rosaline924

Go Professors!

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 14:20:24 GMT

So, I was looking over The Chronicle of Higher Education, a weekly paper my company subscribes to and they did a short article on college and universities professors with tattoos. It's under the cut, but seeing it made me proud of the tats that have and the ones I plan on getting in the future.

Branded as Scholars
By Peter Monaghan

Do you love your research so much that you'd have a symbol of it tattooed onto your body? Among academics, scientists seem to be the most often inked, but plenty of scholars in the arts and humanities have tattoos, too. Perhaps you have one that relates to your work? Send us a photo at tweed@chronicle.com.

Kip Fulbeck
U. of California at Santa Barbara
Lawrence K. (Kip) Fulbeck, a professor of art, has written a book about tattoo art, Permanence: Tattoo Portraits (Chronicle Books, 2008). Even though he considers himself less interested in having tattoos than in tattoo culture and art, and tattoos' role in the formation of personal and racial identity, he has plenty of tats himself. His body is the canvas for the work of three leading exponents, Horitomo and Horiyoshi III, from Japan, and Horitaka, the only American apprentice of Horiyoshi. "I've only had real masters work on me," he says. "I went to Japan and had it done the old-school way." That means, rather than using an electric tattooing drill, the artist works by hand, with needles, for many hours at a time—"horribly painful," attests Mr. Fulbeck. In keeping with the Japanese tradition, he had to write and respectfully ask the masters to honor him with their art.

Does his body, now quite heavily tattooed, shock campus colleagues? Not that much, given that he also rides a skateboard to class and is known for being an avid surfer, guitar player, motorcycle rider, ocean lifeguard, pug enthusiast, and world-ranked masters swimmer. Still, he knows when not to push his luck: "My mom has never seen my back piece, by Horitomo. … But she's Chinese, from China, and she still thinks of tattoos as something criminals have. I'm 44 years old, and I still wear long sleeves when I go home to see her."

Milton Love
U. of California at Santa Barbara
Mr. Love, a research biologist at the Marine Science Institute and an expert on rockfish, has two tattoos befitting his trade. The first is a cowcod, Sebastes levis, a slow-moving, deepwater fish. The second is an angler fish, which puts a captivating spin on love, too, as Mr. Love explains: Angler fish often come in a strange coupling; a male, lured by a female's pheromonal trail, bites onto her vent, stays, and eventually becomes, as Mr. Love puts it, "nothing but a little sac of sperm."

He observes: "In evolutionary terms, that's great, because the female always has sperm available." Such is romance, a mile below.

Nicole L. Ackerman
Stanford U.
The physics doctoral student at Stanford University had herself tattooed with "the most beautiful thing I've ever learned," the Taylor expansion of sine, named for the English mathematician Brook Taylor (1685-1731). While obscure to most people, the equation is fundamental in physics, and in fact Ms. Ackerman first learned it in high-school calculus. "I thought when I first got it that some people would criticize me for getting something that is so basic," she recalls. Instead, at college parties, strangers approached her saying, "Oh, you're that girl. …" During her graduate-degree years, most physics colleagues have recognized the equation, although, she says, "they can't always place off the top of their head whether it's the expansion of sine or cosine."

Anthony Friscia
U. of California at Los Angeles
Mr. Friscia, a faculty member in the undergraduate general-education science program, studies the ecology of fossil animals and plants, including extinct mammalian carnivores. To judge by the skull tattooed behind his right shoulder, those could be toothy creatures. The image is from a 1939 research paper about Miacis gracilis, a carnivore that did its clomping and chomping about 60 million years ago. Mr. Friscia used the same illustration, based on fossils found in Utah, in his doctoral dissertation.

His next tat? A Latin transcription in block Roman letters of the last sentence of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species: "There is grandeur in this view of life. …"

Scott Pitnick
Syracuse U.
Mr. Pitnick, a professor of biology whose specializations include reproductive strategies, chose as his tattoo a spectacular homunculus-in-a-sperm-cell design. "I don't have any particularly profound comments about it," he says. "It's only a tattoo. But all good spermy fun."

Peter T. Leeson
George Mason U.
Given that he holds a named chair "for the study of capitalism," it is perhaps not that surprising that Mr. Leeson was a keen economist even as a teenager. When he was 17, he had supply-and-demand curves tattooed on his right biceps. "People think it's fun and that I'm an oddball for having it," says Mr. Leeson. "One of my favorite things about it is the chance it gives me to talk to total strangers about economics." That, he admits, might confirm his "dorkdom," but so be it.

Michael Ruse
Florida State U.
A professor of philosophy and leading historian and philosopher of science, Mr. Ruse says: "I'd always wanted a tattoo, ever since I was a kid. But in those days it was considered very vulgar." He didn't get one until he had five children of his own, but he inked up before any of them did. Why did he choose the trilobite as his image? "I had to think of something that was symbolic of evolution and immediately recognizable." A trilobite fit both those stipulations. So, perhaps, would Darwin's tree of life or an archaeopteryx; but those would be too complex, and "everyone knows what a trilobite is." His is a mid-Cambrian trilobite, from Newfoundland, slightly simplified, and also reduced in size. "I'm not into the business of having something major all over my back," he says.

Joshua Drew
U. of Chicago
Mr. Drew, a postdoctoral research fellow in bioinformatics at the Biodiversity Synthesis Center at the Field Museum of Natural History, is interested in the conservation of coral fishes. So he decided to preserve one on his arm. The image, designed by a family friend and tattoo artist, T-Bone Martin, is the checkerboard wrasse, Halichoeres hotulanus, with a representation of its sperm trail as well as DNA in it. Mr. Drew says: "I wanted a piece of art that would represent both components of my doctoral research, the fieldwork and the lab work. I was also concerned that a lot of molecular biologists aren't able to identify the species they work with."

