topsy-turvy world

I hate the quarter system–ten weeks is barely enough time to get into the rhythm of things. Right when you have things figured out, you realize that you should have already started your papers the week before and are terribly behind. This week has been rough. I haven’t been able to sleep from stress. I have been researching and worrying constantly about my papers because usually I am a bit more organized about it all. I’ve been writing this afternoon and now I realize that I actually should be fine. I’m a bit relieved. Really I should have just written an outline last week because I would have seen that I will easily have enough material for 15 pages.

Students have been kind of a pain for the past couple of days. Not many have emailed me about their paper topics and the ones who did have kinda needed more help than I would have thought. I’m worried that they will be really bad. Also, they have been complaining about their first papers. I had a guy argue with me for half an hour about whether his paper was unclear and had run on sentences. He actually said that I just don’t like long sentences, which is absurd. I don’t like grammatical errors; he just couldn’t tell the difference. He had to agree when I said I read a lot of papers and if it wasn’t clear to me, then it wasn’t clear, dammit! Writing is a skill that one needs practice to do well, so it never ceases to amaze me that students who only write papers for GE credit one class a year are surprised when they don’t get A’s. They even sometimes have the gall to tell me that they take all kinds of “hard” classes, thereby insinuating that I must live in some kind of topsy-turvy world if I think I can give them a B-. Apparently they think that the fact that they write like shit shouldn’t bring down their GPA. Bah.

nobody here but us chickens

I haven’t really been up to all that much. I have a presentation this afternoon that I foolishly stayed up all night preparing, only to find that now my entire afternoon is free and I’m really tired. I haven’t exactly been keeping up very well on my classes–they aren’t particularly interesting. Until the past week or so the weather has been crappy, so Paddy and I have stayed in, ordered pizza and played wii almost every weekend. Now that Spring is here, its all going to change. On Friday night, we went out with Paddy’s friend from work and his fiancee. One of the great things about the city is that if you live in the cool part of town, you can have people meet you there then go to the sushi place across the street and the bar that is kitty corner to it. When I lived in Montreal, I used to complain about people doing that very thing because I lived in uncool Westmount, but now that it works in my favor, I really don’t see the problem. Anyway, they were happy enough because they live in the suburbs. It’s kinda weird how nice it is going out with other couples when you are in one yourself–especially considering how annoying it can be when you are single.

We worked most of Saturday, because as I said, I’ve been dicking around all quarter and now I’m screwed and Paddy had to review an article for a journal. The evening we got Indian food then met up with Paddy’s single friend Helen. We spent most of the time talking about her love life, which is what you almost always end up doing with single people, usually because they bring it up. And dates usually make good stories-certainly better than us talking about how we got pizza and played wii all February. Sunday we hung out at the park with Kevin, one of our fancy city friends. Let’s hope the nice weather continues–socializing seems healthier than what we have been doing.

I’m really excited. Paddy and I are going to take a road trip to Oregon for Spring break in a few weeks. I’ve never been up there, but it is supposed to be beautiful.