I have a 100 page manual I have to review (as in check the English) this afternoon before we send it to a client. Then I have a 37 page report from senior management at our parent company to review too. Over the last few days I've also reviewed a 40 page report, a 45 page report, and other miscellaneous sections from other reports. I can't pass any this off to foreign interns because they're all considered confidential materials.
I've been... well, kinda dicking around. I'm way less busy than I should be for being in my last semester of a master's degree. But my excuse is that I've gotten back into Team Fortress 2 and it's eating my time.
I went to a party last night. My friend's wife's a bitch, so I walked home drunk off my ass. I fell a lot. I can't raise my left arm now and I lost my cell phone and my license. I'm gonna go for a walk and see if I can find them. DAMMIT!
I know this is minor, but GOD DAMMIT I HATE MEMOIRS ABOUT SPORTS. Every damn semester I assign a memoir, and I get maybe 10 great memoirs but there are always a few that are just boring sports recollections. It's not that I mind sports stories, but the whole point of memoir is to tell a story that others will be interested in, stories about being human or being part of a certain culture or whatever.
But dammit, I don't want to hear the play-by-play of your big hockey game when you were 15. That's not interesting and it's not a memoir. The worst part is that when I comment on their paper and talk to them in conferences and suggest that they turn it INTO a memoir by talking about different aspects of being in sports, being part of the team, whatever, they always turn it in with maybe a sentence added to the beginning. Argh. It's happening again, and it'll keep happening forever..
Andrew!! Is it okay to talk about playing the violin when writing a memoir? That's usually my go-to story when I have to write about anything: some sort of concert that I was in at some point. That, or my autistic brother. So many papers, Andrew..... so many papers. You know those "Write about your proudest moment" papers? I've written like 9 of them and all of them were either about my brother or about some concert I performed. Sorry!
Fuck man, I've had a lot of life experiences though. I'm still a baby! I'm only 19!!!! I've been ENGAGED. That's crazy. Doesn't make for a good paper, but still... I've been through things.
All those things can make for a GREAT paper. It's not really about WHAT you choose but HOW you write it. I had someone write a memoir just this semester about her standing up at her high school drama group's concert and singing a Sondheim song, and she was REALLY pissed that her mom wasn't there. It's really simple, but the way she wrote it made it interesting and relatable.
But just the fact that you've been given "write about your proudest moment" papers makes me suspect those teachers. Sure, that's the topic, but how were you supposed to write it? What genre was it supposed to be in? I encourage students to write about whatever they want but try to give them a specific genre, in this case, memoir, to work in.
Of course, maybe the way I'M teaching it is suspect. But this semester I actually modeled a single story of my own as a boring personal narrative and as a memoir so people could see the difference and I've gotten a lot better memoirs this semester. So who knows.
And really, I don't care at all if people write boring sports stories but then revise them into something interesting. I just get pissed when I spend half an hour making comments and talking to these students and then they turn around and change nothing.
But yeah, I feel like sometimes I also forget what it's like to be an undergraduate. You guys get so many more papers and your workload is so spread out among different types of learning... it's a bitch trying to keep up with it all, especially when you're just getting your first taste of FREEDOM! I wish I could talk to my students to get their sides of the story but usually they're stymied by the student-teacher relationship, or something... I don't know. It's hard to get really heartfelt feedback, I feel.
EDIT: And I guess, to clarify, what I'm looking for in memoirs is this: tell us a STORY about you and your life that's going to be interesting. How does playing the violin (or any other thing that you've done) relate to you as a person or your growth? What can you tell us about your life THROUGH these events? That's why a play-by-play retelling of a sports game or... shit, I don't know, an event-by-event retelling of your history playing violin doesn't work... because it's mostly about the game or the violin playing and not about YOU. Just like the best zombie stories are stories about PEOPLE with the backdrop of a zombie apocalypse, the best memoirs are about the WRITER with the backdrop of some life event or whatever.
FURTHER EDIT: I also don't want to sound like I'm passing judgment on these people and their lives or anything, even though it probably sounds like that. Part of me just gets frustrated because I want to help my students see writing and art in a deeper way, maybe give them a greater sense of what sort of stories resonate well with others, and some students just don't give a shit. It makes me sad. But such is life. And after it all, I still love being a teacher.
Well there you go. The only real requirements I had when I was writing the most serious version of the "proudest moment" was that it couldn't be about a relationship with a boyfriend or girlfriend. My teacher said "I am so tired of reading about high school relationships, I refuse to comment on those papers anymore."
A few of them were standardized tests for the state, too. Texas sucks. I suuuure do love Austin and Dallas though.
The one day I feel like shit and need to go home is the day I am forced into attending 4:30pm meeting scheduled by my department over a project I'm not involved in, and then given an urgent company profile by management at 5:15 to fill out for a potential client that for some reason HAS to be done today. Fuck me.
