The great thing about being a (semi-) permanent student is that you're guaranteed months of vacation every year. The thing that sucks about winter break is that I find myself totally unmotivated to DO anything, a condition exacerbated by being in New Haven, where I'm not in my own house with my specific routine, and thus am less able to hold myself to the semester-time schedule of working and eating. Here we always wind up sleeping late, then lolling around in the dining room for hours (well, to be fair, Sean manages to work on his French, but I can't accomplish anything with TCM blasting from the living room), and then when we finally manage to get dressed, there are always errands to be run, people to see, restaurants Linda is dying to eat at, et cetera. Work = nil. Last night, for example, we agreed to get up this morning and go to the library to do work. I set the alarm for 9:30, then wound up having a Resident Evil-style dream about an underground laboratory and some kind of plague, so when the alarm went off I smacked it and slept till 11. It's now almost 2pm, and Sean is in the shower upstairs. There will be no library today, but we definitely have errands: going to the bank to deposit Christmas money, getting Sean's car's emissions test, going to Target.
To be fair, my to-do list is fairly short. Read some Italian (I've been reading Bergamo's newspaper, L'Eco), re-learn German, draft the obsequious emails that I will be sending to the owners of the Bergamo frescoes, and possibly the city's soprintendenza, regarding our trip in March, and find a suitable hotel for our one night in Milan, where even the crappy hotel that Lonely Planet warned was likely also a brothel wants 95 euros a night. Still, chances are that I will accomplish most of this list during the last week of vacation when I'm back in Philadelphia, instead of here. Oh, lofty ambitions, how far you have fallen!
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Holidays
I haven't posted on here in more than a week, I think, and it's been quite busy! I'm back in Connecticut for three weeks, having left Philadelphia rather precipitously on Friday in order to avoid the giant snowstorm heading for the East coast. It took me five hours to get home rather than the usual three, but it was worth it--since Meredith's holiday party had to be rescheduled due to inclement weather, Carla ended up taking the train to New Haven instead and spending the next few snowy days with me, during which time we basically sat around watching movies on TV nonstop and I half-heartedly graded exams (finally finished those yesterday, thank God!). I dropped her off at the train station last night--sad face. She won't be able to come see us while we're in Bergamo/Venice in March because of her job, but she's coming home this summer to get her visa renewed, so at least I know when I'll see her again!
Sean got stuck in Virginia thanks to the storm, since that state is not used to getting big snowfalls and they just weren't prepared. Sean's apartment complex only finally got plowed last night, when it started snowing on Friday night! He's en route to CT as we speak, and should be home in a couple of hours. Right now we have the house to ourselves, as Hubbard has taken up with her daughter Michelle for a little while, and I am not complaining, since that means I don't have to hear TCM blasting all day long. Last night Linda and I went to Michelle's to see her, and between Michelle, Hubbard, Michelle's dog Lulu, a giant standard poodle, one of Michelle's friends, and a contractor working in her spare bedroom, it was a madhouse. I was glad to escape with Linda for dinner (I had lamb stew, so delicious!) and a trip to the Christmas tree shops for wrapping paper, bags, all that Christmas jazz. I have the best mother-in-law ever, PS.
I've only gotten one of my final grades thus far (an A from Dr. Cooper for my directed research yay!) but Sean has gotten all of his, and he got straight As, even in horribly difficult things like Phonology and Sanskrit. Is my husband awesome or what?
Sean got stuck in Virginia thanks to the storm, since that state is not used to getting big snowfalls and they just weren't prepared. Sean's apartment complex only finally got plowed last night, when it started snowing on Friday night! He's en route to CT as we speak, and should be home in a couple of hours. Right now we have the house to ourselves, as Hubbard has taken up with her daughter Michelle for a little while, and I am not complaining, since that means I don't have to hear TCM blasting all day long. Last night Linda and I went to Michelle's to see her, and between Michelle, Hubbard, Michelle's dog Lulu, a giant standard poodle, one of Michelle's friends, and a contractor working in her spare bedroom, it was a madhouse. I was glad to escape with Linda for dinner (I had lamb stew, so delicious!) and a trip to the Christmas tree shops for wrapping paper, bags, all that Christmas jazz. I have the best mother-in-law ever, PS.
