(no subject)
WHY are people so bloody incompetent???
The guy that is annoying me most at the moment is the new Old English seminar teacher - he's not a proper staff member as such, has a one year teaching fellowship. This year the only 2 staff members who are specialists in Old English are on research sabbatical and were replaced by two one-year teaching fellows. The first one, Winfried, was great - really knowledgeable and enthusiastic.
But the second one is RUBBISH. Not only does he turn up 15 mins late to almost every seminar, he clearly doesn't understand Old English grammar! And this guy is supposed to be teaching us!
I, a 2nd yr student actually CORRECTED him in my last seminar on a really basic grammatical error. He got a nominative (subject) and an accusative (object) mixed up! IDIOT! Anyone who has vague memories of Latin will know what a horribly elementary error that is. He actually told us the WRONG translation: 'The warrior hid the sad-faced one in the earth'. I pointed out that the word 'sad-faced one' in Old Eng (dreorigleor) was a nominative so that tranlsation can't be correct because he's made it into an accusative. I told him it had to be 'The sad-faced warrior hid one in the earth.' After about 2 minutes of looking things up, reading editors' notes etc, he eventually admitted "Yeah um sorry am going to do a complete turn on that one it's actually 'the sad-faced warrior...' "
That wasn't the only time. I asked why a plural subject took a singular verb in this sentence. He clearly didn't know the answer and completely fluffed it; started off by saying it was "a preterite", which is a posh word for past-tense. Err...right, because that answers the question... he clearly hoped that I didn't know what a preterite meant and so would be dazzled by his high-flown grammatical term and be convinced that he'd answered my question when he clearly hadn't. I frowned so he carried on, flustered, ended up saying that it was because the King was doing the action with the West-Saxons so it was really the King doing it, hence singular. The answer isn't right really for one thing the noun for West-Saxons isn't a dative, it's a nominative. He eventually found that the answer was in the notes of one of the books - the correct answer - that the verb took the subject that was immediately before it in the sentence regardless of whether it was plural or singular. He read out the answer from the notes and said '...um which is what I said basically, only in a more complicated way.' Um no it's not dear, it's the uncomplicated correct answer whilst yours was a convoluted and incorrect answer.
I also asked him if 'eorl' was a nominative or accusative in that context and he had to look that up. I mean, it could be either taken OUT of context because it doesn't change but he's teaching us this text, surely he should know...
God what an idiot. I can't believe we're being taught by this incompetent twit. Not only does he not know his stuff, he's bloody irritating trying to be all cool and down with the kids. I bet he hates me, always putting him in a tight spot. I don't do it to be mean or anything, the two Qs I asked I genuinely wanted to know the answer and when I corrected him, it was so the others didn't suffer. They all wrote down his translation for god's sake, I mean if they wrote this translation in the exam they would get penalised. It could mean the difference between a first paper and a 2:1. It makes me shudder to think of all the errors he's made that I've missed. I mean, me, a 2nd yr student has caught him out about 3 times and I'm no expert. God knows what lies he's inadvertently telling us.
I'm going to complain to Dr North, the Old Eng lecturer he's supposed to be replacing. I emailed him asking if I could meet him to talk about my current OE seminars and he replied 'What's up?' with his mobile number. Err....??? I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do. Eventually phoned him, obviously did that at an inopportune time because he cut me off without picking up. Didn't know what to do so ended up texting him. Argh. Haha apparently for his Old Icelandic seminar (the course consists of all of 2 students per year), Alice (because Louise wasn't there) ended up having to read her tranlsation to him whilst he sunbathed on the nearest green in full view of other staff members of the Dept. Incidentally this is the guy who is famous for sleeping with students...
Am panicking about exams a bit. Was supposed to book tickets to go to Vienna with Felix tonight but I cried out at the last minute, going in June instead after exams. Will probably go to Stratford-upon-avon for a night or 2 instead.
Oh year other incompetent person, the website designer for my workplace. We hired him, he said it would be done by last week and it's still not done. On Thursday I called him on mobile, house phone and emailed him. Left messages for him in all 3 places. He didn't reply. Managed to get in touch with him at last today. He said he'd had 'personal problems'. I mean fair enough but this was after he postponed getting it finished because he was ill. And besides, he should warn us beforehand if the work's going to take longer rather than ignoring us and running away. I reproached him over the phone and he apologised. I mean I REALLY need to get this website up and running as I'm responsibile for it ASAP as I'm taking time off to revise but I can't do that until the website's done. So basically he's eating into my revision time. Even when I couldn't do my essay on time/go to work last year because I was severely depressed about my brother, I warned people, I told them what was going on. I didn't just leave it and let people panic.
