We will draw a veil over the months of intermittent pain, and the recent visit to a very annoying orthopedist who needs training in how to listen and how to answer questions. The bottom line is that for the next two weeks I will be laced into what I am trying to think of as an ankle corset.
A corset, after all, can be sexy, an object of fantasy and fetish. Much more attractive than a brace.
But when you think about the basic purpose of corsets, it gets hard to keep up the fantasy. They constrict; they make it hard to move at a brisk or even normal pace. If worn, now, as outer wear, they are clearly costume. If worn for their original purpose, modern clothing does not fit well over them; once more, you wind up in costume.
And this is what is happening to me, and my plans for an English travel wardrobe. Most of my shoes, particularly those I was going to take with me, do not fit once I'm laced into the ankle corset. It hides under trousers, but looks fairly awful with a skirt. Part of me says, "Who cares? Dress as you like down to the ankles, and then if you're in brace and special shoes, it's clear you're making an effort despite your impairment." And part of me says, "I'd rather hide it. I cannot bring myself to wear athletic shoes with a skirt, in London, where most people are well dressed."
So I went shopping. Instead of a skirt, I'm taking another pair of trousers, and I bought two pair of shoes that are flat, hideous, comfortable, and not white with colored trim. One pair of black lace-ups, work shoes, the next thing to hiking shoes; one pair of brown Mary Janes, with bold stitching and wide toes, cute if you like sporty German-style casual shoes, which I'm not usually a fan of. I'm more the penny-loafer type. But I need flat shoes that can both accommodate the brace and fit the unbraced foot, hence lace-ups and adjustable straps. And multiple pairs of socks.
I thought about substituting a pair of lace-up boots for the brace; then I could have gone neo-Victorian in style: a little costume-y, but within academic tolerances, and perhaps not inappropriate for my itinerary. But the ones I have don't lace high enough, and it is not a good time of year to buy boots in local stores. There wasn't time to order online and take delivery before I leave. So I'm bracing myself.
It's not as if anyone is going to notice or care. It's just that I tend to deal with my travel anxiety by obsessing over the clothes I pack, and I dislike having the plan disrupted at the last minute.
29 June 2009
27 June 2009
Dream jobs
I didn't see this post of Ink's till a bit late to comment. But I loved the question and the answers. In many ways, my dream job is the one I have, tarted up a bit (as many of the other people who commented seem to have felt). I like the idea of teaching Latin to enthusiastic students and spending summers in the Mediterranean; being a curator of medieval manuscripts would be great; or maybe I could be the engineer who invents Belle's "poof" machine for idiots.
And finally, I would love to be in charge of caring for big cats at a really good zoo.
And finally, I would love to be in charge of caring for big cats at a really good zoo.
23 June 2009
Itinerary
30 June - 3 July: London
3 - 5 July: Oxford
5 - 8 July: Cambridge
8 - 13 July: Exeter
Overlapping dates are travel days, starting one place and ending up in the other.
If anybody overlaps with me anywhere, and would like a blogger meet-up, drop me a line.
3 - 5 July: Oxford
5 - 8 July: Cambridge
8 - 13 July: Exeter
Overlapping dates are travel days, starting one place and ending up in the other.
If anybody overlaps with me anywhere, and would like a blogger meet-up, drop me a line.
20 June 2009
There goes the neighborhood
Our living room usually has one or more empty carboard cartons lying on their sides, because the cats enjoy playing and sleeping in or on top of them. When they get bored with one, we recycle it and get a carton of a different shape. I buy groceries at a store that gives the option of getting a box rather than bags, so we have many opportunities to get new and exciting boxes.
To encourage peaceful interactions when Basement Cat is out among the other cats, I have taken to sprinkling catnip inside the largest box. It keeps the nip from getting spread all over the house.
We've started referring to that box as "the crack house."
This place has really gone downhill since Basement Cat moved in.
To encourage peaceful interactions when Basement Cat is out among the other cats, I have taken to sprinkling catnip inside the largest box. It keeps the nip from getting spread all over the house.
We've started referring to that box as "the crack house."
This place has really gone downhill since Basement Cat moved in.
16 June 2009
Pedant and proud
Reticent, adj.: Reserved; disinclined to speak freely; given to silence or concealment.
Reluctant, adj.: Unwilling, averse, disinclined.
Just saying.
Reluctant, adj.: Unwilling, averse, disinclined.
Just saying.
