Archive for December, 2009

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Gratuitious Gratitude

Monday, December 21st, 2009

Snow Picnic

I know I should be bitter.  Baltimore County closed schools today; our term ended on Friday.  Instead, though, I am so grateful:

1) Exams are over, and except for one batch of essays, I am completely caught up with grading.

2) The principal gave us each a generous gift and a box of Rhebs chocolate, along with her heartfelt thanks for all that we do.

3) I got all my baking, laundry and accounting done in two glorious days of being snowed in.

4) The cat has finally accepted that for once, she is not interested in being outside.

Cat Gives Up

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Inescapable Irony

Saturday, December 19th, 2009

So this morning, instead of grading the last set of exams or baking the last batch of biscotti, both of which desperately need finishing, I decided to take an Internet survey about my procrastination habits.  Doesn’t that sound like a delicious distraction?

I scored high on the scale (75th percentile), but that’s no surprise.  I’m a terrible procrastinator.  The main reason is that I almost always get away with it.  Ever since grade school, I have been able to churn out high-quality work at the last minute.  It’s not my best work, but it’s good enough for an A or sometimes a B.  I’m disappointed in myself, but it’s such a relief to have the pressure gone that I don’t bother to change my pattern of behavior.

Case in point: my class last semester.  I think I read a total of about 20 pages of the textbook, which is many hundreds of pages long.  I never started my assignments until the day before or the day of.  But I was always able to yank something out by deadline time, and it was usually pretty good by my professor’s standards.  I ended up with a perfect score, which may be a procrastinating record even for me.

And, if any of you were ever to show up half an hour early for a dinner party, you would probably find the table un-set, dishes piled everywhere, visible clutter on every exposed surface, and me in my pajamas.  Oh, and I’d be picking fights with Rob and trying to blame HIM for the fact that I am genetically unable to plan ahead.  But as soon as the guests walk in, on time or (as a special gift to me) a few minutes late, everything is dreamy and happy and fun — so fun that I forget all about the part before, and next time we invite friends over, do it all again.

The problem with trying to teach anything: People Never Really Learn.

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A New Job

Friday, December 18th, 2009

A couple of days ago, I met with one of my husband’s classmates at MSU.  She is choosing a written thesis instead of a project, which is a little unusual for an architecture student, but her subject involves a lot of history and research, so it makes sense: she’s writing on Nature Deficit Disorder, a tongue-in-cheek term for the behavioral, intellectual and physical problems that result from a loss of creative, unstructured outside play during childhood.

So this lady mentioned needing an editor, and Rob mentioned he had a wife who kindly corrected his grammar in every turn.  (Just then his phone rang; it was me, sending him a text that read, “at every turn, honey.  Love you!”)  So, after that, she had no choice but to call me.

It’s tough to edit your peers’ work.  It’s much easier to edit your students’.  As a teacher, I can be firm, unyielding, even a bit harsh, and the students understand it’s for their own good.  But for someone your age — or, in this case, someone twice my age — it’s trickier, especially when it comes to style.  I don’t want to invade too much of what is really a very personal project.  I’m nervous (especially about learning a THIRD style of citations — I used MLA in high school and college, have been forced to learn APA for grad school, and now will have to become fluent in Chicago / Turabian as well.)  She has a lot of confidence in me, which makes me twice as nervous.  I hope I’m up to the task!

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Proof!

Thursday, December 17th, 2009

That intelligent people still exist!  From The Week, which I love more with each issue:

Recently, a University of Wisconsin anthropologist concluded that the human brain has shrunk a full 10 percent over the last 5,000 years. We asked you for more proof that our brains are getting smaller and you weighed in with:

FIRST PRIZE: Two words: Reality TV.
Frank Letchworth, Knoxville, TN (and others)

SECOND PRIZE: The 90 percent re-election rate for Congress.
Cathy Curtis, Finksburg, MD

THIRD PRIZE: Bottled Water.
Ellen Wong, Pasadena, CA

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Spellcheck.
Joanne Nigg, Elkton, MD

Black Friday.
Mark Kellerman, Hays, KN

Hardly anyone can make a decent flint arrowhead anymore.
Chuck Gaston, Lancaster, PA

The return of ‘80s fashions.
Jaime Davis, Minneapolis

Reading weekly magazines that simplify and condense full news articles.
PJ Wells, Canton, OH

Huh?
Mary Hogan, New York City

Cn u repeat the kwestun?
Michael Ullmann, Princeto

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All I Really Need to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

Well, not truly.  All I actually learned in kindergarten was that I couldn’t sleep in strange places (I still can’t) and that it was a big deal to know how to spell “butterfly.”  (My mom taught me how to read at 3.  So sue me.)

But oh, man.  How I wish I had attended this school. It’s called Forest Kindergarten, a branch of Waldorf education in which the kids go outside every day for three hours, even in the snow, even in the rain, even if it’s below freezing.  They dig, splash, gross each other out, and do all the other things kids do well.  They spend some time indoors reading and writing, but mostly they play outside.

The bad news?  Tuition is $7000 a year.   It’s ridiculous — this program should be instituted in all public schools, even if they have to plant a garden in flowerpots in a parking lot.  Especially if they have to plant a garden in flowerpots in a parking lot; nature will be all the more precious to those children, and they need as much of it as they can get, and they won’t get it at desks being crammed full of differentiated knowledge to prepare them for placement tests while they’re still young enough to forget to go to the bathroom.

Sorry; that sentence got away from me.  Well, I guess this is why I advocate homeschooling.  It’s the only way you can ensure your children have a balanced education at less than $7000 a year.

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