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Post by Olive on Jun 26, 2011 16:33:31 GMT -5
I really have to throw in a petty complaint about how much I hate that the US decided to call the first book The Golden Compass. It makes me so (irrationally) angry; WHY? WHY WAS THAT NECESSARY?! Do Americans not understand 'Northern Lights'? I'M PRETTY SURE THEY DO. WHY WHY WHY?! D: Having got that out... I do love the series. I've been meaning to re-read them, actually. I know, it's kind of strange... I saw a British copy at the used bookstore my housemate works at last week, and it was so hard not to buy it... (I had no money left)
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Post by Olive on Jun 26, 2011 12:16:14 GMT -5
Small-but-sprawling 60's era campus, because they keep tearing down the pretty old buildings from around 1900 and replacing them. Pretty old building: Type of crap it was replaced with: But hey, we have the world's largest free-standing wooden dome! The English department gets the second floor (of three) of Gries hall... which used to be a dorm... They've currently got plans to tear down the last old building, which has been out of use for at least 5 years. Oh, and as I mentioned in another thread, our main administrative building (where the President's office is/most of the departmental offices are) is riot-proof! And the tallest building on campus, at 6 floors.
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Post by Olive on Jun 26, 2011 12:02:19 GMT -5
Hmmm... all of our finals are just held in whatever classroom that course used for the semester. A.K.A. 60's era rooms. We had a lot of really gorgeous old-ish (1900s) buildings on campus, but they just keep tearing them down and rebuilding... sigh.
Ah well, at least one of the administrative buildings is riot-proof! >.>
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Post by Olive on Jun 26, 2011 11:58:17 GMT -5
I have a fair few books in Finnish, only because it's impossible to find many translated to English. I purposely have the Kalevala in Finnish, too. It rhymes and alliterates and it's just so beautiful. Finnish! I love this language... although I've never really had the urge to learn it. There's a huge Finnish population where I live, and we've got some Finnish records/books at my job. Including a "English -Finnish-Finglish" book. I think I love it so much because it's so bloody different from every language around it.
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Post by Olive on Jun 26, 2011 11:55:21 GMT -5
One that I remembered thanks to a fantastically terrible experience yesterday.
Himmo: a stretch Hummer limo. God those things are awful.
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Post by Olive on Jun 26, 2011 11:53:39 GMT -5
In other news, I'm surprised nobody has yet mentioned John Steinbeck. (Unless I just missed it?) He was easily one of the worst authors I ever had to endure for the sake of education. But but but... I love Steinbeck! Although I will admit that forcing high schoolers to read Of Mice and Men is a terrible idea. Have you read East of Eden?
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Post by Olive on Jun 26, 2011 11:51:14 GMT -5
THIS TRILOGY. Drool. Slobber. Cry tears of glorious love.
My uncle gave me TGC when I was... 10 or 11? In other words, a mini-Lyra (blonde haired little girl with no siblings). I loved the book to death, couldn't put it down, and then read it again. And then found out that it was actually a trilogy. The Subtle Knife was good, but honestly it wound up being my least favorite. This might be an unpopular opinion, but The Amber Spyglass was my favorite of the three, with out a doubt. I've re-read the series multiple times (I'm not usually a re-reader), and I still cry at a certain part in TAS. I'm currently working my way through a German translation of it that my roommate gave me for my birthday. There I was, 20 years old and crying in my dorm hallway over what a perfect present it was... I swear, I'm not really a crier, but this paragraph makes me sound otherwise.
Also: That book sparked my undying love for Marzipan. Yup.
As far as the movie goes... it was a disappointment. I remember that at some point Peter Jackson was supposed to direct it, and maybe if that happened there would have been slightly less of a negative effect from all of the Christian backlash. They did do a phenomenal job of casting (when I first saw that Danial Craig was listed, I realized that he is exactly what I had always pictured for Lord Asriel), but the entire effect wound up being a giant letdown. I saw it in theaters and was sitting in my seat at the end going "Wait, what? but where's the rest of the book? IT DOESN'T END THERE, THAT'S NOT EVEN CLOSE TO CLIMACTIC." I half-forgave when I read some interviews where the director apologized, saying that he had to butcher the first in order to do what he really wanted to with the following movies. However, it looks like those are never happening. So not only did you fuck up the adaptation, but you slaughtered the end in order to lead into the second movie... that's never coming? Awesome.