13 June 2009
Booked
Got a flight. Not on an Airbus. Making the distinction is probably pointless, but allows me to assert a smidgen of control as I yield my life into the hands of engineers, mechanics, pilots, and whatever other personnel can influence whether I live or die on my next trip through the air.
(Query: is space opera my version of horror fiction? Is dying outside planetary atmosphere really any worse?)
Next I'll have to organize places to stay in London and Cambridge, since I'm not actually planning to die before I get there (the scholar's maximum horror: I will find out something crucial and die on the way home, before I can do anything about it!). Oxford and Exeter are taken care of already. I have a couple of familiar London hotels to contact, but I've never been to Cambridge: any advice, either about lodging or dealing with CUL?
(Ignore the jitters. I always do this. This is what Xanax is for. Better research through chemistry.)
(Query: is space opera my version of horror fiction? Is dying outside planetary atmosphere really any worse?)
Next I'll have to organize places to stay in London and Cambridge, since I'm not actually planning to die before I get there (the scholar's maximum horror: I will find out something crucial and die on the way home, before I can do anything about it!). Oxford and Exeter are taken care of already. I have a couple of familiar London hotels to contact, but I've never been to Cambridge: any advice, either about lodging or dealing with CUL?
(Ignore the jitters. I always do this. This is what Xanax is for. Better research through chemistry.)
09 June 2009
Keeping track
I'm re-visiting the journal meme. Even though I have a research journal and a teaching journal (lab notebooks in different colors), lately I'm using my personal journal as a repository for thoughts about both teaching and research.
There are various reasons for this. For one, since a friend of mine said she couldn't remember anything much from the first year after her mother died, I decided to try to ward off any such memory loss by writing more regularly about the events of the day or week, so that I'd have a record even if my brain refused to hold on to things. For another, I tend to use the notebooks to record definite plans or report on what I have actually done (wrote 530 words on Project X; e-mailed with Grad Student Y about a chapter; made up a quiz to go with the Shorter Poems unit). Then there's that keeping-up-with-thoughts problem: I can type about as fast as I'm thinking, but I can't write that quickly, so if I'm trying to work out what I think, I want to type.
Why not use some other document(s)? I could have a thinking-it-through journal in the Teaching directory on my computer. But thoughts come to me when I'm writing about other things. Life, research, and teaching plans seem more interconnected, these days, than they used to. And as far as finding things again, I am a strongly associative thinker.
That is, if I'm trying to remember where/when I wrote about teaching plans for Fall 2009, I don't automatically think "dated document in Teaching folder." I think, OK, it was right before I had to serve as outside reader on that dissertation defense in History, I was in my study looking things up and piling books on my desk when I'd just cleared the desk of all the post-K'zoo piles, I had to stop Basement Cat from chewing on Gower, it was around the time Sir John and I were scheduling dinner with his dissertation director . . . and all of that makes it easier to search in the Journal folder than in the Teaching folder.
I guess what I'm saying is that my journal is becoming my brain's external hard drive for all kinds of stuff. The kind of associative thinking I do makes it easier to find things organized temporally (I start a new journal document each month) than by topic, even though organizing by topic seems like it would make more sense.
It seems like a good sign that my journal is filling up with thoughts about teaching and research, and how to integrate them. In recent years, it had a lot of thoughts about my parents and things I should do for them or encourage them to do, guilt about not visiting as often as my mother would have liked, worry about their situation. I am now giving (am now able to give) more attention to my own life than to theirs. It looks as if my work is my life . . . and I'm okay with that. I went into this field because I loved it, after all, and because I wanted my work to be my play. It isn't always, of course (how I want a Grade-o-Matic!). But it's nice to find that work is something I want to think about and write about, these days.
There are various reasons for this. For one, since a friend of mine said she couldn't remember anything much from the first year after her mother died, I decided to try to ward off any such memory loss by writing more regularly about the events of the day or week, so that I'd have a record even if my brain refused to hold on to things. For another, I tend to use the notebooks to record definite plans or report on what I have actually done (wrote 530 words on Project X; e-mailed with Grad Student Y about a chapter; made up a quiz to go with the Shorter Poems unit). Then there's that keeping-up-with-thoughts problem: I can type about as fast as I'm thinking, but I can't write that quickly, so if I'm trying to work out what I think, I want to type.
Why not use some other document(s)? I could have a thinking-it-through journal in the Teaching directory on my computer. But thoughts come to me when I'm writing about other things. Life, research, and teaching plans seem more interconnected, these days, than they used to. And as far as finding things again, I am a strongly associative thinker.