We've had a bit of rain lately. I parked my car on dry land, and when i woke up, it was in a pond.
Actually, this is far from the worst we've ever had, but I do have to go out and work in it later.
You can't see in the pictures, but it's still raining quite a bit.
YouTube apparently decided to hate my browser today. If I try to view a video on the youtube site it just tells me to upgrade my flashplayer. I'm a FLASH DEVELOPER. My flashplayer is up-to-date thankyouverymuch. I put in a userscript which disables their broken version checking though, and now it works fine again. Yay?
WHERE IS EVERYBODY!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
rawr
Boo. I forgot the electricity bill was due today until about an hour ago (11:00), and I drove around looking for a drop off place around town where you can just instantly pay the bill but they were all closed.
I just spent an hour at the dentist's where they did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!!
And besides that, my mom for some obscure reason picked a "Kid's Dentist". So there were 5 year-olds running around all over while I felt that I was 10 years to old to even step foot in the place.
Most expensive toothbrush EVER. Yet, at the same time the cheapest since some state insurance place picked up the bill.
So, I went to a boat party today... I was telling my friend before we went swimming that I COULD swim, but that I never really liked it as a kid because I would ALWAYS get swimmer's ear whenever we went to the pool......
and then I went swimming.....
and now I have swimmers ear. I can barely hear out of my left ear.
Comments
Lame.
But dammit, I don't want to hear the play-by-play of your big hockey game when you were 15. That's not interesting and it's not a memoir. The worst part is that when I comment on their paper and talk to them in conferences and suggest that they turn it INTO a memoir by talking about different aspects of being in sports, being part of the team, whatever, they always turn it in with maybe a sentence added to the beginning. Argh. It's happening again, and it'll keep happening forever..
Fuck man, I've had a lot of life experiences though. I'm still a baby! I'm only 19!!!! I've been ENGAGED. That's crazy. Doesn't make for a good paper, but still... I've been through things.
But just the fact that you've been given "write about your proudest moment" papers makes me suspect those teachers. Sure, that's the topic, but how were you supposed to write it? What genre was it supposed to be in? I encourage students to write about whatever they want but try to give them a specific genre, in this case, memoir, to work in.
Of course, maybe the way I'M teaching it is suspect. But this semester I actually modeled a single story of my own as a boring personal narrative and as a memoir so people could see the difference and I've gotten a lot better memoirs this semester. So who knows.
And really, I don't care at all if people write boring sports stories but then revise them into something interesting. I just get pissed when I spend half an hour making comments and talking to these students and then they turn around and change nothing.
But yeah, I feel like sometimes I also forget what it's like to be an undergraduate. You guys get so many more papers and your workload is so spread out among different types of learning... it's a bitch trying to keep up with it all, especially when you're just getting your first taste of FREEDOM! I wish I could talk to my students to get their sides of the story but usually they're stymied by the student-teacher relationship, or something... I don't know. It's hard to get really heartfelt feedback, I feel.
EDIT: And I guess, to clarify, what I'm looking for in memoirs is this: tell us a STORY about you and your life that's going to be interesting. How does playing the violin (or any other thing that you've done) relate to you as a person or your growth? What can you tell us about your life THROUGH these events? That's why a play-by-play retelling of a sports game or... shit, I don't know, an event-by-event retelling of your history playing violin doesn't work... because it's mostly about the game or the violin playing and not about YOU. Just like the best zombie stories are stories about PEOPLE with the backdrop of a zombie apocalypse, the best memoirs are about the WRITER with the backdrop of some life event or whatever.
FURTHER EDIT: I also don't want to sound like I'm passing judgment on these people and their lives or anything, even though it probably sounds like that. Part of me just gets frustrated because I want to help my students see writing and art in a deeper way, maybe give them a greater sense of what sort of stories resonate well with others, and some students just don't give a shit. It makes me sad. But such is life. And after it all, I still love being a teacher.
A few of them were standardized tests for the state, too. Texas sucks. I suuuure do love Austin and Dallas though.
Actually, this is far from the worst we've ever had, but I do have to go out and work in it later.
You can't see in the pictures, but it's still raining quite a bit.
What?
Long Island.
I hate google so many days.
rawr
My first late payment! Very disappointing.
And besides that, my mom for some obscure reason picked a "Kid's Dentist". So there were 5 year-olds running around all over while I felt that I was 10 years to old to even step foot in the place.
Most expensive toothbrush EVER. Yet, at the same time the cheapest since some state insurance place picked up the bill.
and then I went swimming.....
and now I have swimmers ear. I can barely hear out of my left ear.
Fuckin lake. I should have never jumped in