Catching Up

Catching Up

Wow -- it's been a while since I blogged. Personally, it's been an interesting week or so. In a fairly surprising turn of events, I've been invited to visit a friend who lives in an exciting and cool city, so I get to travel many miles (note to self -- must check partner airlines and (finally) update my name on my frequent flyer programs, 'cos I'll be getting miles for this!

Also, I've been shopping, and bought this jacket -- for $99! Not bad for a jacket that retails for $250. It's not glamorous, but it looks good for icky weather. Apparently, it's not all that good for snowboarding, but I don't snowboard.

Also, and this is probably TMI, my cat has nasty bad breath. He's washing himself a couple of feet away, and I can smell his breath from here. I think I need to get a kitty toothbrush. Or maybe just kitty toothpaste. I hear that if they eat it, it still helps, and Mr. Soppy is not really good about having people play with his mouth. He turns into Mr. Fetal Position.

School-wise, I have one class that makes me want to bang my head against the wall. There are some very bright students, but the energy level is so incredibly sucky that even when I run through a set of questions that point back directly to things that I or the students have said in the previous 40 minutes, no one can or will answer. When I mention this, someone will invariably say, "It's [insert day of week]." My other survey never ceases to amaze me. I thought that this would be the class from hell, but after I gave them the, "OK, this is college and these are the expectations you need to get used to" speech, they responded in really wonderful ways. They are fairly brave, there's some cameraderie, and if they don't understand something, they ask. I don't just mean about historical stuff, but they ask basic mechanical questions about how class works, and what they are supposed to be doing. Some of them are infuriating in that several of them are barely starting the paper that's due on Friday, but they are trying and engaged -- and some of them are really stretched. I can honestly say I have little to no respect for many of the people in charge of athletic programs. We have one coach on campus who actually thinks that our athletes may practice too much -- he thinks that they have a harder time getting up their energy for real games because they're always practicing. This is not true for some of the other coaches, who have their students eating and sleeping and drinking sports -- so much so that they really are not able to take proper breaks to eat and sleep, let alone keep up with classes.

Ok -- I have to stop for a minute. I've got some crime show on right now in the backgrouns, and how stupid is it that they keep talking about athletes getting Fulbright scholarships??? Are there Fulbrights for athletes?

That's about it right now. Just thought I'd mention that I was still here, still working, panicking about getting in a bunch of little grant applications so I can go to conferences and maybe get some summer research funding...

And by the way, does anybody know what the timeline is for finding out if my K'zoo paper has been accepted -- I had to submit to the general sessions, because I kind of waited till the deadline.