That is, if I'm trying to remember where/when I wrote about teaching plans for Fall 2009, I don't automatically think "dated document in Teaching folder." I think, OK, it was right before I had to serve as outside reader on that dissertation defense in History, I was in my study looking things up and piling books on my desk when I'd just cleared the desk of all the post-K'zoo piles, I had to stop Basement Cat from chewing on Gower, it was around the time Sir John and I were scheduling dinner with his dissertation director . . . and all of that makes it easier to search in the Journal folder than in the Teaching folder.
I guess what I'm saying is that my journal is becoming my brain's external hard drive for all kinds of stuff. The kind of associative thinking I do makes it easier to find things organized temporally (I start a new journal document each month) than by topic, even though organizing by topic seems like it would make more sense.
It seems like a good sign that my journal is filling up with thoughts about teaching and research, and how to integrate them. In recent years, it had a lot of thoughts about my parents and things I should do for them or encourage them to do, guilt about not visiting as often as my mother would have liked, worry about their situation. I am now giving (am now able to give) more attention to my own life than to theirs. It looks as if my work is my life . . . and I'm okay with that. I went into this field because I loved it, after all, and because I wanted my work to be my play. It isn't always, of course (how I want a Grade-o-Matic!). But it's nice to find that work is something I want to think about and write about, these days.
02 June 2009
Bad timing
So I'm supposed to be going to England in about a month, or maybe less, yet I still have not booked a flight. I tend to put these things off, because I'm afraid of flying. I understand the physics; I recognize that terrorism doesn't happen very often; what I fear is mechanical error, systems errors, pilot error.
I woke up this morning and thought OK, I'm going to do it.
Brought in the newspaper, and saw the Air France 447 coverage.
I haven't done it.
The last week has not been a good one. I had a birthday, the first one since my mother died; no one I'm biologically related to remembered it. I attended the funeral of a friend's father. I can't find various important receipts (probably due to the parentally-induced brain trauma of the past year), and my study is a wreck. I need to start the summer over, but I feel more like going back to bed with a pile of space-opera sci-fi and pretending that my real career involves translation from alien languages, interstellar diplomacy, and shooting bad guys with tentacles.
I woke up this morning and thought OK, I'm going to do it.
Brought in the newspaper, and saw the Air France 447 coverage.
I haven't done it.
The last week has not been a good one. I had a birthday, the first one since my mother died; no one I'm biologically related to remembered it. I attended the funeral of a friend's father. I can't find various important receipts (probably due to the parentally-induced brain trauma of the past year), and my study is a wreck. I need to start the summer over, but I feel more like going back to bed with a pile of space-opera sci-fi and pretending that my real career involves translation from alien languages, interstellar diplomacy, and shooting bad guys with tentacles.
24 May 2009
Translate. Paraphrase.
When teaching Middle English, I ask students to do a certain amount of translation, in order to check their understanding and thus improve their comprehension. Similarly, when teaching poetry in Present-Day English, I assign paraphrases before analysis. I reason that before you can analyze a sonnet, you need to know whether its topic is love, lust, contemplation or nostalgia, and whether references to any one of these are direct or metaphorical.
I mean different things by paraphrase and translation, but I have trouble conveying these shades of meaning to students in Middle English classes. Even with examples.
Here's what I would call a paraphrase of the opening lines of Chaucer's General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales: "When rains come in April after a dry March, when the west wind has made the fields sprout, and the sun is halfway through Aries . . . " If a student came up with that, I'd accept that Stu got the gist of those eight lines of poetry.
But it's not a translation. I want more than a demonstration that Stu gets the gist; if we're going to talk about Chaucer's language, his skills as a poet, his word choices and the way the pieces fit together, I need to know that Stu can detangle the syntax and recognize not just some of the words, but all of them. I want something that reads more like this: "When April with its sweet showers has pierced the drought of March to the root, and bathed every vein (of a plant) in liquid of such strength that it begets flowers" (we'll stop at four lines, this time).
Now, I'm not claiming that this is a brilliant or unproblematic translation, but it shows greater awareness of syntax and of some of the vocabulary problems than would a paraphrase. With this, we can start to analyze: why pierce? What does that verb suggest about the rain? And why liquor? Is there a connection between shoures and liquor, or not, and either way, what is the significance?
