Sunday, April 27, 2008
My recent blog break
I have posted several bits in the last few days, but before those it had been a few weeks since I posted. I had to take a blog break, I was having a very tough few weeks--perhaps the toughest I have had, ever. Things are looking up and I will be reporting on some very good news soon.
How do I love me? Let me count the ways..
Check it!
A big question for me is how do I balance connecting with students and making the course interesting and personally relevant with not feeding their overwhelming narcissism.
A big question for me is how do I balance connecting with students and making the course interesting and personally relevant with not feeding their overwhelming narcissism.
Cheater Guilt
Early last fall semester, I came across identical submissions from two students. The assignment was to create a reference page according to the format within our field. The assignment was small and sort-of ungraded...it was for me to check before they turned in the whole project. The students turned in the same page--with the same mistakes. When I confronted the students about it--they said that because they live together they had worked on it together and that is why they had the same mistakes. I gave them a firm talking to and told them not to work on individual projects together.
This semester they turned in an assignment in another faculty members class with identical passages again. I am feeling a bit guilty. I should have busted them because clearly they didn't learn from my lecture.
This semester they turned in an assignment in another faculty members class with identical passages again. I am feeling a bit guilty. I should have busted them because clearly they didn't learn from my lecture.
Friday, April 25, 2008
My newest habit
As a kid, you weren't cool unless your soda drink of choice was a suicide. This of course meant that you mixed a bit of each of the available drinks. And apparently I was not the only one. Check it!
Perhaps reminiscent of those care-free years of my life, I was moved recently to pour all of the bits of remaining cereal into one container and shake it up creating cereal suicide. And it is delicious. A bit insensitively named, but as a throwback to my childhood days, I gotta go old school in the name.
So imagine my surprise when recently I saw the 'Say Something' episode of the Gilmore Girls and lo and behold--Rory Gilmore (and her friend Paris) are, when near the dorm cafeterias magical wall of all possible cereals, of mixing it up and getting a bit of several. Do you know they have whole restaurants devoted to cereal? In real life, not in Stars Hollow. Man, I wish I lived near one.
Perhaps reminiscent of those care-free years of my life, I was moved recently to pour all of the bits of remaining cereal into one container and shake it up creating cereal suicide. And it is delicious. A bit insensitively named, but as a throwback to my childhood days, I gotta go old school in the name.
So imagine my surprise when recently I saw the 'Say Something' episode of the Gilmore Girls and lo and behold--Rory Gilmore (and her friend Paris) are, when near the dorm cafeterias magical wall of all possible cereals, of mixing it up and getting a bit of several. Do you know they have whole restaurants devoted to cereal? In real life, not in Stars Hollow. Man, I wish I lived near one.
My biological clock is barely starting to tick....and its weird.
So, I recently knit a baby sweater that is so awesome I decided not to give it to anyone. I am keeping it. Despite the fact that I am not pregnant, not trying to get pregnant, couldn't even possibly get pregnant (no dating options here in nowheresville). Also, I feel like acknowledging my preference for baby names.
So here goes:
Boys: Trace, Kannon, Cooper, Wynn, Noah, Benjamin, Giles, Brogan,
Girls: Boys names for girls, Elison, Sukie (sookie), Sloane, Grace, Emerson, Lorien, Brady, Caden, Ellis, Evangeline, Piper, Finley, Patience
What a ridiculous waste of my time.
So here goes:
Boys: Trace, Kannon, Cooper, Wynn, Noah, Benjamin, Giles, Brogan,
Girls: Boys names for girls, Elison, Sukie (sookie), Sloane, Grace, Emerson, Lorien, Brady, Caden, Ellis, Evangeline, Piper, Finley, Patience
What a ridiculous waste of my time.
Has anyone used SLIMTIMER?
I waste time. For example, I am currently blogging while listening to commentaries of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That having been said, I am thinking about tracking my work habits a bit more closely (or at all). That said, if anyone has suggestions about SLIMTIMER or other ways to track habits--let's have them. Now I will go grade--yuck!
