She lives!
Oh, lord. Where to start. I haven't updated this journal in-- almost a year? So there's a lot to explain.
Wait. There is too much. Let me sum up:
Career-wise (Since that's the last thing I posted about):
* I made it through my first year of teaching without crying, shouting, or otherwise second-guessing my career path. \o/
* I fielded my first Absolutely Insane Helicopter Parents. And had them writing me thank-you notes by the end of the year. I, my friends, am good. (You don't understand: my first interaction with these parents? Involved thirty minutes of them quizzing me about pedagogy and my assessment methods. Dude. I know my Piaget, and I'm not afraid to use it to get you off my fucking back. Tell your kid to do his damn reading, and we're good.)
* I managed to teach four classes of AP World History to 103 sixteen-year-olds, have 96 of them take the exam, and have 78% of those pass the exam with a 3 or higher. 36 students got 4s and 5s. (Oh yeah. I did some serious happy dancing. There may have been celebratory shots. For me. Not the students.)
* I was a faculty adviser for our Model U.N. team, which has about a hundred members (I teach at a school with an international studies magnet program, so we have a dedicated bunch of students), and saw them win many, many country and individual awards and argue other delegations into the ground.1 We did four conferences last year, and this coming year we'll do three locals, plus a travel conference in Chicago. This means I will be taking something like twenty teenagers on a plane to a major metropolitan area. Good god, what were we thinking?
Personal Stuff:
* I'm in the process of moving, which means I have nothing packed, far too many books, and a desperate wish to live simply and without any material encumbrances. I have considered the possibility of yurts. And then I remember that I would shrivel up and die without my media collection, which makes me feel very consumerist and somewhat embarrassed.
* My sister, however, is embracing the possibility of yurts, and is joining the Peace Corp. She'll be leaving for Paraguay in the next two months. I'm going to miss her (although I will die before I let her know that), but am super excited at the potential to fly down and visit her on breaks and have Adventures in South America. Also, I'm rather intrigued at the possibility of learning Guarani. My Spanish is pretty good now, so I was thinking of taking on another language anyway-- an indigenous Paraguayan language would fit the bill nicely.
* Flew out to California with my mother and sister a couple weeks ago, and did the grand tour. We also visited my grandfather, who lives out in Clairmont near to my aunt and uncle. It was-- hard, and a little teary at the end. His memory is definitely weaker than the last time I saw him (I know he didn't know who I was this time, but he did a brave job of faking it), and he's eighty-nine and getting a little frail, physically. It was important that my sister get a chance to see him before she left the country, though, because-- well. The odds aren't very strong she'll see him again, and I really don't know that they're much greater for me, either. He looked happy, though, and the caregivers are wonderful. So we smiled during the visit and took pictures and brought him ice cream, and then cried in the car on the way back to the hotel. Goodbyes suck.
Fannishly:
* I have been writing. Really. I swear I have. But I spend so much time grading and doing school stuff that it becomes a choice between (1) writing fic and posting it and (2) getting out of the house and interacting with people who are not my students. And generally, going and seeing friends or doing something social trumped writing. I'm not sure if I should apologize for that or not, actually, because I think avoiding being a shut-in is probably healthy.
* So. What would the reaction be if I said I had been writing Avengers-type fic? Which may or may not reference Thor, which I never watched and really don't care to? I mean, you have to understand: I'm not a Marvel girl in the least, comic-wise. I thought Iron Man was kickass, but I don't know how much of that is because I adore Robert Downey, Jr. And I enjoyed the heck out of Captain America, but then-- I'm a sucker for anything set in the 1940s. So. I'd be writing fic about characters whose comic background I know nothing about and really... I just want to squish a few characters together because they're darling.
And-- do I need to cut-tag for The Dark Knight Rises spoilers? Probably. So be warned: there are totally spoilers coming up.
Okay. So I went to go see TDKR this evening, and I have Thoughts. (Good ones, mostly.)
1. Miranda Tate. Firstly, as someone who is a Batman fan, I wasn't surprised by the Talia al-Ghul thing, but-- I do like Nolan's play with the name. Miranda as in The Tempest, no? It's an interesting reference, if you think about Ras al-Ghul as Prospero (the architect of a coming storm) and Bane as Caliban (brutal, deformed, and ultimately exiled-- and there's the interesting Romani connection, too).2
2. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle. I don't for one damn second buy the attempt at a Happily-Ever-After with Wayne, but I liked pretty much everything else about her. (And may I say: I totally dug the way her night-vision glasses or whatever they were gave her little cat ears when they were pushed back. Ten points, costume design people. I enjoyed the playful practicality.)