I've only gotten one of my final grades thus far (an A from Dr. Cooper for my directed research yay!) but Sean has gotten all of his, and he got straight As, even in horribly difficult things like Phonology and Sanskrit. Is my husband awesome or what?
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Progress
My presentations are both done, and so are my papers! This despite my late realization that I would need to reformat my 100+ footnotes on the Eakins paper in order to accommodate Dr. Braddock's preference for a certain (weird) citation style. Instead of placing a footnote after each sentence in which you used a source, you use just one footnote at the end of every paragraph; if you used any quotations, those sources are listed first, and the reminder are then organized chronologically beginning with the most recent publication. That means the footnote sources don't actually match up to the order in which you used sources, something that he acknowledged makes it difficult for people to look at your work and extract references from it. He feels that this style places more focus on your work and not on your sources, but I just think that I'm really glad I don't work in American or modern art, because if this is how their articles work, how does anyone ever find anything? Anyway, after an hour or so of copy/pasting (and cursing when I realized I had an orphaned ibid, the source of which was now unclear thanks to the shuffling) I found myself with only 39 footnotes. However, I saved myself a copy of the paper with my original footnotes, so that should I decide to work this into an article (which he recommended after hearing my presentation, *grin*) I will actually know where I got information from.
I have begun working on my annotated bibliography, which was six pages worth of sources before I even began annotating, so God only knows how long this is going to turn out to be. In addition, I haven't even graded any of the papers yet, and after next Friday I'll have 80 exams to grade. The 20 extra exams are thanks to Agnes, who is skipping off to Egypt on Thursday to learn to use computer imaging equipment to model the monastery that Dr. Bolman is working on. However, she has promised me Polish chocolate upon her return, so I'll forgive her.
Fun stuff ahead, though; this Saturday Jasmine and I are going to a symposium at Princeton, though we will be missing Deborah Howard's talk because we have to skip out early so Jasmine can get ready for her Christmas party, which I will be bringing alcohol to in lieu of a baked offering. Next week Sean is coming up because he'll be done with classes! Yay! That next Saturday Meredith is having a Christmas party, and Carla will be home, and it will be all wonderful. We're going to the casino for New Year's with Sean's friends, for which I have a dress but no shoes, but Sean has promised to remedy this. Then it will be our five year anniversary, if you can believe it! We've decided to keep celebrating it without the gifts, because, you know, it's awesome.
Next semester, I'm taking one class (which is based around learning to polish up a paper into an article, so I think this will be extremely useful), TA-ing AWW again, and writing my thesis. After my presentation yesterday Dr. Cooper told me that it's definitely a thesis, and worthy of presenting at a conference (Cheshire cat grin). She told me to shoot for 30-50 pages for the thesis, and if I then take 40 as my upper-limit goal, I'm already a quarter of the way there!
You know, looking back at this, I'm in a very good mood. Unfortunately, now I have to walk to the eye doctor's and have my eyes dilated so they can check out the hole I have in my right retina, whoo! It's been there for a while and it's not a problem, but it does cause me to see bright light things if I look far to the right in a dark room. The doc compared it to "prisoner's cinema," which refers to people in dark solitary confinement who pressed their hands against their eyes to see the sparking lights. The downside is really the fact of being dilated, because it makes everything blurry and very photo-sensitve; last time I sort of stumbled the four blocks home squinting and shielding my eyes. I have so much work to still get through, though, that I wish they didn't have to do it. Ah well, c'est la vie.
