Well, last night I played chess again at the UIC Chess Club. It was my first time in about thirty years playing at a chess club. Yes, I was a bit rusty. And no, my moves didn’t suddenly come back to me. But I’m glad I went. I need some sort of intellectual stimulus to exercise my mind. I mean I go running to exercise my body, so I want my mind to be healthy, too. I enjoyed playing chess last night. I was easily the oldest one in the room. But I got along well with everyone there. I plan to play chess every Tuesday from now on. But I’m promising myself not to get too involved with chess so that it becomes an obsession. That’s why I haven’t played chess for years. I’m afraid to become addicted to it–again!
Now that it has become quite apparent that Barack Obama will not select me has his presidential running mate, I realize that I will have a lot of free time on my hands. I’m not taking this political snub personally, B.O., because I understand that that’s how presidencies are won or lost. I don’t want to hold you back, B.O.! That will be my contribution to your presidential campaign. Trust me. My personal support for you is worth much more than my personal assets. That’s why I was kind of hoping I could be vice president. I could contribute a lot to this country as vice president, but since you have already chosen Joe Biden, I guess you’ll just have to make the best of the hand you were dealt–as will I. As election day rapidly approaches, I get this nagging sensation that John McCain won’t pick me as his running mate, either. I wish them both the best of luck with my name conspicuously missing from the slate. And, I am absolutely convinced that the independent candidate (Rafael Nadal?) doesn’t even know that I exist. Because of all the free time that I will now have from not hitting the campaign trail and pressing the flesh, I have decided to start playing chess again. Some students at UIC are starting a chess club and I am their faculty adviser. Perhaps our chess playing will help American interests at home and abroad. That’s the kind of guy I am! I always try to improve the world in my own little way!
When I was a student at UIC, I wrote all of my papers on computers. I tried to do most of my writing on my own computer at home, but whenever I had free time between my classes I would use a computer in one of the few computer labs they had at the time.
I did a lot of writing on typewriters and then eagerly progressed to personal computers because of their word-processing capabilities. I was definitely an IBM aficionado since I couldn’t afford an Apple or a Macintosh. Our high school didn’t even have computers when I was a student.
Anyway, UIC had two types of computer labs: IBM or Macintosh. At first, no one used the IBM lab, so I had the lab pretty much too myself. Everybody was really into Macs at the time, although I’m not sure why. Supposedly, they were better than IBMs. Then there was a sudden shift in computing at UIC and I could hardly ever find an open IBM computer. Perhaps it was when IBM compatibles started using Windows, which was definitely inferior to the Mac operating system. I never did like those early versions of Microsoft Windows and stuck to MS-DOS 5.0 for much longer than most normal humans could endure.
Well, IBM’s were no longer readily available when I was. So being the adaptable person who I am, transformed myself into a Mac user. I have convinced myself that I can survive anywhere in the world, under any conditions. So, I sat down at a Mac computer for the first time in my life and started typing. When I looked at the screen, I couldn’t make heads nor tails of what I had written. You see, I can touch type and, when I put my fingers on the keyboard, I felt for the little bump in order to find the home keys. All electric typewriters and IBM keyboards always had those little bumps on the F and J keys. Mac, however, had the little bumps on the D and K keys. So my fingers were off by one key.
Macintosh always tried so hard to be different. Also maddening was waiting for the Mac to execute a command. Instead of the little hourglass to represent the waiting, a dialog box would appear that said, “Please wait. The computer is doing something real complicated right now.” So how was this better than an IBM computer? Well, I continued using IBMs and Macs, depending on which was available. To this day, I can go on any strange computer do some strange writing.
Well, this last semester was full of surprises for me. For some reason, students opened up to me a little more than usual. Partly because I’m very friendly and partly because I encourage them to express themselves, but I do maintain control of the class for the most part. I always encourage students to study for all their classes. I tell them that if they cheat, they’re only cheating themselves. A university education teaches them how to think. If they cheat, they are depriving themselves of a valuable education. However, one student told me that this semester all he learned was how to cheat. He really believed that graduating only involved passing courses, and that could easily be done by cheating. I told him that he was cheating himself because he wasn’t developing valuable cognitive abilities, but he didn’t seem to care.
When I was a student, I only cheated three times in my entire life. The first time was in eighth grade. We were doing an English grammar quiz in which we had to match columns. I was almost done except for two answers. I was very sure that the rest of the answers were correct. My friend Robert K. who sat in the next row looked at my paper and shook his head. He lifted his paper so that I could copy his answers, but I shook my head no and looked away. He insisted that I copy his answers, so I did because I didn’t want to lose him as a friend. I wanted him to think I was as cool as him. Well, it turns out that I changed my correct answers to his wrong answers, and I failed the quiz. I had learned my lesson, and I didn’t cheat anymore. I realized then that I was much smarter than I thought I was.
