Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Like a ratty old jumper

I've shrugged studying back over my head again. Assignments, group work, countless readings that I'm not doing enough of.  It's all so familiar and well-worn. I know how to do this. I am doing it.  Quelle horreur.

I've not much to say this week.

1. My Little Guy is off with his Dad for 9 sleeps having the first half of the Easter hols 2 hours away from me. I miss his squirmy little body and his silly little voice and his little rat-fingers trying to tickle me.

2. The Big Guy's kids are off with their Mum on the normal week-on-week-off schedule. Thus we are kidless and it's sucky. And nice, but only for a little while.

4. The chickehs are doing well.  I am trying to train them to leap for food, which works sometimes but only if they can see the food.  Then they flutter and leap to get it. Dry cat food = nomnomnom. Perhaps I will open a  chicken circus one day. No doubt I will have to teach them other tricks besides chasing me and leaping. I will ponder it further.

5. I signed my fellowship contract today and I feel like a fraud because I'm nowhere near as Fellow-y as the other Fellows, but c'est la vie.  I am still deciding whether to change my position title on our website (I'm the webmaster) because of my fraud-y-feeling.

6. I got a Very Good Mark for my first assignment but I'm pissed off because the marks came from the peer ratings and our lecturer had told us that those ratings didn't count for anything and as it turned out they counted completely and I'd been soooooooo (SO) kind to the other students while they killed me with Death-By-Powerpoint. Now my choices in this matter are thus:
       a) keep marking everyone stupidly high (47 out of 50),
       b) mark everyone else a average grade only (30 out of 50) unless they blow my mind,
       d) write "I refuse to participate because it's so patently invalid to have me marking my peers".
What would you do?


And here's a picture for your eyes.

The traditional Venice shot. Ahhhh, holidays, they go so fast.

8 comments:

  1. it must be so hard to get back into the swing of things at this point- I am not sure how I woul go about doing it. I am wishing you tons of luck and hope you can be patient with yourself thru this.
    Fabu pictures, I must go there ASAP

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  2. re: teaching chickens tricks, I have instructions somewhere on how to teach a chicken to "pick a card". You just teach her to pick the Queen of Hearts and amaze people with her ability to do that. I've never tried it and won't swear that the instructions weren't just meant to trick people into trying to train their chicken impossible tricks. But it looked kind of fun.

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  3. My husband has been in school mode, since I met him. 6+ years. gahhhhh. I feel for you. Some of the assignments he gets are silly.

    I hope you enjoy your kidless house a bit. You can now run around naked whenever you want! That's a bonus.

    The chikens sound cute. I once trained a guinea pig to squeek every time I opened the fridge. I miss that little pig.

    Take Care!

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  4. That grading regime is LAME! Ugh. I hope the schooling is going well otherwise.

    I'd love to see a video of the leaping chickehs if that's possible.

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  5. I know from experience that I'd keep marking them stupidly high...And I would now like to unify chickens and death by powerpoint with this:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL_-1d9OSdk

    Also, I love xxcd--so awesome. Though I was imagining the missing parenthesis got left behind in some poor woman's abdominal cavity--you know, one of those surgical mishaps...

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  6. Well, I would say go with 'b'...a little mean but still.

    I don't think most of the other people would be being fair either. But you know best anyways..

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  7. I'd like to say "D" but I'm afraid it wouldn't necessarily be in your best interest. Peer reviews are one thing but peer reviews that end in a grade (counted or not counted) are kind of silly.

    It's hard to get back into the swing of studying. Very hard.

    ...but I'd pay good money to attend a chicken circus.

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  8. My vote is keep marking them stupidly high. Also I adore the Venice shot. AHHHH.

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"Scout yonder's been readin' ever since she was born." I wasn't quite so precocious but I do love reading comments!