Also, I organised a wine-tasting for the Francophone society. So many ppl wanted to come but only 50 places. We told 55 people they could come with the expectation that 5 ppl might not turn up. Only 35 ppl turned up. *sigh*. The aim wasn't to make money and we have a big budget so it doesn't matter if we lose money on one event but still... Also the treasurer messed up sending the invoice and there was a whole to-do about that too.
Still, there was a competiton, guessing the grape and region and comments about a covered up bottle, the person answering most accurately getting a prize of a bottle of wine. I won! All I did was compare it to all the other wines we had information on, find the one that tasted most similar and wrote that one's information down. My dad (wine connosieur) was so happy when I told him "It's much more impressive than getting a good grade in exams. Anyone can do that. Wine tasting is a real talent!' My mum told him off for saying that.
The last renaissance seminar was on Sir Philip Sidney's influence on other writers. The seminar leader, Prof Woudhuysen who is the Head of Dept, made us a sheet with extracts from Thomas Nashe's 'The Unfortunate Traveller'. The first 3 extracts were very pertinent, being basically parodies of Sidney's Arcadia. The last was a very indulgent, gruesome description of a torture. We did a class discussion the last extract. As we were wrapping up, I said
'Although...this extract isn't really...Sidneian is it?'
There was a silence. Professor Woudhuysen then said
'Well...er...no. ...Sorry I shouldn't really have put it there. It was a bit naughty of me.'
Honestly, he so blatantly loves sex and violence in literature. Whenever he extracts stuff for lecturers or seminars it's always the sexiest/most violent bits he can find. He's a great lecturer though, one of the best. He once told us about how Sidney left a friend 'my best sword' in his will with relish. 'I've been wishing someone would leave me his best sword in his will for years and years!' he told us and then added mournfully 'But no-one ever does.'
Went to Felix's home home in a little village near Reading for the weekend to see him and a play by Somerset Maugham. Twas very good. I had a great time although the last dinner was a bit emotionally draining. Throughout the whole of dinner discussed prison systems, prison abuse, prison reform. Some harrowing stories. It made me a bit shaky. Also, also, Felix and his mum made fun of me because I saw some birds by the river and asked what sort of birds they were.
"They're ducks, kit."
The guy that is annoying me most at the moment is the new Old English seminar teacher - he's not a proper staff member as such, has a one year teaching fellowship. This year the only 2 staff members who are specialists in Old English are on research sabbatical and were replaced by two one-year teaching fellows. The first one, Winfried, was great - really knowledgeable and enthusiastic.
But the second one is RUBBISH. Not only does he turn up 15 mins late to almost every seminar, he clearly doesn't understand Old English grammar! And this guy is supposed to be teaching us!
I, a 2nd yr student actually CORRECTED him in my last seminar on a really basic grammatical error. He got a nominative (subject) and an accusative (object) mixed up! IDIOT! Anyone who has vague memories of Latin will know what a horribly elementary error that is. He actually told us the WRONG translation: 'The warrior hid the sad-faced one in the earth'. I pointed out that the word 'sad-faced one' in Old Eng (dreorigleor) was a nominative so that tranlsation can't be correct because he's made it into an accusative. I told him it had to be 'The sad-faced warrior hid one in the earth.' After about 2 minutes of looking things up, reading editors' notes etc, he eventually admitted "Yeah um sorry am going to do a complete turn on that one it's actually 'the sad-faced warrior...' "
That wasn't the only time. I asked why a plural subject took a singular verb in this sentence. He clearly didn't know the answer and completely fluffed it; started off by saying it was "a preterite", which is a posh word for past-tense. Err...right, because that answers the question... he clearly hoped that I didn't know what a preterite meant and so would be dazzled by his high-flown grammatical term and be convinced that he'd answered my question when he clearly hadn't. I frowned so he carried on, flustered, ended up saying that it was because the King was doing the action with the West-Saxons so it was really the King doing it, hence singular. The answer isn't right really for one thing the noun for West-Saxons isn't a dative, it's a nominative. He eventually found that the answer was in the notes of one of the books - the correct answer - that the verb took the subject that was immediately before it in the sentence regardless of whether it was plural or singular. He read out the answer from the notes and said '...um which is what I said basically, only in a more complicated way.' Um no it's not dear, it's the uncomplicated correct answer whilst yours was a convoluted and incorrect answer.
I also asked him if 'eorl' was a nominative or accusative in that context and he had to look that up. I mean, it could be either taken OUT of context because it doesn't change but he's teaching us this text, surely he should know...
