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petunia
20:38 / 02.10.07
Don't give the guy a complex.

Yeah, you're right. My mind is a constant battle between my inner snob and my inner anti-prescriptivist.

He had wound me up as being rather obviously stoned and a bit unengaged, which is obviously me just reacting to an image of what i used to be and am trying very hard not to be anymore.

He did say 'fooco' when he noticed that i and the other people in our excercise group were saying it, but then went back to foocal. I hasen to add that i didn't say anything about it. I don't want to be mean. But obviously, i do.

Inner snob is mean.

Perhaps something i need to deal with.
 
 
Olulabelle
20:38 / 02.10.07
kangourou boxeur (loving) Yes it might do, that's a good idea.

For THS we have a slide test where we are shown slides and then we have to state what the pieces are, where they're made and who by, and some social context surrouding that style; all very easy stuff if you revise properly. But also we have to give an hour long seminar on something THS related; perhaps, say, 'how the use of Sheffield plate provided access to affordable silverware for the middle classes'. I have to do that after christmas.

Then in my second year I have to write a huge essay (not a dissertation length by any means but still scary) on a topic of my own choice. I am afraid of these things.
 
 
HCE
21:58 / 02.10.07
I bet a thread on some topic of interest would elicit a lot of good questions. A lot of times that's what it takes to get an essay to take shape -- having a couple of good questions that you can then go out and research. I bet folks here have a lot of access to research resources.

.trampetunia, I think the inner snob is sometimes the voice of despair -- at one's former self, as you say, or perhaps at the sense that the other guy is not taking things seriously and is slowing down the discussion. I guess I'm a little sensitive myself, as there are a lot of names I don't know how to pronounce -- I've just never had anybody to talk with about them.
 
 
Leigh Monster loses its cool
02:24 / 03.10.07
I am currently in my last year of undergrad and taking my firstever computer science class. So far it is Not Going Well. I have yet to complete a single assignment--I just open them up, sit and stare and don't know how to begin. It's object-oriented programming in Java and it's so amazingly foreign to me. I can't afford not to pass this class though, or I won't graduate. I spent three hours with a tutor yesterday and got through a single basic exercise. I'm pretty sure he was thoroughly frustrated with me, although he was nice about it .

Kangourou boxeur, how did your hiragana test go? The handwriting you posted was beautiful.
 
 
HCE
23:18 / 03.10.07
My handwriting is actually not all great, but I am trying to improve. Wetter inks seem to produce greater line width variability, which is good. I wish there were a handbook for beautiful calligraphy or samples of various hands.

The test went very well, thank you! Nothing but net, as they say in basketball.

Good luck with the computer class. I'm afraid such things baffle me entirely, so I can't suggest any useful resources. If it's just the one class, perhaps you can grit your teeth and tough it out.
 
 
HCE
20:06 / 11.10.07
What the FUCK is it with my classmates? First, this ASSHOLE tries to cheat during an exam. When the teacher walks out to get our graded papers, he pipes up, full-throated, and asks the class in general for the answer to a question. I mean, at least whisper, motherfucker! So I shush him, and he does it again! I was practically trembling, I wanted so badly to break my desk over face. Everybody else is sitting there trying to concentrate, and this DOUCHETOOL expects the whole world to come to a grinding halt so he can pass his exam while the rest of us SUCKERS do his work for him.

Then, in the ongoing saga of the anthro teacher who has never heard a comment too stupid, pointless, or insincere as to be unworthy of twenty minutes of class time, today we went over kinesics and proxemics at the pace of a comatose slug swimming through molasses, after spending half the fucking class listening to 'Dylan' explain that he's just too busy working for the school paper to study, and then crack jokes with his equally useless pal while other well-meaning classmates tried to give him study tips. THAT'S ODD, I thought I had signed up for LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY, but it turns out that I have instead been taking a course in REMEDIAL STUDY SKILLS for TOOLS OF A DOUCHE NATURE. While I am perfectly happy to offer free tutoring in the guise of a 'study group' I have to object when somebody complains about not getting the material, and then talks and laughs through the clarifications.

