Pumpkin Picking, CFP's, and Upcoming Assignments

So I decided to take yesterday off and go pumpkin picking with my boyfriend. It was awesome. We went to a little farm just outside of Woodstock, ON called Birtch Farms. There were pumpkins everywhere. This doesn't have anything to do with being a grad student. It was just fun. Well I guess that's not entirely true. The hayride was punctuated by a narrative about apples (the farm was also an orchard), and being an English grad student, I couldn't help but be over-analytical. They had wooden tableaus of apple related stories all along the hayride, geared towards the kids. Guess what the first apple story was? Yup, you guessed it. Genesis: Adam and Eve. After this, the next tableau was William Tell, a story I'd never really heard. I was surprised to discover a biblical intertext in that narrative. Very Isaac and Abraham-esque. Except fate seemingly takes the role of intervening force, and not God. Very interesting. Then, we came across another tableau of Snow White. Well, all the kids started going CRAZY and were literally climbing over the adults just to get a peek. Disney wins again. I also think it's interesting that Snow White functions as an analogue to the Genesis story, but I think that this academic pond has already been fished out... Too bad. Here are a couple of pictures from our day:

It was nice to have a break, but I have a lot of things to do, and a lot of assignments coming up! I joke with my friend that, that beacuse I am so busy, all I get to eat is perogies and pizza pockets. She laughs, but there's truth in jest, you know. The same friend also sent me a bunch of CFP's for the ACCUTE conference. I want to go, but I am so bogged down right now, and the abstracts are due on or before November 15th! Plus I have something due every week until the end of term, starting this week. And tons of grading consistently coming in. I guess I get back to reading. I have a busy seven weeks ahead. *GROAN*

Teaching Grammar (Zzzz...)

It’s Thursday again! Yes! I just finished teaching. Today’s lesson: grammar! My students were overjoyed. Can you sense the sarcasm just dripping from my narrative voice? I had one student, who, hilariously, was sitting directly to my right, literally put his head right down on the desk and go straight to sleep. He was sitting right BESIDE me! In my experience as an undergrad, the best way to sleep in class is to find the perfect angle at which you are the least noticeable and then practice resting your head in your hand so that when you close your eyes, it appears as though you are merely pondering the oh-so-interesting contents of your book. Or, just wear a baseball cap. But to place your head directly on the desk and doze off directly beside the course instructor without even the vaguest attempt to camouflage what you’re doing, practically drooling on the TA’s textbook, is just flagrantly disrespectful. Even the way he was sleeping reflected laziness and a lack of effort. At least try to pretend like you’re not sleeping! Also, in my experience, the best and most heart-attack-esque way of waking up someone who is sleeping in class is merely to use the verb “to sleep” in a sentence. So mid-sentence, when I noticed this student sleeping, I used the sentence “Sleeping in class, my notes were not sufficient for the final exam” as an example of a dangling modifier. I stared at him as I said it, and he woke up with a start. For some reason, when sleeping in class, students are oblivious to everything except the word sleep. It is as though they’ve programmed their brains to respond only to this word. It’s hilarious. I had a hard time containing my laughter. I’m not normally in the practice of humiliating students, but in this case, he was sitting right beside me, and if I let him away with it, I may lose the respect of the other students. I then instructed the students that if they really must sleep in class, perhaps it would be best to sit in a place other than right beside the instructor!

I guess that’s all. I have to go update my participation grades record now!!!

Ein Prosit!

Well, yesterday my family came down from the GTA for Oktoberfest. They stayed the night. My house is full of empty bottles and dirty glasses. I guess I have to clean again... urgh! It was a fun time, though.

First we went to St. Jacob’s where my family shopped (and I browsed, since I am a grad student), and then we went out for dinner. I wanted to take them to Wildcraft, but when I called and they said it would be about a 1.5 hour wait, so we went to Ennio’s instead, which was perfect.

