Fact: I go to Princeton.
Fact: I am writing my spring junior independent work on an art historian.
Fact: I frequently wear black with a colorful scarf.
Fact: I teach math once a week.
Here is my question: AM I TURNING INTO MY MOTHER?

Shut up, Oscar Wilde. It's not much of a tragedy.

But why are you teaching math, Nom de Plume? I thought you hated math more than anything (waiting by the phone and tardiness excepted)? This is still true. What I am doing is tutoring once a week in a prison in a town nearby. The other tutors and I were assigned somewhat randomly to existing classrooms. The teacher I was assigned to, Ms. T, has a bit of a one-room schoolhouse thing going: she teaches twelve guys a variety of subjects from what looks like 8:30 to 12:00 (I leave at 10:00). It's supposed to be divided up between math, reading/writing, and Other Stuff, but the entire time I was there was spent working on one double-sided math worksheet on percentages, decimals, and fractions. Some problems were about 15% tips. Whenever I was helping anyone with that problem I told them that I usually left 20 or 10% tips, depending, since it involved less math. They liked that.
At first I was sitting awkwardly in the corner of the classroom as the students trickled in. They had what looked like a pretty complicated attendance system involving name badges, wood blocks (no joke) and a digital list that I won't even try to explain. Anyway, I was sitting there while they started their worksheets, not quite sure whether I should be wandering around checking in with them or not. Finally, two guys sitting closest to me broke the ice by asking for help. That unleashed the floodgates. I was pretty much answering questions and helping with problems nonstop from 8:45 until I looked at my watch at 9:55 and realized I needed to hightail it out if I was going to meet my ride on time.
I also wanted to allow enough time to find my way out. The prison where I'm volunteering has enough free movement that I only had to pass through two checkpoint gates and one metal detector on my way in, but I had also run into the art teacher on the way in, and she showed me where I was supposed to go. Hiking back through the hallways by myself was a different story, since there were no exit signs anywhere. I have enough of my dad's sense of direction that I did it without making any wrong turns on the first try, which makes me hopeful for next week when I'll probably have to find the classroom again by myself.
What I've learned so far:
-I REALLY need to learn Spanish. That being said, I understand enough to know when people are talking about me inappropriately and no one was today. So that was good.
-Cross-multiplication and proportions were my salvation in middle school. Working with people who don't have those shortcuts is challenging.
-My name is now Ms. [de Plume]. That's how I was introduced to the class (it's a respect thing), and luckily it stuck with me enough that when one of the guys asked me, "What's your name again?" I only had a minimal about of "ummmmm..." before I answered. As if I didn't have enough of a crisis of names on a daily basis, keeping track of who knows me by my full name and who knows me by my "real" name.