Posts Tagged → teaching

Hop aboard the struggle bus our rates are reasonable and our seats are clean hey what do you mean you don’t have exact change f*ck

I don’t know what I expected. Maybe that I’d be better at handling loss than I am. Maybe to believe the mid-west adage that there’s nothing more curative than WORK WORK WORK to take your mind off things.

Whatever the case, I have been struggling. I feel like I’m doing a terrible job at school and that just messes with my head. I can’t stand being somebody who isn’t doing their best, and there is no doubt that my classes are being affected by what I’m going through.

I’ve missed more days of work these last few months than I have at any job ever, which means I’ve had substitute teachers, which means that all of my classes are behind in their coursework. It’s nothing insurmountable, and I don’t mean to say a single bad word against substitute teachers — they are vital and God bless every one of them — but the fact is that not as much work gets done when the class has a sub.

Lots of students, even the most studious students, tend to slack off. I don’t get upset at students for it — what am I going to do? Get mad at someone for not wanting to read “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock?”

Plus, I often feel like a significant portion of my brain has melted. I am just … dumber than I used to be. My memory is bad. I have trouble focusing. Little things that I’d normally remember slip through the cracks. (Cue a panicked student yelling, “Did you grade my paper yet!?”)

Between this paragraph and the last paragraph I typed, I just spent about 10 minutes trying to get the cat to sit on the heated pad we got her. Unsuccessfully.

Sigh.

The solution here is obvious: Time.

Of course that’s the answer. I have to be gracious with myself and give myself time. All I do by beating myself up like this is giving myself a proverbial black eye. All I have to do is wait. Breathe. Exist. “This, too, shall pass.”

I hate it, though. Until it does pass, I hate every last minute of it.

Like a lighthouse keeper with a broken bulb sitting on the rocks and weeping at the tide

Yesterday was ACT day at my school district and it was just…depressing.

It had snowed the night before (in April?!) and there was talk of a snow day, but we really only had about an inch, it wasn’t super icy, and all of it melted by early afternoon. Still, it was chilly and there was a bit of traffic. As we left the house, I felt bad for students who had to wait for a bus to come pick them up, which is (unfortunately) a lot of my students.

I was a proctor in the “Late Start” room, which meant I would be monitoring everybody who didn’t get to school by test time. My room would wait 2 hours and start normally so all the students who weren’t here on time would have a place to get their ACTs done. I was worried there’d be a bunch of late arrivals (more than last year) because of the weather, but there were only a handful.

On ACT day, only juniors come to school (because it somehow makes sense to give people an important test when they’re not yet finished learning English, Math, or Science). The juniors who were late that day weren’t just students whose cars wouldn’t start — they were the chronic absentees, students who are almost never on time. There are a lot of kids with this issue; Absenteeism is a big problem in American education.

It’s such a problem that I feel bad about speaking ill of these students. I know some of them and know that they don’t have easy lives, so disparaging them doesn’t feel all that cool.

Still. They are simply and frankly so dim-witted that I cannot fathom it. Literally. I cannot wrap my head around their lack of common sense or the complete absence of basic academic skills. I try to find reasons; I try to understand, to make sense of it. But, ultimately, I have no idea how or why they came to be this way. It has to be something systemic. A fundamental and (series of) major malfunction(s) in the way these children are raised and educated. Not just parents, not just teachers, not just friends — some combination of everything that can possibly go wrong going wrong.

I’ll just tell you about one student’s actions on ACT day so as not to over-pick all this low-hanging fruit.

One student, call him “Steve,” was having some trouble with the non-cognitive portion of the test. (That’s basically the part at the start of the test where you write down your name, address, and email. It’s not even really “part of the test.”) At the top of his question booklet, there was a spot for his “Name” and “Signature.”

As we read instructions, we made it explicitly clear that everyone had to write their name and add their signature. We announced it. We went around to tell everyone one-to-one that they needed to both write and sign their name.

“Steve” left this part of his question booklet blank.

As I was making my rounds, going desk to desk and helping each student in turn, I stopped by his desk and gently reminded him, “You write your name right here and then, right here, under that, add your signature.” Then I continued making my rounds to help the others. (“Steve” was, unfortunately, not alone in struggling to add his name and signature to a piece of paper.)

When I returned to “Steve”s desk, I was pleased to see that he’d written something.

