As the summer moves along I feel the familiar feeling of time running out a bit regarding my research projects, or just regarding not being as busy as one generally gets during the semester...it's a mix of feelings, because the start of the semester is always a fun time too-one catches up with colleagues, meets new people and of course meets new students and gets a bit "infected" by their general >excitedness< at coming back or beginning college. As language instructors we always go through that with our new batch of native speaker teaching assistants, for whom everything is new a bit different from how things are done at their universities back home. There really is nothing like a small private residential liberal arts college in the German education system. The closest thing would probably be a private residential high school ("Internat") but even that is not really the same....
I am trying to get a lot done: first and foremost the article. It's coming along and together slowly. I now hope and think I shall have a good draft/version ready by the time classes start. The first weeks of school I will spend formatting what I have written so that it looks the way it should for whatever journal I decide to send it to--every journal has different guidelines as to how one should do footnotes and the bibliography. If I think too much about such stylistics during the writing stage I can tell it slows the writing phase down--sometimes a lot. That's why I have decided to split off the formatting of the paper from the writing. I'm also still reading as I write/edit, which is fine I just have to not let the reading slow the writing down too much.
And I'm also trying to get a bit of course prep done, so there'll be a less to do in August. I'm also reading a certain amount of pages every day of the book I have to write a review about by August 1. I want to have the review done before the start of our holiday: July 25. And then there are neighbors pets to be looked after (fun--I've bonded with my first dog in a long time!) and the usual household jobs to be taken care of: cleaning, vacuuming, laundry, cooking etc...Next Friday I'm off to visit a friend in Columbus, OH. She actually lives in California, but she's attending a workshop in Columbus. And then next week Friday is the first day of our holiday. Yeah!
Today I have to clean litters and we will go shopping. We're having salmon for dinner and we'll probably watch the movie "Michael Clayton." We've started watching 30 Rock, which is pretty funny, and we're on Season 5 of Babylon 5. I'm not sure why - maybe because I wanted to see what the youngsters are into and so I got the first disc of the first season of "The Hills" and I was so bored and annoyed by the show!
Boring uninteresting young people doing boring uninteresting things in a fake reality show way! Lauren doesn't seem really interested in fashion at all--at least we're not seeing that side of her, and her lazy, extremely self-involved friend is a joke! (Heidi?) I don't like the way they dress, and their male friends are boring too! Well I was seriously bored and wanted nothing better than to quickly get an Austen or a Dickens fix...or even better Prime Suspect!!! Mirren is amazing. I would have found it more interesting if we had seen what Lauren had to do for her classes -- does she have to sew anything or create anything or even go out and shop for things? does she draw or sketch or have a portfolio that we could hear her talk about? Fashion as I gather is all about hard work of a very specific nature and we don't see ANY of that in this show....I much prefer looking at the great warderobe remix group on flickr--so many cool, innovative outfits - that I wouldn't ever wear but its nice to get ideas...Now a show about some of those people might be interesting.....what I don't understand is why anyone would like this show....why why why???...I guess I'm too old to "get it"...
Well I guess I'm off to clean some litters!