I have begun working on my annotated bibliography, which was six pages worth of sources before I even began annotating, so God only knows how long this is going to turn out to be. In addition, I haven't even graded any of the papers yet, and after next Friday I'll have 80 exams to grade. The 20 extra exams are thanks to Agnes, who is skipping off to Egypt on Thursday to learn to use computer imaging equipment to model the monastery that Dr. Bolman is working on. However, she has promised me Polish chocolate upon her return, so I'll forgive her.
Fun stuff ahead, though; this Saturday Jasmine and I are going to a symposium at Princeton, though we will be missing Deborah Howard's talk because we have to skip out early so Jasmine can get ready for her Christmas party, which I will be bringing alcohol to in lieu of a baked offering. Next week Sean is coming up because he'll be done with classes! Yay! That next Saturday Meredith is having a Christmas party, and Carla will be home, and it will be all wonderful. We're going to the casino for New Year's with Sean's friends, for which I have a dress but no shoes, but Sean has promised to remedy this. Then it will be our five year anniversary, if you can believe it! We've decided to keep celebrating it without the gifts, because, you know, it's awesome.
Next semester, I'm taking one class (which is based around learning to polish up a paper into an article, so I think this will be extremely useful), TA-ing AWW again, and writing my thesis. After my presentation yesterday Dr. Cooper told me that it's definitely a thesis, and worthy of presenting at a conference (Cheshire cat grin). She told me to shoot for 30-50 pages for the thesis, and if I then take 40 as my upper-limit goal, I'm already a quarter of the way there!
You know, looking back at this, I'm in a very good mood. Unfortunately, now I have to walk to the eye doctor's and have my eyes dilated so they can check out the hole I have in my right retina, whoo! It's been there for a while and it's not a problem, but it does cause me to see bright light things if I look far to the right in a dark room. The doc compared it to "prisoner's cinema," which refers to people in dark solitary confinement who pressed their hands against their eyes to see the sparking lights. The downside is really the fact of being dilated, because it makes everything blurry and very photo-sensitve; last time I sort of stumbled the four blocks home squinting and shielding my eyes. I have so much work to still get through, though, that I wish they didn't have to do it. Ah well, c'est la vie.
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Down with Sparkly Vampires
This cracked me up:
First of all: YES. Edward Cullen can go suck on a pointy stake.
Since I'm around other grad students all the time, it's unlikely that my opinion will ever be sought in the great Edward/Jacob debate, but if such an event were to occur, I would now be able to inform them that I am Team Edward James Olmos (aka Admiral Adama from Battlestar Galactica, aka probably the oldest guy I will admit to finding attractive. Actually, that depends on how old is Jeremy Irons is.)
Second, this T-shirt was inspired by the following cartoon:
Things on the internet rarely make me laugh out loud anymore, but this did.
First of all: YES. Edward Cullen can go suck on a pointy stake.
Since I'm around other grad students all the time, it's unlikely that my opinion will ever be sought in the great Edward/Jacob debate, but if such an event were to occur, I would now be able to inform them that I am Team Edward James Olmos (aka Admiral Adama from Battlestar Galactica, aka probably the oldest guy I will admit to finding attractive. Actually, that depends on how old is Jeremy Irons is.)
Second, this T-shirt was inspired by the following cartoon:
Things on the internet rarely make me laugh out loud anymore, but this did.
Gah
The students have a paper due Friday, so of course I'm getting more emails right now. That in itself is not a problem, but it's the content of their emails--ridiculous, inane questions, things they should be able to figure out themselves without needing it explained to them with a map and a graph. Recent winners:
Hey Mrs. Dimarzo,
I was wondering if I can email you my paper 2 before I hand it in today or tomorrow? And also if we use a book what type of information do we have to use from the book. and what type of thesis do we have to come up with?
Yes, you read that correctly: she asked me HOW TO USE A BOOK. A) she's in college (albeit the business school) and should know how a book functions; b) we had the art librarian come in and do a powerpoint presentation on research, citations, and plagiarism; c) she's in college! I felt this needed double emphasis.
