robglazebrook.com

[I've decided a picture every post is too much undue pressure]

Friday night: Justin, Sam, Sammie and I all head out around 11:30pm, looking for a party. We take the bus to west-central Ames, looking for one Sam had heard about somewhere on Story Street. Unfortunately, it was over by the time we get there. Somewhat discouraged, we decide to check out another party we’d heard about in the newly (and poorly) constructed Legacy Tower. We’re less than a block away from the building when I hear someone call my name. I turn around, and some kid grabs my hand and shakes it.

“Rob!” He says. “Remember me? I’m in your class.”

By class, I realize, he means my English 104 class. I’d just run into a student while wandering around looking for a party. Luckily, he’s far more inebriated than me. Maybe he won’t remember by Monday.

Saturday night: Justin is in Des Moines playing poker with a friend of his, so Sam and Sammie and I are bored. We decide to go find a party. After some calling around, we find one on Franklin, which is a block or two from Story. Again, we catch the 11:30pm bus (we happen to live on a shuttle stop of the Moonlight Express (Drunk Bus)) and head to west-central Ames. We get off a couple blocks early and, a bit confused, head the wrong direction. We get turned back around eventually and head the other way. Sammie, however, has to pee. We come across a friend’s house and she sneaks inside to use the bathroom (her friend was already at the party we were going to). Sam and I wait outside. There’s a huge party in the backyard of a house two doors over, so Sam and I decide to walk through the backyards and check it out. We mingle with roughly 100 of our newest friends for maybe thirty seconds when I hear my name. I turn around.

Yeah, I’d managed to run into another student. Two nights in a row. The first weekend of the semester. This cannot be a good sign.

—–

Don’t think, by the by, that these misadventures suggest I haven’t been doing much work. I did around three hours of homework before heading out Friday night, and at least eight hours of homework Saturday. And now that I’m up, I’m going to do a couple more hours of homework before I go shopping. In fact I’m hoping to finish as much homework as I (reasonably) can before heading out, because on this particular shopping trip, I’m hoping to pick up my new cellphone. And you ~know~ I’m going to spend all night playing with it. :)

PS - Kindly ignore the obvious trouble I’m having stringing sentences together. I just woke up after only five hour’s sleep, and it wasn’t good sleep.

Well, friends, your humble narrator has survived into at least his third day of grad school, as of this writing. That isn’t to say that everything has been horrible or anything; in fact, I’ve been having fun so far. But as a whole, the experience has been… whelming. Not necessarily overwhelming, but probably pretty close, and whelming at the least. In fact, I read a quote just last night in an essay by Mina P. Shaugnessy that sums up the first few days of graduate school quite nicely, even though she applied it to beginning undergraduates: “The experience of studenthood is the experience of being just so far over one’s head that it is both realistic and essential to work at surviving.” It’s not undoable, but it ain’t easy, either. :)

The first day was probably the more unnerving of the two. Monday, at 3pm on the second floor of Hamilton hall (yeah, I ended up in the 3pm Hamilton slot, not the 2pm Carver slot), I had to briefly shed the role of a student and become, for fifty minutes (well, forty, cause I let them go early) an instructor. The first few seconds after I entered the classroom were probably the worst. Five or six students had gotten there before me, and they were spread out evenly across the room, reading the newspaper, doodling, or simply staring into space. I walked in. They glanced over, briefly assessed me, and looked back down at whatever they were doing. Sure, I could assume that I looked so damn “Teacherly” that it was obvious at a moment’s glance as to who I was. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t account for the double-takes and quickly-hidden confused glances when I set my backpack down at the front of the room, behind the big desk, and began distributing syllabi. :) Not that I really blame them. In my own assessment, I look roughly fifteen minutes older than most of them.

Luckily, once I started talking, a lot of my initial nervousness faded and I was able to get about doing what needed to be done. Part of that, I’m sure, was due to the more casual, conversational tone I employed. The tone allowed me to pretend that the class was just one big twenty-six person conversation, in which I was an attention whore. :) Also, a few of my students (I think) even thought I was kinda funny. That will help. Please, Lord… let them get my humor. I’m guessing the nervousness will be back today at 3pm when I have to begin my first ‘real’ lesson, but it’s nice to know ahead of time that nervousness fades.

Tuesday brought two classes, one from 2:00 - 3:30 and the other from 6:00 - 9:00. The first class, Introduction to Computers and Applied Linguistics (with a focus on developing websites for instructional purposes), left me with a smile on my face. After the class had ended, the instructor asked to see me in his office. Of course, I immediately assumed that he’d caught me talking to Bethany or something and was going to ask me to keep my mouth shut during class. Instead, he said that he got the feeling I was already pretty good with technology and web design. When I indicated that, yeah, I considered myself decent, he made me an offer I’m going to find difficult to refuse: he offered to waive the class. Which would mean, if I understand the waiving process (which I may not), that I would “get out of” one of my linguistics requirements, and would also free up some of my time. Which sounds kinda cool, no?

The second class was Writing and Analyzing Professional Documents with Dr. Burnett. I’ve had one class with Dr. Burnett before, so in a way, I knew what I was getting into. At the very least, I had a better idea than those poor people who’d only heard the whispered rumors during orientation. Dr. Burnett has an interesting teaching philosophy: she gives you a set of impossible tasks, and then somehow coerces you into completing them. Some Ph.D. students offer counseling services to M.A. students who are taking a Burnett class. Admittedly, she’s a wonderful teacher and a nice person. But taking one of her classes often makes her students second-guess their choice of major.