Only…it wasn’t quite right.

The “Name” section he’d decided to keep blank. Where it said “Signature,” he’d written “STEVE” in big, elementary school block block lettering. That’s right–just his first name. He saw “Name” and “Signature” and thought to himself, “I can just write ‘Steve.’ Those ACT people will be able to sort it out.”

“Almost,” I said to him. “See here? You need to sign this. Do you have a signature?”

“Steve” didn’t respond.

“Just…uh, write your first name and last name here. And then, uh, write your name in cursive here.”

“Steve” didn’t respond. He almost never does. In my Creative Writing class, he’s one of the students who puts his head down and will not participate at all. I’ve tried to reach out to guardians, I’ve got admin involved, I’ve spoken to counselors. He doesn’t work, doesn’t respond, doesn’t seem to talk to anybody. I try to approach him with grace because…well, shit, what else is there?

At this point in our ACT journey, I figured it was a typical “lead a horse to water” scenario. If this kid doesn’t know what a signature is, then he’s got bigger problems than his ACT composite score. Besides, there was no time to teach him how to sign his name on test day. There were other students waiting, and the ACTs are very rigid on protocol — we have to start and stop at certain times, so we had to keep going.

“Just write your name twice,” I said.

“Steve” looked at his paper. Then he put his head down.

After that, I had to look up “Steve”s address because he didn’t know it. Same with his school email. While explaining that to him (“No, you need the ‘at’ symbol. It’s right there. No, there. This one.”), I had to explain how bubble tests work, because he’d apparently forgotten the PreACTs (and all the other Scantron tests he’s had to take over the years). Then I had to show him how to turn his answer booklet to page 3, which was beyond him. (“The pages are numbered — just like a book!”) In a lot of ways, it was like trying to get a cat to take a test.

The only difference was that cats don’t ask questions. Throughout the whole day, “Steve” had two things he wanted to ask about.

First (and this was before the test started) was, “When is lunch?”

The other question (that he asked 6 times over the course of 4 hours) was, “Can I go to the bathroom?”

As I write this, I feel like I’m not accurately showing you what the whole thing was like. It is so depressing that “blogging it up” with any sort of humor feels like I’m not treating it as seriously as I should.

It was like watching a car wreck.

No.

It was like sitting on the shore of a rocky beach somewhere, watching people struggle for breath beneath the crashing of tremendous waves, hearing their shouts, seeing their arms flail out beyond the breakers. I try to throw flotation devices their way, but they don’t know what a flotation device is, so they slap it away. The cry and wail and holler toward the shore, “Are we going to get some kind of snack at least? It seems unfair that we can’t eat!”

“Of course you can have a snack!” I shout back at them, “but could you focus on not drowning for a bit!?”

I’m met with a chorus of barely-audible gurgles that rise above the sound of the surf and all seem to moan, “I need to go to the bathroom!”

(Yes, I know the kid who went to the bathroom 6 times was probably vaping in there. But guess what? I am not the goddamned bathroom police. I refuse to be. Short of following him in there and standing right outside his stall, there’s not much I can do to curb that kind of shitty behavior. Plus, you never know. Maybe he had the rumble tums and legitimately needed to poo.)

Blogging about diseases is boring and sad but I need to remember these things so here we are

I haven’t been reading much. Well, I’m still reading a little, but I’m so preoccupied that in my off time I just veg out and either watch YouTube or TikTok. Still, I’ve gotten through Dungeon Crawler Carl and am currently working through the second book in the series, Carl’s Doomsday Scenario. I’m doing the print version and the audiobook (which is interestingly done).

The series is fine. I like the relative mindlessness of it. Blowing up goblins and punching monsters so hard they explode. There are some unique aspects to the plot structure that are worth examining on a serious level — I feel like the arc of the story is built to be understood from a macroscopic lens; characters will make more sense the more books you get into the story. It’s as if the author planned on writing hundreds of thousands of words and just thought, “We’ll get to it eventually.”

As a writer, I’m used to doing this stuff quickly — I’m borderline minimalist. “Get to it!” that’s my motto. Or, as Vonnegut puts it, “Start as close to the end as possible.” Don’t waste words; your readers’ time is valuable and you should use it well. Reading Carl reminds me how flexible these rules are, because there’s a lot of stuff I don’t get or simply wouldn’t do.