God what an idiot. I can't believe we're being taught by this incompetent twit. Not only does he not know his stuff, he's bloody irritating trying to be all cool and down with the kids. I bet he hates me, always putting him in a tight spot. I don't do it to be mean or anything, the two Qs I asked I genuinely wanted to know the answer and when I corrected him, it was so the others didn't suffer. They all wrote down his translation for god's sake, I mean if they wrote this translation in the exam they would get penalised. It could mean the difference between a first paper and a 2:1. It makes me shudder to think of all the errors he's made that I've missed. I mean, me, a 2nd yr student has caught him out about 3 times and I'm no expert. God knows what lies he's inadvertently telling us.
I'm going to complain to Dr North, the Old Eng lecturer he's supposed to be replacing. I emailed him asking if I could meet him to talk about my current OE seminars and he replied 'What's up?' with his mobile number. Err....??? I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do. Eventually phoned him, obviously did that at an inopportune time because he cut me off without picking up. Didn't know what to do so ended up texting him. Argh. Haha apparently for his Old Icelandic seminar (the course consists of all of 2 students per year), Alice (because Louise wasn't there) ended up having to read her tranlsation to him whilst he sunbathed on the nearest green in full view of other staff members of the Dept. Incidentally this is the guy who is famous for sleeping with students...
Am panicking about exams a bit. Was supposed to book tickets to go to Vienna with Felix tonight but I cried out at the last minute, going in June instead after exams. Will probably go to Stratford-upon-avon for a night or 2 instead.
Oh year other incompetent person, the website designer for my workplace. We hired him, he said it would be done by last week and it's still not done. On Thursday I called him on mobile, house phone and emailed him. Left messages for him in all 3 places. He didn't reply. Managed to get in touch with him at last today. He said he'd had 'personal problems'. I mean fair enough but this was after he postponed getting it finished because he was ill. And besides, he should warn us beforehand if the work's going to take longer rather than ignoring us and running away. I reproached him over the phone and he apologised. I mean I REALLY need to get this website up and running as I'm responsibile for it ASAP as I'm taking time off to revise but I can't do that until the website's done. So basically he's eating into my revision time. Even when I couldn't do my essay on time/go to work last year because I was severely depressed about my brother, I warned people, I told them what was going on. I didn't just leave it and let people panic.
Also, I organised a wine-tasting for the Francophone society. So many ppl wanted to come but only 50 places. We told 55 people they could come with the expectation that 5 ppl might not turn up. Only 35 ppl turned up. *sigh*. The aim wasn't to make money and we have a big budget so it doesn't matter if we lose money on one event but still... Also the treasurer messed up sending the invoice and there was a whole to-do about that too.
Still, there was a competiton, guessing the grape and region and comments about a covered up bottle, the person answering most accurately getting a prize of a bottle of wine. I won! All I did was compare it to all the other wines we had information on, find the one that tasted most similar and wrote that one's information down. My dad (wine connosieur) was so happy when I told him "It's much more impressive than getting a good grade in exams. Anyone can do that. Wine tasting is a real talent!' My mum told him off for saying that.
The last renaissance seminar was on Sir Philip Sidney's influence on other writers. The seminar leader, Prof Woudhuysen who is the Head of Dept, made us a sheet with extracts from Thomas Nashe's 'The Unfortunate Traveller'. The first 3 extracts were very pertinent, being basically parodies of Sidney's Arcadia. The last was a very indulgent, gruesome description of a torture. We did a class discussion the last extract. As we were wrapping up, I said
'Although...this extract isn't really...Sidneian is it?'
There was a silence. Professor Woudhuysen then said
'Well...er...no. ...Sorry I shouldn't really have put it there. It was a bit naughty of me.'
Honestly, he so blatantly loves sex and violence in literature. Whenever he extracts stuff for lecturers or seminars it's always the sexiest/most violent bits he can find. He's a great lecturer though, one of the best. He once told us about how Sidney left a friend 'my best sword' in his will with relish. 'I've been wishing someone would leave me his best sword in his will for years and years!' he told us and then added mournfully 'But no-one ever does.'
Went to Felix's home home in a little village near Reading for the weekend to see him and a play by Somerset Maugham. Twas very good. I had a great time although the last dinner was a bit emotionally draining. Throughout the whole of dinner discussed prison systems, prison abuse, prison reform. Some harrowing stories. It made me a bit shaky. Also, also, Felix and his mum made fun of me because I saw some birds by the river and asked what sort of birds they were.
"They're ducks, kit."