Oh, Japanese and Cinema teachers, with your hard-assed, old-school ways! What can come of creating an atmosphere where those of us with the temerity, the sheer gall to actually do the assigned reading and keep our remarks relevant to the course material go unpunished? True, your students are performing well, but a class of forty students who have all become fluent readers and writers of hiranaga in only a few weeks must surely also be a class of CRUSHED SOULS. Do not be misled, either, by the way the group of students who linger after class to animatedly argue about the films they've seen grows each week! It's all a sign of DESPAIR that rocks them to their cores. While the students in these other classes may not know their ASSES FROM THEIR ELBOWS, let alone any of the assigned topics, at least they feel TRUSTED and NURTURED.

I believe there is a relevant Jesus Lizard song, something like, don't get me wrong he's a nice guy, I like him just fine...

Ok. I'm going to take the machete into the back yard and 'tidy the hedges'.
 
 
All Acting Regiment
23:20 / 11.10.07
Drunk again, I apologise, but basically I vame here to say that the guy trying ot cheat is a fucking idiot. It won't do him any good in the long run.
 
 
semioticrobotic
10:42 / 16.10.07
I've been there, kangourou boxeur, and I do not envy _this_ aspect of your semester. I once encountered similar circumstances when taking a philosophy exam. After I finished and exited the classroom, a student I didn't even know was a member of the class cornered me outside the building and asked about the contents of the exam as he clutched crumpled notes in a tired three-ring binder. Mysteriously, I had just "forgotten" everything that happened for the last hour.

So excited because a colleague is going out of town in two weeks and he offered me TOTAL CONTROL of this Communication Theory class for one complete period! Rapture! The toughest part of preparing a lecture was dealing with his reminder that his students don't typically read more than ten pages between class periods.

Woa. I'm hoping my status as a "guest lecturer" helps me get away with assigning a whopping twenty instead. If my colleague had asked me to follow his own syllabus, then sure, I could have stuck to ten pages -- but asking me to talk about new media, video gaming, and technological embodiment and narrow a lecture to ten pages? Torture.
 
 
HCE
14:08 / 16.10.07
I'd be curious to see what you come up with! Other people's classes always sound more interesting than mine. Also, if you or anybody else feels like posting a syllabus for any class, I'd be curious to see them.

On the plus side, my English teacher got quite angry when I asked him not to leave the classroom during exams anymore, and as a result gave us a pop quiz yesterday. When people tried to claim they didn't know they were supposed to read the material he turned almost purple and waved the cover of the textbook around quite energetically, asking if anybody could remember what the name was of the object he was holding up. It was pretty great. Then he spent the rest of the class passing around some readers on critical theory and talking to the rest of us about Derek Jarman, Modernism, Roland Barthes, ecriture feminine, and a number of other breath-of-fresh-air-like things, as if to say, "If you can't be bothered to read the five pages I assigned and you're going to openly lie about it as well as cheat on the exam, then I'm going to teach the four or five people who are doing the work, and fuck you if you get confused or lost."

Go team!
 
 
Essential Dazzler
21:04 / 24.10.07
There are Final Fantasy Ten Cosplayers outside my window, and I'm trying to condense The Singing Detective and about a million Brian Bendis comics into a 10-minute Screenplay.

Life is ace.
 
 
HCE
00:06 / 25.10.07
The word 'cosplay' will never stop being funny to me. Never.
 
 
Essential Dazzler
00:16 / 25.10.07
The treatment is not going well.
 
 
Essential Dazzler
01:01 / 25.10.07
Oh dear, emotional catastrophes in fiance's life mean treatment isn't getting done. Stupid Life.
 
 
HCE
06:13 / 25.10.07
Good luck, Pacific fiance!
 
 
All Acting Regiment
12:08 / 25.10.07
I'm nipping off a length of essays at quite a good rate.
 
