Random news

Today I was happy as I walked to school in the sunshine and above freezing weather. My pleasant mood continued in art class because of a lovely painting by some Italian Futurist whose name I can't remember. The painting was of a dog on a leash. It pressed on (the mood, not the dog) when I treated myself to a Teriyaki Experience in the student centre. And then it crashed fast and hard when I sat through four hours of statistics. Something to do with logits and probits for categorical response, or was it explanatory, variables? To top it all off there was a guest lecturer in psychology. Ugh, guest lecturers. What's the point.

I have three more essays sitting in front of me to be graded. Yes, I know I was supposed to finish yesterday but I got sidetracked. By what? I forget. I'm a really bad marker. Despite the posts of shockingly bad student work, the essays have been quite good on a whole. As I enter each new grade into my Excel spreadsheet I wince at the ever-climbing average. It's sitting at 74.08% right now. Kind of high for a first year sociology class, so the need to lower the average has been very likely influencing my grades in the last quarter of the pile. I was talking to another TA who said she hardly gave any A's or C's. I gave out lots of A's and lots of C's. And lots of B's. So hopefully our averages end up being around the same. Ah well, at least my students will be pleased.

I have also found myself lost and confused with my own writing after reading all these papers. I can't remember then from than or who's from whose anymore. I guess what they say is right; that reading improves your own writing. I better pick up the book I started back in February that is currently buried somewhere under some assorted pile of things.

Tim called me from CCLCS to schedule an interview for the TESL program that I want to take. It will be next Thursday at 11:00am. I wonder what kind of interview this will be. Probably they just want to check me out to see if I'm responsible and actually an English speaker. I wrote my application letter a little haphazardly, thinking that this organization will probably accept anyone who's willing to pay their tuition fees. My closing line went like this: Please accept this application and ensure that my future students get the best out of their future teacher. Aggressive, I know, but I figured what the heck. We'll see how the interview goes.

Blake, who recently departed for Korea (and is LOVING it) said that a TESL certification won't make any difference and that I will be teaching out of a textbook anyway so there's no need. Does anyone else have input on this? I think I'll take it anyway just for some confidence and something to do in May, but I would have thought it would be beneficial.

Back to marking. Can't wait to come out of hibernation.