990s.  They will have no concept of a time without mobile phones, a time before laptops, or a time when there was only three free-to-air TV stations.  Johnny Young Talent Time?  Wombat?  Hey Hey it's Saturday, when it was actually shown on a Saturday. Pre DVDs, pre 9/11, pre internet.  This is a writing course: will they all be writing in SMS-speak?  Will I understand them?  It has been more than a decade since I have attended a university campus as a student.  Has much changed?  What do I wear?

Oh my god, I am going to be the dorky mature aged student in the corner that no one talks to.  Worse than that, I will be the dorky mature aged student with baby vomit or dried cruskit on my cardigan.  While the rest of the group head to the pub after class, I will be heading to daycare to collect my children. 

Coincidentally, the year I start back at uni my not-yet four year old will be starting Kindy for the very first time.  We will both have our new backpacks and pencil cases full of exciting new stationery.  We will both be trying to make new friends.  Except she will be one of the youngest, and I may be one of the eldest. 

But I am guessing that is something I will probably need to get used to.