(marginalia vitae)
one of those moments in a teacher’s life. those moments. when the truth is spoken by the lips of the infants. terrible truth, too. from a student’s paper, analysing translation: He (Newmark, 1988) has categorized cultural words in five groups; words related to: Ecology; Material culture (food, clothes, transport, etc.) Social culture (work and leisure); Organisations, […]
Read More what students writethe past three weeks or so have not been the best part of my life by far, and that is, in itself, an understatement. but then again, aided by fried meat (with onions), some decent drink and a friend who knows little of the lizard world, i came to a solution. yes, the komodo dragon. […]
Read More why komodo dragon existsunder mountains of test papers, i make a tiny little cave for unexpected survival in a world full of too many words and too many sorrows
Read More buriedthe university is a very many-sided and complex institution. it reminds of a jungle with plenty of species and life-forms that interact in intricate patterns. so i tried to write some of them down here. just in case. (yes, this week has been quite hectic and totally exhausting, and i need some nonsense to cheer […]
Read More the invisible life of the academic junglethe lindens are on blossom. the fragrance spells ‘summer’ in capslock all over the city. the greater jasmine add their creamy lightness to the tinge of rose in the air. this morning the tomtit brought his brood to my window. i have signed the last of papers with student marks. on the whole this academic […]
Read More summer term. technology. fragrances.thus there is this dream: there are course descriptions like little boats floating in the air. and then there comes a leaviathan, a white whale (like moby dick in the film), and jumps, and eats them. and i wake up in horror. ——————— parallel to the course description revision, i read. currently – rereading the […]
Read More academic nightmaresso, i have finished grading the exam in, what a student accidentally called in a private email to me, hystery of english. it is rather a hilarious subject, as everyone might guess, full of surprises for sure. today i was looking through the result analysis, and stumbled upon the simple question “who compiled the Oxford […]
Read More one of those things, apparentlythe snark was a boojum, of course.
Read More untitledso. watching Kuroshitsuji – re-watching it actually, a beautiful story. and this came to my mind (i did check with google scholar) – how about checking out representations of victorian england in anime, or comparing Kuroshitsuji to the Remains of the day. might make an interesting research paper. for those that understand anime, that is.
Read More curiouslyi have almost finished grading the history of english homework (173 students, 6 pages each)…the gulls (see previous post) do not talk to me any more. they are perplexedly silent, even at night. i have no wings, and, probably, no brain left to imagine any. hence the quote of the day – from one of […]
Read More quote of the daythe gulls are talking to me again – in the morning, and in the stillness of night. the gulls talk to me again through the darkness. they talk so much, they talk inside, they make my essence flow through yours, they make us both go into faraway dreams. the gulls are talking to me again, […]
Read More that’s ityesterday i read … how many? … too many papers. the month of may has begun, and the crop of raw papers is coming home to be winnowed and whetted into some shape. so i fell asleep on my keyboard in the middle of a paper. i woke up four-o-clock-ish. on the keyboard, or almost. […]
Read More inappropriately onlinethere is a reason why the ancient bards died out. it was the training, according to one of my students. Bardic training formed the core of druidic teaching. The future bards had to learn raw poems, at least three hundred and fifty stories and study poetic form and grammar. (from an unpublished, and unpublishable BA paper […]
Read More quote of the dayit seems, i have the coolest research group in the whole of the third year (and i can say this also about the ba paper writing people too). everyone an individual with unique properties, creative and thinking out of the box. they are also friendly and kindly listen to all the nonsense i try to tell […]
Read More a reason for joynot much to say. him. Posted by Wordmobi
Read More this one(pēc divām bezjēdzīgām stundām online konferencē, sānu saruna skype) /me: man sāp galva /me: un gribas nogalināt /me: nezinu ko vilks: derētu tagad kāda karpa pie rokas vilks: zaurs varētu viņu nogalināt vilks: un tad uzcept un apēst vilks: un būtu laimīgāks
Read More in search for a fish as a scapegoat and victim, and failing dismallybreakfast: oat porridge and plenty of painkillers. communication to my joints: ready or not, here we go. the crows sit in the maples outside my window like so many carrion birds. and i have to talk of things i do not believe in. again. thank god, there are no colloseums in the virtual space, no […]
Read More nē mæg werig mōd wyrde wiðstondan*no, i do not understand. i will write a more complete analysis maybe later. or not at all, because it does not matter. the annual crisis of imagination is at its fullest. on the other hand, if people think they can go on being plain stupid, i will not hinder them.
Read More beset by nightmaresas usual, the ingenuity of students is surprising. some bits and pieces from the text analysis exam essays.
Read More от забора до обеда* – as the joke goeshad one of those talks… where one can only be amazed at how there is nothing but appearances, where demanding equals cruel and love is perceived by having no requirements. or so it seemed. and the question- in the talk – ‘ you must understand that we have not read all those books’, it really got […]
Read More i am that i am, no more, no lessyesterday, i had this encounter (wrote it down because it was so..miserable) in the corridor, on my way to staffroom. i still have no idea about the name of the student, thus dramatis personae are these: teacher – yours truly; student: that anonymous ungrammatical life-form. In the corridor. (an encounter with disastrous results) Student (with […]
Read More miseryfrom a student’s paper “Peculiarly in the fairy tale production of goods is rather small and it is met rarely. Thus, agriculture plays a minimal role in the fairy tale. In contrast to agriculture hunting is reflected more often in this genre of folklore. For example, plough and sow are usually met in the beginning […]
Read More i must be going nuts.. At work people are pressured, sometimes even annoyed by their colleagues and/or boss to the point when they would like to throw things at them or strangle them, but when they come home, they do not need to pass on their negations to their family because they can simply play a game to release […]
Read More a perfect waybeloved university is the glitchiest place in the universe. the top dogs dont do what they supposed, and the rest are thereby put in tight corners. i am tired of re-planning the lecture schedules for the fifth time in a run, just because some freak upstairs (like the dean) has forgotten a blasted course or […]
Read More madness at work