When we were finished eating I tried to call a cab, but no such luck. It’s impossible to get a cab on the closing weekend of Oktoberfest! I suggested, since our ‘festhallen’ was on King street, that we take the # 7 bus to get there. Well, what a scene my family made on the bus!!! Most of my family is not used to public transportation, having had cars since the time they were legally able to drive. Some of the highlights, in quotes:

- (as an express bus passed): “Why isn’t he stopping? What a jerk! What does he think we’re waiting here for?”
- (after 5 minutes of waiting) Is this bus EVER going to come?
- (as we enter the bus, frantically) “How do I pay?!!!
- (sitting on the bus, with many bus regulars) “I can’t believe I’m on the BUS!”
- “It’s like a ride at Canada’s Wonderland!”

SO embarrassing. Other riders similarly headed to Oktoberfest events began to chat up members of my family, presumably because they were immensely entertained by their lack of bus-taking prowess. So at least that kept them entertained (and occupied) for the duration of the ride.

When we arrived at the ‘festhallen” which turned out (unbeknownst to me) to be a tent (family response: “OMG, it’s a TENT?! They BETTER have indoor plumbing!), we entered and claimed a hightop table. Almost immediately, two weird guys started hitting on my Mom and my Aunt. One was missing his two front teeth and smelled quite foul. He also had difficulty remembering any names, and just called us all by my sister’s name for the entire duration of the night because he was so drunk. The other, presumably weirdo #1’s buddy (though we weren’t sure if they were friends or just bonded due to mutual weirdness), was creepily trying to photograph us surreptitiously all night. *Shudders. They colonized our hightop table. My Mom and Aunt did not want to surrender the table, to which my response was “good god, they really don’t know how to shake one, do they?” Give up the table, it’s not worth it! My cousin, sisters and I gradually moved over to the neighbouring table, which was pleasingly occupied by cuter, more socially graceful men. My Mom and Aunt soon followed, and the two weirdoes got scared off by the other men (yes! Operation: successful!). The new, nice guys kept commenting on how cool it was that our moms were out partying with us. I think it’s cool too :D

In closing, it was a great girls’ weekend, and I have just one thing left to say:

“Ziggy, Ziggy, Ziggy, Ziggy,
Oy, Oy, Oy!”

Ein Prosit!

Just Some Random Things Happening in My Life

So this past week has been Oktoberfest. I decided (on my usualy Thursday night forray out with my friends) to visit one of these "festhallen" to see what it was all about. It was quite fun. We had lots of beeer and polka-ed until 1 am, when they kick everyone out. I am tired today...

I have my family coming to visit me this weekend. We're all going out to Oktoberfest together, since they've never been. This means I have to clean my house. Great... It's not that messy, but I have other things I need to be doing!

As a grad student, I worry about my health sometimes, mainly because I drink too much, eat the wrong foods (due to ease/speed of preparation or acquisition), and don't get enough exercise or sleep. So I am trying to turn over a new leaf. I went to a bikram yoga class yesterday. For those of you unfamiliar with bikram yoga, let me "enlighten" you (pun very much intended). Bikram yoga is much like regular yoga, except it is done in a room so hot that it rivals the deepest pits of hell. The room is literally heated to approximately 44 degrees celcius. Not only are you expected to stay in the room for 90 minutes, they want you to be active and do yoga. Hmmm. It feels good afterwards, but mainly because you come to appreciate being in a normal temperature. When you exit the room, you feel a relief like nothing else you can experience. It's good for me, and I shouldn't complain about it. I will probably go back. I am a glutton for punishment. Hence, I am in grad school.

Speaking of grad school, I met another grad student the other day who was still working on his OGS and SSHRC applications (HAHA!) and he was telling me about a dream he had about said external funding agencies. He dreamed that SSHRC and OGS were PEOPLE and they had singular, personififed identities. I thought this was hilarious. He said it freaked him out a lot and then he woke up. I told him that maybe he had just been reading too much allegory. Only an English Literature grad student would find that joke funny. It cracked him right up.

So I am working on a book review for Rawi Hage's new novel Cockroach. I suppose I'd better get back to it, since I told them I would get them somthing today, and I still have 150 pages to read! Maybe I can read and vacuum at the same time...

Epic EmbarASSment!