It’s unfathomable to me that we don’t have more information about Carl’s ex-girlfriend yet, even though you know she’s going to make an appearance (or be brought back up somehow.)

I’m also not a fan of giving readers actual numbers for strength and intelligence. This book will give each character a level and stats, all of which are explicitly told to readers. Is this why they’re calling it “LitRPG?” (Horrible, horrible name IMO. And maybe, overall, just a bad idea.)

Increases in ability should be shown through action not spreadsheets. The spreadsheets were only ever created for RPGs like D&D where you couldn’t easily show strength or intelligence through action. In a narrative, though, all we have is time to show how characters act. That’s the whole point of a story.

I will never read a sentence like, “My strength was at 30 so I was confident I could win the fight,” and think, “That’s some good writing!”

I know, I know, not everything needs to be literary. Besides my gripes at the LitRPG genre in general, Dungeon Crawler Carl has been fun so far.

Anywho.

My dad has a feeding tube installed in his stomach and is out of the hospital, but his condition doesn’t seem to be…improving, or at least not improving rapidly. While he’s glad to be home, he really doesn’t have a lot of energy. I don’t know if that’s from the cancer or if it’s from weeks of not being able to swallow due to the tumor in his esophagus (which is growing rapidly), but it isn’t a good sign.

Sarah, my brother, and I went down to visit yesterday. Dad was able to get up and move around, but not much. He can’t swallow anything at all and chews on ice like they have you do in the hospital. His headaches are getting bad. He has a big red bottle of hydrocodone you can inject in his feeding tube.

Radiation treatments start this Thursday and will continue for most of April. Chemo will start after that, depending on how the radiation goes.

A “home run” at this point isn’t a cure; a home run is shrinking the tumor in dad’s throat enough that he can swallow food. Not only will that make his quality of life much better, but being able to get more nutrition will be an added bonus. Dad loves eating and I hate thought of him missing out on food he enjoys in favor of the flavorless goop that goes right into his belly.

Time marches forward.

School continues. The ACTs are tomorrow and I get to proctor.

Sarcastic yay.

Thanks I hope so too

My dad is sick and I am a mess.

He was diagnosed with esophageal cancer a few weeks ago after a hurried trip to the ER when he started having difficulty swallowing. Scans revealed a tumor in his esophagus that prevented food from going down; more scans revealed that the cancer had spread. The prognosis is bad. Stage 4, likely inoperable.

I hate hate hate talking about it. Thinking about it is hard enough — I try to dumb myself down with substances in my off time specifically so I don’t have to dwell on it. Is this healthy? Not one bit. But I’m doing what I can to get through the day. Or, at least, that’s what I tell myself.

I’m at a point where I’ve started letting people at work know about what’s going on. Students are asking me about it; I missed school yesterday so I could go sit with dad while he waits to get a feeding tube put in, and today, first thing, I was met by a bunch of, “Where were you yesterday, teach?” (Students don’t really call me “teach,” but I’m hesitant to put my real name on here. I’d hate for my solitary reader to know who I am.)

This is what I assume you look like.

I don’t lie to students about stuff like this. It might be easier if I did, but this sort of thing is a part of life and there’s no use hiding from it. Plus, it isn’t as if people won’t notice something bad is happening. I probably look awful. Still, I won’t go advertising it because, again, I hate hate hate discussing it. When I have to talk about it, I try to sound as positive as I can to keep classes from turning into some kind of morose pity party.

So I smile and say, “Oh, my dad’s in the hospital and I wanted to drive down to be with him.” The conversation continues for a bit and, invariably, students say to me something like, “I hope your dad gets better soon!”

As much as I want to be truthful, I can’t exactly tell them that this isn’t the sort of cancer that gets cured. I pretend to be positive and, while it’s not technically the truth, I just tell students, “Thanks. I hope so, too!” in the most upbeat tone I can muster. It’s better than saying, “I don’t feel hope anymore,” which (unfortunately) is where my head is currently at.

Putting on this act is exhausting and It. Never. Stops. It’s so tiring that there are days when I don’t know if I can actually handle it. My body, like a house consumed by flames, will crumble in on itself in a pile of ash and smoke. “That was a nice old building,” couples will say as the amble by.

