Month: October 2011

Halloween Costumes

~ Clarissa ~ 3 Comments

We are invited to a Halloween party today. N decided to dress as a woman because this allows him to wear my long blue skirt and my pink hat that he adores. And I, of course, had to dress like a man.

Here is N in his costume. Cool, eh? These are also the cheapest costumes ever because we are wearing each other clothes. Now I just have to figure out how to prevent the tie from going into food and drink.

What I’m noticing is that he looks so much prettier than I do. Male clothes are kind of boring. There is an obvious gender imbalance here.

Two Sides of Autism

~ Clarissa ~ 5 Comments

Today, I had to record an audio of a lecture for my students. For ten minutes, I struggled with the microphone because I had no idea how to put it on. I used a mirror, I turned it every which way, I stared at it, trying to understand how it worked. Nothing helped. Finally, I had to ask N. to come and put the earphone with the mike on me.

Here is the microphone I struggled with

N. found my struggle with the mike impossible to understand. He thought I was kidding when I said I couldn’t figure out how it worked. For me, however it was truly a daunting task. Now that I have taken it off, I still have absolutely no idea how to put it back on.

However, I then managed to record my lecture from beginning to end, using no notes or memory aides, never stopping or pausing (except where the context required it, of course). I wanted it to be about 30 minutes long and it ended up being 33 minutes long, so no editing will be needed. It came out exactly as I wanted, and the effort that went into it was minimal.

This is how autism works, people. A task that involves a minimal degree of manual dexterity and a basic understanding of left and right is impossible for me to carry out. At the same time, a much more complex intellectual task is effortless.

Domestic Violence Awareness Month Blog Carnival

~ Clarissa ~ Leave a comment

Tori at Anytime Yoga has organized a blog carnival dedicated to promoting awareness of domestic violence. Clarissa’s Blog is participating in this blog carnival.

Visit the Domestic Violence Awareness Month Blog Carnival here.

 

Babies, Bathtubs, and Essay Submissions

~ Clarissa ~ 10 Comments

Every new generation of young parents in my country had to participate in the ideological battle of whether to place a napkin in the bathtub while bathing the baby.

“Why do we need to do that?” new Moms and Dads moaned. “It’s messy, it’s annoying, and it makes absolutely no sense at all.”

“You have to do that!” Grandmas and Great-Grandmas responded. “I always did it, and so did my mother, and her mother. Everybody places a napkin at the bottom of the tub when bathing a baby, so you should do, too.”

The reason behind the napkin tradition is actually very simple. In the XIXth century, children in the country-side were bathed in wooden bathtubs. Those tubs were of low quality, and babies ran the risk of getting splinters into their backsides if no napkin was placed at the bottom of the tub. When the tubs made of metal and later of plastic appeared, people still retained the old tradition, even though it had no practical value any more.

I’ve had my own version of the bathtub fallacy. I’ve never allowed my students to submit their essays by email. I persecuted them with repetitive enjoinders never ever to submit anything to me by email. These enjoinders were delivered in a voice that made email submissions sound like some sort of a crime against humanity.

And you know why I did it? Because as an undergrad and then a grad student I had professors who flatly refused to accept email submissions. So I just imitated them unthinkingly without stopping to consider why I was doing it.

Then, I read on Jonathan’s blog that he accepts email submissions of student essays. Jonathan is an important role model for me, so I decided to conduct an experiment that would allow me to figure out whether I genuinely preferred paper submissions to email ones.

This week, students in both of my courses submitted their essays by email. And you know what? I loved it. This cut the weary work of essay grading at least in half. I can write very long comments, which is important to me because I work hard to improve the way my students write. I didn’t have to try to fit my comments on the small paper margins any more. Also, I think students are now more likely to read my comments because they don’t need to decipher my imperfect handwriting. And, of course, I type faster than I write.

Finally, I have been able to realize that there is no actual need for the napkin in this metaphorical bathtub. Thank you, Jonathan!

A Short Illustrated History of Clarissa’s Blog, Part IV

~ Clarissa ~ 4 Comments

Hilarious conversations with an OB-GYN.

Why the commenters on my blog are much much much better than the commenters many other bloggers get.

Students exhibit gender bias while doing a grammar exercise.

Whining as a way of life for academics.

And this is a humorous post on the hypocrisy of the liberal treatment of Israel.

On my search for intelligent conservatives. Of course, now that my blog is popular, I’ve had some intelligent conservatives come over here and comment of their own free will. At that stage, however, I was searching for them desperately and not finding them.

And this is when I first discovered the insane Babygate conspiracy theorists who investigate Sarah Palin’s reproductive processes. Some of the conspiracy theorists joined the discussion and left some pretty wackazoo comments.

Here I reminisce about my very first day as a student at a North American university and make fun of the silly preconceived notions I had brought with me from Ukraine.

This is a very good post about the reasons why people enjoy to engage in conjuring doom-and-gloom scenarios that, sadly, went unnoticed at the time it was written.

As a hopeless old fogey, I was shocked to see what my students had to say about money. Bible Belt, huh? You don’t say.

Why do people try so hard to get me to meet Ukrainians?

