busy busy busy

and i used to use that stuff when i was a kid...

it's going to be an insanely busy couple of days. i'll come back later. promise.

stepping off her soapbox...

so, sorry about yesterday's rant...

anyway, yesterday was a not-so-productive day. well, it was in the AM and then i had to go to pro-sem, which was more interesting than i thought it would be, and then i don't know where the afternoon went (actually i do - kathryn and i (and ozlem) meant to do work, but somehow ended up chatting the whole time...). after that, i had to help proctor an exam. i hate proctoring. it's so boring to try to catch people cheat, so i took the exam with them. if any of those little bastards fail, they're dumb as larry the cable guy (nope, not kidding). and one probably is. he "finished" the exam (which consisted of 90 multiple-choice questions and three short answer) in 25 minutes. fabulous. i bet i still have his paper too. and i bet it has a big fat FAIL on it.

in current news, zoe has been draggin a string around the apt this morning. apparently she successfully managed to get it off the doorknob from which it was hanging. she's so proud.

it's the sick who need a doctor...

[if you're easily offended by Christianity, please don't read this]

so in a conversation with a friend the other day, the topic of church came up. a friend of hers seems to be afraid to come to church because she's not living "right." this pissed me off in so many ways. not that the friend didn't want to go to church, but that she felt like she had to meet some standard before coming to church. i know how she feels because i also felt that way two years ago, as if i had to fix myself before finding God. before i royally screwed up, though, i was one of those who made people feel uncomfortable. but it shouldn't be that way. doesn't matt 9:12 says, "On hearing this, Jesus said, 'It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.'"? Christ's whole ministry was with the prostitutes, the tax-collectors, the unfaithful, the broken, the outcasts and the sick. and yet, the church has become this place for the "right" or the "holy." why?

shouldn't church be like a triage? shouldn't the benches be filled with the people who just aren't sure there's a Savior but want to come to see anyway? shouldn't we be reaching out to the people that society doesn't want? moreover, what makes us able to judge who's "right" and who's "holy"? i know i have more things wrong with me than right, most times. how can we sit back and judge who "belongs" in church and who doesn't? the whole point of our faith, the whole crux of why Christ came was that we can't do it ourselves. "There is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God..." (see Rom 3:10-18). we're all a mess. and church should be the last place where we feel like we have to hide that mess.

since i've run out of space on flickr...

sir neurotic-a-lot

the only remotely "surprising" thing about this is that documents were "leaked."

it's okay, apples are better for you anyway.

in other news, i have found someone who's so neurotic, insecure and paranoid that he makes me look normal. no, really. the drama that's been happening on a listserve i subscribe to has been fabulous. i don't even need to watch grey's anatomy to get quality soap opera quality action (no sex though - or at least, none that i know of...thankfully - some people are better off as ameobas). all i have to say on that matter is that we're not an inner circle and an outer circle: we're a dysfunctional family, complete with the crazy old uncle, the weird cousin who thinks he's better than you, and the prissy aunt. and some of us don't participate because we don't want the crazies from this family to get us - you, sir neurotic-a-lot, are the big crazie.

so easily amused

we had some ceiling tiles fall in our normal seminar room causing concern about asbestos, so all of our classes are being moved to other places on campus. my favorite quote from the whole issue: "this is a pain, but preferable to lung cancer."

sometimes it's better to be in the dark...

"As surgeons, there are so many things we have to know. We have to know we have what it takes. We have to know how to take care of our patients... and how to take care of each other. Eventually, we even have to figure out how to take care of ourselves. As surgeons we have to be in the know. But as human beings, sometimes it's better to stay in the dark, because in the dark there may be fear, but there's also hope." - Meredith Grey

highs and lows

i'm checking the weather for today and tomorrow and i actually said, "hey, it's going to be nice tomorrow!" the high: 48 degrees. it's happen - i've acclimated to the new england lifestyle. wonderful!

remember, remember the fifth of november

ps - if i haven't said anything to you yet, go see v for vendetta. despite the awful review from the news journal critic (seriously - like anyone outside of newark cares...), it's amazing.

are you still reading this? go! go watch it!

"working men of all countries, UNITE!"

i spent the afternoon reading the communist manifesto. the was the first time i've read it in its entirity and i have to say i was somewhat amused, but found it horribly painful. first off, marx/engels, run-on sentences and improper punctuations are a "no-no." okay, so that said, it was amusing in that it was so dramatic in places. maybe i can't relate because i'm not living in the middle of an industrial revolution or in 19th century prussia where i'm about to get a beat-down from some nice ol' conservatives. my favorite line: "let the ruling classes tremble at a communistic revolution." haha, i want that on a t-shirt. second favorite line: "the 'dangerous class' [lumpenproletariat] the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society..." damn boys! be nice.