How do people do this? I have come remarkably close to losing it this week, and it’s only exacerbated by knowing that worse things are yet to come. Every time my phone rings or I get a text notification I immediately think, “This is it.” A memory will randomly make me feel like crying. I have to excuse myself from class every now and then just to get a moment alone to breathe.

Snowless snow

“There’s no way we’ll have a snow day tomorrow,” I believe were my exact words to students yesterday.

We have the day off.

I knew there was snow in the forecast, but it looked like a small amount and our district is notoriously stingy with “snow days” to begin with, so I figured there was a snowstorm’s chance in hell that we’d actually have a snow day.

While I’m not going to complain — it’s always nice to have a break in the middle of the week — I am confused by the decision. It’s noon now and it hasn’t yet snowed a single flake. It’s cold and it’s gray and it’s windy, but “cold, gray, and windy” describes Nebraska 50% of the year.

I’ve started reading a book called “The Atrocity Archives” by Charles Stross. It’s the first book in a series called “The Laundry Files,” which seems to be about a British IT guy who’s employed by a government agency (“The Laundry”) that fights against extra-dimensional Lovecraftian horrors.

Sounds like a hoot!

I picked up “The Atrocity Archives” because I was hankering a little Brian Lumley, who used to write books with covers like this before he died a few years ago:

“Necroscope” is a series about a guy who can talk to dead people and fights against an intense body-horrorish breed of vampire (Wamphyri!) from an alternate universe. There are about 16 books in the Necroscope series, and I was really into them when I was in college.

The Laundry Files should scratch that particular itch, but I know very little about these books. (Which is pretty fun, actually. I feel like I usually know a lot about books I read before I read them, which helps me appreciate the writing but leaves little room for surprises.) I’m excited to see what The Laundry Files is all about.

Perfect fodder for a snowless snow day.

Like a nandle in the nind

I downloaded a little book called The Trauma of Burnout by Dr. Claire Plumbly the other day, hoping (as I always do) to find more information about why I’m having trouble sleeping. And, hopefully, to find ways to improve the situation.

Am I actually burnt out? I don’t know. Being burnt out is more of a spectrum than it is a binary condition (“syndrome,” technically), so I suppose most people who’ve been teaching for a while are. Both mentally and physically, teaching is a tough gig. If you want to see how tough it is, take a little trip over to r/teaching on Reddit and see the horror stories that get posted there on a daily basis.

Plumbly’s book reads like she’s been following me around taking notes about how my day is going, which should make me upset but actually makes me a little relieved. It’s just nice to have a clearer idea of why I feel so crummy and to have some practical steps I can take to fix the issues.

For example, this morning, one of the first things I did after waking up was splash a bunch of cold water on my face, which apparently has some physiological benefits. Did it feel great? No. But my morning did go a little smoother than usual, so that’s a win.

I’ve never been huge on self-help books, but at this point I’ll take advice from anywhere I can get it.

Home again home again jiggity jig

I was able to keep some food down yesterday (toast, some soup), but I’m still nowhere near back to “normal,” so I’ve decided to take another sick day. I still feel a bit feverish and just so…exhausted that I don’t think I’d be much use in front of a classroom.

I’m a little guilty about it. I always have felt guilty when I’m sick — any time I take day (or two) off of work, my mid-western brain starts beating itself up. “You’re just being lazy,” is a phrase that was always thrown around the house when I grew up, and now it lives rent-free in my head.

People always say your health comes first, but my mind is at odds with that. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a person wanting to work a lot — if anything, I think I’d rather err on the side of being too hard-working — but that means I’ll feel bad about it whenever I can’t work.

And that’s a stupid way to feel. Like a boxer climbing into the ring alone, punching himself in the face, and then complaining to the referee that the rules of the match aren’t fair.

Sarah and I put a humidifier in our bedroom this winter and, holy cow, all the plants over by the window are absolutely thriving. Apparently they like a little moisture in the air.

Sarah’s taken charge of managing all the plants in the house, and she’s been doing an amazing job with them. Her policy so far has been “The more the merrier!” and it is really working. Nearly every available window has at least one plant nearby. Most windows have more. The biggest problem we’ve had is that a lot of them seem to be outgrowing the pots they’re in, which isn’t really much of an issue when you think about it.

I’ve only noticed these hearty greens because I’ve spent a lot of time in bed over the last 24 hours. Take pleasure in the small things, I suppose.

