my reputation spreads
Apr. 3rd, 2004 01:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vostoklakeOn the local union email list:
SOME BOZO: [rambling about why there should be a postal ballot for strike action rather than having to go to a meeting to vote]
ME: "If you're not motivated to actually get to a meeting and discuss things with your colleagues, your opinions on whether we should go on strike are probably not worth much."
SOME OTHER BOZO: [makes some sarcastic remark about being sorry he doesn't have time to go to stupid meetings, and tells me to 'get real]
ME: "Now, you see, one reason why meetings are better than email votes is that it's less easy to be sarcastic and rude in a face-to-face situation."
Back in real life:
MY TEAM LEADER: [laughs approvingly] Daphne, you're a hard woman!
ME: Thank you. I do try.
===
I am snowed under a pile of awful, *awful* first-year essays. Like, I'm going to have to give this one chick a D - my first ever - because I cannot for the life of me figure out what the hell she's talking about. And I'm pretty sure she doesn't have the excuse of not speaking fluent English. How can I possibly suggest politely that the only way she's going to pass this course is to learn to motherfuckin' write?
If I find time this weekend, I'll post that insane round-robin that a bunch of us pervert chicks wrote a couple of months back. You know the one. The one with Svetlana, the one that I didn't *intend* to turn into bondage smut...
==
The new chick at work is Italian. I said "buongiorno, benvenuto alla nostra bibliotecca". She said "ha buon' accento", and was suprised that I'd never actually been to her country.
One of the cool things about the Library is that I get to use my language skills quite a lot. Not just in finding references and shelving books in non-English languages, but in just being friendly with our very multicultural staff and clientele. For instance, if I note that a patron has a Japanese name, when they thank me for issuing their books I say "doo itashimashite", and they giggle happily. If I can recognize a Thai name and have a brief, stilted conversation, they're generally totally gobsmacked (in the good way).
The ethnic balance among the library staff includes two Maori, two Pacific Islanders, a Brit, a Serb, a Korean, an Indonesian, a Thai, a Burmese (not![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
darthsappho's cat) and now the Italian babe.
==
*sigh* Note how much I can write when I'm trying to avoid those fucking essays? Let us only hope that the second assignment, due in a couple of months, will be better.
SOME BOZO: [rambling about why there should be a postal ballot for strike action rather than having to go to a meeting to vote]
ME: "If you're not motivated to actually get to a meeting and discuss things with your colleagues, your opinions on whether we should go on strike are probably not worth much."
SOME OTHER BOZO: [makes some sarcastic remark about being sorry he doesn't have time to go to stupid meetings, and tells me to 'get real]
ME: "Now, you see, one reason why meetings are better than email votes is that it's less easy to be sarcastic and rude in a face-to-face situation."
Back in real life:
MY TEAM LEADER: [laughs approvingly] Daphne, you're a hard woman!
ME: Thank you. I do try.
===
I am snowed under a pile of awful, *awful* first-year essays. Like, I'm going to have to give this one chick a D - my first ever - because I cannot for the life of me figure out what the hell she's talking about. And I'm pretty sure she doesn't have the excuse of not speaking fluent English. How can I possibly suggest politely that the only way she's going to pass this course is to learn to motherfuckin' write?
If I find time this weekend, I'll post that insane round-robin that a bunch of us pervert chicks wrote a couple of months back. You know the one. The one with Svetlana, the one that I didn't *intend* to turn into bondage smut...
==
The new chick at work is Italian. I said "buongiorno, benvenuto alla nostra bibliotecca". She said "ha buon' accento", and was suprised that I'd never actually been to her country.
One of the cool things about the Library is that I get to use my language skills quite a lot. Not just in finding references and shelving books in non-English languages, but in just being friendly with our very multicultural staff and clientele. For instance, if I note that a patron has a Japanese name, when they thank me for issuing their books I say "doo itashimashite", and they giggle happily. If I can recognize a Thai name and have a brief, stilted conversation, they're generally totally gobsmacked (in the good way).
