passport

you can eat bbq on a stick (or bone) at the salt lick

my irish passport arrived last week. i can now officially travel in europe with it...not that i'm planning a trip anywhere in the near future. work has been bogging me down. this whole ta-ing thing is turning out to be a lot of work. the professor, who is new, almost broke down in tears in front of the other ta and me on friday after reading the mid-semester feedback her students had given her. i'm not sure that flat out saying the instructor is inhibiting your learning is the most tactful way to tell a professor to step it up a bit. suffice it to say, the reviews were brutal.

the other ta is from india and after listening to some of the reviews he made a really interesting comment. he said that where he went to school, they definitely wanted and requested student feedback, but that to say some of the things the students here said would have just been considered over the top disrespectful. the reason i found this so interesting was that a professor in the oceanography department at uh had posted an article a few years ago about how students today feel a sense of entitlement, even when they (the students) clearly don't know what they're doing (i.e. they expect more credit on exams for "trying" despite not being able to solve the problems and/or writing down incorrect equations). the students in the class i am currently ta-ing will give harsh reviews and say they don't know what's going on, and yet, they're not coming into office hours, frequently it seems like they're not even trying to read the book (which is terrible, but you can still glean some useful information out of it) or emailing the tas or the professor with questions. they just expect to be able to sit passively in lecture and "get it." last time i checked, learning didn't work that way. then again, i'm "old" now, so what do i know.

on a completely different note, saturday eric and i got a group together to go to the salt lick for bbq (pictures to come). i went as a designated driver so that when people were uncomfortably full afterward they didn't have to think (or drive). afterward we stopped at whole foods so i could grab something and then went over to carrie and julie's house for the end of a party and so that i could crash. my house party was this weekend and i had a feeling that i just shouldn't go, hence staying at friends' house. well, sunday afternoon my housemates told me they were glad i didn't go (for my own sake). apparently they had to kick a bunch of people out among other things, the dj was terrible and there were various other mishaps. funny how things work out.

my students had an exam on friday, which means office hours this morning have been spent bonding with my laptop and updating my blog. i could get used to this. thursday morning bright and early i'm leaving for utah for kehau and jason's wedding. fortunately, they didn't have to evacuate this weekend during the tsunami warning, but i'm sure it was a bit stressful trying to wrap up last minute details for this week while making sure everything is in order at home in case of water!

happy first week of march everyone!