I didn’t read much yesterday, but I finished A Court of Thorns and Roses this morning and…I’m not quite sure how to feel about it. The book is fine. But that’s about it; there’s nothing really amazing going on.

The characters are a little bland, the prose is a little pedestrian, and there isn’t much happening plot-wise that really turns my crank. I think Sarah J. Maaaaas is steering everything toward a love triangle in the next book, which isn’t exactly ground-breaking.

It’s like a scoop of vanilla ice cream as far as fantasy books go. It’s not even French vanilla; just the plain stuff you get in a gallon-sized tub at the local IGA.

I’m going to give the next book a try — A Court of Mist and Fury — but I’ll have to see if things pick up a bit before committing to the whole series.

I should also keep in mind that I’m sick and I’m probably not going to *love* whatever I read right now.

Oh well.

Troublesome times & behavioral defiance

At the end of last semester — just before winter break — a troublesome student of mine handed in his final assignment and told me, “I’d better pass this class. Otherwise, I’m coming for you.”

I didn’t feel particularly threatened by it. This student talks a lot, but they’ve never been violent, so I didn’t think there was any substance to what they’d said. However, you don’t get to threaten people.

So, I took the student into the hallway and explained it to them. “You can’t talk to teachers — or anybody, I guess — like you just did. Making threats like that is very serious.” I sent the student to his admin and wrote them up.

All of this happened literally 15 minutes before school got out for winter break.

I took some time before leaving for the day to speak to administration about it; I wasn’t sure what the protocol was for threats, so I wanted to cover my bases and make sure I’d informed everyone who needed to be informed. Admin told me not to worry — that particular student was being moved out of my class. So, I thought, problem solved. Hopefully the student will be put someplace where they can find success.

Except, of course, that wasn’t the end of it. That student simply got moved from one class of mine to another class of mine. So, I’m still teaching them, but at a different time of day.

(Thanks for the help, admin! Shuffling students around like troublesome Catholic priests is sure to solve this issue.)

Yesterday, this student got in some more trouble. They were late for class without a pass, lied about where they’d been, lied about talking to an admin when told to get a tardy slip, lied about having their phone, lied about using their phone while they were supposed to be reading, and refused to stop using their phone multiple times. All of this was within the first 10 minutes of class.

I called for security to get an escort to take this student to the administration office. The student said, “I don’t need an escort. I can walk to the admin office by myself.”

I said, “I’d like to believe you, but you’ve lied pretty consistently today and you have been caught walking the halls several times this week. We’ll just wait for an escort to make sure you get where you need to be.”

Only no escort showed up. We waited for over an hour, but … nothing. The student just sat at his desk. I carried on with the lesson and emailed admin to ask what to do in this situation but heard nothing in response before the end of class.

It is incredibly disheartening. I’m not mad at the student, just as I’m not mad at admin for keeping this student in my class, just as I’m not mad about no security escort showing up.

The cold, hard truth of it is that security was probably busy with other problems and didn’t have time to send an escort. Admin probably kept the student in my class because there was no other choice with scheduling — every student takes English and there are only so many English classes. And this student has problems of their own — I’m sure their propensity for lying is learned behavior that has helped the student in the past. They need more help; they need a classroom with fewer students and a different structure.

This is the kind of student who, if I asked them, “Please write your name on this piece of paper,” would fail the task. Not because they can’t write or anything; it’s more likely something along the lines of behavioral defiance. The student opposes anyone in authority “just because.”

I wish I could say I didn’t have other students with the same issue, but it’s actually pretty common.

Who would’ve thought a country like ours would produce so many people with behavioral disorders?

Dumb & dumber & grades

I swear I’m getting dumber and dumber as the days go on. It’s like my brain is turning into a dried up husk.

It’s not that I’m forgetting how to speak or do math (although I feel like I’m a lot slower at both of those things than I was, oh, five years ago) but that I’m feeling a lot more scatter-brained. I am all over the place.

You know that feeling you get when you walk into a room and forget why you’re there? That’s called an event boundary, and it basically happens because your mind starts a new “instance” of itself when you are in a new context. When you’re in the kitchen, kitchen-you can be perfectly aware that kitchen-you needs kitchen-your airpods, but when kitchen-you goes into the bedroom to get them, a whole new you pops up! It’s Bedroom-you, who doesn’t run the same set of processes. Bedroom-you isn’t thinking about how kitchen-you’d like to listen to a podcast while kitchen-you’re cooking; bedroom-you wonders if bedroom-your sweatpants are in the dryer or in the hamper. 