His tattoo will ensure that he never forgets what the wrasse looks like. Meanwhile, he says, it bridges the natural-history and phylogenetics aspects of his research.

James Snow
Loyola University Maryland
An affiliate assistant professor of philosophy, Mr. Snow has a tattoo inspired by one of the seminal works of his discipline, Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, written during the thinker's year in prison, in 524 AD as he was awaiting execution on a trumped-up charge. One day, while teaching Consolation, it struck Mr. Snow that Lady Philosophy, whom Boethius describes encountering in his book, would illustrate well his professional life. He acquired a tattoo that fit Boethius's first description of his muse: a woman "whose countenance was full of majesty, whose eyes shone as with fire and in power of insight surpassed the eyes of men, whose color was full of life, whose strength was yet intact though she was so full of years that none would ever think that she was subject to such age as ours." Mr. Snow teaches in suit and tie, so his tattoos are noticed more at the gym, where he is a weightlifter, or at home, where his wife, Dale E. Snow, also a philosopher and acting chair of his department, is "pretty inked up," as he puts it. In fact, on their 25th wedding anniversary, they got matching "25" tattoos based on a set of numbers designed by the American artist Jasper Johns.

Christof Koch
California Institute of Technology
One of the world's leading neuroscientists has a small rainbow-colored Apple-computer logo on his upper right arm. That makes him, he discovered after the fact, one of several dozen people in the world with that tattoo.

The professor of cognitive and behavioral biology and of computation and neural systems admires the icon's beauty and elegance: "It implements the best of design principles—perfect fusion of form and function. Nothing superfluous, and it fits perfectly into its environment." Another benefit:

"I relate well to people who have Harley-Davidson and Smith & Wesson tattoos."

Snow day!

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:08:50 GMT

Wow, never thought I'd actually say that as an adult, but true! Yesterday, due to the vast amounts of crystallized water that fell from sky on Friday and Saturday and a little on Sunday the Metro trains were closed for outside stations until Monday morning and the buses were also closed and thus the Federal Government took a holiday and so did my office. WOOT! WOOT!

So I spent my snow day lounging around the house for the third straight day in a row before KP and I ventured out to the mall and walked around for a while. It was good just to let the apartment. We bought of few things and then stopped to eat then went home and lounged some more.

I did lots of RPing and watched all of Pushing Daisies and a season and a half of Psych. Really very boring, but fun never the less. I'm looking forward to the holidays bc I'm going to go see Sherlock Holmes and something else...either The Princess and the Frog or Fantastic Mr. Fox; I haven't decided yet. Also, I plan on sitting down and editing Nano...or at least begin editing Draft #1 of Camp Dead End and polishing draft #4 of But Words can never Die.

We'll see what happens

HI-LAR-IOUS

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:56:30 GMT

Stole from the_rainbow_jen

On the twelfth day of Christmas, rosaline924 sent to me...

Twelve tangograces drumming

Eleven snarkysweetness piping

Ten pres_jjs a-swimming

Nine cloverdews baking

Eight tattoos a-scrapbooking

Seven movies a-writing

Six mysteries a-reading

Five gre-e-e-ey's

Four pushing daisies

Three dc shorts

Two long walks

...and a hockey in an ugly betty.

This just cracked me up...8 tattoos a-scarpbooking...LMAO

Holla!

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 15:48:48 GMT

I have finished! After a strong beginning and some distractions in the middle, I did. I won Nano for the third year in the row.

Go me!

Nano and weight

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 19:22:31 GMT

I'm behind on word count...OH NO! 38,715...I need to be at 41,666 today so when work lets out in 40 more minutes it's off to cat sit and write and nothing but writing until I'm caught up...I can do it!

Also, since I've been sitting on my ass and writing all month, I was pleasantly surprised today to find out that I've lost 26 pounds since July...go me!

More on Nano coming on Dec. 1...I'll put up a preview, but remember it is only the first draft and I wrote it in 30 days.

A quick catch up

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:49:49 GMT

I hit 30,000+ the other day; I'm going to do some writing during work hours today if I can...shh! I'm on word count maybe 200-300 over. I was ahead for a while, but then took a day off.

Rping a little...thinking of picking up another character...I haven't decided who or which game yet. More to come in Dec when I have time. Also, have good IC drama for one of mine...hehehe

Lost...25 lbs! Woot. Which is good, I'm looking at bridesmaid dresses for my facebook wife's wedding. I'm excited for that.

Work is good...slow this week...

Agnes was good...over and thank god, but still good.

KP is amazing, but back to working almost 7 days a week...stupid people who are assholes and can't manage to hold onto a job. I know I have friends looking and if you lived near me, I would totally help you find something.

Also, I'm preparing for the holidays and for me that means sending Holiday cards...if you want one, send me a PM and I'll get your address and everything...I've sent cards out every year for the past three years...it makes me feel independent and domesticated.

Anywho...got to work.

A quickie

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:35:13 GMT

Just wanted to give a brief update:

New position: Liking...more work, but not too bad, flexible hours which is nice. No waiting for someone to sit for me when I have to pee. Woot!

Agnes: Play opens tomorrow...in tech week...not really around. we were listed in the Washington Post Express and the Northwest Current. Let's see if we can get more.

NaNo: On target...actually ahead slightly 7,389 as of 6 pm yesterday and I did some writing this morning but didn't check work count.

KP: Best boyfriend ever!

That's all check in when I have more time

Yo Yo

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:10:24 GMT

I just got a new position at my office!

*squee*

Spam me

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:01:12 GMT

I'm bored at the office...spam me with fun articles or news info please!

RECASTING YOUR LIFE

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 18:36:20 GMT

Stolen from the_rainbow_jen

This is a mega-meme: it's the union between a PICSPAM and a FANMIX. IT'S MY LIFE!