The ethnic balance among the library staff includes two Maori, two Pacific Islanders, a Brit, a Serb, a Korean, an Indonesian, a Thai, a Burmese (not
darthsappho's cat) and now the Italian babe.==
*sigh* Note how much I can write when I'm trying to avoid those fucking essays? Let us only hope that the second assignment, due in a couple of months, will be better.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-02 05:40 pm (UTC)On the downside, it's halfway done, and I'm still only working from my lecture notes, which I can't reference. I get the feeling that once I actually use books, and add in quotes and stuff, I'll have an essay which is too long, and I'll have to cut it. Damn editing.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-02 06:19 pm (UTC)I had one student in a CS class who was like this. He kept losing points because his answers on tests and homework were incomprehensible. I honestly had no idea what he was trying to say; it was as though he were putting random terms down on the paper in random order, independent of grammar, much less topic. I begged him to go to the writing centre on campus - so many freshman had been coming in incapable of writing coherent sentences that a programme had to be set up just to help them learn to understand that whole "noun-verb" thing - but he just refused. He ended up failing, and went to the chair with a false complaint saying that I spent a significant period of time every lecture swearing at him in front of the rest of the class, and also complained that I was taking off for "meaningless" things like grammar.
He was a native speaker as well, one with a high school diploma. A clearly worthless diploma, but...
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-03 12:42 am (UTC)i ended up failing quite a few of my first-years - some for incomprehensibility (only a couple of which were ESOL), some for making absolutely no effort (a couple of pages long, no references, no evidence of having cracked open a book) and a couple for plagiarism. but in my department i always had to run the fails (and As) past the lecturer for approval.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-03 02:55 am (UTC)Migliora. :)
la donna italiana e' bella?
Non conosco la parola italiana per "so-so". :)
sono gelosa - ci sono poche italiane qui :(
Ma si vuoi tu incontrare italiane, e' possible andare all' Italia!
She's in the wrong department
Date: 2004-04-05 07:27 am (UTC)Cosi' cosi'.
Chiedo, vogliano Loro far cominciare uno piccolo gruppo da LJ per impararci italiano? Nonche' sian Lei, DBM e me, c'e' anche' un amico mio italiano (e, beh, interlinguisto....) LJisto chi potrebbe assistarci. Si ne lo chiedo pian piano.
---
Title: She's in the wrong department
Executive summary: "Like, I'm going to have to give this one chick a D - my first ever - because I cannot for the life of me figure out what the hell she's talking about."
Analysis: Clearly she should be in sciences. Incomprehensibility is a requirement in writing science papers, even life sciences. If a paper doesn't start "Some aspects of", and have at least a thousand characters (preferably including Greek, Hebrew and Fraktur used as symbols) in the title alone, it's a loser.
It also helps if there is a mistake in the actual title. This prepares the reader for what lies ahead.
If she's got *really* bad communication problems, she may fit in better in hard sciences. No-one can understand us: it's our proudest achievement.
As so many sub-atomic particles have weird names, it's easy to have a zippy title like "Can strange bottoms have charm?". (The bottom quark is also known as the beauty quark. Some people prefer beauties, some prefer bottoms. Chacun a son gout.) Then draw pretty patterns with Equation Editor, interspersed with odd bits of English. It's not actually necessary to *understand* English, mind, as the following phrases cover most eventualities:
- from equation 14.1.11 above
- using Dabrowski's elegant transformation (Chicago, 1978, p 172)
- which cannot be solved analytically
- re-normalising:
- although Bridgewater, Potti and Spliff (Irkutsk, 1995, p 403) forbid this transformation for asymmetrical Aji-na-moto functions, it is permissible when Ulyanov boundary conditions do not apply.
Project over. Time to go down the pub.
I especially like "re-normalising". It means "I have accidentally ended up with one side of the equation equal to infinity. Oops. Therefore I am going to re-define infinity as 1, or, if the fancy takes me, zero." Physicists do this all the time. So do Finance Ministers. And the great thing is, you can always say if questioned "that's the same re-normalisation as you used last week in your lecture on Quantum Chromodynamics". This answer is always satisfactory.
Concluding remarks: your student has a great future in front of her in Theoretical Physics. You *can* fool all the people all of the time.
And if you don't believe me all I can say is: Stephen Hawking.
and um, ....
r
B Sc (Hons) (Lond) Nuclear and Quantum Physics :-)
(but I do have a real degree as well)
The importance of proofing before posting
Date: 2004-04-05 07:29 am (UTC)