Posts Tagged ‘education’
I seem to be perpetually tired
March 21st, 2010 • chatter
Tags: chatter, education
These last few weeks have been non-stop go-go-go for us. Add to that I’m not sleeping like I should be. Between work, school, photography, and life, it’s almost as if there’s no “me” time. Sure, I’ve got a few hours every night to myself but then, I don’t really have them because I always have to do something. Most readers will notice both the lack of general updates and the lack of pictures these last few weeks. I started shooting a roll of film and have not yet developed it and the camera’s been off for repairs. Got some sand on the sensor and that took a few days. But it’s back and I’ve got some new lighting set ups I want to try, along with some lights and wireless triggers coming. Now I just have to scout out things around here to shoot. There were two discarded bicycles outside my apartment complex but someone came and got them this week and I so badly wanted to shoot them with a grid or snoot for ambiance.
School’s getting a little confusing. I don’t have a discussion tomorrow but I do have a lecture but next week, we’re supposed to have an exam and lecture, I wonder which will get pushed back or moved. Classes are going alright though, I’ve been slacking a lot more than I should and with an exam coming up, I can’t afford another low grade. However, the geography class is going well, it’s just so easy. I don’t get how some people are failing that class, it’s so simple.
Speaking of school, my girlfriend is now entering her fourth week of internship as a student teacher and she’s enjoying it. There’s been some issues with red tape and how the mentoring teacher teaches but that’s probably to be expected — I have no idea, I don’t plan on teaching 7 year olds to find out. I think next week she starts her second internship that is required for her coursework. I don’t envy her at all. She’ll be essentially working three jobs plus trying to get a business off the ground, which doesn’t really leave a lot of time for much of anything else. I guess I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth sometimes.
I’ve got to get to bed. My neighbor’s computer is almost done with its virus scans and I’m trying to think of something to photograph tomorrow, perhaps I’ll finally make my way over to the mosque beside school.
Spring is in swing
January 13th, 2010 • chatter, education
Tags: college, education
For school at least; we’re still in winter weather-wise. I’m taking general education courses this semester, mostly because I feel don’t feel like writing a paper. However, now I have to suffer through Weather & Climate and World Geography surrounded by 18 year olds who still think college is high school + 1. Taking these low level classes will allow me to focus on other things which should be good. I’ve still got to get my old Shadow VLX taken down to the mechanic to get the carbs cleaned and put back on the bike so I can get her running again. I’ve also got to de-rust and de-scale its gas tank, which will probably happen at the same time.
Yesterday we received our new (to us) Mamiya 645 Pro TL medium format camera. We got it for a steal at $500 plus shipping and handling. Each piece priced out ends up costing nearly $1000 so we’re definitely glad to have this. Since it’s medium format and takes 120 film, we haven’t used it yet except with the Polaroid “land camera” film back that came with it which had three exposures left in it. Only one of the three even worked and it came out blurry and darker than expected. We should be getting some film next week so we can test it out. I will also be purchasing some regular 35mm film and possibly some 126 film to go along with a Kodak Instamatic my girlfriend received over our Christmas break. I have no idea what 126 is or what it looks like but it’s not heavily used these days and is fairly expensive, comparatively.
I’m working on different themes for my photography project so if you have any ideas, please let me know via comment or email!
Uninterested reading
September 23rd, 2009 • chatter, education
Tags: education, music
So I’m over halfway done with Disorderly Women by Susan Juster and I’m still struggling to become interested in the book. The actual content is fascinating enough, sure, but Juster has failed at every attempt to grab my interest by simply being a boring writer. Maybe it’s that I find her style of writing-via-quotes-and-citations boring/annoying. Unfortunately, I’m still trying to figure out the actual point/hypothesis of this book and I’m over halfway through it already. Separating her own information from the flurry of quotes (other writers and church documents) is both difficult and time-consuming given that I’ve found most of the content of the book itself is quotations. I don’t find this occurring as often in anthropology books or in most history books I’ve read, so perhaps this is some kind of women’s history schtick? I have no idea how I’m going to write a three page paper on a book whose point I still haven’t understood (or found). This is why I don’t take subjective history classes. I hate wasting my time wading through ego or fluff information to have to discern a minuscule point.
On another note of annoyance, I don’t like Leaves’ Eyes new CD Njord. I can’t say this CD is boring however, it’s definitely not that good to me. The content of the CD has swayed far from Vinland Saga‘s stories and elegies to the Scandinavians of old and was put together very well musically. However, Njord seems to have kept the musicality of the first CD while stripping out any interesting stories from the songs. This CD is another album about Nordic conquests however, I really fail to see what Vikings and Scarborough Fair have in common since they would not have been frequenting Scarborough in the Middle Ages. I understand this is a cover song but really, it belongs as a bonus track or the end of the CD as it interrupts the flow of the CD. Most CD arrangements are either a V or a descending plateau arrangement. This means that in a V arrangement, the CD starts off strong, has an average/weak middle, and a (hopefully) strong end. A descending plateau is just as it sounds: starts off strong and flutters out as the album goes on. Having Scarborough Fair at track 5 of 12 smacks this straight into V territory as it’s simply in the wrong spot on the CD. The rest of the CD has strong, upbeat tracks and this is just a very odd arrangement especially for Leaves’ Eyes whose last few EPs and last CD had excellent arrangements.
Midterms, midterms, midterms
October 17th, 2008 • education
Tags: education
It’s the week college students dread the second most: midterms week. I only had one, really, but it was a real bitch of a test. However, I feel worse for Professor McCarthy and his TA who have to read all of our essays, must be at least 400 pages to plow through. It was a 10 question take-home test in which he wanted us to basically write a whole bunch and I’m sure that about 10 of us actually did, the rest half assed everything. They’re the same bunch (basically everyone) that never does the reading and complains about doing work. Too bad for them because I’m sure we’ve still got our ethnography to do. Not that I’m looking forward to it either.