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Post by Olive on Jun 24, 2011 7:23:37 GMT -5
Didn't think I'd have to use this, but fuck if my friends acted like friends sometimes. I just got a letter saying I'm kicked off of financial aid for missing 9 credits and my GPA going down 2.5 points. I really thought I ended my semester well. I did all my presentations fine, I got my papers in on time and within the page limit. I've never had a problem with papers before. I really don't get it. Without financial aid I can't go to college. If I can't go to college, I have nowhere to live. /rant Oh, shit, I'm sorry. That's a really shitty situation Appeal to your profs/find out what went wrong?
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Post by Olive on Jun 23, 2011 7:33:47 GMT -5
Actually, I can only tell who exalted you, not for what post. Sorry :-P
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Post by Olive on Jun 23, 2011 7:30:52 GMT -5
I took 18/semester my first year (with 12 being the minimum for "full time" and 18 being the max for flat-rate tuition) and then 16.5 my third and 16 last semester. That .5 credit is orchestra, which still meets 4 hours/week (like a 4 credit class). My second semester, when I was taking 18, that included band and orchestra, so I was meeting 8 hours a week (plus practice outside of class) for 1 credit. That got annoying.
All of this is with working 20/week, the max my university will let me (I have an on-campus job). I'll be doing 19 credits in the fall, but that's because one of them is a TA position and they're paying for the extra credit cost.
tl;dr I realize that your credit system might work out differently, but 15 sounds like a piece of cake to me.
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Post by Olive on Jun 23, 2011 7:21:12 GMT -5
I hate the convention that courses need exams at all. Take away the exam and add another essay, or a journal, or a class presentation, an in-class quiz etc. Every single one of my lecturers think they're pointless, and yet they still have them because it's university standard. I mean, do you ever really remember the questions in exams? I don't. Cram, write, amnesia. Doesn't sound like a good way to learn, imo. Honestly, most of my English classes don't do the final. The few classes that have had exams kind of made sense because they were usually survey courses. Half of the exam was a sort of "here's an excerpt, what is the title of the work/who wrote it" or other fill-in-the-blank identifications, and then a brief essay which was usually assigned the class period before, and you were expected to bring it in with you. However, none of these were "final" exams (except one class), but rather tiny little exams throughout the semester. The final is almost always a research/etc. paper, in my experience.
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Post by Olive on Jun 22, 2011 14:04:26 GMT -5
How 'bout getting back on topic? I asked a question earlier about how many people are in y'all's classes (mine is usually 30, with a 15 or so minimum requirement). Since it seems like a lot of y'all come from smaller colleges and I (and Dodger Thirteen, I think?) come from a state university, I feel like that might have as much to do with faculty and student gender discrepancies as the subject we study does. To recap: my school has a definite majority of male faculty and a slight majority of female students. That line wavers on a class-by-class (i.e., subject-by-subject) basis. Beats class? You must be swift as the coursing river. Post-colonialism? LADIES' NIGHT. Brilliant notion. My school sounds like maybe about the same size? (Lit classes are 25-35 capped, with 12-15 minimum, usually.) I think there has been a female majority in all of my classes (yes all, including the non English or German courses), and I know there is a female majority in the undergrad population, though I think overall it's about 55% female, whereas my classes average about 75% female. (Undergrad total is just under 10,000. I have no idea how many of those are officially in the English department.)
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Post by Olive on Jun 22, 2011 13:40:36 GMT -5
After being labeled 'transphobic', 'cissexist', and now 'sexist', I was indeed having a tongue-in-cheek dig. However, my debate points still stand as presented. Why is it that whenever someone disagrees or presents an alternative view that happens to be a male, the term 'sexist' is freely bantered? I don't believe it's "freely bantered" when in direct response to a comment that claims the superiority of one gender over another. And in a thread where many are sensitive to such ideas, you would be wise to assume that the sarcasm of the moment might be taken seriously.
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Post by Olive on Jun 22, 2011 13:04:55 GMT -5
Perhaps there is some truth in male brains being able to do maths better. Those kind of comments are why it's very hard for any of us to take you seriously, and why many of your opinions come off as sexist. You almost had me convinced that you were a completely neutral party, and yet you still had to throw in that dig.
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Post by Olive on Jun 22, 2011 13:00:55 GMT -5
Really? Because that's me, and I can't seem to find anything like this.Never mind, it's in a strange place, and not exactly pleasant to look at :-P So you can now see all our deep, dirty secrets? Yes, who you've exalted and who's smote you, how many times you edited that post with unseen grammatical errors and what posts you've secretly deleted. All is revealed to the great Admin!
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