 
HCE
16:43 / 26.10.07
Wow, how useless was that. I just came out of a meeting with an academic counselor who informed me that having completed only 78 of the 104 units in which I've enrolled reflects poorly on my "character as a student and time management skills." Ok. So, what are the consequences? The counselor is going to shake her head at me, or what? Do I have to pay a fine? No, but I may be "limited to enrolling in only six units next term." This is my last term, barring some extra requirement that film school comes up with. "Well, given a student with Ws, and one without, they're going to want that student without those Ws."

I just stared at her. I love being a number.

Oh and she also said I could get kicked out of school. (I'm carrying 14 units and getting straight As. Really. I love it.)
 
 
semioticrobotic
20:22 / 28.10.07
kangourou, don't let the bureaucracy get you down. Seriously. And when you're finished with the term and your report card shows all As, be sure to take it back to the counselor and ask, 'Is this what you meant I had to do? Oh, okay.'

Tomorrow is the guest lecture, which has now been titled 'Are Video Games "Useful"?' I'm actually more nervous about it than I thought I would be. Not nervous about leading the discussion or being in charge of someone else's class, really (won't be the first time that's happened), but more nervous when thinking about the possibility that it might totally bomb. It's a class discussion, after all, and that means recognizing the stark reality that the success of the experience rests on the shoulders of students who may or may not have even read the materials I so painstakingly collected and pieced together just so. And I am so emotionally invested in the subject matter that I fear disappointment no matter what happens. Gah!
 
 
HCE
03:56 / 29.10.07
Best of luck with the lecture! Hopefully you'll have a good turnout.
 
 
semioticrobotic
10:28 / 29.10.07
Work up this morning feeling very refreshed and really good. Will report back soon.
 
 
teleute
10:39 / 29.10.07
This is an interesting thread, for me in particular how people are finding their classmates.

I'm in the final year of a creative writing MA (part time), and have felt somewhat marginalised on my course as I didn't come from a literature / media background, but had a politics based education, a handful of frustrated and terribly edited pieces of prose, some very dodgy poetry and a massive love of books and reading.

I have found myself very much as a literary have not because of my background and also because I openly admit to loving fantasy, sci-fi, comics etc as well as contemporary / classical literature. At the same time what has astounded me about the cocaine kids who occasionally turn up to lectures is how little they read. In addition, they have no interest in the genesis of story telling, the classics or anything that isn't post modern. Now I may be slightly naive, but surely if you wish to write you should at least read? And you should love what you want to do?
 
 
Olulabelle
16:28 / 29.10.07
Kangourou, I am confused about your unit/class thing. How does the American system work? How can you be getting into trouble if you are attending and getting straight A's?

Today I had my first unit assessment (my project brief was to make a tiny metal working puppet) and I got a distinction! I know it's not about the grades and should be about what you learn from each unit but I am really delighted. And it does matter to me even though I know it shouldn't. It matters for my own personal proof I suppose. Validation.
 
 
All Acting Regiment
18:23 / 29.10.07
I'm in the final year of a creative writing MA (part time), and have felt somewhat marginalised on my course as I didn't come from a literature / media background, but had a politics based education, a handful of frustrated and terribly edited pieces of prose, some very dodgy poetry and a massive love of books and reading.

The massive love of books and reading is the most important thing here, and will see you through.

I have found myself very much as a literary have not because of my background and also because I openly admit to loving fantasy, sci-fi, comics etc as well as contemporary / classical literature. At the same time what has astounded me about the cocaine kids who occasionally turn up to lectures is how little they read. In addition, they have no interest in the genesis of story telling, the classics or anything that isn't post modern. Now I may be slightly naive, but surely if you wish to write you should at least read? And you should love what you want to do?

