Found on the interwebs

2013-04-14T00:55:48Z

Teaching Freshman Composition in GIF form.

All of them are accurate, but I have to say the two for "Introducing myself to the class during my first semester of teaching" and "Introducing myself to the class during my second semester of teaching" (and particularly the difference between them) are spot on. There was notably less oversharing in my second semester of comp, and I was glad of it.

*

In other news, yay for skating! I got up to a pretty good clip, dodged many kid!obstacles,* and did not fall once during today's public skate session! I...have not quite taught myself front crossovers, since I never actually crossed my right foot over my left (more like put it directly in front of the left), but I at least got the feeling of what I need to be doing. I'll get there one day.

I hope I'll learn at my lessons how to stroke without jamming my toepick into the ice every time I push off. I mean, I'm pushing off mostly with an inside edge, it's just that I don't manage to lift the skate up in time to avoid the first spike of the pick digging into the ice. I'm going to bet this is called "toe pushing," which I know is a bad thing you're not supposed to do. I just need to figure out how not to do it.

I also need to figure out how to keep the laces from loosening around my ankles. I had to stop and tighten them three times over an hour and a half just to keep the boot properly supporting my ankle. kyriacarlisle, is there some trick to it? Well, besides "get something better than rental skates," but that's not an option as of yet... ;)

The feeling of skating is even more addictive than I remember it being. There's something about the speed and the smoothness that makes you want to keep going forever. By the end of the session, my right ankle was in agony, but I kept telling myself, "One more time around, then I'll quit. Well, maybe one more..."

* Apparently the tiny kids now get to use walkers instead of flailing and/or hugging the boards like we did in my youth. Talk about your traffic hazards.

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Awesome pen

2010-09-23T01:01:29Z

Tried watching Undercovers tonight. Really liked the married couple characters, but spies and I just don't get along. Con men are even more boring, but spies are definitely up there. Still, the Blooms were cute. Maybe there will be good short fanfic.

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Awesome gadget: Livescribe. I consider myself an excellent notetaker, but that would've been fantastic in some of my history classes.

However, this bright idea from the inventor: "[students could] receive a graded paper e-mailed back with handwritten and spoken feedback from the teacher"? Hahahaha. That would've been a terrible idea for me, anyway. My written feedback was courteous, helpful, and, well, teacherly. Any part of my running internal commentary on a paper that emerged from my mouth in the silence of my apartment or, worse, in the company of other TAs in our "office" was most definitely none of these things.

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To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive

Found on the interwebs

Awesome pen