Did you ever meet people who are REALLY INTO their signs? And your signs? This is signs as in Capricorn, Scorpio, etc.. Anybody who knows me knows that I don't place any stock in the theory that because I was born in a certain month, my personality is confined to certain limits. But complete strangers do. Apparently, because I'm a Capricorn, I will be "good in business" and I won't "stay with teaching, but it will open doors for me." And I found all this out by simply stopping by Hasting's after work to read their books and drink their free coffee. Maybe I shouldn't have answered that question "What's your sign?". But, I found the following assumptions and conversation to be entertaining, if nothing else. The two people on either side of me in the reading/comfy chair area apparently knew each other and it soon became apparent they both lived their lives and viewed who they were as very significantly linked to their signs. "I would never date a Scorpio", or "Bears aren't compatiple with rats, or dogs"(or whatever Chinese or Japanese sign animals they knew way too much about). These were just some of the statements I heard. Incredible. I would feel so limited as to who I could be if I actually believed my sign dictated my personality. But, as someone who likes to observe others(the writer in me), I simply listened and answered their questions, as long as they didn't go too far. Inside, I was cracking up, and it was pretty hard for me to hide it.
All signage aside, I did actually stumble upon a book I would like to read all of someday. I just don't want to pay $20 for it. "Mexifornia" is a book all about illegal Mexican immigrants and the problems illegal immigration creates in California, and by extension the southwest and even Massachussetts. The guy who wrote it is a profosser of Classics (Western Civ.) at California State University. He grew up in a border town so he has more credibility than some intellectual elite who is an outsider, at least in my mind. His basic contention is that assimilation shouldn't be viewed as a bad thing while acknowledging that corporate America's high demand for cheap labor is a large part of what drives the success of illegal immigration. Think about this. An illegal Mexican immigrant in California can be enrolled in a state university and pay in- state tuition. If I, as an out of state U.S. citizen go to the same school, I will pay almost three times as much in tuition. There are many cases where it pays to be an illegal immigrant. I'm sure there are no easy answers, but I'm also fairly certain that giving illegal immigrants preferential treatment in some cases is not the best thing to do. Whatever your opinion on the matter, it's an interesting subject that I think will eventually affect us all.
Since I have class Saturday and actually need to study, I need to stop pondering the problems of immigration in California and start thinking about pedagogy and how to properly interpret the wacky questions the state of Texas writes to test aspiring teachers on the "proper" methods of said pedagogy. For those not keen to vocabulary, pedagogy is the science of how people learn and how to teach.