After I wrote this highly personal and extremely cathartic post, I was immediately ridiculed by some idiot for writing “confessional tear-jerking crap.” Still, I enjoyed the experience and continued writing in a more personal way after that.

P.S. Everybody who feels like leaving comments on the old threads is welcome to do so.

Teaching the Art of Email Writing

~ Clarissa ~ 18 Comments

I hate babying my students or being preachy with them. I also don’t want to come off as condescending. However, I feel that there is an urgent need for me to teach the so-called computer generation how to write an email. I received about a dozen emails in the past three weeks that went as follows:

i need to meet when can i come by your office

And this was the extent of the email. No greeting, no signature. Except one student who signed the email with “XOXO.” Which was not extremely helpful in allowing me to deduce who was writing to me.  No punctuation either.

So this is what I’m planning to say:

Dear students! It is a good idea to begin an email with greeting a person you are writing to. “Hi” is better than no greeting at all. “Hi professor” is even better than that. And “Hi Professor Clarissa” is the best version of all because it demonstrates that you took the trouble of learning the name of the person you are addressing.

Then, it’s a good idea to explain who you are. Example, “I’m your student in the course ABC.” I usually get over a hundred work-related emails per day, and it’s hard for me to place a person immediately.

After that, you say what you need to say and then – and this is very important – sign the email. With your first and last name. 

I can’t even remember the last time I got this kind of an email from a student.

I feel like a nursery teacher right now.

Curiosity

~ Clarissa ~ 6 Comments

Seventy-two people went to search this blog for the picture of the boxes in my office? In the 3 hours since the post mentioning them was published, that’s a lot. Wow. Some folks are curious.

Here it is, since everybody is so interested. It’s a boring picture, though, so don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Is this a hint that I should start adding more visual content to my blog?

The Hypocrisy of Domestic Violence

~ Clarissa ~ 22 Comments

Here is an article on an instance of domestic violence:

Dawn Montesdeoca, 50, of  Chicago, used an usually sweet weapon when she assaulted her husband, Arturo Montesdeoca, 56, with cupcakes during an argument that got progressively sticky and ended with a charge of domestic battery.

The fight began as a verbal disagreement around 7:30 p.m. Saturday but soon escalated to a physical altercation. “The woman struck the husband about the head with her hands and then commenced to hit him with cupcakes,”  the Chicago Police Department said in a statement.

When police arrived, they found Arturo Monesdeoca with icing smeared on his head and clothes. Police arrested his wife for misdemeanor domestic battery. . . Arturo Montesdeoca reportedly told police that his wife had been verbally aggressive, and that he feared for his safety when he called police.

And here is a reaction to it:

This wife got in an argument with her husband. She began striking him, and then the argument deteriorated. She began pelting him with cupcakes! He called the cops on her. She has been released on $10,000 bond. Just how much damage can a battery of cupcakes do? I think she needs to be hospitalized and checked out for emotional illness, not arrested for assault. What a crazy article.

If you Google the story, you will find dozens of articles where the perpetrator is referred to as “cupcake-tossing wife.” Not “beating-a-person-on-the-head wife”, mind you. Not “verbally abusive wife.” Cupcake-tossing. Because that’s what makes the story interesting: cupcakes.  And arresting a person who beats a human being over the head? Oh, that’s just crazy.

I really don’t want this post to turn into “If the victim were a woman, the reaction would have been different.” No, it wouldn’t. No matter who the victim is, people who are battered at home are routinely dismissed. Domestic violence is an issue people love to dismiss. By ridiculing victims of domestic abuse we create an emotional distance from them. It is as if we said to ourselves, “This is not something that could happen to me. I’m nothing like these crazy, cupcake-hurling folks.”

While we are hiding from the horrible realities of domestic violence behind these inventive strategies, the true causes of it and the very real damage it creates remain unaddressed.

Is the World Conspiring to Annoy Me?

~ Clarissa ~ 12 Comments

A student just regaled me with a statement that the US was “founded under Christian ideals.”

As much as I hate plagiarism, I’d just rather they plagiarized than offer something like this to me.

A colleague has nicknamed me “the eternal optimist.” Still, even an optimist like myself can’t help but feel that the planet is doomed when a college professor can’t avoid being exposed to this kind of statements as she sits quietly and inoffensively in her empty office.

I want my Ivory Tower!

Oh, Stuff, Where Art Thou?

~ Clarissa ~ 3 Comments

So even though we have moved back into our offices a while ago, my stuff still hasn’t been returned to me. And now the movers are saying they did return it and if it isn’t there, they have no idea what happened to it.

The good news is that I had brought all of my tenure-related paperwork back home with me. The bad news is that the boxes that disappeared contained all of my textbooks, my teaching materials that I have developed in the course of the last 10 years (there are such cool board games that I created among those materials), my dictionaries, my DVD collection, my books. All of this was bought with my own money.

The movers are suggesting that it’s all my fault because I supposedly didn’t put my name and office number on the boxes. What they don’t yet know (but will find out the moment I get to work) is that I took a picture of the boxes for my blog and it shows very clearly that the boxes did have all the necessary information written on them in huge bright letters.

This is annoying, people.