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Posts tagged grades

I keep on slipping, slipping, slipping…

It seems around now, at the end of each quarter, this void opens up in my head. It’s a place I know I shouldn’t go, because I can’t be there and here at the same time. It’s full of thoughts: unorganized, murky, recursive thoughts. My papers live in here. I can dip my toe in, and pull out paragraphs like seaweed. But I can’t organize a paper, and think it at the same time. Today, I’m slipping in. I’ve organized, organized, organized… I’ve outlined, I’ve re-outlined, neatly stacked my books, prepared my topics, summarized my readings. This is as far as this line goes. From here, you must disembark, grab your paltry outlines, and step into the fog. If you’ve done a good enough job you’ll have stashed food in your pockets, water in your bag, and brought a map of the right city, in the right time. You gather this fog in your arms, package it, label it, store it, and arrange it. Three weeks pass, and you can’t remember why you were here, or why it seems like so much time has passed and there’s nothing to show for it. More weeks of silence, relative freedom, organized thought returns after a restorative period of languid disinterest. At the end of it all, someone gives you a grade: an A. The same grade you would have gotten regardless of the sequence of events that lead you here. Not because your paper earned it, but because your graduate school admission came with this clause: you’ll spend the next several years writing papers no one reads, compelled to do so by a sense of duty and a fear of the unknown, which will earn you in all circumstances the letter signifying your continued acceptability: an A.

May 21st, 2009 | Tags: , , | Category: life, school | Comments Off

Mehed

Long day full of not a lot.  Didn’t have class this morning, so I got to sleep in and make Lewis a tasty weekend-like breakfast with some of the tasty hot sauce he made yesterday.  I did manage to mow the lawn today, which was a really nice excuse to hang out in the decent weather and sunshine.  Did a little weeding even, and spend a while gazing lovingly at the waxwing flock in our tree.  I need to spend more time outdoors that doesn’t involve moving from one location to another.  I’ll be happy when it’s toasty enough for long enough to read on the lawn again.  It’s been so damp this winter!  You know, for Davis.

Did manage a few accomplishments today.  Bought my tickets to San Diego for my grandparents’ joint 80th birthday party in April, so that ought to alleviate some parental worry.  Also turned in my neuroimaging quiz, which went slightly crappier than I could have hoped.  I’m definitely a little out of my league, so getting a decent grade I’ll consider a triumph.  I really have no idea what I’m going to get as a final grade in that class – as far as I can tell, it’s going to be entirely dependent on 3 quizes, the second of which I just finished today.  Got an A on the first one, and I’m feeling B on this one… so hopefully I can nail the last one as scrape by with an A- or such in this class.  Phew.

I also baked a loaf of bread!  I haven’t made this recipe for potato bread for a few years, so it was a nice one to come back to.  The potato in it always makes it turn out nice a moist and smooshy, which is great.  I did forget to put the butter in, but it doesn’t seem to have made any difference.  All in all, pretty great.  After all that, I was pretty pooped today, so I sort of slugged around and ended up needing to go out for dinner, despite having lots of food here.  I was just too knackered to cook, and was feeling really ready to get out of the house anyway.  So Lewis and I had a great sushi dinner, and I was feeling much more relaxed and put together by the time I got back home.  Though we did reneg on a pictionary party with the philosophy grad students.  We’ve got a party to go to tomorrow, so I’m not feeling too bad… but we are so terribly unsocial some times!

February 28th, 2009 | Tags: , , , , , , , | Category: home, school | Comments Off

Woot!

Grades are up!   We’re gonna call this Fall 08, zero; Laurie, 4.00!

It’s nice to feel like my hard work paid off… but also surprisingly underwhelming.  I don’t know if it’s because I feel like I worked harder than I ever have for any classes, ever… or that the grading schemes were really nebulous and there’s not really any reason you would give a grad student who did their work well anything but an A… but regardless… it’s A’s for me!

December 17th, 2008 | Tags: | Category: school | Comments Off

So chilly

First of all, this new wordpress is fantastic.  I was waiting to do this update until I was out of school just in case I mussed something up and had to spend a million hours fixing it. Instead, I’ve had unorthodox success on two updating fronts.  I’ve updated wordpress, and added new and exciting widgets (including the aforeposted twitter feed) and everything went as smooth as can be.  I can’t believe it!  But what’s more, I also upgraded Ubuntu today with only the tiniest of hiccups!  Had to swap out my network manager (but the standard one is crap anyway) and I still have not quite figured out why my outgoing mail isn’t working… but otherwise, total success.  Sound working, wireless is working, display working, even *suspend* is working!!   I love you, computer.  I love you, you wonderful old Ubuntu.  And I love you, lovely people at Za Reason!

This has been a muchly successful day.  Got up at my leisure, made breakfast (mm, cinnamon tortilla rollups and yogurt), and watched silly SNL videos.  I made split pea soup in the slow cookers, and baked a loaf of multigrain bread to go with it (graham flour + cornmeal + white) .  Got the tree trimmed, and Lewis set the train up around the bottom.  The track is really great this year – so long and curvy!  Lewis also did the laundry, so we’re all well set up for tomorrow.  Watched an episode of Ken Burns’ Jazz,  and did some internet window shopping, getting myself ready for maybe going actual-type Christmas shopping tomorrow.  I even read a little, and hung up the instruments mom brought up for the music room.  Yay!   It’s so fantastic to get to spend a day doing random stuff… I’m getting so much done, even though it’s all the little unimportant-type stuff that gets passed off while I’ve got real school-type work to do.

Also, it only got up to 45 degrees, and it rained all day.  We were going to put the Christmas lights up on the house, but it just was not very inviting outside.   Our rain meter says .43 inches for the day so far!   It is nice to have some decently wintry weather though, since it’s been so mild for so long.  Not that I’m getting actual snow, Seattle-style or anything, but you know.  I’ll take what I can get.

I should also mention that we had to parties in a row!  After classes finished up Friday, we had a we had a gathering of Linguistics folks over to watch William Shatner speak Esperanto.  It was much more well-attended and festive than I had anticipated, and I’m really pleased with the whole endeavor!  People stayed rather late (for academics coming off finals week anyway) and there was much good bonding and joking and such to be had.  Yay for our department.   We spent yesterday at another party, this time Nina’s engagement party, full of all our good ol’ work folks.  I really miss all those guys!  It was so wonderful to see Nina & Jimmy and Charlise, Scott, Christine, Julian, Raffaella, Chuck, Hope, and Kim!  Chidi and Stefano were both out of town, but perhaps we’ll get to see them soon.  We promised KE we would stop in for tea time if we’re going to be in the area doing Christmas shopping.  And I believe we will!  Lewis and I already have a Rattos and tea trip in mind.  Yum.

Ah, life is good, isn’t it?  I’m looking forward to my classes next quarter, and have found I really don’t even care what grades I got this quarter.  I do anticipate A’s in both, if I may be a judge of my own work and its quality, but I find that I don’t have nervous grade checking heart palpatations like I might have as an undergrad.  I just check every day like habit, and feel like the inevitable grades will show up sooner or later.  Probably more like later.

I don’t even know what to do with the rest of my night.  Snuggle up to Lewis and read?  Go to bed early?  Start an art project?  The possibilities are endless.  Endless!

December 14th, 2008 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | Category: life, meta, school | Comments Off