Tenser, said the Tensor

Collapsed in a Heap

Whew!  I hadn't thought I was going to make it, but the Quarter From Hell is over, Christmas with the families went as smoothly as could be expected, and I've actually got a few days of calm before the next, not nearly so hellish quarter begins (and is then immediately interrupted by LSA 2006).  Time to do the several quarters of filing that's arranged in various stacks around the house, I guess.

Surprised by the Literature

If you're like me (and why wouldn't you be?), you're always worried, when writing a paper, that you haven't done a deep enough search of the literature related to your topic.  The uncomfortable possibility that somebody out there has already spilled the particular flavor of ink I'm mixing up is always in the back of my mind, but at some point, I just have to hope I've found everything relevant and start spilling.  Well, this week The Wife, who has been soaking in the literature related to her dissertation topic for long enough that she should be well past the part where surprises pop up, had a memorable encounter with some theses that were surprisingly relevant—maybe too relevant.  Head on over to her blog and read about it.

Quiz #4

Part of my responsibilities as a TA in a traditional English grammar class is writing and correcting quizzes (including coming up with bonus questions).  There are six quizzes over the course of the ten-week quarter, and we just had the fourth on this Friday.  I spent all day correcting it—a laugh riot, let me tell you—and I wanted to share the high points.

Norman Who?

The class I'm teaching (a traditional English grammar class) just took their first quiz on Friday.  At the end of the quiz, we wanted to have an extra credit question worth a couple of points.  I suggested, "Name two non-Indo-European languages spoken in Europe," which I'd had show up as an extra-credit question in a CS (!) class once.  The professor vetoed it because we hadn't discussed it in class.  He clearly misunderstood the purpose of an extra credit question, but no matter, because just afterwards I had a brainstorm.  At one point during his discussion of the history of English, he'd mentioned the Norman Conquest in 1066.  Sweet!  That's one of only two dates you need to know in English history.

TA Training

I'm TAing a class this fall, and since I've never done that sort of thing before, I'm attending the required pre-quarter TA conference.  Note: it's not an orientation, it's a conference—I heard two different people start to say "orientation" and then correct themselves—and we were told explicitly that attending it should be the first item in our teaching portfolios.  Which isn't a CV-padding racket, apparently.  I went to three sessions that covered teaching a social science section, motivating students, and dealing with difficult situations.  Here are the high points:

Reburgled

This week's unpleasant curveball: when The Wife and I got back home late Sunday night, we found a chair propped up under an open window and the back door standing wide open.  Uh-oh.  Upon investigating we discovered that both our laptops were missing, along with their associated AC adapters, external CD drives, and docking stations, and also my backpack and The Wife's day-planner.  Fortunately, our two (all-indoor, never been outside) cats were OK: one was waiting for us in the kitchen, and the other came running up the walkway when I called him.

The Wrong Side of Dawn

The Wife just sent me email saying "Look familiar?" with a link to this comic strip.  All too familiar, in fact—at a guess, I've been seeing the wrong side of dawn five days out of seven for the last month.  I usually tend towards insomnia, and the sky has been getting light earlier and earlier as summer has approached.  The inevitable quartersend burst of activity hasn't helped any.

Milestone

After:

1. Completing the required courses
2. Finishing my thesis
3. Receiving comments from all three committee members and making the necessary revisions
4. Printing out a draft and submitting it for a format review
5. Fixing the three (minor!) formatting issues that turned up
6. Printing out two final copies (89 pages each)
7. Getting ink signatures from all committee members, including two who were out of town, on both copies of the thesis and also on the degree request form
8. Paying a $25 fee (which includes binding the thesis)
9. and taking all the various theses, receipts, and forms to the appropriate office

...I have, as of today, satisfied the requirements for the Master's degree.

Eye Chart Pledge

Seen today in the Student Fiscal Services office: this (subliminal?) pledge, formatted as an eye chart:

I wonder if this actually has any effect on student loan default rates.  Some enterprising psychology or education grad student is no doubt running that study at this very moment.

Obstacle

You-know-what's-not-convenient?--Having-the-spacebar-on-your-keyboard-fail-in-the-middle-of-writing-your-thesis.--It's-always-something.

(Yes, I know I could use copy and paste to work around it, but where's the fun in that?)