wiggolation

Big wigs



Two big wigs today--one is the rockin' show I just saw, that is, The Strokes! It rocked, for sure.

The other is that Massart just called to say he'll be in NYC tomorrow. Hadn't talked to him for six months or so. Just like him to call and drop a bomb like that.

Am supposed to do some major Columbia work this weekend. Hmmm.

Crunch time

This is the point in the semester when things get really busy.

There's a midterm project in Second Language Assessment; a midterm project in K-6 Methods; and a number of different essays to do with the youngins, in addition to reading more and more short stories and poetry.

The 2nd marking period is now in full swing but there are already students falling behind after just one week into it. The class lists keep getting longer too.

The Strokes concert Thursday couldn't come faster!

P.S. My car has NOT been ripped off yet.

Big ticket item week

So I bought a car this week....


My Mazda Protege 5

I guess I missed driving and road trips. I also hated being stuck in the city. I could go on, but the bottom line is I have always owned a car while living in the States, and it's such a big part of our culture that it's hard to go without one. Besides, it's cool owning a new car.

But why do I feel guilty owning a car? I feel like I've become the 'cospicuous consumer' I always detested. I do have a sense of guilt since signing the papers for this car. Why?

Well, I think after my first real road trip out of the big city I will get over this silly sense of selling out. Till then my bikes remind me of the environmentally conscious punk I used to be.




On the bright side I cut my commute to work by almost two-thirds. For the first time in a year or so I didn't feel like a zombie this last week. I also went out to a store on the outskirts of town and bought something and got it home in about an hour. Compare that to my 14 hour trip from hell to IKEA via public transport a few months ago. Don't get me wrong--I'm still an advocate of public transport. I will still be using it to go to Columbia for instance. I just think it's very draining on one's system to use public transport exclusively.

I think if I got a bike rack for my car I'd feel better. Hmmm.

I will now be focusing on the various road trip destinations in the north-eastern United States. I think Boston, Philly, Atlantic City, and D.C. are due up, finally.

If I could just get someone to tell me exactly what NYC parking signs really mean.

Some 'contrastive rhetoric' links. Stuff I might read up on for my M.A. essay, and beyond...

--a review of a book on the subject
--a roundtable
--another book review
--more about such things booklike
--cool bit on CR
--yet another book review...worth reading
--article on CR
--a rhetoric reading list for Ph.D dudes and dudets

Week # whatever

Like I can keep track.

Anyway, the M.A. exam, which I sat for today, was a total joke. A little background why. The College requires you take the M.A. exam and write a take-home essay of about 10-15 pages. The exam, which you actually go to sit for at the school, consists of 84 multiple-choice questions and two questions about APA formatting. The test would seem to be challenging enough by most any grad student's standards. But this exam is kind of a joke since there is this thing at the college where students are allowed to use notes and books during the exam. Well, sure enough, some generous if not crafty students got to compiling and pruning their notes for future test-takers. Thus there is now a popular 'binder' which contains all the notes pertinent to the exam. In fact, you could say the notes are the exam since the exam has not changed since 1995. So anyone with a clue goes into this exam with a 100 percent chance of passing, if not a 100 percent chance of getting a very high mark. So when you go in you just fill in a bubble sheet, and that's about it. As long as you get the 'right notes' you are laughing, as the Naked Chef would say. I read over the notes this week, so when I was answering the questions I knew the answers to almost all the questions without blinking an eye or lifting my pencil. I had to look up and actually think about about five answers. What pain.

Well, I am happy to be done with the exam knowing that I almost certainly passed and passed well. At the same time I feel that the college is kind of stupid for not updating its exam. I mean, they are the leading college of education in the country, after all. Again, I am not going to raise a stink. But it's kind of pointless asking busy teacher-grad students to take a day off from teaching to sit for a blow-off exam, and pay 190 bucks to boot. It's not possible that the college does not know about what's going on either.

I suppose that in the end I did get a nice mini-review of the material on the exam just by studying the little bit I did. The day of examination, though, was a formality.

The essay is sure to be the real thing though. I'll have to work hard enough on that thing. Good that it's not due till February. I don't have a topic decided on just yet, but I have a few titles/ideas for it a-brewing: 'NYC ESL Students and the Regents Exam: Battle Royal', 'Contrastive Rhetoric in the ESL Classroom' (no, seriously), or maybe 'ESL and the Leningrad Cowboys: Go America or Go Home'.

A story I'm using in the test that I'm designing. It's slightly abridged from the original.

Wedding Night
By Tom Hawkins

I have worked at this bus station magazine stand since nineteen fifty three, waiting for the right girl to come along. When I took this job, the paint on that wall over there was new; it was a light green color then. The servicemen from the Korean War would stop and buy cigarettes, and I learned the insignia from the Army, Coast Guard, Navy, and Marines.

Anything can happen in the bus station. In the nineteen-sixties, we had what we called the hippies, young people in ragged get-ups. They used to sleep all over the furniture in sleeping bags, with packs and rolled-up tents.

That’s when I began to think that the right girl might come along after all, some girl who’d grown tired of the long-haired boys, and tired of the road, and walk home with me and hold my hand, and curl up with me in my bed and on my squeaky springs. I kept an eye out. One day I saw a young lady: she looked so long-tired and in need of a friend. I bought her a sandwich and coffee and a peanut-butter cup. I bought her some aspirin and a pint of milk, fingernail clippers and a souvenir shirt.

I told her I had a place where she could come to rest and stay, as long as she might want. I told her it wasn’t fancy and wasn’t but one room, but what was mine was hers. I knew it was clean. I’d cleaned it up the day before when I saw this girl hanging around.

She stroked my hair and said my heart was full of love. She said she had to sleep about twelve hours and then she’d go away. I took her home. She slumped down on the bed and cried-told me I was “so very kind.” And then she slept like the dead. I lay down on the floor beside her, where I said I’d stay. In the middle of the night I woke up on fire, and the room was turning. I couldn’t think. The air turned furry, where I crept up and slid in bed beside her, that girl still completely dressed. She breathed like the sea. I touched her skin, just her skin inside her clothes. She really never woke, just sighed and turned. In the morning when I woke up in the bed, she was gone.

I’ve worked here since nineteen fifty-three, waiting for the right girl to come along. I guess she did. Some good marriages don’t last long.

Courtesy of 3D.

as a bee

Well, the Cubs are winning and looking toward a World Series. But it's the great relief and excuse from working that they really hit home with round here.

Saw School of Rock with Saji. It was OK but not that good. I expected something a little more from it. I thought it was about a high school class, not an elementary one, so the audience included a lot of kids with their moms and dads. But it was worth watching I guess. A lot about the importance of individuality and the like. I think Black is the new Farley.

The comprehensive MA exam in TESOL is Friday. I'll have to take the day off school. Needless to say I am not ever in the mood to study for a comprehensive MA exam, and this is my second one in as many years. I figure it'll be easier than the last one, but still I've got to study and gather my notes ... and my thoughts.

Teaching is going fairly well, despite the occasional down moments when you have to deal with kids who just can't behave like students. Overall it's pretty good though.

TC is OK too but there is much to do. I've at least three projects I'm working on. Again, if there were no teaching to do every day it would be a piece of cake.

I figure if I can just get through this semester then I'll be home free, more or less. Spring should be easier, and I'll be getting a nice raise with a master's plus 30 hours of grad credits.

I'm also thinking about booking a ticket to Ecuador for February. Or to Argentina. I'll have to talk it over with Scott and Emmett, respectively.

To think I'll actually be getting away this winter is a huge motivation in itself.

I was able to get up close for this one. How lucky was that?