I went to see Religulous this week, twice in fact. Once just to see it for shits and giggles — of which there were many — and the second time so I could jot down notes for a paper for McCarthy’s class. Like most skeptics that saw the movie, I enjoyed watching Maher poke fun at people who mostly deserved it. I don’t agree with all of the critics who say that the segment with Rabbi Dovid Weiss was anti-Semitic in any way unless they’re referring to Rabbi Weiss. I’ve seen attacks against Maher for comments he made which I’m wondering if we saw the same movie because Maher barely got a word in before he called the interview off…because he couldn’t get a word in. Overall, I enjoyed the movie, even with its quick cuts. I hope the director’s cut will have extended interviews or simply include them on the disc(s) as extra, I know a lot of people would like to see more of what was said.
I’m glad this week is over, it was too stressful. Now I’ve got to read Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson for another paper that’s due soon.
More on Veiled Sentiments
October 8th, 2008 • anthropology, education
Tags: anthropology, education
So I finished the book Veiled Sentiments last week and was thoroughly surprised at how well written it is. It’s the first ethnography that I’ve read in a while, if not ever, that’s written to be read by a normal lay man. Aside from a myriad of oft-redefined Awlad ‘Ali dialectical terms, it doesn’t contain the usual obscuring language of anthropology. Ms. Abu-Lughod succeeded in making this book and the lives of these Bedouin extremely accessible to anyone who’s curious.
That being said, I will probably buy her follow up book called Writing Women’s Worlds. This book was written roughly a decade after her original research in the Western Desert and takes place with the same tribe. I think it would be interesting to see how much has changed socially in that passing decade.
The paper I had to write on the book is simply abysmal but it seems I wasn’t the only one. Practically everyone else in class had the same problem I did with the topic. This was essentially a book report that could be backed up by some research but the lives of these people are so complex to Westerners, it’s quite tough to cram 260 pages into 5 pages. Almost everyone loved the book, that was overwhelmingly apparent but everyone suffered the same issue with the bounty of the subject at hand. Hopefully I’ll get a decent grade that I can more than easily make up for with our next two papers.
Veiled Sentiments and human brain evolution
September 18th, 2008 • education
Tags: education
I’ve been busy since my last post, somewhat with school but more with work. Due to Hurricane Ike, our headquarters in Houston (smack dab in the MIDDLE of downtown) has been powerless and waterless since last Friday. Since then, we’ve worked all weekend and this week and are frankly pretty tired. Classes have come and gone, I too think some brain cells have as well.
Politics of Identity is actually getting to be a bit easier. We’re transitioning from metacontexts and rote theory to applicable situations and more grounded contexts. This week’s discussion was about spatial identities and the specific identities and meanings groups and individuals place on space. Our reading focused around the identity placed on Stonehenge by both hippies and Britons alike and how identifying yourself by country or homeland is becoming less meaningful in globalization. I also started reading Veiled Sentiments by Lila Abu Lughod tonight. I’m only about 50 pages in but it’s very interesting so far. It’s an ethnography about the Awlad ‘Ali Bedouin of Northern Egypt, with a very specific focus on both poetry and the women of the society. We’ve got a paper due on it on my birthday so I need to buckle down and read.
Evolution and Creationism is starting to drone for me. The class has gone from what could’ve been decent discussion, even with oddball opinions, to displaying that nearly everyone is in the class for an easy grade. Those of us who participate are the only ones who took the class because it was a discussion-based class and want to discuss. We spent all day Tuesday discussing the evolution of the human brain in terms of what’s drastically different versus other apes and other animals. Most people had no idea what the frontal cortex was (or that we had one) or that brain size has little to do with intelligence. And that IQ tests don’t determine how intelligent you are. The only time so far that most of the class participated in any discussion was when we watched South Park last week and that was only because it was a topical cartoon. I suspect that when we watch Expelled, most people will fall asleep or…actually believe the crap Ben Stein flings. That and all of the side conversation that goes on while Professor McCarthy is talking really makes the class not only less interesting and inviting, it also dismisses the entire framework of a discussion class.
I hope tomorrow’s class will prove to be much more eventful than the last two have been but we’ll see how that works out.
The wonderment of creation myths
September 3rd, 2008 • education
Tags: creationism, education
This week’s class focuses on creation myths, specifically the one in the Book of Genesis. Most of us know the story, God creates everything we know in 7 days including the Earth, heavens, and all living creatures. That was the first book. In the second one, basically the order of events is changed slightly but the story remains the same. For an allegory, it’s not bad at all. For literal fact, it’s absurd. But if you take one of the creationist screeds and attempt to work within that framework, it makes slightly more sense. The belief that each of the 7 days it took is roughly 1000 years can make sense except for the reliability of radio carbon dating showing things are much older than 7,000 years. By leaps and bounds. Although, still, if you want to believe wackaloonery that belief is much better than man and dinosaurs and everything lived at the same time and it only took a day to create things like humans, cypress trees, and birds.
But this discussion finally got more people talking in class, it’s always boring hearing the same people talk over and over, myself included — although, I’m beginning to just sit there and keep quiet as to not laugh. The religious folks have some interesting rationale and the wannabe Bible scholars keep floating about as much as they can. I appreciate that there are other people who’ve looked into things like this as I have but when they don’t cite where it came from, I tend to put less credence into it. I wonder what we’ll talk about tomorrow since we’re supposed to watch part of Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth (wikipedia).
