Collecting bottles, tossing leftovers, taking out the garbage
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Jean Braithwaite lives in Edinburgh, Texas, where she teaches English, directs the MFA program, and struggles to improve her Spanish, all at the University of Texas–Pan American. Her work has appeared in the New York Times and Bayou.
On this particular day in 1987, as I bicycled home from the student rec center, no one mooed at me. Mooers seemed to have grown scarcer than they’d been in my fat years as a teenager, despite the fact that I was now even bigger than that and went outside more frequently.
“C is an average grade,” I tell my students. “C means you’re doing just fine. B is a good grade, a better-than-average grade, and an A is an outstanding grade reserved for truly outstanding work.” I’m lying of course, and I suppose they know it. University-wide, the average grade is a B-minus. Higher for some subjects.