It’s late, I should be trying to go to sleep, I know. But on a whim tonight, I thought I would check and see if course evaluations had been posted for the spring. And lo! The evaluations *are* posted. Despite the fear rising in my throat and a sudden feeling of uncontrollable nervousness that made my heart race, I decided to read the evaluations for my class…
Fortunately, the overall assesment was pretty postitive. I got 2 “awesomes” and 10 “knowledgeables” (ha ha, sure fooled them!). There was definitely one person who was apparently bored out of his/her skull in my class, but in general the biggest criticism I got was for my photocopying (it was a new copier dammit! Maybe I had one or two difficulties with it, is that a crime?!) So I can breathe a little easier now knowing that I didn’t dissapoint 70% of my class last term. I know I’ve still got a lot of room for improvement, but I don’t think I could have asked for a better first class.
I’m pretty sure I had one too many “friendly” and “enthusiastic” comments to have truly lived up to my current pedagogic role model. By the way, I told you so!
Finishing Super Paper Mario.
Take that stupid Flopside Pit of 200 Trials!!
Watching The Day the Earth Caught Fire.
I couldn’t help but laugh when London started buring down because it hit 100°F. It was a fun film to watch with friends, but I found the main character Peter Stenning to be almost thoroughly unlikeable, so the movie didn’t work that well for me. Didn’t realize the leading lady was also in The Crawling Eye. Now that one’s a winner :-)
Watching Millenium Actress.
I thought it was a decent film, but not as interesting to me as Kon’s other work. Although it does making documentary-making seem quite thrilling!
Watching My Neighbor Totoro.
I liked it. I still think Princess Mononoke is my favorite Miyazaki film, but I thought this was still one of his better films
Watching Mad Love.
This movie is fantastic, by which I mean fantastically bad, but still fantastic. The get-up Peter Lorre wears when he’s pretending to be the murderer Rollo could make for the best Halloween costume ever!
Uh yeah, so I know it *looks* like all I did last week was watch movies and play video games, but I did other things too, honest! I did laundry, and read some chapters in the book I need to review by the end of the month, and I request books from Interlibrary Loan for my philsci exam, and I went grocery shopping. So there, I did work too! It’s just the work isn’t really fun to write about :-P
Fine. I’ll try to do something this week that’s actually worth posting about, okay?
Today was a surprisingly, inexplicably, randomly good day. Nothing spectacular happened. I didn’t win the lottery or find true love or buy something awesome. In fact, on the surface today should have been one of the crappiest days ever: I had the Saturday morning shift at work, I missed the movie I was going to see with some friends, it poured cats and dogs on us as we fled the theater to go wait out the missed movie in a Starbucks (so we could catch up with the friends who *didn’t* arrive late to the sold out show), and the restaurant we went to for dinner forgot about us and didn’t give us our check for about an hour after we were done.
But for all that, today felt like one of the best days ever. There was an unexpected (and delightful) chill in the air when I left for work, which thrilled me from the get-go. Yay long sleeves! The shift seemed to pass in no time, even though I was doing one of my least favorite tasks. I dozed in front of the tv for a bit watching one of my favorite HK martial arts films when I got home. I thought it was hugely amusing that Ratatouille, of all things, was sold out when we got to the theater, so I didn’t really feel all that put out for our failed attempt to go see it. I enjoyed immensely getting rained on in the beautifully fall-like weather we had today, even if it did make me a little more cold and wet than I would have liked. And finally, the lengthy dinner just made for a pleasant evening out of Hyde Park having a pleasant conversation with a friend. Even the terrible Canadian cop show that I watched on tv when I got home didn’t spoil the good mood (don’t ask why Chicago tv likes to show bad Canadian cop shows–beats me). So now I’ve had a hot shower and I’m going to curl up in bed and hopefully finish off a surprisingly wonderful day with a good night’s sleep. Gute Nacht!
In order to get people psyched up for King of Kong, (which I totally want to see, people!) I offer the following. The video is a testment to the skill of a genuinely amazing player. The link under the video just plain frivolous fun. Enjoy!
Can I just tell you all for a moment how much I really hate my university? Really and truly hate my university. Now, I am well aware that grad students are notorious complainers. We live fairly cushy lives, despite our measly incomes, and for the most part we tend to come from fairly priviledged backgrounds, etc. So yada yada yada… long story short I fully acknowledge that our complaints probably sound pretty trivial in the whole scheme of things. Okay, with my disclaimer out of the way, can I just say that I still hate being treated like crap by this university? This school fawns over big shot professors based on the principle that big names=quality education. Now, I don’t know how that works out for the undergrads, but I would have to say it generally doesn’t work out so well for the grad students, especially since the university is also committed to a high grad student to faculty ratio (read=too many grad students vying for the attention of a few largely disinterested prima donna profs). But okay, maybe that’s the case everywhere. Getting taken under someone’s wing is the bane of grad students everywhere.
But when your health care sucks, you get paid 2 months late because no one thought to put you on the payroll, and your library is run by a bunch of incompetent retards, you tend to get pretty damn pissed off. And folks, that’s what I am right now: pissed off. I’m pissed that the stupid RN at the student care center completely dismissed my health concerns and that I’ve had to wait two weeks to get an appointment with an actual MD in the hopes that they won’t just shrug their shoulders at me and ask, “why do you think this is a problem?” I’m pissed that the interlibrary loan department kept me in the dark about a loan for two months, then ignored the first email I sent them asking about it, then got pissy about the second email I sent a week later asking about it, then on the same day that the wrote me back saying they didn’t know anything about the book I wanted, they apparently did find out something about the book I wanted and didn’t think to mention it to me, and then cancelled my request today because my request had expired. I’m pissed that I can’t teach next year because teaching positions are highly coveted, even though I got my first paycheck for the class I taught last quarter in the 8th week of the term (that’s out of a roughly 12 week term) because no one thought to mention to the division that I was teaching, and I had to go and talk to 4 different people over about 3 weeks to get thing straightened out.*
In short, I’m just pissed. Pissed that I’ve been sitting on the project I’ve wanted to do for 5 years and I’m only now really getting started on it. Pissed that it’s not only the little professional aggrevations that I have to deal with, but that every step along the way, there’s always someone fucking up and making more stupid, energy-draining busywork for me to do without even the slightest apology for the fact that it was their fuck-up and not mine. And I’m pissed that in my anger, I’ve inhaled a bag of popcorn and about half a pound of Sour Patch Kids. ARGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!
K. I feel a little better now. I also feel better for having written a charmingly passive aggressive email to the retarded library staff :-) Although I’m getting really good at this by now. Question: how do you draw the line between passive agressive notes and just plain aggressive ones? Anyone?
You will all be glad to know that I’m not nearly as cranky as I was last time I posted, although unfortunately, this is still not a happy post. No, this is a post to bemoan the fact that my dear comrade-in-arms, Celia, is leaving for Germany today for FOUR MONTHS! Not only have I hardly seen her all summer because she was slaving away in some hippie labor camp (aka a summer teaching gig in upstate New York), but now who am I going to eat crack wings with at the campus Pub this fall? And who will help me make fun of our sadistic profs and pompous collegues? Okay, there will probably be plenty of takers on that one. But no one is better than Celia at coining new bitchy phrases like Douchey McTool! And worst of all, how will I keep from going crazy knowing that she’s eating currywurst and bratkatoffeln without me?!?! WAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