3. There are not enough words in the English language to describe how much I want Joseph Gordon-Levitt to be Nightwing. (Another costume reference for the freakin' win.) Or Batman. Or whatever, I don't particularly care.
4. What I do care about, however, is how freakishly obsessed Mr. Nolan must be with the French Revolution. Storming a prison! Class-based conflict! Eulogies from A Tale of Two Cities!3 The freaking Scarecrow as Robespierre. I can't even. Nolan couldn't have been more obvious if he had dressed the cast with tricolor cockades and Phrygian caps.
5. Nope. I'm still stuck on the Terror, and I'm trying to figure out how I can work this into a lecture next semester. There's a way to do this, I'm certain.
6. This is not to say the film was perfect; I still think The Dark Knight is a better film. I would have liked to cut some of the exposition-- Nolan does love his exposition-- and while I adore the soundtrack, I'd want a better balance of sound so I could hear the freaking dialogue. But visually-- gorgeous. And the story was solid. And if I was far less concerned about Bruce Wayne than any other character, I'm just going to chalk that up to the fact that (a) I adore Jim Gordon, (b) John (ROBIN!) Blake was dreamy, (c) Selina Kyle was competent, clever, and kickass, and (d) I just really, really like ensemble films. I like lots of moving pieces on the board.
So. That's what I've been up to. How about you?
1. As a former MUN geek myself, I assure you: there is something deeply satisfying about having two students run up to you during a ten minute unmoderated caucus, both super excited because their unfriendly amendment on landmines derailed debate for an hour and a half. (This is a big deal when you're Bosnia and Herzegovina. Any attention you can command when you're not P5+1 is good.)
2. Tom Hardy mentioned somewhere-- I have no idea where-- that Bane's accent was based on that of a bare-knuckle boxer of Romani descent from Ireland named Bartley Gorman, who was called by the press the "King of the Gypsies." So Hardy attempts a slightly Romani-influenced accent. And it's been suggested by some scholars that Shakespeare's name "Caliban" might be a reference to the Romani word for black or blackness, which would be plausible, in terms of Romani migrations and time periods. (The words in question would be either kaliban or cauliban.)
3. Not going to lie. I'm not a major Dickens fan, but I cried for about half an hour the first time I read the end of A Tale of Two Cities. Granted, I was fourteen and Romantic, but-- I still teared up at the theater when Jim Gordon read that at the funeral.
Wait. There is too much. Let me sum up:
Career-wise (Since that's the last thing I posted about):
* I made it through my first year of teaching without crying, shouting, or otherwise second-guessing my career path. \o/
* I fielded my first Absolutely Insane Helicopter Parents. And had them writing me thank-you notes by the end of the year. I, my friends, am good. (You don't understand: my first interaction with these parents? Involved thirty minutes of them quizzing me about pedagogy and my assessment methods. Dude. I know my Piaget, and I'm not afraid to use it to get you off my fucking back. Tell your kid to do his damn reading, and we're good.)
* I managed to teach four classes of AP World History to 103 sixteen-year-olds, have 96 of them take the exam, and have 78% of those pass the exam with a 3 or higher. 36 students got 4s and 5s. (Oh yeah. I did some serious happy dancing. There may have been celebratory shots. For me. Not the students.)
* I was a faculty adviser for our Model U.N. team, which has about a hundred members (I teach at a school with an international studies magnet program, so we have a dedicated bunch of students), and saw them win many, many country and individual awards and argue other delegations into the ground.1 We did four conferences last year, and this coming year we'll do three locals, plus a travel conference in Chicago. This means I will be taking something like twenty teenagers on a plane to a major metropolitan area. Good god, what were we thinking?
Personal Stuff:
* I'm in the process of moving, which means I have nothing packed, far too many books, and a desperate wish to live simply and without any material encumbrances. I have considered the possibility of yurts. And then I remember that I would shrivel up and die without my media collection, which makes me feel very consumerist and somewhat embarrassed.
* My sister, however, is embracing the possibility of yurts, and is joining the Peace Corp. She'll be leaving for Paraguay in the next two months. I'm going to miss her (although I will die before I let her know that), but am super excited at the potential to fly down and visit her on breaks and have Adventures in South America. Also, I'm rather intrigued at the possibility of learning Guarani. My Spanish is pretty good now, so I was thinking of taking on another language anyway-- an indigenous Paraguayan language would fit the bill nicely.