___ as ME aka Rosaline924

___ as The True Love

___ as The Mistake

___ as The True Love's Best Friend

___ as The Dad

___ as The Mom

___ as The Brother

___ as The Rival

___ as The Best Friend

___ as The Gay Best Friend

___ The Pet

___ The City

And now you have to choose YOUR PERSONAL SOUNDTRACK, of course:
~ Opening credits
~ Falling in love
~ The Kiss
~ Sex
~ The break up
~ The psychological breakdown
~ Shopping with friends
~ The getting back together
~ End Credits

Dana Barron as ME aka Rosaline924:

Michael Symon as The True Love:

Johnny Knoxville as The Mistake:

Billy Boyd as The True Love's Best Friend:

Richard Beltzer as The Dad:

Stochard Channing as The Mom:

Jack Black as The Brother:

Brittany Snow as The Rival:

Rachel Leigh Cook as The Best Friend:

Jerry Ferrera as The Gay Best Friend:

giggle

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:08:24 GMT

Well, there have always been strange people in Florida.

University of Flordia's Zombie attack plan.

Full Blog article here.

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:09:05 GMT

So I had a kinda shitty birthday last week; things that made it only kinda were the flowers KP had sent to the office, the cake he made me and some icons colombelle made me for one of my characters.

This weekend also kinda sucked, but it wasn't a total loss since I went to the MD Ren fair and drank lots of meade and hard cider.

Me and Sunny as Queen and King of the Fair

Glass blower

Glassblowing demo

More glassblowing demo

Finished piece, but it's a little hard to see, it was a champagne flute

Glass blown Penguin Vase

Squire on the Wire, he wore Spongebob boxers underneath

Big old cup of Meade

Really nice tattoo

The Joust losers

The Joust Winner

The Scottish Champ that we cheered for

Dragon's Pub sign

Elephants and we went on an elephant ride but didn't take any pictures. Sorry!

More elephants

Weigh In

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:52:36 GMT

I'm turning into a skinny bitch...lost a total of 20 pounds!

Woot!

Sad

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 12:52:48 GMT

My game is closing and it makes me sad.

You choose:

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 19:57:04 GMT

From pasted and seakisst:

Every girl needs a hot character to go on an adventure with --

1. Who would you lounge with and read a good book on a rainy afternoon: Tim McGee [NCIS]
2. Who would you go camping with and let him hold you as you watch the fire: Aiden Shaw [Sex and the City]
3. Who would you enjoy a good dive bar with, grind yourself against them and perhaps start a fight that will lead to sex on a wall: Jason Stackhouse [True Blood]
4. Who would you dance with: Dean Forrester [Gilmore Girls]
5. Who would be waiting in the bottom of the stairs with a sharp suit on to sweep you off your feet: Chuck Bartowski [Chuck]
6. Who would you love to get into a police chase with that will lead to hot sex, of course: Eric Northman [True Blood]
7. Who would you play house with: Luke Danes [Gilmore Girls]
8. Who would you take shopping: Stanford Blatch [Sex and the City]
9. Who would you take on a walk down the beach near sunset: Zach Addy [Bones]
10. Who would you runaway with and possibly marry in a small, questionable chapel: Sean Spenser [Psych]

AWWWWWWWWWW

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 18:32:39 GMT

This is the cutest little story ever and I just have to share it with all of you.

Icons inspired by article

Just comment and credit

Progress report

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 18:39:16 GMT

I lost 3 pounds last week...part of it was my hair which I had cut, but not all of it. so I am now down 17.4 pounds...only 2.6 to go!

It's been three weeks since my last post...

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 13:27:23 GMT

Holy mother of God! Where did summer go? I swear it was June last week. Oh well. It has been a really long time since I updated last, so here's a real quick overview.

Job: Like it, settling in nicely and my boss just loves me. Yay! I've been given three big projects, one is completely finished, one is at a standstill until my boss finishes her part of the new software and the other is about halfway done.

Home: New place is great, although I lost power this morning and couldn't open the fuse box. Good news though, the whole building went out, so it didn't matter that I couldn't open the fuse box. Had to shower in the dark, but I had hot water.

KP: He's going great and now has THREE days off vs. only one like last year, so woot! However, I think he's bored, so I'm trying to think of a hobby he can do at night. Apparently, brewing beer isn't enough. (I bought him a home brewing kit for Christmas, which he still hasn't used...grrr).

RPG: All games are doing great and I'll do some pimping soon. We've had some big threads in post_bellum which have been sweet. I have all 14 of my characters active 3 to 4 threads a month, plus do_bad_things should be starting soon, I'm playing Sookie. Fun fun

NaNo: Did some plotting for NaNo this year. I'm writing the sequel to my 2007 NaNo entitled Buts Words can Never Die, which is a young adult Nancy Drew Style mystery. I'm hoping to publish it someday and have a few friends reading the 3rd draft of it as we speak. The new NaNo takes place over the summer and will be call Camp Dead End and will involve smuggling...I'm thinking drugs, but I'm not sure. I do know there will be camp rivalry, kidnapping and good looking lifeguards. The main character is only 15.

Weight: Down 13...want to drop 7 more before end of year which is part of my 101

Rhodora We are producing Agnes of God in the fall. Auditions soon...need to find space and confirm with director his schedule. I may just pick dates without him just to get things moving. I'm working on this over the weekend.

Future: I've talked with a few friends and done basic (I mean, I've look online at two schools) about grad school for creative writing. My facebook wife, Connie, is in a graduate program at John Hopkins and it's only 9 course, including thesis and she should have it complete next summer. So, I've been saving and thinking about applying or looking into the GREs. This morning I came across an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education which is a university industry paper that my company subscribes to. I thought it was really interesting and I've decided to share it. It's under the cut bc it's long and I blatantly stole it bc I'm not sure how to share it without making anyone interested in reading, sign up for a subscription. It's good and I suggest you read it.