Despite examples like these, both written and oral, in class and on assignment sheets, I seem to baffle a significant percentage of my students when I ask for translations. (Not all of them are clueless, I hasten to add, but enough that I am trying for greater clarity.) Some of them give a paraphrase instead; in this case, this may be the best they can do. Perhaps they do get the gist, but not the details. I also get minor rearrangement and respelling of Chaucer's exact words: "When that April with his showers sweet [or sooty, sometimes] the drought of March hath pierced to the root and bathed every vein with such liquor of which virtue engendered is the flower . . . " In a case like this, I can't tell whether the student understands the lines and thinks inversion of noun and adjective, subject and verb (and other medievalisms) is All Poetic N Shit, or whether Stu recognizes the words but can't put the sentence together; but I fear the latter.
Why does it matter? Because I want to head off problems while they're still little problems. We work up: exercises in class, homework, quizzes, papers. If a student gets a poor grade on a translation quiz worth 5% or less of the final grade, there's time to work on the rough spots. (Guess what: the ones who do the homework do better on the quizzes.) If a student is getting the gist, but skipping the homework and the quizzes, then has to do some analysis of, let us say, sexual imagery in the opening lines of the CT in a paper worth 20% of the final grade . . . oh, two of us will not be happy, Stu and me.
I value everybody's happiness. So I'm trying to figure out if there's a way, not to convey my expectations differently, but to use different techniques to test comprehension. Maybe this is a place where multiple-choice would actually be appropriate: rather than students doing their own translations, perhaps I should give them a series of translations, and ask them to pick the best. Or the worst. Or to work through each of them and explain what's wrong with it. Or I could give the original, a translation, and a set of key words in the original, with MED definitions (edited for brevity and clarity), and ask them to use the definitions in critiquing the translation. Or give the original, the list of key words and definitions, and a paraphrase, and ask that students explain what the paraphrase fails to convey.
Extra credit to anyone who comments helpfully (points off if all you do is trash the whole idea of testing comprehension, or teaching ME in the original).
I mean different things by paraphrase and translation, but I have trouble conveying these shades of meaning to students in Middle English classes. Even with examples.
Here's what I would call a paraphrase of the opening lines of Chaucer's General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales: "When rains come in April after a dry March, when the west wind has made the fields sprout, and the sun is halfway through Aries . . . " If a student came up with that, I'd accept that Stu got the gist of those eight lines of poetry.
But it's not a translation. I want more than a demonstration that Stu gets the gist; if we're going to talk about Chaucer's language, his skills as a poet, his word choices and the way the pieces fit together, I need to know that Stu can detangle the syntax and recognize not just some of the words, but all of them. I want something that reads more like this: "When April with its sweet showers has pierced the drought of March to the root, and bathed every vein (of a plant) in liquid of such strength that it begets flowers" (we'll stop at four lines, this time).
Now, I'm not claiming that this is a brilliant or unproblematic translation, but it shows greater awareness of syntax and of some of the vocabulary problems than would a paraphrase. With this, we can start to analyze: why pierce? What does that verb suggest about the rain? And why liquor? Is there a connection between shoures and liquor, or not, and either way, what is the significance?
Despite examples like these, both written and oral, in class and on assignment sheets, I seem to baffle a significant percentage of my students when I ask for translations. (Not all of them are clueless, I hasten to add, but enough that I am trying for greater clarity.) Some of them give a paraphrase instead; in this case, this may be the best they can do. Perhaps they do get the gist, but not the details. I also get minor rearrangement and respelling of Chaucer's exact words: "When that April with his showers sweet [or sooty, sometimes] the drought of March hath pierced to the root and bathed every vein with such liquor of which virtue engendered is the flower . . . " In a case like this, I can't tell whether the student understands the lines and thinks inversion of noun and adjective, subject and verb (and other medievalisms) is All Poetic N Shit, or whether Stu recognizes the words but can't put the sentence together; but I fear the latter.
Why does it matter? Because I want to head off problems while they're still little problems. We work up: exercises in class, homework, quizzes, papers. If a student gets a poor grade on a translation quiz worth 5% or less of the final grade, there's time to work on the rough spots. (Guess what: the ones who do the homework do better on the quizzes.) If a student is getting the gist, but skipping the homework and the quizzes, then has to do some analysis of, let us say, sexual imagery in the opening lines of the CT in a paper worth 20% of the final grade . . . oh, two of us will not be happy, Stu and me.