My parents always taught me to second guess my intelligence. But after that, I never cheated again. Until high school. I didn’t do my homework in physics class, and I was failing the course. Toward the end of the year, Mr. W. said I could pass the course if I made up the homework. However, when I tried to do the homework, I couldn’t because Mr. W. never actually taught us physics, and on those rare occasions when he did, I was too busy playing chess with my friend Jim Harmon. So, I talked to my friend Bill Pappas who had done all the homework. He lent it to me, and I copied all of it. I passed physics with a C, although I still feel guilty about it to this day.
In college, I only cheated once because we received a take-home final exam for Latin American literature class in Spanish and I didn’t have time to answer one question before the due date. My friend Ernesto Mondragon let me read his answer and then I wrote my own original answer. When classmates tried to copy off of me, I would always cover my paper and not give them my answers. I had studied very hard. Why should I help them out? I only helped one student once, but we were very close friends. We were in a literature class that focused on the works of James Joyce. I believe I was the only student in the whole class who actually read Finnegan’s Wake in its entirety. Well, we had a take-home final exam and one of the questions was on Finnegan’s Wake. Daniel Buckman couldn’t find the passage in the novel that we had to analyze for the final. Well, since I had read the whole book, I was determined to find it. And I did! I had to help my friend out, so I told him on what page the passage was. He was so grateful to me, and I was so proud of myself for having found it in the first place. He did go on to publish several books.
Some Spanish students just amaze me with some of the things they tell me, particularly when it comes to criticism about teaching. Some students are very blunt and opinionated when criticizing teachers. Most often, they don’t tell me what they think about me or my style of teaching, but they will tell me how they changed to my class because they couldn’t understand the other instructor because he or she spoke Spanish too quickly. Sometimes students will tell me that my Spanish class is their favorite class, which makes me a bit uncomfortable. Then, some will even add that my Spanish class has been the best class of their entire college education.
I can honestly say that most of my students are happy to come to class and we often have fun together and laugh a lot during class. However, I don’t feel that I deserve all the compliments that I receive. When I used to teach at Morton College, an instructor who taught in the classroom next to mine commented about all the laughter she heard emanating from my classroom. “You must teach a fun class,” she said. “What do you teach?” “Spanish,” I said. She gave me this look of disbelief. Normally, most students dread studying a foreign language and only do so to fulfill the mandatory general education requirements. But most of my students love coming to class! This last semester, many students told me that this was the most Spanish they had ever learned. And they had fun in class.
When I first started teaching Spanish at UIC, I wasn’t sure what to expect of the students. Overall, they were certainly a notch above community college students because of stricter admissions standards. The main difference was in the attitude toward me as a Spanish teacher by the two school administrations. At the community colleges where I had taught, I was in charge. They would give me a textbook and tell me that I had to cover a certain number of chapters, which I always did. But I had a lot of freedom in the classroom. Then, I started teaching at UIC, which is a research university, where most of the 100-level Spanish classes were taught by teaching assistants. Since there are hundreds of 100-level classes and the possibility of cheating increases exponentially, the classes are more controlled and there is less freedom for the instructor in the classroom. Plus, the administration wanted all the classes to be equally fair to all the students. So, it took me a while to adjust.
I’ve always liked showing movies in Spanish class. At UIC, I once asked if it would be okay to show a movie if we had time and I was told no. So, I didn’t show a movie. I recalled how students liked watching a movie, in Spanish, set in a Spanish-speaking country. I always picked a movie that demonstrated some cultural aspects of Spanish or Latin American society. Anyway, I decided that I would show a movie to my classes the next semester. How did I get around getting permission? Simple! I just didn’t ask for permission to show the movie. If I had asked, I would have been told no. And then I wouldn’t be able to show a movie because I was ordered not to. So, I just showed it. If anyone of my superiors would have told me anything, I would have said, “But no one told me that I couldn’t show a movie.” Of course, none of my students ever mentioned watching movies in Spanish class.
So, one day at UIC, one of my students tells me that I’m a very good Spanish teacher. I said, “Muchas gracias” and left it at that because I don’t take compliments very well. She was a good student who always paid attention in class and always did the homework and participated in class. Another day, she told me that her friend was also in the same Spanish 103 class as her, but in a different section. Her friend wasn’t happy with her Spanish instructor. A couple of weeks later, she told me how her friend had transferred to UIC from Daley College and how her Spanish instructor at Daley College was so much better than the one she presently had at UIC. She just went on and on about how her friend had learned so much Spanish at Daley College and how her instructor was so enthusiastic and always answered all her questions. I must admit that I got very bit uncomfortable by all this talk. I wondered who this super Spanish instructor was. I was also afraid that my students would be disappointed to have to settle for me as their Spanish teacher instead of having that teaching wonder from Daley College. One day, I’m leaving Lincoln Hall where I teach Spanish 103. The student who always talked about her friend at Daley College is exiting alongside me. Well, who do see on our way out? Her friend. “Carol!” my student shouts at her. Carol and I looked at each other and we immediately recognized each other. I used to teach at Daley College and Carol was my student back then. The Spanish instructor she was talking about was me!
Chicago USA 