Anyways, that's my life up until now. I'll try to update more often.

Kisses!

February 6, 2009

Testing the Test
An English professor takes the GRE and questions its value
By Michael Bérubé

I did a very foolhardy thing this fall. I retook the Graduate Record Examination in English literature, 25 years after I entered graduate school at the University of Virginia.

The potential for embarrassment, I thought, was enormous — and, therefore, so was the perverse attraction. It seemed like a stunt out of a David Lodge novel. What if an English professor got a lower GRE score than some of the applicants who had been rejected from his own graduate program? It's not inconceivable: I haven't taught literature written before 1800 since … oh, I don't know, sometime around 1800. But once upon a time, I was pretty well versed in the history of English verse. At Virginia, when I was writing my dissertation, I taught discussion sections of the course on the "History of English Literature" required for majors — the kind that often goes by the informal name "Beowulf to Virginia Woolf," or, even more colloquially, "Snortin' the Norton," after the ubiquitous anthology.

Before that, when I was an impressionable young undergraduate thing, Columbia University's English department required all its majors to complete four out of five "sequence" courses in literature before 1800; the 1500-1600 and 1600-1660 courses, notably, assigned fairly little Shakespeare and Milton, on the grounds that one really should study those authors in classes dedicated exclusively to their work. (That, of course, in addition to Columbia's admirable core courses in Western literature, philosophy, music, and art.)

All that might sound like excellent preparation for the English GRE, and in a way, it was. It was also valuable in its own right. And because my "specialties" (if one can speak of undergraduate specialties) were British modernism and 20th-century American literature, I thought at the time that I had the canon covered. Imagine my dismay, then, to find that my literature examination asked a couple of questions about medieval literature, more than a couple about the Renaissance, a fair number about the 18th century, a modest few about early 20th century, and a barrage (or so it seemed to me) of questions about the Romantics and the Victorians, about whom I knew only the barest minimum. What did I do? I guessed on a few, even though I didn't know my Shelley from my Keats. And I passed on a lot more, knowing that every unanswered question would register as "minus 1" on my total, whereas every wrong answer would register as "minus 1.25," taking a big bite out of a correct answer.

In 1981, at the age of 20, I wound up with a 650 on the English GRE, good enough to clamber into the 88th percentile. My verbal and math scores on the general exam were 720s, and my score on the then-experimental "logic" section (where I was asked a battery of questions about how many green cars are parked in front of Bob's house on Thursday if Sue, Ellen, and Tom agree to eat at a Chinese restaurant twice a week) was a gratifying 790. Too bad it didn't count. My peers and I were uniformly panicked about the test, but unfortunately I didn't panic until it was too late to sign up for a retake before submitting my graduate-school applications. I took the whole thing in one six-hour sitting.

I was not surprised, in 1981, that the canon of literature in English ended with the high modernists — indeed, well before T.S. Eliot and William Faulkner picked up their Nobel prizes (in 1948 and 1949, respectively). But I've been intensely curious about how the exam might have changed in the intervening years. Since 1981, my field has witnessed the rise of interpretive theory and the controversies over canon revision. How had the test responded? Similarly, since 1981 I've gone from sweating out the application stage to serving on graduate-admissions committees. Now that I've reviewed hundreds of applications, only cursorily glancing at each applicant's GRE scores (the better to focus on the most important thing in the application dossier, the writing sample — which not a single university required of me in 1981), would I think the test had any useful purpose at all?

I took the practice test instead of the "real" test, for a number of reasons. I wanted to be able to look over the questions afterward — that is, in the course of writing this essay; I wanted to see what percentage of test takers had gotten each question right (the answer sheet provides that useful information); and, not least, I wanted to get my score immediately, instead of waiting the requisite four to six weeks. (If you take the general test online, you can get your scores in 10 to 15 days; the subject test, however, is not available online.) I didn't cheat, I promise: I sat down on Tuesday, October 14, 2008, started the test at 7 p.m., and finished at 9:30. I did not, however, use a No. 2 pencil.

The test consisted largely of five types of questions. Some required you to identify individual authors and works; some required a more-general knowledge of literature and literary history (catching allusions, knowing your Aesthetes from your Augustans, finding your way around a pastoral elegy). Some involved high-end reading comprehension, the kind that entails an understanding of various forms of irony. Some involved low-end reading comprehension; there were no fewer than three questions that asked me to spot the obsolete idiomatic usage. (After looking them over again, I decided to call those "IF U CN RD THS U CN GO 2 GRD SKL" questions.) And some questions, I was surprised to see, were basic grammar/usage questions, like the one that asked whether "eradicate" in the line of poetry "plants new set to be eradicate" is a present indicative, a past participle, a subjunctive form, an infinitive form, or an imperative form. Yeah, like that's gonna come up at some point in your graduate studies.

It's tempting to say I missed only the bad questions — and there were plenty of bad questions. Not just the grammar/usage ones, either; especially bad was the question that asked whether Book III, Lines 122-34 of Paradise Lost (beginning with "They trespass, authors to themselves in all," as God discusses the incipient fall of Adam and Eve) presents an explanation of "(a) foreknowledge and free will can coexist, (b) Satan chose of his own free will to rebel, (c) the fall of humankind makes possible Christ's victory, (d) humankind's praise of God is worthless without free choice, or (e) God will punish and excuse in the way that He has chosen." (I got it right, though after some grumbling; it's (e), though (a) is quite plausible, and if you go back and look at the immediate context of the poem, you'll find that God is talking about (b), (c), and (d) as well.)