I love thursdays. Thursdays are the end of my academic week. I always give myself thursdays off (well, except during essay writing time) to go out with my friends. I started this tradition in my MA year so I wouldn't get so immersed in my schoolwork that I became isolated and hermit-esque. Forcing myself to be social turned out to be one of the best things I could do. I made wonderful friends last year (you know who you are if you're reading this ;D). So I'm continuing the tradition this year and going out with friends that are still in the KW area.

I caught up on my sleep, finally. But not in a good way. I have been so exhausted with SSHRC/OGS/grading/the conference/my coursework that I accidently fell asleep on the couch on Tuesday night and was out cold for more than 12 hours.

Pro: I caught up on a lot of sleep.

Con(s): I stupidly neglected to post something on a course message wall that was required for class the next day.

And less importantly, the couch was not as comfy as my bed and I got a massive neck cramp.

Here's a comic, from http://www.phdcomics.com/ (awesome website that I frequent when procrastinating) that I feel epitomizes my life:

I woke up with the sun beaming in on me, in the biggest freaked-out panic you can imagine. I had a moment of cognitive dissonance where all sense of a spatio-temporal reality faded and I didn't know what time of the day it was and part of me thought I might actually be missing class (bigger freakout). I frantically checked the time, realized I was not missing class, and then darted upstairs to post what I was supposed to put up.

The most frustrating part is that I'd already prepared this a couple of days in advance, but I didn't have my password for the course website (a very obscure and difficult to remember password of random numbers and letters, some lowecase, some upper), so I decided to post it later...

After feeling like a total idiot, I got ready for class, and ready to feel even more completely humiliated! It wasn't so bad, but I did feel like a big loser.

After all this, I am really glad to have this week behind me, and that I get to relax tonight. And bonus: It's a long weekend! Yay, turkey!!!

FREEDOM!!! sort of...

I handed in my SSHRC and OGS applications today and now I'm free!!! Sort of... Thank god! Oh, it feels so good to be done. My friends in other programs had later deadlines (by two weeks!) and I was so jealous, but now, I'm living it up! Yay.

I should maybe foreground this by saying that I have been up for about 48 hours now, not because I wasn't done, but just because I couldn't sleep knowing that there might be other things I could change, edit, or fix up. I worked on it right up until the moment I had to leave for class, and even then, I was hesitant to click on that oh-so-final print button.

I emailed my edited draft to the professor who told me to reorganize everything (see post from September 30) on Friday, asking if he could take one more look at it to see if there was anything horrible about this draft that I should change. I got a response one hour before I had to leave the house. I was deeply afraid of opening this email. What if he said the whole thing was horrible and that I should reorganize everything again? Oh god. Panic set in. I opened it anyways. It said that this version was "MUCH stronger" (I liked the caps, that gave it a nice emphatic touch). Thank god. I don't know what I would have done if he hated it.

I've spent the entire past two nights combing through both proposals, and I really still don't know when you cross the line from constructive editing to deconstructive knit-picking. Hopefully OGS and/or SSHRC will give me the fame and fortune I'm after (HA!)...

Shirking SSHRC

Nothing has changed over the past three days, really. SSHRC and OGS are still driving me absolutely crazy. I decided that I would organize a peer review with two of my friends (from other schools, no chance of them stealing my brilliant ideas that way). We met up at Laurier's grad pub. But before reading each others' proposals, we decided to go get some dinner (can't think on an empty stomach...). After sitting down to dinner, we exchanged proposals. Perhaps because we're all at the same level, or perhaps because we're all too polite, none of us had any criticism. It became an occasion for ego-stroking. "Wow, your proposal is SO good, I can't see why they wouldn't fund this," etc. At least it forced me to get some revision done.

After this uselessness, we went out for a drink to numb the pain of external funding application processes. One drink turned into two, and two turned into several, and before I knew it, it was last call and I was cursing this peer review, which had digressed into a beer review.

So now I am sitting here writing this, putting off further revisions to OGS and/or SSHRC, and hoping that I'll have an epiphany about what I can change so that the adjudicators of these competitions think my project has "merit" and is "worthy." Hmmm...