Walking Fossil

It doesn’t feel like that long ago when I started teaching, yet without any warning, three years have passed by. I remember walking into my very first tutorial, I had to put on a shirt, proper cotton pants and leather shoes to give the impression that I was older and wiser. The age difference between the students and myself wasn’t that far apart and it didn’t take long before we communicated at a level you would on a Friday evening at the pub.

Time flies as swiftly as my monthly cash injection mysteriously disappears (yes I bought that damn ski goggles). It was an entirely different feeling when I met my students this semester. I introduced myself and so did they, “hi my name is girlie and I’m 19 years old.” There was a sudden twitch on my brow, possibly the instantaneous formation of wrinkles, and I felt like a walking fossil. The age gap is moving towards a decade and no longer could I pretend that I had youthful exuberance to spare. I was having a conversation with my colleague and I realised that I no longer use the word ‘my students’, instead I call them ‘the kids.’ Where did all that time go? That, I suppose is the problem with studying at the same University for 8 years. You stroll along the same corridor on a daily basis and you feel like everyone around you are getting younger and it really isn’t your fault. The last thing I need is to be stuck in a time capsule, which is why I’m pretty sure I’m not going to pursue academia for my career.

My Top Ten
You know that a generation gap exists when :

• you play Eric Moo in your car and your passengers say, “is he still alive?”
• you invite someone over for dinner and she talks about how she was in junior high when the spice girls appeared, and you realise you were already in Uni then
• you wonder why the kids support Taiwanese bands that name themselves with three-letter-acronyms
• you get frustrated because you can’t hear what in the bloody world Jay Chou is singing about
• you bought tickets to watch a tribute to Louis Armstrong
• you feel that the spoken language is better served with adjectives (as opposed to “I’m like….. it is like…..and then it’s like…..”)
• you think that World of War Craft is evil
• you stick to the speed limit when you drive
• you enjoy a 21 year Scotch on a week night (and not down it like the crazy Vietnamese)
• you know that Laurel and Hardy is not a designer label