* I was farther along in "The Horse, The Wheel, and Language" than I thought - I'm almost 2/3 through and have not yet reached the point where I stalled out before. (And I can tell, because I could see where I marked the pages. Don't tell Lynn, but I do sometimes dog-ear pages on books if I don't have a marker handy, or if I'm carrying the book around and fear a marker will fall out. I only do it to books I own; I would never do it on a borrowed book).
* One thing I either had forgotten, or not been struck by before: the author is writing about Equus hemionus, probably best-known to us in the US as an "onager" but that it also was known as a hemione (from the specific epithet) or a "half-ass." Which makes my inner 12 year old snerk mightily, and makes me wonder if I could find some stickers of onagers to apply to student papers that I thought contained considerably less effort than I thought the student capable of putting into them. (My father tells a story of getting back a paper - I think it was in one of his undergrad-level Geology classes - and the prof had drawn a strange-looking insect on top of it instead of putting a grade. When my dad went to ask, the prof curtly responded, "That's a half-assed B, which is what you earned.")
Of course, you can't really do that sort of thing today (except, perhaps, with an upper-division student you knew very well to begin with) lest it be construed as being "mean."
* Not sure how much posting there will be the rest of the week; Tuesday and Wednesday is the Cavalcade Of Unrelated-Subject Talks we are expected to attend (I sincerely hope they scheduled breaks this year so people don't have to decide, "Can I wait until lunchtime to use the loo, or do I get up and walk out on a talk?"). Thursday is all-day meetings; Friday is Faculty Meeting plus time spent enrolling stragglers. (Amazingly, my 8 am PI section is totally full, but Ecology still has one place left, and my Biostats course has several.) Saturday I thought I was supposed to go to Fort Worth (whaarrrgarrrblll) to meet with the faculty at the divinity school our interim minister is attending (he is doing what is analogous to his practice-teaching with us) but it turns out neither of the positions of authority I hold require me to be there....I'm still welcome if I want to go, and someone else will drive, as it turns out. But they are leaving here at 6:30 am, and the thought of another day of meetings after a week full of them....I might not go.
* Hooray, my reimbursement for mileage was finally approved. (After I filled out the forms from the campus website, was told, "No, those are the old forms and they are wrong, go back and do it again." Um, you might want to take the old forms down?) That does mean I need to write up my summer research (as far as I got; I'm going to start again once it cools a bit) and submit it to the granting group.
* Public school has started here. I saw disgruntled-looking kids standing out waiting for the bus when I came into campus this morning. I still maintain: early or mid-August feels way too early. Cut back on a few of the one-day holidays, maybe make Christmas break shorter, maybe go later into the summer....but leave August free. Though I guess there's also a faction of people agitating for doing away with summer break altogether, on the argument that kids don't work on the farm anymore (well, most don't) and many families either have both parents working or are one-parent families, so it's hard to find someone to watch the kids in the summer, and so on, and so forth. And yeah, it might be more "efficient" to have year-round schooling, but somehow, I think those long summers off were worth something....I've spoken before about how I spent that time "poking mud with sticks" and reading lots of library books and going to day camp for a couple years and....just stuff that was different. My feeling is, kids are going to be adults for what, 60+ years? They're probably going to spend their entire career as an adult working year-round, without summers off. (Even I, as an allegedly-idle college prof, don't take the summer off from work). Okay, maybe some kids will be bored (but there's value in learning to cope with boredom; I wonder sometimes if the Smartphone Generation is losing that ability to entertain themselves with only their brain). Maybe some kids will "waste" the summer playing video games or something (But really - if you enjoy it, if it gives you a break, is it really a waste of time?). I don't think we should be pushing our kids to become little executives to the extent that some parents seem to. I really treasure the memories of my summer off - of being able to go to the library and check out a big stack of books and then go home and immediately begin reading them. Or of climbing trees. Or of playing H-O-R-S-E until it was almost too dark to see the ball. Or even of whining to my mom that I was bored and then being given a dandelion spudder and told to go out and weed the garden.
While I'm not entirely sure what I would do with six weeks or more of time off from work now (I suppose I'd work on research unless I was not allowed to for some reason, like they were closing the buildings down to remove asbestos or something). I suppose I could find something....I still hold a tiny desire to go someday to the Campbell Folk School and learn to spin or weave or something like that. Or, if I had someone (a friend or significant other) I felt I could hang out with in fairly close quarters for an extended period of time without us both driving each other crazy, I'd plan a long tour of the various National Parks I've either never seen, or would like to see again. Or I'd get what genealogical information my mom had on her French-Canadian ancestors, and I'd take a trip up to Quebec and Nova Scotia and try to find traces of where they lived.
3 comments:
I think the problem with long summer breaks for most families is one of economics. If you have a full-time stay-at-home parent with a lot of energy and no handy electronics around--and you live in a safe place with access to interesting open space or parks or museums--you can probably facilitate the kind of summer that you and I enjoyed. (my parents were teachers, so they both had summers "off"--although there wasn't much money, so they sometimes needed to teach summer school.)
But now, especially given the ways in which low-wage salaries haven't increased with inflation, most families require dual incomes. And then you're left figuring out some sort of childcare that is effectively babysitting. Summer camps that are good tend to be expensive. Nannies are even more costly. And so you sign your kid up for endless weeks of 9-5 care with some theme or other--or they stay at home with someone but watch a lot of tv. My mother and I disagree about this because she loved her summers off but I would absolutely support year-round school. We work year-round. Kids are by and large not in great learning environments in the summer--at least, not the kids who badly need them. And they really do backslide, which means that teachers spend a lot of the beginning of the school year just trying to regain lost ground.
Before I retired, I had five weeks vacation. Unless I planned an extended trip somewhere, I would take two weeks (at most) at a time. But an extended trip required all my five weeks and usually one from the previous year as well. If you were traveling internationally, the HR department would let you carry over that extra week from one year to the following one.
Re going to the Campbell school, I'd encourage you to go even if you have to go alone. Sometimes getting out of our comfort zone and doing something like taking a trip by yourself is a great personal growth opportunity. I've traveled with friends and I've traveled alone. I usually prefer to go alone because I've found people are friendlier to a single traveler than they are to a duo. This is especially true on bus tours or in "camp" situations like the Campbell school. You'll meet new friends there and can be free to join them at meals, etc., much more freely if you don't have a companion to consider.
"I think those long summers off were worth something" +1
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