The three questions that asked you to identify which city was being described in which poem — those were bad questions too, suitable more for Jeopardy! than for an exam in English literature. Alas, I got many bad questions right, sometimes through sheer dumb luck. Among the ones I missed, I couldn't remember what the "euphuistic" style is, and I couldn't remember which war novelist — Stephen Crane, Faulkner, Joseph Heller, Ernest Hemingway, or Norman Mailer — had not seen combat. But I also missed a few good questions, the kind you wish you could have back — the kind about which you might say, as I did, "Dang, it's been almost 30 years since I read Much Ado About Nothing."

About the changes over the past 25 years, there is some good news and some bad news. Good news first: The expanded canon was accommodated pretty well here. There was a question about Aphra Behn's Oroonoko (the 1688 novella by one of England's first female writers to earn a living from her craft), a question about Olaudah Equiano (the 18th-century writer whose autobiography was a landmark in British debates over abolition of the slave trade), and a question about Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon (1977, the most recent work of literature to appear on the exam). You wouldn't have seen any of those in 1981. "Ah, but no Herman Melville or Henry Fielding," I thought upon finishing the exam. "The National Association of Scholars is right — those upstart women and members of minority groups are displacing the great white guys." Whereupon I went back and realized I was mistaken: There was a question about Fielding's Tom Jones and a question about Ralph Ellison's discussion of Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener." I'd gotten them both right but had forgotten they were there. Over all, with regard to the old canon and the new, the test was remarkably comprehensive — covering every period of English literature as well as a great deal of material in other languages (in translation), ranging from the Greek classics (Identify the allusion to Niobe! Know your Orestes from your Telemachus!) to Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler and Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters.

But the "theory" questions were a joke, a very bad joke. Literally. The first question involving literary theory — 54 questions into a 230-question exam — asked students to identify parodies of Marxist, reader-response, and structuralist criticism. The Marxist parody was hideous: "Fulvia Morgana said that the function of criticism was to wage undying war on the very concept of 'literature' itself, which was nothing more than an instrument of bourgeois hegemony, a fetichistic [sic!] reification of so-called aesthetic values erected and maintained through an elitist education system in order to conceal the brutal facts of class oppression under industrial capitalism." My stars! Who knew that Fredric Jameson and Raymond Williams could be so reductive?

There were, in fact, very few "theory"questions — one involving Harold Bloom (the word "clinamen" was the giveaway), one involving the late Northrop Frye, and one basically asking you to identify the author of Writing Degree Zero (answer, Roland Barthes). And OK, maybe the one about female readers being asked to sympathize with stories of heroic men surrounded by scheming or trivial women was an "intro to feminist theory" question. But that's about it. Abysmal, really, if you're designing an exam that has anything to do with graduate study in English. Not that every student immerses herself in theory, of course; but most students, it's safe to say, will be expected to understand and respond to a "theoretical" argument — a real one, not a parody of one — at some point in their graduate studies.

I do have some sympathy with the test's designers, though. Apparently, it's quite hard to come up with questions about anything written after 1950 — poetry, drama, fiction, or criticism and theory — that won't elicit incorrect answers from more than 75 percent of test takers. The question on Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire? Only 22 percent got that one. Harold Pinter? Twenty-four percent. Isak Dinesen? Eighteen percent. Philip Larkin? Seventeen percent. (I missed that one too.) The 19 percent who got the correct response to the Frye question should probably be seen in this context: The exam makes too many people miss when it edges too close to the present. Perhaps contemporary literature isn't nearly so prevalent in the college curriculum as casual observers think — or, possibly, the contemporary "canon" is still in flux, as well it should be. But at least Frye beat out the Victorian-era stalwart Anthony Trollope, down there with Larkin at 17 percent. Whew! Good thing I've read Trollope's The Warden and know who Septimus Harding is.

But after I finished the test, tabulated my score, and had some geeky fun finding out which questions were "easy" and "hard" according to the correct-response rate, I decided that the whole thing was decidedly disappointing. Very little of the test, as far as I could see, had anything to do with gauging someone's aptitude for graduate study in literature; it was, instead, as if I'd played an arduous two-and-a-half-hour parlor game. And that's apparently how some departments of English treat the English GRE. Although many programs require it, my own does not, and back at my old haunt, Columbia, the graduate-admissions Web page declares, "Our department does not require the GRE Subject Test in English literature, which we regard as unsubstantive and not predictive of the quality of graduate work." Over all, according to the most recent "MLA Guide to Doctoral Programs in English and Other Modern Languages," 41.5 percent of English departments require the subject GRE test, whereas 96.2 percent require a writing sample. When I asked my department head whether I'd wasted my time with a test that would have no significance if I were an applicant to my own program, she said, "Pretty much, yeah. But it does sound like fun." A supposedly fun thing, in the words of the late David Foster Wallace, that I'll never do again.

For our College of the Liberal Arts, however, the GRE scores on the general test are common currency because they supply a quantitative measure for doling out fellowships and assessing the "quality" of an incoming class of students. (Their scores are higher than those of their counterparts 10 years ago — and that's how we know we're getting better!) That aspect of the system strikes me as a necessary evil, since fellowship money has to be divvied up somehow, and there are no reliable qualitative measures of applicants' talents — no good way to determine whether an incoming class is 8 percent philosophically deeper than its predecessors, or 12 percent more capable of historicizing a cultural formation. (All our students receive stipends; some also receive "top-offs," which depend in part on GRE scores.) But for my purposes, as I noted above, the most important thing in a student's application dossier is the writing sample, and I would be surprised if very many of my colleagues in literature departments thought differently. The writing sample, after all, offers us a chance to read and assess the kind of work we're actually going to ask our students to do.

