She lives, more or less
Justin just left, but the volleyball prospie has taken over the shower so this is a good time to update.
Hi. I'm alive. And in Chicago.
Chicago cold is unlike any cold I've ever experienced (and I live in Minneapolis when I'm not here). The other day I was walking out of the Midway Studios (this super-cool, architecturally disorganized building built in the 1930s that now houses the random artistic types of UChicago and my COVA 101 class) I was blown several feet to the right by this cold, wet wind. The thing about Chicago cold is that it's wet, windy, dark, and penetrating. It penetrates through everything, including my North Face black-marshmallow coat that I wear almost everywhere these days.
It'll be 9th week this week. At UC there are ten weeks to a quarter (but there are really only three quarters ... math was never my strong suit, anyway) and then an eleventh finals week. I don't think I've told anyone, really, what I'm doing here. So far I've boiled it down to three majors (sociology, anthropology, and history (concentrating in gender and sexuality)) ... I need to elimate at least one of them. For the first quarter I'm taking mostly Core classes and one class that serves as a pre-requisite to my sociology major.
Let's discuss my ahem favorite class: Self, Culture & Society.
Self, Culture & Society (SCS or Self, Torture and Anxiety if you're one of those who wussed out and took Democracy and Social Science) fulfills the social sciences core requirement here. The first quarter is devoted to economic theory and history, the second to sort of postmodernist business (I hear tell that we read Foucault and Durkheim ... a lot) and the third is devoted to psychology (Freud and Jung). It's a course taken almost exclusively by first- and second-years and is one of two hardest core courses offered at Chicago. It wouldn't be so bad, really, if I didn't have the head of the anthropology department, the esteemed Ralph A. Austen, as my professor.
He told us on the first day that he was a) teaching this class as punishment for going to Africa last quarter and b) he's a notoriously hard grader even among graduate students and none of us should expect an A because he doesn't give 'em.
I didn't believe him.
Until I got a C+ on an essay for the first time in my life. I thought it was a damn good essay, too. I should have been expecting it; he gave us fair warning, after all, and his general discoursive style is to sit at one end of our lecture table (there are no stadium-seating lecture halls at UC; my biggest class is 30 people) and lean back, wizened head in hands, and say,
"Come on, speak up. One of you has to be wrong first."
So then some fool will venture a comment such as, "Adam Smith was the father of ... capitalism."
"WRONG!" and then he will proceed to systematically rip apart your argument and show you just how and why you are a waste of time, an idiot who did not deserve to be admitted here.
So when we got the essays back, he through the pile on a table and said, "I'm letting you people re-write this one because the overwhelming majority of you critically misinterpretted the text. That is, beyond recognition. So you have a week to make it make sense."
I found out later that the average grade in the class was a C-/D+, with the highest grade (one person) a B+, no Bs, and then everything else was below. That made me feel a little - just a little - better about my C+.
So I rewrote my essay and handed it in. When we got them back, he again through the pile on the table and leaned back, head in hands, saying, "Again, I'm disappointed in you people. Not many of you improved your grade, and I felt morally obligated to lower some of them."
Well, I wound up with a B. I can breathe a little easier ... I suppose.
The essay that I should be working on today instead of going downtown discusses Marx and Weber. It's due Monday. Wish me luck.
I'm looking to end this quarter with two As, an A-, and a B (hopefully, hopefully). More later - the prospie has left the shower and I'm going to pounce on it.
Hi. I'm alive. And in Chicago.
Chicago cold is unlike any cold I've ever experienced (and I live in Minneapolis when I'm not here). The other day I was walking out of the Midway Studios (this super-cool, architecturally disorganized building built in the 1930s that now houses the random artistic types of UChicago and my COVA 101 class) I was blown several feet to the right by this cold, wet wind. The thing about Chicago cold is that it's wet, windy, dark, and penetrating. It penetrates through everything, including my North Face black-marshmallow coat that I wear almost everywhere these days.
It'll be 9th week this week. At UC there are ten weeks to a quarter (but there are really only three quarters ... math was never my strong suit, anyway) and then an eleventh finals week. I don't think I've told anyone, really, what I'm doing here. So far I've boiled it down to three majors (sociology, anthropology, and history (concentrating in gender and sexuality)) ... I need to elimate at least one of them. For the first quarter I'm taking mostly Core classes and one class that serves as a pre-requisite to my sociology major.
Let's discuss my ahem favorite class: Self, Culture & Society.
Self, Culture & Society (SCS or Self, Torture and Anxiety if you're one of those who wussed out and took Democracy and Social Science) fulfills the social sciences core requirement here. The first quarter is devoted to economic theory and history, the second to sort of postmodernist business (I hear tell that we read Foucault and Durkheim ... a lot) and the third is devoted to psychology (Freud and Jung). It's a course taken almost exclusively by first- and second-years and is one of two hardest core courses offered at Chicago. It wouldn't be so bad, really, if I didn't have the head of the anthropology department, the esteemed Ralph A. Austen, as my professor.
He told us on the first day that he was a) teaching this class as punishment for going to Africa last quarter and b) he's a notoriously hard grader even among graduate students and none of us should expect an A because he doesn't give 'em.
I didn't believe him.
Until I got a C+ on an essay for the first time in my life. I thought it was a damn good essay, too. I should have been expecting it; he gave us fair warning, after all, and his general discoursive style is to sit at one end of our lecture table (there are no stadium-seating lecture halls at UC; my biggest class is 30 people) and lean back, wizened head in hands, and say,
"Come on, speak up. One of you has to be wrong first."
So then some fool will venture a comment such as, "Adam Smith was the father of ... capitalism."
"WRONG!" and then he will proceed to systematically rip apart your argument and show you just how and why you are a waste of time, an idiot who did not deserve to be admitted here.
So when we got the essays back, he through the pile on a table and said, "I'm letting you people re-write this one because the overwhelming majority of you critically misinterpretted the text. That is, beyond recognition. So you have a week to make it make sense."
I found out later that the average grade in the class was a C-/D+, with the highest grade (one person) a B+, no Bs, and then everything else was below. That made me feel a little - just a little - better about my C+.
So I rewrote my essay and handed it in. When we got them back, he again through the pile on the table and leaned back, head in hands, saying, "Again, I'm disappointed in you people. Not many of you improved your grade, and I felt morally obligated to lower some of them."
Well, I wound up with a B. I can breathe a little easier ... I suppose.
The essay that I should be working on today instead of going downtown discusses Marx and Weber. It's due Monday. Wish me luck.
I'm looking to end this quarter with two As, an A-, and a B (hopefully, hopefully). More later - the prospie has left the shower and I'm going to pounce on it.