The Laursonian Institute

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durp

durp

nuugh

splurg

October 5th, 2008 | Tags: durp | Category: meta | Comments Off

I have two things to confess.

First, I waited, again, until midnight to start blogging. This makes me loopy.

And second, I say “nu-cu-lur”.  I know it’s spelled like it’s “supposed to” be pronounced.  Nuclear.  I also know I’m in graduate school and I shouldn’t be harboring all these uneducated colloquialisms in my lexicon.  But I trump both points.  For I am also a linguist!  I celebrate my sub-standard form!  I grew up saying it, and now, with my tiny set of linguistic oddities I like to pretend are my “Seattle accent”, I must embrace my nuclear.  I’m also keeping my short /uh/ “roof”.  And my short /e/ “Vegas”.  And I’m also too tired to try and figure out how to put any of this in IPA tonight.  Oh well.

Half of that aversion is that I spent all afternoon making notes on Trubetzkoi and thus arm wrestling IPA into my wiki program.  Tried to find a more wonderful way to get Linux and IPA together, but it looked like more installing and futzing than I could do at that moment right in the middle of my reading.  That didn’t stop me from installing all the rest of the language packages though!  Got most my non-Latin scripts up and running.

Other things that happened today:  I finished grading two sections worth of homework!  Also, the Lawyers had us over for delicious dinner and we checked out their Hawaii photos and caught up on news.  I got my Trubetzkoi done (though after typing his name all day I’ve really taken to wanting to call him “Trubz”) which was my set goal du jour.  Also the kitty wasn’t feeling well this morning, but I think he’s gotten over it.  Seems to be doing decently this evening, though I’ll keep an ojo on him.  Oh, and reading Trubz gave me an idea for my 260 fieldwork as well… gotta see if I can follow up on that tomorrow.  Decently successful!

October 4th, 2008 | Tags: kitty, linguistics, linux | Category: life, school | Comments Off

Pretty successful day, for sure, but busy as heck.  Feeling a little too disparate to blog successfully.  It’s rather late.

Went to class, collected our first round of homeworks from the undergrads.  Most everyone turned them in!  Much success.  Class went well and everyone seemed to be into the morphology thing.  Chatted with some kids after class, and busted over to office hours.  Spent most of office hours talking to my co-TA and other TAs in the office about Warcraft and other slightly-more-relevant topics.  Good times!  I do really like the grad students in our department.  We’re good folks.  Anyway, had my last two sections this week and they both went really well!  I think I learned from my Wednesday mistakes and moved forward.  Guess we’ll see how the content shapes up this week, when I’ve really got to do the “teaching” part of the ol’ job.  Linguistics Graduate Group party after that, which was fun!  Went over with another one of the 1st years, who I really like, and chatted with many of the rest of the 1st years.  Again.. what a great group!  Students and faculty alike.  Yay.  Came home and graded homeworks and watched crap TV while Lewis was out celebrating his friend’s birthday.   These homeworks are gold, but truthfully I’m really glad to see how well all the kids are getting the material.  And those that aren’t… pure gold.  And lots of material for next week’s discussion sections!

Weekend.  Tomorrow.  That’s all I really have the steam left to say.  Yay!

October 3rd, 2008 | Tags: homework, party, taing | Category: school | Comments Off

Boo goes colloquially by Jingles around these parts some times.  Sometimes I also feel like those jingles are the perfect pick-me-up to a tanking day.  It’s funny how endearing the tinyness of Boo’s existence can be.  But I guess sometimes you just need something that simple to pluck you from the theoretical storm cloud brewing in your head.

It’s silly that my days feel like they’re tanking lately.  Classes are going pretty well.  I’m really worried about Sociolinguistics, but the material is interesting and the challenge, though great, seems surmountable in my moments of optimism.  Bed time is never a moment of optimism.  This is the time of night this stuff sinks in.   I look at my day tomorrow and all I see is myself one moment closer to what must be inevitable TAing mediocrity, and one day closer to the deadline of my Socioling initial research proposal which I am completely floundering about.  This is a little over-dramatic.  After reading all day, this is what happens.  It’s ridiculous to say I’m working too hard when it feels like all I’m going is leisurely reading research papers about subjects I like.  It’s not even hard reading.  And all it is is reading.  But when I crash right about 9:00, like I do most nights, it seems, I wonder if I work too hard.

It’s true I got up at 6, and was busy getting us ready to go to school.  I had class till 11:30 and did a little of what I’m going to call “grad student stuff” for a bit.  Had lunch with Lewis, which is definitely quantifiable as a break, though we were talking about class.  Was home by 1, went straight to TA work and reading.  Read till 5.  Helped Lewis study for Latin test tomorrow.  Turned on the debate at 6, and watched it while simultaneously skim-reading another paper.  Had a brain storming conversation about research proposals with Lewis again.  Finished said paper after debate ended.  Eyes glazed over, doom descended, and a general aversion to bed set in.  I blogged.

And now here we are.  Blogging and dreading again.  But the somewhat meta-frustrating reality of it is that tomorrow I’ll wake up, it will only seem 3/4th as hard, I’ll go through the motions, getting up, making breakfast, studying, class, studying, class… and by 6:00 my weekend will be upon me.  My day will culminate in drinking and festivities with the grad students in the department.  And that’ll be it.  I’ll have fun, some things will go well, some things will discourage me, and I’ll start it all over again.  And with this washing-machine-like emotional cycle in mind, I’ll say one thing definitively that I stupidly had never bothered to anticipate:  grad school is hard.  Now, to sleep on it.

October 2nd, 2008 | Tags: dread, kitty, pensiveness | Category: life, school | Comments Off