* Flew out to California with my mother and sister a couple weeks ago, and did the grand tour. We also visited my grandfather, who lives out in Clairmont near to my aunt and uncle. It was-- hard, and a little teary at the end. His memory is definitely weaker than the last time I saw him (I know he didn't know who I was this time, but he did a brave job of faking it), and he's eighty-nine and getting a little frail, physically. It was important that my sister get a chance to see him before she left the country, though, because-- well. The odds aren't very strong she'll see him again, and I really don't know that they're much greater for me, either. He looked happy, though, and the caregivers are wonderful. So we smiled during the visit and took pictures and brought him ice cream, and then cried in the car on the way back to the hotel. Goodbyes suck.
Fannishly:
* I have been writing. Really. I swear I have. But I spend so much time grading and doing school stuff that it becomes a choice between (1) writing fic and posting it and (2) getting out of the house and interacting with people who are not my students. And generally, going and seeing friends or doing something social trumped writing. I'm not sure if I should apologize for that or not, actually, because I think avoiding being a shut-in is probably healthy.
* So. What would the reaction be if I said I had been writing Avengers-type fic? Which may or may not reference Thor, which I never watched and really don't care to? I mean, you have to understand: I'm not a Marvel girl in the least, comic-wise. I thought Iron Man was kickass, but I don't know how much of that is because I adore Robert Downey, Jr. And I enjoyed the heck out of Captain America, but then-- I'm a sucker for anything set in the 1940s. So. I'd be writing fic about characters whose comic background I know nothing about and really... I just want to squish a few characters together because they're darling.
And-- do I need to cut-tag for The Dark Knight Rises spoilers? Probably. So be warned: there are totally spoilers coming up.
Okay. So I went to go see TDKR this evening, and I have Thoughts. (Good ones, mostly.)
1. Miranda Tate. Firstly, as someone who is a Batman fan, I wasn't surprised by the Talia al-Ghul thing, but-- I do like Nolan's play with the name. Miranda as in The Tempest, no? It's an interesting reference, if you think about Ras al-Ghul as Prospero (the architect of a coming storm) and Bane as Caliban (brutal, deformed, and ultimately exiled-- and there's the interesting Romani connection, too).2
2. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle. I don't for one damn second buy the attempt at a Happily-Ever-After with Wayne, but I liked pretty much everything else about her. (And may I say: I totally dug the way her night-vision glasses or whatever they were gave her little cat ears when they were pushed back. Ten points, costume design people. I enjoyed the playful practicality.)
3. There are not enough words in the English language to describe how much I want Joseph Gordon-Levitt to be Nightwing. (Another costume reference for the freakin' win.) Or Batman. Or whatever, I don't particularly care.
4. What I do care about, however, is how freakishly obsessed Mr. Nolan must be with the French Revolution. Storming a prison! Class-based conflict! Eulogies from A Tale of Two Cities!3 The freaking Scarecrow as Robespierre. I can't even. Nolan couldn't have been more obvious if he had dressed the cast with tricolor cockades and Phrygian caps.
5. Nope. I'm still stuck on the Terror, and I'm trying to figure out how I can work this into a lecture next semester. There's a way to do this, I'm certain.
6. This is not to say the film was perfect; I still think The Dark Knight is a better film. I would have liked to cut some of the exposition-- Nolan does love his exposition-- and while I adore the soundtrack, I'd want a better balance of sound so I could hear the freaking dialogue. But visually-- gorgeous. And the story was solid. And if I was far less concerned about Bruce Wayne than any other character, I'm just going to chalk that up to the fact that (a) I adore Jim Gordon, (b) John (ROBIN!) Blake was dreamy, (c) Selina Kyle was competent, clever, and kickass, and (d) I just really, really like ensemble films. I like lots of moving pieces on the board.
So. That's what I've been up to. How about you?
1. As a former MUN geek myself, I assure you: there is something deeply satisfying about having two students run up to you during a ten minute unmoderated caucus, both super excited because their unfriendly amendment on landmines derailed debate for an hour and a half. (This is a big deal when you're Bosnia and Herzegovina. Any attention you can command when you're not P5+1 is good.)
2. Tom Hardy mentioned somewhere-- I have no idea where-- that Bane's accent was based on that of a bare-knuckle boxer of Romani descent from Ireland named Bartley Gorman, who was called by the press the "King of the Gypsies." So Hardy attempts a slightly Romani-influenced accent. And it's been suggested by some scholars that Shakespeare's name "Caliban" might be a reference to the Romani word for black or blackness, which would be plausible, in terms of Romani migrations and time periods. (The words in question would be either kaliban or cauliban.)
3. Not going to lie. I'm not a major Dickens fan, but I cried for about half an hour the first time I read the end of A Tale of Two Cities. Granted, I was fourteen and Romantic, but-- I still teared up at the theater when Jim Gordon read that at the funeral.