my, but I'm feeling spammy lately
Clearly, it's the grading. Piles of grading will induce me to poke at the internet, post to LJ, refresh the academic jobs wiki every ten minutes, and re-read fanfic favourites, right up until the moment I really freak out about how much left I have to do and in how little time, and then cut off the internet entirely and spend two days straight in my pajamas. I expect pajama-grading will set in by tomorrow; in the meantime, have some links:
Normally I don't advocate reading the comments to newspaper articles, but there were a few in this Guardian article about Charles and Camilla getting caught in the tuition hikes protests that made me laugh out loud. The passage of the bill raising tuition fees, however, makes me ill.
At some point, when I work the way through the enormous pile of papers I'm grading because the financial situation of universities is such that I have classes of 125 students each, I may have ranty thoughts about any number of crises in higher education, particularly in the humanities. In the meantime, if you haven't read the open letter to the president of SUNY Albany from a Brandeis biologist, about SUNY Albany's recent humanities decimation, please do!
I find that the investigative reporting in the NY Times has left rather a lot to be desired, in general, in recent years: lots of sensationalized non-trends applicable largely to members of the East Coast elite. Here's a refreshing (in the journalistic sense, though thoroughly depressing, content-wise) exception: an article about a neglected apartment building in the Bronx. I was linked to the article by a friend who commented, "this is three blocks from where we used to live," and indeed, I once lived three blocks from this place, in a building that looks much the same from the outside but was thankfully much better taken care of.
I've been trying to process my feelings about Elizabeth Edwards's death--or rather, the fact that it turned out that I have feelings about her death, even though she's someone I hadn't ever given much thought to. The best thing I've read so far, though, is this article that looks at what Edwards has shown us about the process of living with the knowledge that you're dying, and the way that that's a real, imperfect, human kind of thing that doesn't always fit into the narratives that we try to shove death into.
And changing the subject entirely, a meme snagged from chaila43 and slightly adapted to be more fic-relevant than vid-relevant (just because I'm curious and clearly looking to be distracted):
If you were asked to pick one scene, one turn of phrase, one detail, one moment of some kind out of all the things I've written and say "This, this, for whatever reason, I remember, this is something that struck home with me, that I wanted to keep," what would it be?
Crossposted from DW, where there are
comments. Comment here or there.
Normally I don't advocate reading the comments to newspaper articles, but there were a few in this Guardian article about Charles and Camilla getting caught in the tuition hikes protests that made me laugh out loud. The passage of the bill raising tuition fees, however, makes me ill.
At some point, when I work the way through the enormous pile of papers I'm grading because the financial situation of universities is such that I have classes of 125 students each, I may have ranty thoughts about any number of crises in higher education, particularly in the humanities. In the meantime, if you haven't read the open letter to the president of SUNY Albany from a Brandeis biologist, about SUNY Albany's recent humanities decimation, please do!
I find that the investigative reporting in the NY Times has left rather a lot to be desired, in general, in recent years: lots of sensationalized non-trends applicable largely to members of the East Coast elite. Here's a refreshing (in the journalistic sense, though thoroughly depressing, content-wise) exception: an article about a neglected apartment building in the Bronx. I was linked to the article by a friend who commented, "this is three blocks from where we used to live," and indeed, I once lived three blocks from this place, in a building that looks much the same from the outside but was thankfully much better taken care of.
I've been trying to process my feelings about Elizabeth Edwards's death--or rather, the fact that it turned out that I have feelings about her death, even though she's someone I hadn't ever given much thought to. The best thing I've read so far, though, is this article that looks at what Edwards has shown us about the process of living with the knowledge that you're dying, and the way that that's a real, imperfect, human kind of thing that doesn't always fit into the narratives that we try to shove death into.
And changing the subject entirely, a meme snagged from chaila43 and slightly adapted to be more fic-relevant than vid-relevant (just because I'm curious and clearly looking to be distracted):
If you were asked to pick one scene, one turn of phrase, one detail, one moment of some kind out of all the things I've written and say "This, this, for whatever reason, I remember, this is something that struck home with me, that I wanted to keep," what would it be?
Crossposted from DW, where there are
comments. Comment here or there.