Would You Like Some Gum?

I’m sitting in class and my friend, next to me, pulls out a pack of gum. She opens it and slides one out. The she turns to me and offers the box.

“Would you like a piece of gum?” She offers.

I shake my head and smile, “No, thank you.”

We turn back to the lecture at hand, not giving it a second thought.

Later I considered the interaction again (when I should have been learning about the literacy rates of American children), and realized that is an odd conversation. In American society, it’s an expectation to share our minty breath fresheners with those in our company.

But why?

When I bring a coffee (or let’s be honest: tea) to a meeting or class, I don’t feel obligated to share with those around me. That’s my drink! Get your own!

Same thing with food. Often there is the comical disclaimer of: “Sorry to eat in front of everyone, I just haven’t eaten since *insert meal before the one that has been skipped here*” and then that person eats guilt free. No offering of their sandwich/salad/or chips. Munch away, baby.

What if I came into a meeting and pulled out a pen, but every time pulled out a pen I would look around: “Does anyone else need a pen? I just bought the value pack.” No one does that! Because it’s an expectation to bring our own.

But gum. Why must we share our gum?

When I originally wrote this post, I had every intention of citing the origin of this tradition, however, after a somewhat intense episode of Googling and Wikipedia, it appears that not too many other people in cyberspace give the offering of gum to other people much thought (Maybe I’m just cutting edge). However, we do this so automatically, that this tradition is in line with offering a guest a drink and not calling a date three days after receiving her number: it is accepted as a norm.

What historically, makes it not only thoughtful, but something that is an expectation in our society to offer our precious gum out?

What if I want to keep my gum?

The Science of Political Science

I am all about education. That’s no secret.

It’s funny because before coming to college, I had no idea what I was interested in or what I wanted to do. I just maybe wanted to be a teacher because I had enjoyed tutoring one of my biology classmates during my sophomore year in high school.

I jumped in the education program and LOVED it. Then my work with the nonprofit world exposed to me how interested I am in issues on a broader scope. So education policy became my new area of interest.

This semester I am taking my first public policy class. Because my program is so specific, I had some class conflicts and had to take a class in the another program to substitute the policy class I was supposed to take.

Political Science 256.

Note the 2. The 2 means that this class is a 200 level class. Let me remind you that I have been taking pedagogy classes for a year and a half. This is a class full of political science majors.

The first day, the professor asks each student to introduce him/herself and share his/her activities over the summer. I was excited to share, I had been in Nashville and actually done something.

Then as students started share, I realized there was a common thread throughout most of the class. 75% of the class had spent their summer in DC and approximately 99% (these are exact numbers) of those students had interned for a congressman or woman. They had worked in the White House, the Senate, think tanks, and a whole assortment of insanely impressive internships.

One other student made me feel better with his lifeguard position at Jersey Shore, but still Jersey Shore. Even that was noteworthy, he probably saw Snooki wobbling around. Why couldn’t it have been the baby pool in Lake Erie?

My Nashville summer was not impressive to the class.

Class started and right away I knew I was over my head. The professor would ask a question and 32 hands raised in the air, and not just half way. A full vertical line extended above each students head. They were yearning to share what they knew. Meanwhile, I was making a list of words to look up after class: constituent, federalism, oligarchy. This was going to be a long semester.

I miss my education classes, those are comfortable and I know what all the big words mean.

Then the professor pauses the discussion to do the traditional review of the syllabus. He stops during the presentation to explain that he is a hard grader and students have specifically avoided his class to save their GPA. Everyone starts with a zero and works up from there.

Welp.

I am just overwhelmed. All I want to is to help America’s education system, but now I have to compete with a room of pre-lawyers and pre-politicians (it’s also incredibly easy to tell which one is which).

Class ended and I approached the professor and explained my plight. I explained that the last study of government I had was my high school government class: and the most I really remember is that Obama is our president. He smiled and took me to his office. There he gave me a book and told me this would help me keep up. He explained that he wouldn’t let me get too far behind and we could do weekly political science bootcamp if we needed to.

I’m still crazy intimidated by the class (although I did ask a question during the last session! I was shaking and praying that nobody was laughing hilariously in their heads), but now I am bound and determined to do well.

We’ll see who wins out: me or 250 years of American political science history.