Also, making me into my mom aside, "Hey" is NOT OK as an email opener. Actually, though, considering the number of emails I get with no salutation at all, not to mention the idiots who, in December, STILL don't remember I'm their TA and email Amy or Agnes instead, perhaps I should be thankful.
This one is an exchange that made me want to tear out my hair:
Hello Michelle, for the footnote part of the paper, do we only have to footnote the museum label? As in we do not have to footnote when we reference sources in general?
Ian,
This is a direct quote from the paper assignment: "Be sure to properly footnote when extracting or paraphrasing words, sentences, and ideas from other sources."
Haha I just read that on the paper before I read this e-mail..Then would you like us to only footnote the source when we first use it as opposed to footnoting the source every time we refer to it?
You have to use a footnote every time you use information from another source. That was something that the art librarian explained in her presentation and that I stressed as well.
I may sound calm and rational in my responses to this hooligan, but let's remember that he, too, is in college. He has already written one paper for this course, so this footnote business should not be NEWS. He has already listened to me speak, at length, WITH HAND GESTURES that I assure you were extremely expressive, about the need for citing each and every time you use a source. Oh, and he sat through same art librarian presentation as Genius #1 above.
I repeat: GAH.
That is all.
Hey Mrs. Dimarzo,
I was wondering if I can email you my paper 2 before I hand it in today or tomorrow? And also if we use a book what type of information do we have to use from the book. and what type of thesis do we have to come up with?
Yes, you read that correctly: she asked me HOW TO USE A BOOK. A) she's in college (albeit the business school) and should know how a book functions; b) we had the art librarian come in and do a powerpoint presentation on research, citations, and plagiarism; c) she's in college! I felt this needed double emphasis.
Also, making me into my mom aside, "Hey" is NOT OK as an email opener. Actually, though, considering the number of emails I get with no salutation at all, not to mention the idiots who, in December, STILL don't remember I'm their TA and email Amy or Agnes instead, perhaps I should be thankful.
This one is an exchange that made me want to tear out my hair:
Hello Michelle, for the footnote part of the paper, do we only have to footnote the museum label? As in we do not have to footnote when we reference sources in general?
Ian,
This is a direct quote from the paper assignment: "Be sure to properly footnote when extracting or paraphrasing words, sentences, and ideas from other sources."
Haha I just read that on the paper before I read this e-mail..Then would you like us to only footnote the source when we first use it as opposed to footnoting the source every time we refer to it?
You have to use a footnote every time you use information from another source. That was something that the art librarian explained in her presentation and that I stressed as well.
I may sound calm and rational in my responses to this hooligan, but let's remember that he, too, is in college. He has already written one paper for this course, so this footnote business should not be NEWS. He has already listened to me speak, at length, WITH HAND GESTURES that I assure you were extremely expressive, about the need for citing each and every time you use a source. Oh, and he sat through same art librarian presentation as Genius #1 above.
I repeat: GAH.
That is all.
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
Kant + Wolverine = Awesome and Informative
In this video, Kant's Critique of Aesthetic Judgment is explained in five minutes using comic books. If only I had been able to watch this when I was writing my paper in August, everything would just have been so much more clear! Also, I need to track down the Wolverine-Van Gogh and Wolverine-Dali mash-ups. Can you say 'teaching aids'?
Down the Rabbit Hole
The semester home stretch has begun. Tomorrow I'm presenting my paper for the Eakins seminar; Thursday I need to work on my paper for Dr. Cooper's class, which I present on Monday; Friday I get 6o-odd papers to grade from the AWW students; Saturday I'll spend at the Bryn Mawr graduate symposium, where Jasmine is giving a paper; Sunday I will be a) sleeping and b) finishing my paper/slideshow for Monday. I like to get my papers to an extremely high level of finish before I present them (hence why I like to present as late as possible in the semester), so I rarely have to make any drastic edits afterward. That means after Monday, I will be almost entirely wrapped up for the semester. Actually, a fairly important project still remains: I need to turn in an annotated bibliography to Dr. Cooper that will form my 'project' for the directed research I did with her this semester, research that has been rather helpfully feeding into my paper for her class. After that, though, I'll just need to attend the AWW final on the 18th, grade those exams, and I'm done!