A new blog-hero
Recently finished backtracking through a new blog (Hunting for Mr. Right). I love finding new blog-heroes*. She sometimes writes the blogs I am thinking in my own head. But my favorite of all her recent posts goes back a bit to a post making comparisons between life and swimming.
As an avid swimmer, I loved the idea. To sum up (but really, check out the whole blog or at least the post for all her funny details), life is like swimming because: 1) It's not as easy as it looks. 2) No matter what you wear, you're bound to look like an idiot. 3) If you don't pay attention, you're likely to run into the wall. 4) Sometimes, all you can do is focus on breathing.....[there are more, but those are the best, in my opinion]
Some of her commenters also noted: life is like treading water (all that movement, but not going anywhere--Brilliant!) and lots of time in either makes you wrinkly. I was a swimmer for years and its still my favorite place to workout and often my favorite place to think.
When I get back in swimming shape (usually the second or third week of regular swimming), it makes me feel powerful and strong and sexy.
*A blog-hero is a person whose blog you admire because it is more [fill-in-word] than yours. Eloquent, Funny, Technologically adept, Clever, etc. Technically my use of a foot-note type thing is an example of taking something that you saw on someone else's blog and thought was awesome. In Hunting for Mr. Right, she frequently foot-notes. My favorite foot-note defined 'secret dating'
As an avid swimmer, I loved the idea. To sum up (but really, check out the whole blog or at least the post for all her funny details), life is like swimming because: 1) It's not as easy as it looks. 2) No matter what you wear, you're bound to look like an idiot. 3) If you don't pay attention, you're likely to run into the wall. 4) Sometimes, all you can do is focus on breathing.....[there are more, but those are the best, in my opinion]
Some of her commenters also noted: life is like treading water (all that movement, but not going anywhere--Brilliant!) and lots of time in either makes you wrinkly. I was a swimmer for years and its still my favorite place to workout and often my favorite place to think.
When I get back in swimming shape (usually the second or third week of regular swimming), it makes me feel powerful and strong and sexy.
*A blog-hero is a person whose blog you admire because it is more [fill-in-word] than yours. Eloquent, Funny, Technologically adept, Clever, etc. Technically my use of a foot-note type thing is an example of taking something that you saw on someone else's blog and thought was awesome. In Hunting for Mr. Right, she frequently foot-notes. My favorite foot-note defined 'secret dating'
"I like how your verbs that are things. I think I'm going to sandwich after I sofa here for a bit." Love it!
My Boys comes back in June. I am thrilled. Who did P.J. take on the trip? As you may recall--the possiblities were 1) The cute ex-cubbie, 2) Thoo-rn, the sing-songy named recently returned ex, 3) The adorable botanist. My vote: Bobby, the hookup turned friend, turned friend that she hooked up with--hes a peach.
On that note, recent article on msn: http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/Features/Columns/?article=VerbsGoneWild>1=27004
Verbs Gone Wild Are we taking too many liberties with language?By Martha Brockenbrough
A while back, I wrote about the most annoying office jargon ever. And while that might have been a slight exaggeration, it is true that most people I surveyed despised the use of "dialogue" as a verb above all else -- including the vaguely dirty-sounding "low-hanging fruit."What's more, people chided me for failing to include "monetize," "productize," "incentivize" and other supremely grating words. And then I realized what these sucky little mosquitoes have in common.They're all verbs made from nouns. Or, as the experts say, they're "denominal" words.I have a least-favorite denominal word of my own: gifted. As in, "She gifted me with a designer knockoff handbag." I once even ranted about it to the Wall Street Journal on behalf of the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar. I called "gifting" all sorts of things that didn't get printed (and a few that did). After the fact, though, I turned to my dictionary, where I learned that my distaste was misplaced. Encarta links "gift" as a verb to the 13th century, where it comes from the Old Norse gipt. The Oxford English Dictionary, which traces usage in English, has found several appearances that date back to the 1600s. Something called "The Wife in Morel's Skin" says this: "The friendes that were together met He gyfted them richely with right good speede." I