John Glenn

*Warning: Unless you're in Literary Journalism class or have read "The Right Stuff" by Tom Wolfe, you probably won't get this post.  I'm just writing it so I won't forget the scenario since it was such a funny class period.  Just know there's a lot of inside jokes in our class from that book about the Mercury seven (first men in space).

At the start of Literary Journalism class today Audrey came in to interview us and Dr. Nash about the class for an article she's writing for the Communicator (the SJ&C's newsletter).  Before she could ask any questions, Dr. Nash showed us his new iPad he just bought on Monday night.  He passed it around the class, or tried to.  He gave it to Emily and she had it for most of the time Audrey was interviewing us.  The most amusing part of watching her try out the iPad was when she played some marble game (I don't know the actual name) and had to use her whole upper body to keep the marble moving right.  "Wow, this is a lot harder to play on here than on an iPod," she remarked.

Audrey's questions were pretty easy to answer and we took turns giving her quotes.  Rainey answered one question and did so very eloquently.  She's got a great way with words, both written and spoken (which is a real skill, in my opinion).  When she was done her answer, Chris smirked at her, "Thanks John Glenn."  Every person in the room burst out in laughter, except for Audrey who smiled while looking a bit confused.  "Chris, stop it," Rainey said sheepishly.  Chris grinned down at Rainey while raising both his hands in the air (like elementary students do when they REALLY want the teacher to pick them) and then made his hands into "thumbs up."  Then suddenly Dr. Nash said, "Oh, John Glenn!  Oh, that's funny!" and really started laughing, which made us all laugh even harder.  It's always amusing when people laugh before they actually realize the joke.  Emily joined in, while still keeping her eyes glued to the iPad screen, "We should get a picture of Rainey with her hands up like that."  "Ya," Dr. Nash added.  "Just a picture of Rainey beside the story."  "Wait," I said, "There's seven of us and there were seven of them.  We could all pretend to be one of the Mercury seven at the press conference."  Dr. Nash turned to Chris, who had started the whole thing.  "Who would you be? Al Shepard?"  "No," Rainey countered.  "Emily would be Shepard since she's always been ahead of the rest of us in getting her drafts done."  "I think Chris would be Yaeger even though he wasn't one of the seven," Angela said.  Aimee added, "OK, we really need to get this picture taken before the school year ends."

Poor Audrey must have felt left out.  "Well, my next question was going to be, Because this class is so small, are the dynamics different?, but I think you've already answered that one," she said.  The six of us students looked around the table and realized what an awesome class we were in.  "I think so," Angela pipped up.  "I feel like we're a family in here.  We all help each other out about our articles.  I mean, Rainey and Alison have fixed me up with dates for my project.  We've talked together about each person's topic and I think we have a special bond."  I agreed with Angela and I think the other four students and Dr. Nash did too.

I love having small classes where everyone knows everyone else and gets along and helps each other.  Emily and I had that last year in our six-person, all-girls Adv. Reporting class with Ms. Chamberlain and now we have it again with Dr. Nash in Literary Journalism.  LJ (Angela's acronym for our class) class today just made me realize again how much I'll miss the SJ&C once I graduate and leave.

PS - After Emily had got to level 4 of her marble game, she passed the iPad to me and Angela who worked on a Mad Lib game.  We got all the way to the last word and just needed to put in an adverb when Dr. Nash needed his iPad to read us an e-mail he'd gotten.  So we never got to see how our Mad Lib turned out, but it was going to be good.  Like Angela said, "We used the word gobbleygook.  How could it not be good?"