Well, it’s time to get ready for racquetball. Maybe Katie Miles (today’s racquetball partner) can give me some advice on what to do with my linguistics class. And now that I think about it, Dr. Burnett is her major professor. Perhaps she offers counseling, as well. :)

My sister Sandra, never one to let me keep the spotlight for long, is turning 21 today, totally trumping my 23rd less than two weeks ago.:) Although I think it would be pretty fun to take my little sister out to the bars on her 21st and buy her a drink or six, I’m not sure the bundle she’s got baking in the oven would appreciate an alcohol-based marinade, so that’ll have to wait until February or so. Regardless, happy 21st birthday, Sannie-sannie. I love you, and I’m sorry I’m not down there tonight.

—-

As to the reason I’m not down in Des Moines celebrating with the folks and grandfolks tonight… who’da thunk they’d assign homework during orientation? Not I, to be sure. Regardless of my thoughts to the contrary (which didn’t seem to affect the outcome much at all, go figure), I have quite a bit of homework tonight, and an early-ish start (7:30am) tomorrow morning.

Today was pretty fun, though a little overwhelming. I left this morning, grabbing my bookbag on a whim, with a notebook containing roughly ten sheets of paper. I came home with a third of those pages filled with notes, two folders stuffed to overflowing with information, five textbooks, and probably a good $30 in freebie office goodies.

I also left very confused on one very important point. According to the online schedule of classes, viewable here (just look for Glazebrook, R), I’m supposed to be teaching on Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 2pm - 3pm in 68 Carver. According to what they told me today, I’m actually teaching from 3pm - 4pm in 210 Hamilton, which is on the other side of campus. I asked them to verify, and they insisted that the latter was correct. However, when I checked online as soon as I got home, the registrar still seems to think I’m teaching the former. Looking closer at the registrar list, I see that they believe I’m teaching section 25, while the English department seems to believe I’m teaching section 26. This could be a problem. Hopefully, a problem I can solve soon.

Anyways, I think I’ll go start my homework now. I envy you people in Des Moines eating real food. I just finished a hearty bowl of ramen for dinner, having found nothing better to eat. Maybe I should go to the grocery store tonight, as well. :)

Yeah, yeah, I get it. I get jokes. You’re all very freaking funny.

For those that missed it, I just had to delete 24 purposefully pointless and repetitive comments from the last entry. Only 24, because I left one copy of each of the comments, simply because someone bothered to write them, and I didn’t have the heart to destroy them entirely. Were they spammers? I wish. No, spammers haven’t been that big of a deal lately. I’ve had a comment or two left by spammers in the last couple of days, but they aren’t a part of this batch. Naw, those comments were left by my own flesh and blood, my family. :p That’s the stock I come from, I guess. I’m thinking they’d still be out egging houses on Halloween if they didn’t have to buy their own eggs now.

Anyways, those grumbles aside, I’ve had a decently fun week. I took the entire week off work and have spent most of my time lounging around the house doing not much of anything. I went out with friends a couple of nights, stayed in with the roommates a couple of nights, and spent most of this weekend by my lonesome, as my roommates all chose to go home one last time before school starts up on the 23rd. I even reread an old favorite today, A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin, for the fun of it.

Unfortunately for your disgruntled narrator, school starts a bit early for me and the other new graduate students. Starting tomorrow, we’ll be attending a week full of educational (I hope) seminars (for lack of a better term) on the fine art of teaching composition. That’s right… it only takes a week to learn how to teach composition. :)

That having been said, I need to go get my laundry out of the dryer and then shave, so that tomorrow morning I have that not-unshaven-yet-not-clean-shaven scruffy look I like.

Adieu. And shame on you, spamfamily. :p

Guess whose birthday is this Friday? Okay, now write your guess down on a piece of paper and fold it so that your neighbor can’t see. Ready? If you said Lucille Ball, Kevin Mitnick or M. Night Shyamalan, you’d be absolutely correct. However, that wasn’t the answer I was going for. The correct response given the current rhetorical situation is… me!

Nearly twenty-three years ago, I was rudely forced into this world through an altogether narrow door and immediately smacked by a doctor. After exacting my revenge on said doctor, I went about with the whole growing up thing. Until around the age of one, I worked mostly on my motor skills. After learning to walk, I never really got much more advanced. because I felt my attention was needed elsewhere. From then until around my fifth birthday I focused mostly on communication, while under the tutelage of the great American philosophers Fred Rogers, Big Bird, and Paul Reubens. Around the age of twelve, I determined myself to be sufficiently mature emotionally and psychologically, and focused in other areas, which explains why South Park is still very funny. Then, a lot of stuff happened that was probably not very funny and now I’m a good foot taller and with a lot more hair. Also, I have a degree which serves to cover roughly .65 square feet of my bedroom wall.

So anyway, I’ll be 23 on the 6th. My last day of work in the Sociology department is tomorrow, the 5th. I’ll probably have cake on both days, and if I end up going out Friday night, there’s a decent chance I won’t remember either day by the 7th. :)

By the way, those are Justin’s sunglasses. I borrowed them for a few minutes at Jordan and Lindsay’s reception when I felt the need to be roughly ten times cooler.

I have several wishlists if you like buying things. My shipping address is:

525 6th Street
Ames, IA 50010

M. Night Shyamalan is a very cool name.

Puppies.