This is an interesting moment in the history of the GRE. The SAT's authority is eroding slowly but surely, as one college after another finds more substantial and nuanced ways of assessing its undergraduate applicants. But the GRE and other graduate-level exams may be looking good. In the fall, the Educational Testing Service embarked on a new campaign to encourage more undergraduates to take the tests — and traditionally, in financial crises, college-educated Americans turn to postgraduate education and try to pick up a few more degrees. If you've lost a third of your savings in the stock market and your job prospects are looking bleak, it's a good time to sign up for the GRE — not that the ETS puts it precisely that way. Its Web site at www.takethegre.com features "students" like the thoughtful young woman sitting on a mountaintop, writing in her journal. To her left, just above her head, are the words: "Something to fall back on once the 'I'm going to backpack around the world' thing is covered." The idea, as ETS makes clear, is that it's good to keep your options open — and GRE scores are valid for five years. Why not take the test just in case? You have nothing to lose except the testing fee and the hours of preparation.

Does it work? Are postgraduate degrees a good hedge against recession? In a crisis as severe as our current one, I honestly don't know. But I certainly hope so — not for the sake of our graduate programs so much as for the sake of my fellow citizens and the global information economy in which they hope to participate. One ETS official I spoke to in the fall told me that although people usually respond to recessions by going back to school, the problem this time around is that it's harder to get student loans; this is, after all, a credit crisis. Another spokesman told me this month that although GRE test-taking was down 2 percent, it was down from a record year in 2007 — and registrations for the test had hit a peak in September 2008, just as the economic news began to look catastrophic. But were those registrations a response to the financial crisis, or to the ETS ad campaign? No one can say for sure, but both officials considered the 2008 numbers to be "flat," and both expected 2009 to be a healthy year for the GRE.

And what of the Literature in English subject test? Again, I sympathize with its designers and their impossible task. How can you test someone's aptitude for reading literature? What, for that matter, is "literature"? The question bedevils not only the testing service but every department of literature: The discipline of literary study is amorphously perverse, not because of the advent of "theory," but because literature itself covers everything in the world and makes up other worlds as well. The GRE subject test seems to be something of a compromise — a compromise among at least three different constituencies: those who believe that applicants should demonstrate an understanding of literary history and ability to analyze forms, those who believe that applicants should know who wrote what when, and those who believe that applicants should be able to read all kinds of texts closely and with great care.

Constituencies one and two tend to see themselves as a thin blue line between disciplinary competence and interdisciplinary fraud. Constituency three suspects that the verbal test on the GRE general exam is a better measure of applicants than the subject test: that verbal acuity is more important than the ability to identify Septimus Harding or the euphuistic style. Having retaken the subject test after all these years, I am unambiguously in the third constituency. What will you be asked to do as a graduate student in literature? It's hard to say. But whether you're dealing with Geoffrey Chaucer or Slavoj Zizek, you'll probably be asked to compose sustained critical arguments about difficult and elusive texts. So if I had my druthers, I'd do away with the English GRE altogether — despite its potential use in trivia contests — and award graduate fellowships on the basis of the verbal GRE, together with faculty evaluations of applicants' writing samples. Those evaluations can be ranked and numbered, if need be.

And oh, yes, my score. Very well. I opened with a nice streak of 58 consecutive hits, breaking Joe DiMaggio's record on the 1941 GRE, but from that point on, I stumbled over my areas of ignorance, lapses of memory, and subtle but decisive misreadings of questions. Of the 230 questions, I answered 214 correctly and seven incorrectly, passing on nine. That gave me a raw score of 212.25, just barely good enough for a 760, in the 99th percentile along with everyone who scored anywhere from 740 to 800.

"You know what will happen," I said to my wife as I tabulated my score. "Everyone will say, 'theory-besotted postmodern cultural-studies professor fails to ace English GRE,' and I'll be Exhibit A in the Association of Literary Surly Curmudgeons' argument that literary study has gone straight downhill."

"No, that's not what's going to happen," Janet replied. "People will simply think you're showing off."

Showing off? For goodness sake, I missed a Much Ado About Nothing question, and you won't see top-shelf Shakespeareans like Marjorie Garber or Stephen Greenblatt doing that. No, like the Jeopardy! contestant who suddenly forgets that Franklin Roosevelt's middle name was Delano, I had my embarrassing brain freezes here and there. Let those of you who have taken the real GRE in the past year throw the first stone.

Michael Bérubé is a professor of English at Pennsylvania State University at University Park. His most recent book is Rhetorical Occasions: Essays on Humans and the Humanities (University of North Carolina Press, 2006).

I am the Shit!

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 18:45:29 GMT

That's right. I am the shit and I kick ass...

I've lost 10.4 pounds or 4.73 kilos.

*does happy ass shaking dance*

Some Pimpage

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 20:57:06 GMT

Last night, the five highest ranking Aurors on the squad ended up dead. And it looks like whatever killed them may be contagious....

***

Bloodlines is a post-Deathly Hallows, non-epilogue compliant Harry Potter roleplaying game set four years after the Battle of Hogwarts. The focus of the game is on building strong, dynamic characters, exciting plotlines, and an overall good story as the characters move through their daily lives in a world thrown once again into upheaval. The mods are active both in playing and plotting, and players are encouraged to become involved in existing plots and to create their own stories and characters.

We are especially looking for the following characters: Dean, Seamus, Padma, Parvati, Lavender and Lee. Join us!

Story | About | Characters | Rules | Jobs | Application

Now casting! Currently in pre-game brainstorming phase.
Gameplay begins July 4, 2009.

Breaking Point: I want a Ron!"


