On the Lighter Side: All I Want for Christmas Is To Be A Math Teacher >Mike Jensen

It’s the Christmas season again, and you can feel that Christmas spirit everywhere. It’s the time of year when we’re inundated with the sights and sounds of the season: chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose, two shoppers coming to blows over the last Tickle Me Elmo.

We college professors have our own Yuletide sights to enjoy at this time of year. For us, it’s the Yuletide sight of long-absent students suddenly re-appearing in our seminars, much like the ghosts of Christmas past. These students all come with a common story: despite the fact that they haven’t been to class since Unit 3, they REALLY need to pass this class. But that isn’t the worst of a college professor’s seasonal treats, it’s actually the final grading.

For two solid weeks, during units 9 and 10, all I do is grade papers. I am awash in papers. I am so focused on grading papers right now that anything I see in print, I grade. I took a friend to dinner last night; when the waitress handed me a menu, I graded it. I gave it a C. (The thesis was clear, but overall it wandered a bit.)

It’s at this point in the term that I wish I were a math teacher. Math teachers don’t grade papers; they use these magical things called "check boxes." Students work out the problems, click the appropriate check box, and viola! Instant grades.

Back in college, we English majors used to sit around and laugh at the math majors. While they languished in the library hunched over their books studying trigonometric equations and non-linear functions with one variable, we were outside sitting in the sun reading Shakespeare and Thoreau. We were so smug.

Only now do I realize that the math teachers were the smart ones. Sure, they had to work their way through advanced calculus, but now, during the last few weeks of the term, while the English teachers are locked away grading papers, the math teachers are hanging out watching Oprah and drinking spiked eggnog.

So this year I’m asking Santa to make me a math teacher. Or if he can’t pull that off, maybe he can just find a way to outlaw check boxes.

Did you know...

Mike is currently working toward his EMT certification?

Mike is a full-time professor in Legal Studies.

On the Lighter Side: What Men Talk About > Mike Jensen

One of the fun things about being an English professor (besides making students’ lives miserable, of course), is studying the communication process. I have always focused my study on the unique aspects of male-to-male interaction, which can be summarized in just one word: sports.Let me use myself as an example. As a child I loved sports. I loved playing sports, watching sports, talking about sports. I had a one-track mind.

The obsession with sports started early for me, as it does for most guys. And when I say, “started early,” I mean, “started in the womb.” I could give you Mickey Mantle’s lifetime batting average (8) at birth (mine, not his).

I can still give you the starting line-up of the 1975 World Series champion Cincinnati Reds, although I was only 10 years old when they beat the Red Sox in the greatest World Series ever played—unless you’re a Red Sox fan, in which case you’re an insufferable prat and your opinion doesn’t count.

Do you doubt me? (I mean about remembering the Reds’ line-up, not about Red Sox fans being insufferable prats. Nobody doubts that.) How about this:

Catcher: Johnny Bench
First Base: Tony Perez

Second Base: Joe Morgan
Shortstop: Davey Concepcion
Third Base: Pete Rose
Outfield: George Foster, Cesar Geronimo, and Ken Griffey

And I’ll have you know that came from the memory of a man who regularly forgets the names of coworkers, friends, his children, etc.

The weird thing about sports is that, even all these years later, I still am obsessed with sports. And I’m not alone. Most guys are just as obsessedIn fact, I happen to think that God created sports just so men would have something to talk about. You see, there are a LOT of topics that men are not allowed to talk about—especially to other men. These topics include, but are in no way limited to, the following: Sadness. Worries. Fears. Struggles. Health concerns—especially if they involve the prostate or Viagra. Relationship problems. Anything including the words, “I cried.” Anything including the word “Love.” Anything including the word, “Feel.”

If it weren’t for sports, most men’s conversations would be very short. Let’s assume that old friends Bob and Phil meet after not seeing each other for several months. Without sports, their conversation would go like this:

Bob: Hi, Phil! How you been?
Phil: Great! And you?
Bob: Great!
Phil: …
Bob: …
Phil: Well, see you later!
Bob: Bye!

But include sports in this equation, and see what you get:

Bob: Hi, Phil! How you been?
Phil: Great! And you?
Bob: Great!
Phil: How about those Braves, eh?
Bob: Oh yeah! Amazing win! They’re really doing it this season.
Phil: Got that right! Hey, let’s go get a beer and catch up on old times!
Bob: Great!

Sports also give men something to be passionate about once the fire goes out of our marriages (about 3.7 days after the wedding). If you don’t believe that men are passionate about sports, turn on an AM sports radio station some day and listen to the passion. It’s scary.

I’d give you examples, but the game’s back on.

Did you know…

Mike Jensen is a certified yoga instructor, and he played three seasons of European baseball from the ages of 38 to 40. He was the only left-handed knuckle-ball pitcher in the league. How ‘bout some yoga sessions at the Kaplan retreats, Mike?  Mike is a Composition Professor in the School of Legal Studies.

[This article was originally published in our September, 2009 issue.]

On the Lighter Side - English for Insane People > Mike Jensen, Professor in Legal Studies

I am an English professor. I say that proudly, but only in private. When I’m in public, I claim to be a garbage man, because garbage men have a better reputation. Being an English professor is not a popular job, as evidenced by the number of bullet holes I regularly find in my home’s all-natural artificial log siding.

I understand this disdain for my profession. I know that English classes are tough. I know that literature can be hard to understand (for example, why is it that NO piece of poetry ever written lets a tree simply be a tree, rather than the poet’s symbolic representation of something incomprehensible like humanity’s hatred of their parents?). I know that writing an A-quality essay is more difficult than saying the words "Al Franken, U.S. Senator" without spitting up your Coors Light.

Knowing all this, let me offer my sincere apology to the population in general by saying: “Get off my back, you jerks! It’s not MY fault the English language sucks!”

I’m kidding, of course. The English language doesn’t suck. The English language, despite all of its quirks and difficulties, despite its crazy spelling and grammar rules, despite its weird pronunciations, REALLY sucks.  And it’s even worse for foreigners. If I were to come to this country and enroll in one of those “English for Insane Foreigners Who Actually Think They Can Ever Learn to Speak English” courses, all the professor would have to do would be to write these three words on the board:

THOUGH

THROUGH

THOUGHT

and then try to explain why each word is pronounced the way it is.

At that point I would turn around, walk out the door, return to my home country, and spend the rest of my life telling my friends and neighbors that it’s no wonder Americans are so weird; their language slowly drives them all insane.

And it does drive us insane. How are we supposed to stay clear-headed when we have to decide whether we went THROUGH a tunnel or THREW the tunnel, whether to rob a bank would be to BRAKE the law or BREAK the law, or whether I can HERE the music or HEAR the music. This especially drives us English professors insane, because we are supposed to be the guardians of the language.

And to be honest, I’ve had it. So I am announcing today, as an English professor, that it no longer matters how you spell or misspell any words. Just get your general point across, okay? So if you want to go brake the law, due it! Want too here some good music? Go ahead! Have ice cream for desert, go buy a knew car and have a peace of pie. Get to no some-body knew by telling them you love there hare. Skip work to right a knew song, then sing it threw your lover’s bedroom window. Where your pants over your underewhere. I don’t care!

But for now I’d better go. I just graded a set of essays, and I’m expecting the gunfire to erupt any minute now.

[This article was originally published in our July, 2009 issue.]