(no subject)

This program is all-or-nothing, as the director implied to me today. In the "if you can't handle it, maybe you shouldn't" sort of way. And this after turning one single assignment in late. She conveyed this in a very loving and caring manner, and obviously has my best intentions in mind, but the transition to being treated as a "professional" is still quite a startling one.

In other news, Mom came home tonight, only to leave for some trip thingie tomorrow. Dad spent all day today with the shed, and now it's looking very good indeed. Hope he doesn't die from exhaustion or something. He is sometimes a very silly old goat, and I love him dearly.

This coming weekend will be quite intense, since we'll have two guests around. Jeremy will be here to look at Santa Cruz housing, and some random friend of my uncle's will be here to tour the Bay Area. Then on the 15th, my other uncle is supposedly coming, but perhaps not. And then my cousin is coming over from China! It is totally exciting.

My mom tells me not to drive myself crazy with work, and that I should willfully slack off and get some Bs in the non-important classes. On the other hand, I get called in for being sick 1 day and so turning that day's work in late. Ah well, such is the life of growing up.

I leave you with a thought: how many times a year did your high school teacher get a sub?

Also, ants can be kinda annoying.

I miss academic writing

I miss constructing arguments, I miss the a-ha! moments, I miss the excitement of finding your point provable, the despair of losing it again, and the joy of making everything fit, one by one. Rigor!

Education does not seem to be a discipline. Everything's hypenated. There's education-anthropologists, education-linguists, education-psychologists, education-historians. Each academic discipline has its own immutable traits. You read a paper and you can say "this is a history paper" or "this is a political science paper". History papers is about periodization, about using primary sources to challenge historiography. There is always a progression, and multiple causes. But what seems to make a paper an education paper is that it has the words "education", "teacher" or "child" in it. Race in schools (sociology), Critical thinking in schools (psychology), cultural interaction in schools (anthropology), group vs. individual in schools (philosophy).... where is the education in schools?