Currently Casting \| Casting Studio \| Application \| Rules \| Darkness Rising RPG Community

"….Voldemort's powerful now. You don't know who his supporters are, you don't know who's working for him and who isn't; you know he can control people so that they do terrible things without being able stop themselves. You're scared for yourself, and your family, and your friends. Every week, news comes of more deaths, more disappearances, more torturing … The Ministry of Magic's in disarray, they don't know what to do, they're trying to keep everything hidden from the Muggles, but meanwhile, Muggles are dying too. Terror everywhere … panic … confusion …" Across Europe the Wizarding Community lies in fear. Voldemort and his followers are on the rise, leaving behind a reign of terror in their wake. As his numbers increase, Wizards begins to grow more uneasy, increasingly choosing to fall prey to his Empire, out of fear, unwilling to stand up and fight. In spite of the increasing danger, a small group of vigilante Wizards have begun a rebellion, daring to do what the Ministry fears to do; fight. The Order of the Phoenix is slowly growing into a force to be reckoned with, threatening not only Voldemort, but the Ministry itself. Change is on the brink for the students of Hogwarts. No longer will they be safe behind the confines of the castle, unaware to the real dangers of the world. They will soon be forced to make their own loyalties known; a decision that will affect not only the rest of their lives, but the entire Wizarding World. Amongst the darkness, these students are potentially the light needed to give the Order the man power to take on Voldemort’s forces. As both sides fight to gain support, one question lies: which side do you choose?
Darkness Rising is a canon compliant Marauders Era RPG taking place in 1978. Game opened February 1, 2009. Most Wanted: Amelia Bones, Alecto Carrow , Amycus Carrow, Rabastan* and *Rodolphus Lestrange, Xeno Lovegood, Alastor Moody, Peter Pettigrew*, Fabian and Gideon Prewett, Rufus Scrimgeour, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Andromeda Tonks, and many others! Asterisk's indicate recasts. All recast information can be found here

“Reconciliation should be accompanied by justice, otherwise it will not last. While we all hope for peace it shouldn't be peace at any cost but peace based on principle, on justice.”
~Corazon Aquino

“Reconciliation is to understand both sides; to go to one side and describe the suffering being endured by the other side, and then go to the other side and describe the suffering being endured by the first side.”
~Thich Naht Hanh

Minister of Magic Tiberius Ogden is working to promote the health and well-being of all living things, including both Muggleborn and Pureblooded witches and wizards, as well as elves, goblins, and other magical species. With Mafalda Hopkirk in Azkaban for the foreseeable future, her son is attempting to nurse his fiancee back to health after having been cursed unforgivably by his mother. Hermione Granger has just moved in with her boyfriend, Draco Malfoy, even though her friends and his family weren't too keen on their relationship from the beginning. George and the rest of the Weasleys are still dealing with a lot of mixed feelings regarding the death of Fred and try to support each other through it all. Theo has just discovered that his sister was fathered by another man and is dealing with the fact that his father killed his mother in revenge. The Brothers Lestrange have all kinds of evil plans in the works, including smuggling a werewolf army from France to England. Roger has been doing research into the limits of Transfiguration with genetic makeup as he progresses is his apprenticeship. Melinda is still trying to find her place after being disowned by her family for starting a band with Tracey, Susan, Mandy and Josh.

post_bellum is a Post-War, Post-Deathly Hallows, non-Epilogue compliant Harry Potter Role-Playing Game.

Post Bellum RPG*Currently Casting*Characters In Play*Application*Rules*Watchers Community

We are greatly anticipating recasting applications for: Draco Malfoy, Luna Lovegood, Charlie Weasley, Rabastan Lestrange, and more. We are also looking for applications for: Arthur Weasley, Rita Skeeter, Ernie MacMillan, and any other characters which might be of interest!

If you have other questions or would like to request a hold on a character, please feel free to email the moderators at postbellummods at gmail.com.


Currently Casting \| Casting Studio \| Application \| Rules \| Quadrivium RPG

“The Road goes ever on and on down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, and I must follow, if I can, pursuing it with eager feet, until it joins some larger way where many paths and errands meet. And whither then? I cannot say.” –J.R.R. Tolkien Halloween, 1981, the Dark Lord Voldemort fell at the hands of one-year old Harry Potter, bringing an end to a decade long reign of terror, to the relief of the entire Wizarding World. Death Eaters were imprisoned, wounds healed, and the Wizarding World spent the next decade healing from the pain of the first war. Yet, Voldemort was not truly defeated that night. He will rise once more, bringing upon another viscous war upon the Wizarding World. Everyone knows the story of Harry Potter, but until now, the story of what happened in between has been unknown. It is 1990, the year before Harry Potter will discover he is a Wizard. Professor Quirrell is off to Albania where he will become a vessel for the weakened Dark Lord, Charlie Weasley and his friends are in their seventh-year at Hogwarts, and the foundation for the future is being paved. They are at a crossroads, the road behind them broken and wilting. The road ahead lies a mystery, which paths will they chose? Who will they become? Only one thing is certain; they must continue on.
Quadrivium is a canon compliant Harry Potter Interim Era game taking place in 1990. Game opened May 09, 2009. Most Wanted: Terrence Higgs, Remus Lupin, Lucius Malfoy, Quirinus Quirrell, Andromeda and Ted Tonks, Sybill Trelawney, Bill, Percy, and Charlie Weasley, Oliver Wood, Students, Teachers, and many others!