In short, you're right, they're very wrong. There's nothing wrong with liking comics and sci-fi, so long as you don't make the mistake some people do of assuming they won't get anything out of anything else. Form and structure is form and structure, a good story is a good story. If they take a lot of cocaine and read postmodern novels they're probably duds.
 
 
semioticrobotic
19:08 / 29.10.07
Just finished the lecture/discussion, and haven't really sorted everything out yet. Overall, I think: success. The class had nice input and lots of relevant things to say on the pertinent issues. We didn't get to delve into the final piece, though, which was supposed to "cinch" everything up; consequently, my "cinching" sounded a bit contrived and long-winded, and the session ended with a bit too much "lecture" and not enough "discussion."

And now that I look at my watch, I see I've dismissed class 20 minutes early. Crap.
 
 
HCE
20:36 / 29.10.07
How can you be getting into trouble if you are attending and getting straight A's?

It baffles me, too -- apparently the problem is my ratio - the number of classes I complete compared to the number I signed up for. I've been through the experience of toughing it out in a bad class and promised myself I wouldn't do it any longer, so what I've been doing is loading up at the beginning of the semester and then dropping classes if they didn't work out. This semester, for example, I signed up for five courses which added up to 16 units. I wound up dropping the 2-unit Conversational Spanish course - it turned out to be more basic than I'd expected, lots of vocab I'd had already. I'm now getting straight As in my 14 remaining units (full-time is either 9 or 12 units, I don't recall). This is considered 'poor time management' because the assumption is that I dropped the class because I couldn't manage the coursework. That built-in assumption seriously irritates me.

So if I'd taken 9 units and gotten Cs in all of them, that would be fine, but what I'm doing is not. What would've made things better would've been if the counselor had bothered to find out anything at all about my situation (full courseload, excellent marks, last semester at this school) before chiming in with the pointless and insulting threats.
 
 
Olulabelle
22:02 / 29.10.07
That makes me really cross for you. Is there not someone you can go and complain to about it? It's a poor system that flags you up as a problem.
 
 
HCE
22:57 / 29.10.07
Meh, not worth the bother. I've got real live tigers to go see, you know? At the real live zoo, with my real live friends. Anthro club field trip. It'll be nice, soothing.
 
 
semioticrobotic
12:00 / 30.10.07
That scenario sounds all too familiar, kangourou boxeur. Something similar happened to me when I was meticulating through my undergraduate coursework. I enrolled in an economics course (three units), but accidentally chose the wrong one and found myself in an environment that was far too advanced for me. I had to drop the course not because I was failing, but because I was unhappy and not learning what I'd hoped to be learning. Nevertheless, "losing" that three units caused me to "fall behind" in the overall game, and I consequently needed to play catch-up with summer coursework in order to "make up" those three units (I chose a music course instead, which was much more my speed).

The system has absolutely NO built-in mechanism for experimentation. Students cannot simply enroll in a course and "try it out." Enrollment is a commitment from Day 1, as the number of units necessary for graduation and the number of courses available to students during any one particular semester are serious constraints on one's ability to shuttle around in the system when ze's been "locked into" a course. Moving out of this lock immediately sends ripples of warning across campus. "A body is moving around without a significant amount of certainty!" Really, really frustrating.
 
 
Essential Dazzler
14:26 / 29.11.07
Sometimes, when you're 23 hours away from a deadline, and you're having to start a piece from scratch again because you don't fully understand the brief, or know how to actually use the program you're working with... It Helps To Suck It Up... Take... A... Deep... Breath... and... ASK FOR HELP!

It doesn't matter how much you think you deserve it, the lecturer will not look at you like your a worthless piece of shit and kick you out of his class. He will sit with you for 20 minutes and make everything crystal clear and simple and calm and lovely.

And Relax...
 
 
petunia
14:43 / 29.11.07
Ouch. Sounds bad Pacific...
Hope it goes okay...

Though I too am discovering the wonder that is Not Being Afraid to Ask. I've been having regular meetings with my tutor about my dissertation and my essays. It's been great to get over the whole 'Boss/Student' fear that I'd been sitting with since schooldays. To actually discuss my skills and weaknesses with a real life person who Understands, to get advice in areas where I Don't Know, and just to bounce ideas off another person and get a little criticism (though, obviosuly, there's rarely any.. um..) - It's all rather nice!