can't resist pointing out that the OED found a spelling error in this same dusty old sentence. "He gyfted them" was printed as "Be gyfted them." Oops! Careless scribes. It's tempting to say that sort of sloppiness goes hand in hand with the English abuse that is verbing.But I don't think I'd win that case. Shakespeare verbed -- with the word dialogue, no less. In Act II, scene ii of "Timon," he writes, "Dost Dialogue with thy shadow?" This is from 1607, just a year before "The Wife in Morel's Skin." If you're a writer looking to criticize language, you're not going to get very far by picking on Shakespeare -- unless your name is Stephen King, in which case you wouldn't bother anyway, because you're too busy building a fort out of money.This is too bad for my fellow gifting haters, and for fans of Calvin and Hobbes, who no doubt recall the classic "VERBING WEIRDS LANGUAGE" comic strip. Like it or not, we're living with a language that verbs words. What's that thing you use to get the dog hair out of the carpet? It's a vacuum, right? And when you're using it, you're ... vacuuming. Try to find a single word that means the same thing. Likewise, when you're putting butter on your bread, you're buttering it, no? Does anyone, besides a vegan or a dieter, have any objection to that? So the question isn't, "Is it OK to turn nouns into verbs?" We do this all the time. The question really is, "Why is it sometimes so irritating?" As far as I can tell, no one has conducted research into why certain words are annoying. That said, people have researched which nouns we tend to verb, and why. A 1998 paper written by University of Pennsylvania psychologist Michael H. Kelly argued there are two types of denominals -- ones that are rule-derived and relatively predictable, and ones that are idiosyncratically derived.For example, when we ride a bicycle, we say we are bicycling. When we ride in a boat, we are sailing or boating. There are exceptions, but you can see this is a pretty predictable -- and understandable -- way to extend our vocabulary. Other types of nouns aren't so easy. We know what it means to monkey around. But what does it mean to "iguana"? And why does "to fish" mean to catch a fish, but "to dog" means to chase tirelessly? That's what Kelly means by idiosyncratic derivation. You don't necessarily know the meaning of the noun once it's been verbed.And it's not just animals that are kooky. Foods can act that way, too. You can pepper someone with questions, for example. But what would it mean to oregano someone? Would that be a-salt? (Sorry for that. Sort of.)Kelly found that people are a bit more likely to verb a noun if it follows rules, possibly because it's easier for listeners to understand what we mean, and possibly because it's easier to invent them. And maybe, just maybe, that's the most important word of all here: inventing. English has more words than any other language. Who are language purists to block invention? What would we lose by ostriching? The next Shakespeare?That would be a pox upon us! Happy dialoguing.
On that note, recent article on msn: http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/Features/Columns/?article=VerbsGoneWild>1=27004
Verbs Gone Wild Are we taking too many liberties with language?By Martha Brockenbrough
A while back, I wrote about the most annoying office jargon ever. And while that might have been a slight exaggeration, it is true that most people I surveyed despised the use of "dialogue" as a verb above all else -- including the vaguely dirty-sounding "low-hanging fruit."What's more, people chided me for failing to include "monetize," "productize," "incentivize" and other supremely grating words. And then I realized what these sucky little mosquitoes have in common.They're all verbs made from nouns. Or, as the experts say, they're "denominal" words.I have a least-favorite denominal word of my own: gifted. As in, "She gifted me with a designer knockoff handbag." I once even ranted about it to the Wall Street Journal on behalf of the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar. I called "gifting" all sorts of things that didn't get printed (and a few that did). After the fact, though, I turned to my dictionary, where I learned that my distaste was misplaced. Encarta links "gift" as a verb to the 13th century, where it comes from the Old Norse gipt. The Oxford English Dictionary, which traces usage in English, has found several appearances that date back to the 1600s. Something called "The Wife in Morel's Skin" says this: "The friendes that were together met He gyfted them richely with right good speede." I can't resist pointing out that the OED found a spelling error in this same dusty old sentence. "He gyfted them" was