I am bothered by this post because it is not the New Year yet and because I associate resolutions with exhortations to discipline and austerity, which I do not lack. Still I am compelled to think about it and this is the current draft of my resolutions: 1. Get comfortable tying the kayak onto the … More Brave new year
How is Raghavan as a cat name? Cats add to expense and effort in life, I know, but I dreamed I had acquired two cats without planning it, so I think I should plan. I also want perfume, the first thing I gave up in 2008. I want to go to the beach at Destin, … More Raghavan … and a question academics will think is about Foucault
It is privatized and this makes care much less accessible but people are being told this is Obama’s fault and not Jindal’s. Axé.
Here is a reading list for students considering graduate work in Spanish. Here is my list for students considering Latin American literature as a secondary field for the Ph.D in another literature. Like the SMT list, it is not a reading list for the actual examination, but a preliminary list. * Here is an ancient … More Reading lists
1/- I should read this on zapatismo as indianismo, but it lies out of the scope of my project, or does it, really? I would like to be in Bolivia to do it … and I am so tired of being under so much stress of different kinds and I wonder how much of the … More On some questions of scope
Thursday night my mother fell such that she is now in the hospital, and my colleague’s mother committed suicide. I am still grading, and today I am creating and hosting the department party. My general thesis appears to be that academic advice exists not to advise, but to suggest to people that events can be … More Chocant
I was grading for Spanish courses taught to the language requirement, trying to recover from dealing with these peoples’ behavior, exhausted and bored and drained, and listening to NPR where they are interviewing a professor on a political situation in a country. Z: I would rather be that professor. In Reeducation this thought would have … More Anhelos, y un descubrimiento
The way I make grades is, I first figure out what grade the student would get in Berkeley in the late 1970s. Then I go half a grade up if it is an upper division course, and a whole grade up if it is lower division, or if I feel I have been prevented from … More Grades
That is what the language requirement students complain of in my classes: I refuse to teach. It is true that if not given a “smart” classroom I no longer attempt to compensate for this, even with a CD player, and it is true that I do not make handouts to substitute for the textbook, or … More On “refusing to teach”
We did not make tenure for the quality of our research or our teaching in the major and beyond, but by placating the instructors and the freshmen in language teaching and by doing a great deal of very effective service. We do not imagine this — it is objectively demonstrable and the people who did … More Here, again, is why these classes are so traumatic
coldhearted scientist وداد 