I value everybody's happiness. So I'm trying to figure out if there's a way, not to convey my expectations differently, but to use different techniques to test comprehension. Maybe this is a place where multiple-choice would actually be appropriate: rather than students doing their own translations, perhaps I should give them a series of translations, and ask them to pick the best. Or the worst. Or to work through each of them and explain what's wrong with it. Or I could give the original, a translation, and a set of key words in the original, with MED definitions (edited for brevity and clarity), and ask them to use the definitions in critiquing the translation. Or give the original, the list of key words and definitions, and a paraphrase, and ask that students explain what the paraphrase fails to convey.
Extra credit to anyone who comments helpfully (points off if all you do is trash the whole idea of testing comprehension, or teaching ME in the original).
23 May 2009
Academic honesty
It's summer. Days are sunny, breezy, the scent of lilacs and irises fills the air, and I want to spend my time in the garden, or swimming, or sitting around drinking at noon and pretending that I'm in France or Italy.
But of course I'm an academic, and summer is when we get a lot of our research done. Why don't I work on something that would take me to Italy or France? I enjoy my trips to England, but they're not exactly filled with sunlit piazzas and wine from a vineyard within walking distance.
Anyway. Concentrate. The desk is spread with calendar, books, research journals present and past, print-outs of drafts, and the new to-do list. New not just in the age of the items on it, but also in its layout.
Three columns. One for the thing to be done, one for the immediate reward for doing it, one for the big-picture motivation.
Example: notes on 1000 lines of text. 10 minutes reading blogs. Have specific elements to look for in next encounter with manuscript.
Or: format footnotes in Article That Took Too Long. Half an hour's walk. Submit draft to friend/editor to help her sell the collection to publishers.
Having the motivation down in front of me really helps my focus. The task may be dull, but this is how it helps me meet longer-term goals. It's like ticking off progress on a map. I may have progressed only a few blocks in a journey of many miles, but I can see that the trip is underway.
The trick is to identify what really will get me moving. "Enjoy feeling of accomplishment" won't do it. Sometimes the motivational column has a notation that doesn't discredit me, like the examples above, or one which, though selfish, invokes scholarly interests: "get money from funding body so I can go to Famous Library."
But in all honesty, the entry most likely to help me avoid the siren song of sunlight and irises is something like "avoid humiliating self in front of colleagues" or "prove to Sneering Doubter that this is viable research."
Yes. Apparently I have not outgrown exchanges (at least internal ones) of "Am not/are so/your mama." The urge to "show them" remains with me. If showing them means keeping seat of pants stuck to seat of chair, I can do that! You watch!
Or don't. You and the grown-ups can go drink wine in Italy, and my childish hang-ups and I will stay here in time-out.
But of course I'm an academic, and summer is when we get a lot of our research done. Why don't I work on something that would take me to Italy or France? I enjoy my trips to England, but they're not exactly filled with sunlit piazzas and wine from a vineyard within walking distance.
Anyway. Concentrate. The desk is spread with calendar, books, research journals present and past, print-outs of drafts, and the new to-do list. New not just in the age of the items on it, but also in its layout.
Three columns. One for the thing to be done, one for the immediate reward for doing it, one for the big-picture motivation.
Example: notes on 1000 lines of text. 10 minutes reading blogs. Have specific elements to look for in next encounter with manuscript.
Or: format footnotes in Article That Took Too Long. Half an hour's walk. Submit draft to friend/editor to help her sell the collection to publishers.
Having the motivation down in front of me really helps my focus. The task may be dull, but this is how it helps me meet longer-term goals. It's like ticking off progress on a map. I may have progressed only a few blocks in a journey of many miles, but I can see that the trip is underway.
The trick is to identify what really will get me moving. "Enjoy feeling of accomplishment" won't do it. Sometimes the motivational column has a notation that doesn't discredit me, like the examples above, or one which, though selfish, invokes scholarly interests: "get money from funding body so I can go to Famous Library."
But in all honesty, the entry most likely to help me avoid the siren song of sunlight and irises is something like "avoid humiliating self in front of colleagues" or "prove to Sneering Doubter that this is viable research."
Yes. Apparently I have not outgrown exchanges (at least internal ones) of "Am not/are so/your mama." The urge to "show them" remains with me. If showing them means keeping seat of pants stuck to seat of chair, I can do that! You watch!
Or don't. You and the grown-ups can go drink wine in Italy, and my childish hang-ups and I will stay here in time-out.
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