Speaking of being done, Jasmine passed the oral section of her preliminary exams today, meaning she is officially ABD--All But Dissertation. Listening to her, I quiver in fear at the thought of the sheer amount of historiographical knowledge one has to cram into one's skull in order to pass them. I also quiver in fear at the thought of my exam committee, which will likely consist of the same professors as Jasmine's did, staring at me while I try to come up with answers to the oral questions. I find that in office meetings, I don't like to maintain constant eye contact with the professor, particularly since we're sitting just a couple feet apart in those coffin-cubicles they have upstairs, because it starts feeling too much like a staring contest. At the same time, it's also sort of weird to look anywhere else when there are only two people in that tiny space. During orals they'll be sitting across a table from me, at least.
In other news, Agnes and I brokered a secret agreement to effect a takeover of GAHO! Actually, we just agreed that we're both going to stay on as officers. I'm going to nominate myself as president (but you know I'm thinking dictator, like Sara was back in the old art club days of yore) and she's going to be secretary; the secretary sends out semi-threatening emails to coerce people into attending events, and I'm always trying to get Agnes to be meaner to people because she tends to let people run all over her, even students, so we thought this would be excellent practice.
We haven't told our fellow officers of this decision, but as Agnes pointed out, it's not like we need their permission. Basically, GAHO was kind of a bust this semester, and we want to pump some life back into it. Erin told me that GAHO used to sponsor more frequent get-togethers, including movie nights (art-themed, of course), and used to put out weekly newsletters letting everyone know what was going on in museums and galleries in Philadelphia. The current GAHO leadership, well, let's just say that I lost faith back when there was a flurry of email activity to debate the proper kind of bagel to provide for the welcome breakfast in September, mini or full-size? Bureaucracy at its finest. I plan to rule with an iron fist! Just kidding. Wait, no I'm not.
Speaking of being done, Jasmine passed the oral section of her preliminary exams today, meaning she is officially ABD--All But Dissertation. Listening to her, I quiver in fear at the thought of the sheer amount of historiographical knowledge one has to cram into one's skull in order to pass them. I also quiver in fear at the thought of my exam committee, which will likely consist of the same professors as Jasmine's did, staring at me while I try to come up with answers to the oral questions. I find that in office meetings, I don't like to maintain constant eye contact with the professor, particularly since we're sitting just a couple feet apart in those coffin-cubicles they have upstairs, because it starts feeling too much like a staring contest. At the same time, it's also sort of weird to look anywhere else when there are only two people in that tiny space. During orals they'll be sitting across a table from me, at least.
In other news, Agnes and I brokered a secret agreement to effect a takeover of GAHO! Actually, we just agreed that we're both going to stay on as officers. I'm going to nominate myself as president (but you know I'm thinking dictator, like Sara was back in the old art club days of yore) and she's going to be secretary; the secretary sends out semi-threatening emails to coerce people into attending events, and I'm always trying to get Agnes to be meaner to people because she tends to let people run all over her, even students, so we thought this would be excellent practice.
We haven't told our fellow officers of this decision, but as Agnes pointed out, it's not like we need their permission. Basically, GAHO was kind of a bust this semester, and we want to pump some life back into it. Erin told me that GAHO used to sponsor more frequent get-togethers, including movie nights (art-themed, of course), and used to put out weekly newsletters letting everyone know what was going on in museums and galleries in Philadelphia. The current GAHO leadership, well, let's just say that I lost faith back when there was a flurry of email activity to debate the proper kind of bagel to provide for the welcome breakfast in September, mini or full-size? Bureaucracy at its finest. I plan to rule with an iron fist! Just kidding. Wait, no I'm not.