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Friday, April 24, 2015
Apr. 24th, 2015 08:05 pmFor the first time in over a month I have a weekend (Thur night to Mon morning) free from grading. After grading Paper 3, commenting on Rough Draft 4 and grading Paper 4, I handed everything back and won't need to grade until Monday when I get the final Paper 5. Well, I do have a couple of Paper 4th next week from students who fudged formatting and I gave them some wiggleroom on the important Paper 4, but still it was very nice to just sit with my laptop last night and watch the latest "Supernatural" episode instead of grading by flashlight.
It does get a bit tedious grading 40 papers of the same variety because only maybe 4 people would say something original. Thesis looks pretty much the same in the rest of the class. Original thought and looking at authors critically is hard - it is much easier just to parrot back the argument of the authors without questioning. Also students were pissing me off by messing with margins. Seriously, you submit your paper online too - I am capable of pulling up your online copy and checking your formatting. I read gazillion papers, I can tell when it's Times Roman 13 instead of 12. Also, when I say that I will hold extra office hours from 2 to 5, which I really don't have to do, don't email me to ask if you can set up an appointment for 1:45. I do love teaching and I love seeing my students really learn something over the course of the semester - most can now organize their paper and there are a lot of Bs - but sometimes I just want to shake my head.
I signed up for final Folder Review today, which will be the official end of the semester for me when I submit all the grades. I'll be done on May 11th. Very excited. I can focus on the job hunt more then. I can come back to teach in the fall, they want me back and I'm already on the schedule - but I really do need a full time job with a shorter commute.
Job hunting is such a frustrating process. More so since every online "helpful" article pretty much says that only 10% get the job from online job adds, the rest from networking and referral. I am terrible at networking. I did set up a LinkedIn profile but I still need to figure out how to use that better. I want to switch fields too, so that seems also almost impossible. I know I need to be positive and keep searching but the whole process does not feel that optimistic. At least, I would be able to give it more of a fair shot once the semester is over.
One more personal front, I finally managed to go to my hairdresser to get my hair colored with highlights and get a haircut. In my family early gray is common and I was tired of my graying roots. I didn't color my hair until I was 32 but now I do it periodically. I keep as close to my natural brown color as I can. And when I get my haircut, the hairdresser does a blow out and my hair looks nice and straight and normal sized for a few days and not giant and unruly. (I have lots and lots of big poofy hair and I rarely have patience to style it. I usually just pull it up into a bun. And for a few days after a haircut, I wear my hair loose).
Also, as of a week ago, I finally stepped on the scale after a few months, and I'm back at my pre-pregnancy weight! I don't have to get a new wardrobe at all and that feels good because I hate clothes shopping. I don't usually care much about the scale or my weight, just as long as my pants still fit.
When I was looking up mondegreen on Wikipedia when writing my last post, I realized that I always misheard Alanis Morrissette's "You Oughta Know" song. Instead of "cross I bear" I always heard "cross-eyed bear," like I genuinely thought the guy gave her a bear and it held sentimental meaning she is reminding him off.
On a more silly news in TV and book world:
TV
The idea of a Full House sequel on Netflix makes me happy. I know that show is super corny and ridiculous at times but the very first episode of American TV I saw when we came to New York (we immigrated 22 years ago yesterday! on April 23rd)and bought a TV was the episode where Steve took DJ to his prom. We didn't really understand much dialogue in the episode but we did understand "I love you". And that show was one of the first shows I watched here - I learned English from it. So I will watch the sequel for sure.
Grimm continues to have a nice season. I'm not sure if I like the Evil Juliette story overall nor her downward spiral, but I do like that she has her own storyline and she's allowed to feel things about it and not let men to tell her how she should respond to the upheaval in her life. It is certainly better than her non-presence in the first season. And as long as the show gives me happy married Monroe and Rosalee, I'm happy. I think Trouble and Nick's Mom will come back in the finale, so I'm looking forward to that. Not sure what is going on with Renald at all.
Supernatural in the last few episode started to gain momentum again. I even liked Rowena in the last episode and she was getting annoying before. And it was wonderful to see Bobby and now Benny again. And Charlie always rocks. I'm looking forward to the cliffhanger of the finale. I do think Crowley will die this time for real.
Books
Among my intense grading spree and limited time, I did manage to finish Oliver Sacks' An Anthropologist on Mars I liked it less than The Minds' Eye but it still had a lot of interesting moments and made me think a lot. It is a book of seven case studies that make the reader think of self and how we construct it and what happens if our brain works differently. The seven case studies were: colorblind painter, guy stuck in the 60s due to tumor and inability to form memories but who likes and responds to music, a person who was able to see practically for the very first time in his life, a surgeon with Tourette's, a painter whose brain made him remember and relive his childhood hometown in vivid obsessive detail, an autistic savant, and a woman with Asperger's.
As with many other work by Sacks it just makes you think about your own brain and construction of the world and what it means to see in color, form memories, see, be emotional and it lets you get into the mind of people who don't respond 'normally.' Its creepy, scary and fascinating. My favorite chapter was about a man named Virgil who was blind since very early childhood and after the age of 40 gained the ability to see for pretty much the first time in his life. It wasn't magic - bandages off and you understand the world. It was really hard to figure out what he was seeing because the brain needs to learn to interpret shapes and distances etc. He was well adjusted blind and now with vision he felt he had more of a disability while learning to use it. Like correlating and identifying shapes visually. It is just interesting to realize the whole process behind seeing that we don't even realize because we just take those brain connections for granted.