I'm currently doing something I've never done before and am writing essays before their deadlines. I have three due in a couple of weeks into January and i've already written a first-draft of one! handing notes/draft of another in tomorrow, then a week on the next one. Hopefully this will leave my holidays free from pressure and will let me dedicate some proper reading time to my dissertation.

I never got the french version of Phenomenology... But I did just receive an amazon order of a couple of Deleuze books in the original french, so that will be an entertaining struggle. Oddly, the process of reaquiring the ability to read in another tongue is provoking a nice angle of potential inquiry that may/may not be useful for my dissertation.

My one problem at the moment is that my newfound enthusiasm for the subject has suddenly dropped me in a world of wanna (wanna read Spinoza! wanna read Agamben! wanna read...), which I can't hope to fulfill by the end of this year. It's looking like I might have to stay on to do an MA...
 
 
semioticrobotic
10:50 / 08.01.08
Bumping this as I start to look over my materials for the start of another (spring) semester. Anyone else doing the same?

For me, it's more of the same this semester -- teaching four sections of the same speech course I taught last semester, having made some adjustments to its overall structure, narrative, and grading scheme that will, I hope, benefit both the students and me. I just finished inputting 100 new student names in my gradebook, and now I'm excited.

petunia: I think I have what's been going around -- that case of the "wannas." I've been trying to kick myself into gear and do a bit more writing in the coming semester ('tis my New Year's Resolution, after all), and for this I wanna read Bergson, Spinoza, and Levy in addition to the regular game stuff with which I try to keep up. I find myself pining for my MA days, when the stress and rigor of an academic program kept my nose to the grindstone.
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
17:18 / 09.01.08
New semester, hopefully one of my last for a while...easy courses include Philosophy of Religion and Analytical Ethics, more difficult courses are Plato and Advanced Logical Systems. The course on Plato, while interesting, has a very rigid attendance policy which will hamper my enjoyment of the class. Absence makes the heart grow fonder etc. Plus I like skipping class for almost no reason. It makes me feel young. A single absence in this class drops my final grade by a whole letter.

The Logical Systems class sounded interesting and it was only after the first meeting that I realized I have no idea what I'm doing. Aside from the fact that my last logic class was years and years ago, it turns out the professor is a fruit loop. Completely batty, I tell you. It's going to be a rough semester.
 
 
HCE
17:39 / 09.01.08
Good luck everyone! I made it out alive, more or less, and am now holding my breath waiting to hear back about whether I got in.
 
 
grant
18:48 / 09.01.08
My intro writing class this semester has either five or six students... which is going to make in-class discussions really difficult, I fear. But grading much, much easier.

Hmm.

I should ask again if anyone knows any good Composition 101 writing exercises....
 
 
eye landed
19:35 / 09.01.08
spinoza is getting re-evaluated, isnt he? one of the only major pre-c20 philosophers i didnt discover until post-secondary, and at the time he seemed to fit into a wacky line of alchemists with paracelcus and jung. in the past few years ive seen him cited with french poststructuralists, new age neuroscientists, and mentalist linguists. is there a project underway w/r spinoza? or is it still on the underground and im just feeling the rumble?

reading you guys makes me wish id gone philosophy instead of science (biopsychology). in my spare time i prefer curling up with a massive ego and grok the weltanshauung, rather than following the obfuscated breadcrumb trails of peer-reviewed citation networks. my consolation is that one day i might be able to apply some technology to the ideas that fascinate me, instead of just dreaming.

my semester is off to a good start. my two heavy classes are endocrinology (7 glands that rule ones response to situations) and sensory biology ('5' organs that mediate situation and ego). obviously (?) im using chakras and feng shui respectively to organize information...but my profs probably wouldnt want to know that. is anyone here a mench in this particular area?
 
 
grant
19:58 / 09.01.08
I know a little about feng shui and five-element systems, but not much.
 
  

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