Currently Casting \| Casting Studio \| Application \| Rules \| Recuperatio RPG

“Tragedy blows through your life like a tornado, uprooting everything, creating chaos. You wait for the dust to settle, and then you choose. You can live in the wreckage and pretend it's still the mansion you remember. Or you can crawl from the rubble and slowly rebuild. Because after disaster strikes, the important thing is that you move on.”-Veronica Mars Seven years ago, the Dark Lord Voldemort fell, finally bringing an end to his vicious reign of power and terror. Yet, the war did not end with his death. For years, the Wizarding World has worked to repair the damages left during the aftermath of war. Emotional burdens have yet to fully heal, too many lives destroyed, families torn apart, and friends lost. Hogwarts was left in rubble, unable to reopen for years, the damage too great, endless sweat and tears shed as people worked to rebuild the foundations to give their children a future. Death Eaters still roam free, cunningly avoiding even the best Aurors, leaving many in fear that another war will be on the horizon. As things begin to resemble some semblance of normalcy, an old follower of Voldemort is in the wings, plotting his revenge, gathering the remaining Death Eaters and new followers, planning to unleash a new war, wanting to finish his master’s vision. In the Ministry, a serial killer is murdering powerful political figures, leaving everyone pointing fingers and letting things slip through the cracks. Fenrir Greyback has escaped from Azkaban, butchering countless individuals as he runs from Aurors, gathering and making new werewolves in his travels, gathering an army to strike against the Ministry. All the while, the Muggle World is at war, affecting the Wizarding World as it heightens. The world is in complete chaos. Minister of Magic, Kingsley Shacklebolt is determined to rebuild the Wizarding Community into a vision of peace and has called forth some of the best Aurors from around the world in an effort to clean up the United Kingdom, determined to capture and imprison the remaining Death Eaters and send a clear message of constant vigilance to those seeking to do more harm. Many are unhappy with the Minister’s plans, many seeking to replace him and other important individuals, some willing to go to great lengths to achieve their goals. The Wizarding World is torn between fully recovering and moving forward and taking two steps back, arriving right back where they left off seven years ago. A new war is on the brink, which side will you choose?
Recuperatio is a canon, non-epilogue compliant game taking place in 2005. Game opened June 06, 2009. Most Wanted: Rabastan and Rodolphus Lestrange, Luna Lovegood, Ernie McMillan, Draco, Lucius, and Narcissa Malfoy, Adrian Pucey, Bill, Charlie, Fleur, George, Molly, Percy, and Ron Weasley, Oliver Wood, and many others! contact mods before applying*

Update of sorts

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 13:51:41 GMT

Ok, I've been like CRAZY busy the passed week. First, I cleaned some, but mostly spent every night after work moving a car load over to my new apartment/flat/whatever you want to call it. KP and I planned on moving everything but the big stuff on Sunday, which we did.

However...

KP woke up an hour before he had to leave for work in incredible amounts of pain because he was beginning to pass a kidney stone (Really it is the closest male equivalent to giving birth). So, we went to the hospital. We spent 4 hours there then drove to an all night pharmacy got pills and crashed.

We then picked up the truck at 10 AM, took two loads of furniture (Bed, four bookcases, TVs, tv stand, mini fridge, desk, couch) and another car load. We stopped for food and then KP went back to bed.

I:
*Did 3 loads of laundry
*Set up the bathroom, shower curtain, towels, TP, filled medicine cabinet
*Set up TV, DVD and Wii (ALl by myself..I'm so proud)
*Unpacked dishes and food
*Unpacked most of my books and all my DVDs

Still a lot to do, but I feel mostly moved in which is nice

I saw Harry Potter and the Half blood Prince last night and yes,it was fucking amazing and NO I'M NOT TELLING YOU ANYTHING! Sorry, I don't want to give anything away, other than 5 words...

Ron Weasley on love potion.

Ok that's all for now. My internet and cable should be up and running on Weds, so cross you fingers.

You have the right to remain...

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 00:08:39 GMT

Stolen from miss_bowtruckle and cloverdew

If you saw me in a police car, what would you think I got arrested for? Answer, then post to your own journal if you want, and see how many crimes you get accused of.

Go Me

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:51:35 GMT

In 3 weeks I've lost *drumroll*

6.6 pounds or 3 kgms!!

WOOT!

Go me and my sexy self

Life as it stands

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:18:05 GMT

So there was a Metro Train accident yesterday, most of you knew that all ready bc my roomie was flooded with calls asking if she and I were all right. We were, but it was still a little scary when friends from across the country were asking about us. I then called my mom, who was happy that I called. I also ended up calling my grandparents and emailing my dad.

Besides, deadly train crashes, life has been fairly good lately. Looked a new apartment over the weekend and I'm thinking the owner really likes me and KP so we'll probably sign a lease sometime this week. Woot!

I'm officially off temp status at my job on July 1, so I'm going out to celebrate. If you want to come we're meeting around Metro Center, i'm thinking Matchbox.

Still writing and RPing a ton; I have some free time at work that I do it, but there are some days that I think I RP more than I work...shhh! Don't tell anyone. Also, I'm writing this in Dreamwidth and got to say I hate the font. HTML-ers, how do I fix that? Thanks!

That's it for now, but if I think of something I'll post again soon.

Tell me about yourself

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:53:17 GMT

Snagged from pasted. Copy and fill out in a comment to me. Then post it in your own journal.

1. Your middle name:
2. Age:
3. Single or taken:
4. Favorite movie:
5. Favorite song or album:
7. Dirty or clean:
8. Tattoos and/or piercings:
9. Do we know each other outside of LJ?
10. What's your philosophy on life?
11. Is the bottle half-full or half-empty?
12. Would you keep a secret from me if you thought it was in my best interest?
13. What is your favorite memory of us?
14. What is your favorite guilty pleasure?
15. Tell me one odd/interesting fact about you:
16. You can have three wishes (for yourself, so no "world peace" crap) - what are they?
17. Can we get together and make a cake?
18. Which country is your spiritual home?
19. What is your big weakness?
20. Do you think I'm a good person?
21. What was your best/favorite subject at school?
22. Describe your accent.
23. If you could change anything about me, would you?
24. What do you wear to sleep?
25. Trousers or skirts?
26. Cigarettes or alcohol?
27. If I only had one day to live, what would we do together?
28. Will you repost this so I can fill it out for you?