It does get a bit tedious grading 40 papers of the same variety because only maybe 4 people would say something original. Thesis looks pretty much the same in the rest of the class. Original thought and looking at authors critically is hard - it is much easier just to parrot back the argument of the authors without questioning. Also students were pissing me off by messing with margins. Seriously, you submit your paper online too - I am capable of pulling up your online copy and checking your formatting. I read gazillion papers, I can tell when it's Times Roman 13 instead of 12. Also, when I say that I will hold extra office hours from 2 to 5, which I really don't have to do, don't email me to ask if you can set up an appointment for 1:45. I do love teaching and I love seeing my students really learn something over the course of the semester - most can now organize their paper and there are a lot of Bs - but sometimes I just want to shake my head.
I signed up for final Folder Review today, which will be the official end of the semester for me when I submit all the grades. I'll be done on May 11th. Very excited. I can focus on the job hunt more then. I can come back to teach in the fall, they want me back and I'm already on the schedule - but I really do need a full time job with a shorter commute.
Job hunting is such a frustrating process. More so since every online "helpful" article pretty much says that only 10% get the job from online job adds, the rest from networking and referral. I am terrible at networking. I did set up a LinkedIn profile but I still need to figure out how to use that better. I want to switch fields too, so that seems also almost impossible. I know I need to be positive and keep searching but the whole process does not feel that optimistic. At least, I would be able to give it more of a fair shot once the semester is over.
One more personal front, I finally managed to go to my hairdresser to get my hair colored with highlights and get a haircut. In my family early gray is common and I was tired of my graying roots. I didn't color my hair until I was 32 but now I do it periodically. I keep as close to my natural brown color as I can. And when I get my haircut, the hairdresser does a blow out and my hair looks nice and straight and normal sized for a few days and not giant and unruly. (I have lots and lots of big poofy hair and I rarely have patience to style it. I usually just pull it up into a bun. And for a few days after a haircut, I wear my hair loose).
Also, as of a week ago, I finally stepped on the scale after a few months, and I'm back at my pre-pregnancy weight! I don't have to get a new wardrobe at all and that feels good because I hate clothes shopping. I don't usually care much about the scale or my weight, just as long as my pants still fit.
When I was looking up mondegreen on Wikipedia when writing my last post, I realized that I always misheard Alanis Morrissette's "You Oughta Know" song. Instead of "cross I bear" I always heard "cross-eyed bear," like I genuinely thought the guy gave her a bear and it held sentimental meaning she is reminding him off.
On a more silly news in TV and book world:
TV
The idea of a Full House sequel on Netflix makes me happy. I know that show is super corny and ridiculous at times but the very first episode of American TV I saw when we came to New York (we immigrated 22 years ago yesterday! on April 23rd)and bought a TV was the episode where Steve took DJ to his prom. We didn't really understand much dialogue in the episode but we did understand "I love you". And that show was one of the first shows I watched here - I learned English from it. So I will watch the sequel for sure.
Grimm continues to have a nice season. I'm not sure if I like the Evil Juliette story overall nor her downward spiral, but I do like that she has her own storyline and she's allowed to feel things about it and not let men to tell her how she should respond to the upheaval in her life. It is certainly better than her non-presence in the first season. And as long as the show gives me happy married Monroe and Rosalee, I'm happy. I think Trouble and Nick's Mom will come back in the finale, so I'm looking forward to that. Not sure what is going on with Renald at all.
Supernatural in the last few episode started to gain momentum again. I even liked Rowena in the last episode and she was getting annoying before. And it was wonderful to see Bobby and now Benny again. And Charlie always rocks. I'm looking forward to the cliffhanger of the finale. I do think Crowley will die this time for real.
Books
Among my intense grading spree and limited time, I did manage to finish Oliver Sacks' An Anthropologist on Mars I liked it less than The Minds' Eye but it still had a lot of interesting moments and made me think a lot. It is a book of seven case studies that make the reader think of self and how we construct it and what happens if our brain works differently. The seven case studies were: colorblind painter, guy stuck in the 60s due to tumor and inability to form memories but who likes and responds to music, a person who was able to see practically for the very first time in his life, a surgeon with Tourette's, a painter whose brain made him remember and relive his childhood hometown in vivid obsessive detail, an autistic savant, and a woman with Asperger's.
As with many other work by Sacks it just makes you think about your own brain and construction of the world and what it means to see in color, form memories, see, be emotional and it lets you get into the mind of people who don't respond 'normally.' Its creepy, scary and fascinating. My favorite chapter was about a man named Virgil who was blind since very early childhood and after the age of 40 gained the ability to see for pretty much the first time in his life. It wasn't magic - bandages off and you understand the world. It was really hard to figure out what he was seeing because the brain needs to learn to interpret shapes and distances etc. He was well adjusted blind and now with vision he felt he had more of a disability while learning to use it. Like correlating and identifying shapes visually. It is just interesting to realize the whole process behind seeing that we don't even realize because we just take those brain connections for granted.