October 20, 2007

yesterday was a pretty good day. it started early because i had to do laundry and write my lesson plan. it was the day i gave my students back their grades and i might have been a bit harsh. they all looked physically taken aback when i said that i was disappointed with their papers. it seems that i was the only TA to delineate the students' failures, but i felt i had to. they all messed up by not being able to follow simple instructions. i started regretting putting them in their place, but i now feel it was for the best. they need to learn to follow instructions or they will fail miserably in college and beyond.

i had made a lunch date with jenna to go to Le Petit Robert, a little french bistro we have both wanted to go to. it didn't work out though. her meeting with her research group was going to run long, so we had to cancel lunch. she suggested dinner, but i had plans. instead, we decided we would do something late at night. anyways, i pretty much chilled until 5:30 pm when i had to change to go to this prospective grad student mixer.

several of my fellow TAs went as representatives of COM along with a mix of others from the various departments. it was a really chill event. free beer, wine, and other drinks and an endless supply of seafood. we introduced ourselves during a general assembly and then headed back to our drinks. i spent most of the time talking to this girl from my class and one of the other TAs. we only had 3 people come to talk to us at our table, and i did most of the talking because my tablemate was a bit clueless herself. oh well. the first girl was nice, but didn't stay long to talk. i guess she got what she wanted to know. then there was this girl who came in with her tipsy and gay father. he was doing all the talking, but most of his interrogation was a aimed at our personal lives then the school. how did you do on the GREs? why won't you tell me? how come you don't know more seafood places? you went straight to grad school ater undergrad, so then you've never worked a day in your life. why aren't you having another beer? why aren't eating anything? and so on and so forth. the guy was weird and the whole experience was just awkward and uncomfortable. the guy stayed at our table for far too long. then there was this really quiet and shy girl. i had to drag questions out of her or answer questions i thought she had on her mind. my friend and i had to lean in close to hear what she was saying. there were all these uncomfortable silences i felt obliged to break. she wouldn't say anything, but she also wouldn't leave. it was just weird.

afterwards, i had plans to go see a production of "The Music Man" with denise. we had a lot of time to kill, so we chit chatted a bit with two of the other TAs. well, this chit chat became a 45 minute conversation. we learned a lot about our fellow TAs and i realized one of them was a fellow theatre aficionado and had seen the same london productions i saw. turns out we were both in england around the same time. we decided that we should become theatre buddies. i am loving the east coast. keep meeting all these lovers of theatre. so so different from the west coast.

flash forward to the end of the play. their harold hill was brilliant. sure, he was doing a spot on imitation of robert preston but it worked. their marian was just ok. her voice was pretty enough, but she lacked power, personality, and stage presence. overall, it was really good production and i had a good time. i came back to my place and jenna came over at 11 pm. we talked and watched an old episode of So You Think You Can Dance. she's a horror fan (a rare thing) like me, so we laid back and watched "I Know What You Did Last Summer" and "Final Destination." i'm finding that jenna and i have A LOT in common, even down to simple things like a distaste for raisins and mint. she left my place around 3 am and i pretty much went to sleep soon after.

today was a long and boring day. everyone went to salem and i stayed behind to do work. with the amount of work i got done though, i might as well have just gone. ok that's sort of a lie. i was going to initially, but meghan gave me the impression that the trip might not happen so i didn't set my alarm. apparantly, the trip was on but i was never told any details. the trip did not seem to be very well organized at all. i would have kept sleeping if jenna hadn't texted me and brandon hadn't knocked on my door to see if i was going. they were all outside waiting and i was still in my pajamas. i needed to shower, shave, and all that jazz. i would not have been able to get ready in an instant, so i just declined to go. so that sucks. i'll just have to go on my own later on. nothing exciting or anything of note happened today, so i guess i'll just end this rather long post here.

cheers,

- R