printed as "Be gyfted them." Oops! Careless scribes. It's tempting to say that sort of sloppiness goes hand in hand with the English abuse that is verbing.But I don't think I'd win that case. Shakespeare verbed -- with the word dialogue, no less. In Act II, scene ii of "Timon," he writes, "Dost Dialogue with thy shadow?" This is from 1607, just a year before "The Wife in Morel's Skin." If you're a writer looking to criticize language, you're not going to get very far by picking on Shakespeare -- unless your name is Stephen King, in which case you wouldn't bother anyway, because you're too busy building a fort out of money.This is too bad for my fellow gifting haters, and for fans of Calvin and Hobbes, who no doubt recall the classic "VERBING WEIRDS LANGUAGE" comic strip. Like it or not, we're living with a language that verbs words. What's that thing you use to get the dog hair out of the carpet? It's a vacuum, right? And when you're using it, you're ... vacuuming. Try to find a single word that means the same thing. Likewise, when you're putting butter on your bread, you're buttering it, no? Does anyone, besides a vegan or a dieter, have any objection to that? So the question isn't, "Is it OK to turn nouns into verbs?" We do this all the time. The question really is, "Why is it sometimes so irritating?" As far as I can tell, no one has conducted research into why certain words are annoying. That said, people have researched which nouns we tend to verb, and why. A 1998 paper written by University of Pennsylvania psychologist Michael H. Kelly argued there are two types of denominals -- ones that are rule-derived and relatively predictable, and ones that are idiosyncratically derived.For example, when we ride a bicycle, we say we are bicycling. When we ride in a boat, we are sailing or boating. There are exceptions, but you can see this is a pretty predictable -- and understandable -- way to extend our vocabulary. Other types of nouns aren't so easy. We know what it means to monkey around. But what does it mean to "iguana"? And why does "to fish" mean to catch a fish, but "to dog" means to chase tirelessly? That's what Kelly means by idiosyncratic derivation. You don't necessarily know the meaning of the noun once it's been verbed.And it's not just animals that are kooky. Foods can act that way, too. You can pepper someone with questions, for example. But what would it mean to oregano someone? Would that be a-salt? (Sorry for that. Sort of.)Kelly found that people are a bit more likely to verb a noun if it follows rules, possibly because it's easier for listeners to understand what we mean, and possibly because it's easier to invent them. And maybe, just maybe, that's the most important word of all here: inventing. English has more words than any other language. Who are language purists to block invention? What would we lose by ostriching? The next Shakespeare?That would be a pox upon us! Happy dialoguing.
If the following is the sign posted in the office, how can I have faith in the work being done?
[All spelling, odd capitalization, and phrasing is directly quoted from the sign, sadly. Italics are mine to add emphasis to the numerous mistakes]
Dear Customers, Visitors, and Friends,
Due to Problems in the passed we no longer do payment arrangements.
Please understand that your payment is due at the time you pick up your vehicle.
Any Vehicle left Un-payed for more then thee days will be subjected to a storage Fee of [$#] a day, unless prier written arrangements are made for long term holdings.
ALL [state name] inspections are due at time of the Bill pass or failed.
Please note: the price of a [state name] inspection is determaned by the DMV computer system and is out of the hands of [business name] automotive.
Failer to pay will be turned into collections.
Understand that if you bill goes to collections there wil be a [#%] fee added to your overall total bill.
I got to move. Seriously.
Dear Customers, Visitors, and Friends,
Due to Problems in the passed we no longer do payment arrangements.
Please understand that your payment is due at the time you pick up your vehicle.
Any Vehicle left Un-payed for more then thee days will be subjected to a storage Fee of [$#] a day, unless prier written arrangements are made for long term holdings.
ALL [state name] inspections are due at time of the Bill pass or failed.
Please note: the price of a [state name] inspection is determaned by the DMV computer system and is out of the hands of [business name] automotive.
Failer to pay will be turned into collections.
Understand that if you bill goes to collections there wil be a [#%] fee added to your overall total bill.
I got to move. Seriously.
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