Hence, it feels like you “forgot” why you went into the bedroom just because your mind switched modes. Go back to the kitchen and, odds are, you’ll remember what you were after.

It’s like a crappy magic trick! You’re the one with the saw and you’re the one getting cut in half!

I left my kindle at work so I can’t draw pictures

See? I can remember that stuff perfectly well, but I’ll still fall victim to this psychological treachery.

The worst part of it is the way my attention span has been impacted. It’s not that I’ll be sitting and reading a book and then go, “I’m bored. I should do something else.” But I will sit down to read and find myself suddenly standing up to go do something else when I don’t even realize I’m doing it. Only when I’m elbow deep in dirty dishes will I go, “Oh, yeah, I was reading.”

This is just evidence

Anywho. I’m guessing that the problem is related to my sleep, which makes sense, since I just got done blogging about how bad my sleep patterns are.

It’s tough to decide what to do about this. Except, of course, have a cup of tea.

Of my inevitable mental decline

In other news, after a second round of grades put in the gradebook, hey, look at that, the average grades in most classes are normalizing. There aren’t nearly as many failing grades as the administration was worried about. Why? Because a student’s overall performance is no longer tied to one or two data entries.

It’s almost as if freaking out about off-track data during the first few weeks of school was a total waste of time. 

Who knew?

Tick tock on a clock dj blow up my speakers

I downloaded TikTok a while ago (I’m awfully late to the party; sue me) mostly because I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I’ve found it hard to interact with students on a personal level if I don’t spend some time checking out what they’re into. You’ve got to watch the shows, listen to the music, play the dumb phone games (and, yes, download what is possibly the most insidious app ever devised).

I’m not saying you’ve got to become all about those things — five minutes with Block Blast, I think, is more than enough — but you should spend enough time with them that, when you see little Timmy trying to sneakily make a little square jump over some spikes under his desk, you can know which particular culprit has stolen Timmy’s attention.

Of all the apps that students regularly use, TikTok is far and away the worst. Good lord it is addicting. The more I use it, the more I come to think that it is both reckless and stupid to allow teenagers unrestricted access to apps like TikTok. We’re creating an army of little dopamine mind-slaves. Australia has the right idea in banning that shit.

(Sure, that “mind-slave” bit is an exaggeration — I’m a writer, I exaggerate perpetually — but you’d be hard-pressed to find a single long-term benefit provided by TikTok.)

Sure, but what news is being delivered at laser-fast, fiberoptic speeds? What, exactly, is the content being bounced around satellites and into my little glass rectangle? That’s the problem I have with this whole thing. I ask myself the same question I ask when I watch cable news: “Who decided that I should see this?”

For cable news, the answer is easy: It’s decided by corporations who will show you whatever “news” they think will most benefit their bottom line. (As evidenced by cable news shows actually turning into the home shopping network.)

For TikTok (and YouTube and Instagram…), we’ve instead got something people are oddly okay with calling “The Algorithm.” (What the fuck kind of sideways-ass timeline are we in where our “information feeds” are controlled by “The Algorithm” and we’re all like, “Yeah, that’s fine, Imma go to Starbucks.”)

The scary part (well…one of the scary parts) is that nobody, not even the creators, can fully tell you how the goddamned algorithm works. It’s complicated as all hell and tracks so much of your information it is absolutely astounding.

So, basically, we don’t know how or why we’re being fed the stuff we see on these apps. We don’t know if we’re all seeing the same stuff, or if we’re all in little bubbles being spoon-fed what The Algorithm wants us to see. (In some cases we’re being shown different angles of the same event — actually spinning reality in real time, creating different “versions of the truth.”)

I mean. This all sounds a bit like I need to tighten my tin foil hat, but… How many more times this morning do I need to see a guy in Minnesota being murdered? How many more times do I need to zoom in on that shooting with super slo-mo?

And how many times does every teenager in the country need to rewatch it? No, really, what’s a healthy number? What do you think? They say you have to experience something 33 times for it to enter long term memory, which seems a little high to me, so maybe we can start there and work toward a reasonable number? /s

Shit’s bananas.