In which Marcy takes the AGRE in Education, and is amused\/annoyed by it.<\/p>\r\n
Another time jump here, from January to May; this letter is near the end of her time at Antioch.<\/p>\r\n
She appears to have been teaching at this point, but I\u2019m a little unclear on what\/where she was teaching; I think it was at the Antioch School, the lab school for faculty kids, but I\u2019m not certain.<\/p>\r\n
<\/p>\r\n
\r\n\r\n [pencil: 5\/5\/66?]\r\n\r\nHeigh-ho\r\n\r\nThanks for the check and the sesame seed candy et al---had\r\ndinner with Cathy and Elaine on Sunday and took the candy\r\nwith; twas most enjoyed. This teacher business in a small\r\nfriendly town is really alright; you keep getting the most\r\nsumptuous dinner invitations. Tonight was invited to the\r\nhouse of one of the girls in the class I'm presently in, a\r\nfamily that eats most 'stremely well, and a mother who talks\r\nmost 'stremely incessantly, and a lovely long bike ride back\r\nto work off some of the excess. Druther have x Cathy and\r\nElaine for friends, and do things with them, than have kids\r\ninvite me to have dinner with their parents.....guess if I\r\nwere living in the dorm I'd appreciate it more.\r\n\r\nThe floor is covered with papers, and I'm really somewhat\r\nshambled, having just produced a two-page pr\u00e9cis of what's\r\nsupposed to develop into a 15-pages-at-least paper on my\r\nphilosophy of education. The reverse is page two of mine,\r\nhave many extras as the ditto machine kind of got carried\r\naway....will send a page one if I have any left, have no\r\nextras as the ditto machine got carried away in the opposite\r\ndirection.\r\n\r\nReading about 90 million books for creativity paper, but\r\nhave reached a plateau of sorts and am at a temporary\r\nstandstill, which is kind of depressing, but already\r\nbeginning to be over. this is my senior project, and what it\r\nwill be like a month from now I have no idea.....but, god,\r\nonly a month to do it, eek, help. Think I'll go crawl into\r\nmy footlocker and close the lid.--the essence of non-\r\nxxxxxxxxxxx creative activity--????\r\n\r\nThose godawful allergy pills really came close to ruining\r\nme. The plimasins are fine, but I took the first of the red\r\nones (histadyl?) on friday night, and another on Saturday\r\nmorning, went to class, and had an agonizing headache (not\r\nthe usual painful variety but just totally unpleasant and\r\nrepulsive) and felt like I'd been forced to stay awake for\r\nabout six days straight, finally came home and began to get\r\nthe idea that someone had raked over my psyche with a steel\r\nhasp, and everything was unbearably ugly and terrible.\r\nfinally, after about half an hour of that, I curled up in a\r\nlittle ball, and slept for what turned out to be 15 minutes.\r\nwhen I woke up I was fine. Haven't xxxx felt like repeating\r\nto see if it really was the pill or not, but I guess if\r\nthere's nothing else new I'll go back to ambodryl for a\r\nwhile, now that I haven't taken any for over a week. if you\r\ncould like send some.... also, could use another bottle of\r\nwetting solution, and one of the soaking sol. too,---ah, and\r\none more thing: stocking cost about a dollar a pair here,\r\nand don't wear near' as well as the ones from Gold's--which\r\nI've just about used up, as I wear them nearly every day,\r\nand Antioch school demands a lot more in x the way of active\r\nparticipation from its x teachers than Mills Lawn did. Like\r\nI'm expected to get up and move around and act like I'm\r\nalive, not a critter behind a desk or xxxxx safely out of\r\ntouch at the front of the room. Which is the way it ought to\r\nbe, for kids as well as teachers, but it's certainly harder\r\non stockings. So if you get ambitious, you could pick up 6\r\npair of size x 10 seamless<\/u> mesh<\/u> cinnamin, I think (how do\r\nyou spell cinnamin?), even though it may look awfully dark\r\nto you. cinnamon? oh, well, nutmeg-colored.\r\n\r\nAGRE's were this afternoon. These are advanced graduate\r\nrecord exams, which is a long way of saying college boards\r\nfor seniors. The aptitude part is what we take as a matter\r\nof course for our Level II exam, which means that when you\r\npass that you can go on to take senior-type courses,\r\nhigh-number, low-population seminar classes, etc. (by number\r\nI mean course # in catalogue, indicated degree of\r\nadvancedness, supposedly.) Took them nearly two years ago,\r\ngot all (or mostly) H's, as I recall (= high), xxxxx\r\ntestifies not that I'm smart but that girls high was a good\r\ntraining center for test-taking. The ones today were\r\nachievement, meaning on specific subject matter: you take\r\nthe one for your field. Suzy says the history ones were very\r\ndifficult, I've heard that the sociology exam was ruinously\r\nimpossible, but the education exam was so totally ridiculous\r\nand irrelevant and stupid I can't begin to tell you. They\r\nadminister the test in one big room, with all the people in\r\none area sitting near each other, and we all seemed to be\r\nworking at roughly the same rate, and occasionally a giggle\r\nwould sweep over the whole group at something more xxxxxx\r\npatently absurd or unanswerable than usual. Trying to be\r\nobjective about something as personal as teaching means you\r\ncan ask two kinds of questions: what was so-and-so's theory\r\nof education, and what do you call this or that aspect of\r\ntest-scoring. They did ask a lot of other questions, all of\r\nwhich were either xxxx stupid or meaningless, and the whole\r\nthing x was SO easy as to be xxx a joke. I took a nap in the\r\nmiddle, managed to eat an orange, chew two packs of gum, and\r\ngo through about a dozen hard candies (we all come prepared\r\nfor this kind of thing by now) and still be finished 40\r\nminutes before the time limit. what nonsense!\r\n\r\nCarolyn Effros (formerly Jacobson) and her husband passed\r\nthrough here last week en route to Chicago. They seem to be\r\ndoing extremely well together, which is mildly surprising\r\nand altogether great, and it was really good to see them\r\nagain.\r\n\r\nRegards to people,\r\n\r\n [handwritten: love, Marcia]\r\n<\/pre>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n<\/p>\r\n
Postmark: May 5, 1966, Yellow Springs, Ohio. Handwritten: “Rec\u2019d this 5\/7” and “Ans. this 5\/19” and “Get from Iz — Ambodryls, wetting solution, soaking solution, any brand name. Stocking\u2019s, 6 pr—size 10, seamless mesh, cinnamon } sent to 5\/19\/66”<\/p>\r\n
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