[insert smooth transition here] ...if you're looking for some interesting reading (specifically on religion), i highly recommend this book. my aunt was kind enough to send it to me after reading my post questioning whether i could balance a career in academia and faith. i'm only in the third chapter, but i'm really eager to get through it. i think, for me, it's been really interesting because i just finished reading for a three-work module on secularization. for someone who was brought up religious, it was really discouraging. anyway, i'd recommend the book if you're trying to learn more about Christianity, especially if you believe but have doubts about whether it could really be true. okay, i'm done now.

my little brother comes to visit me tomorrow. i'm psyched!

sociological publicity

it has come to my attention that sociologists aren't good with PR, because if we were, NY Times would have picked up on this a long time ago. i learned all that in my first year of undergrad. if we had done studies on the gene mutation that caused such-and-such disease, it would have been front page news the next day. and that's not a slight at all to our sisters and brothers in other natural science disciplines. they know how to get their findings out to the general public. sociologists, not so much.

scuba steve aka my little leprechan aka sparkly hat dude

so yesterday was the epicentric holiday of the drinking calendar. (that would be st. patrick's day, for anyone not aware of this.) in keeping with tradition, i hung out with the cool cats from DRC. we started at piece of ireland where some random guy gave me beads, and then decided to prepare our stomachs for drinking at TGIFriday's. it was at this point that i realized that i was wearing guy beads that read something to the effect of "me hat is not the only big thing." haha.

after dinner, we went to bennigans where we paid a $10 cover for a crappy green mug and a crappier cover band. fabulous. after deciding that i really couldn't drink beer, we all went inside where manuel and i did a carbomb.

so eventually a guy wearing a sparkly green hat comes up and tries to order a drink. since i was sitting at the bar, i order his beer for him and then (of course) we started talking, a conversation in which he (from DE) used an irish accent. oh yes "lads and lasses" an irish accent. first off, he forgot my name within two minutes of hearing it. okay in terms of grading, that's a loss of at least five points. apparently, he does R&D for a scuba equipment company. he even showed me his scuba license. haha. poor guy. he was trying so hard. but i'm not easily impressed anymore, so it takes more than a scuba license to do it for me.

because students are dumb sometimes

(before people get up in arms about this, i will happily include myself in this category. especially since i apparently have bad grammar. go me.)

apparently i'm not the only one collecting "jewels" from students' papers

today, i had a student turn in a paper THREE WEEKS LATE. he lost 15/50 points for being late and didn't even do the assignment correctly so he lost another 8 points and 1 point for grammar. what the hell kid? seriously, if i were the prof, i wouldn't have accepted the paper. it was a complete waste of time. poor kid. he didn't even get a "F." and i didn't get any funny comments.

and completely unrelated: good for you mrs. brady. go hypnotize those crazy, washed-up, attention-starved stars out of their emotional trauma of living with other crazy, washed-up, attention-starved stars.

ramblings.

my students sadly didn't include any more funny comments. if they're going to write crap, the least they can do is make it mildly entertaining with a few dumb-ass comments. seriously. ah, well. i'm done grading now.

kick-ass shirt! (i wish brown were my color...)

in other news, sadly, chef will no longer be on southpark because it's not personal until it's about scientology. i think they should write an episode about how a cult is taking over hollywood and sucking out the brains of normally intelligent...okay, that's a bit much, at least "functional" people. c'mon isaac! they make fun of everything and everyone. sigh. now who will sing sultry songs about salty chocolate balls?

that's awesome.

i hope that God eventually shows favor on me and gives me a paper like this one. because that would just about kick ass.

and the winners are...*updated*

i have a few quotes from my students' papers that i found funny:

“The very fact that every human existed once as a fetus inside a woman’s stomach…”

“And although gambling can hurt you, it can also make you very rich, and if it’s morally wrong to become rich, I think I’d rather be dead”

“Whether a decision is made to keep abortion legalized or deem it criminal [the authors] are correct in stating that the battle will never end as long as women can still reproduce” [apparently we’re supposed to stop eventually?]

“I have homosexual friends and they are just like human beings” [i guess “just like” is close enough?]

“One argument suggests that abortion should be made illegal because religious theology posits it as murder” [thanks for writing the redundant paper on redudancy]

"If the government legalizes homosexuality and abortion a lot of citizens will be upset and protest, which is not good publicity"

"Next comes in the fact that in some states believe two men or two women having sexual relations is illegal. I for one believe that, that is a bunch of baloney"

home.

Another summer day
Is come and gone away
In Paris and Rome
But I wanna go home
Mmmmmmmm

Maybe surrounded by
A million people I
Still feel all alone
I just wanna go home
Oh I miss you, you know

And I've been keeping all the letters that I wrote to you
Each one a line or two
"I'm fine baby, how are you?"
Well I would send them but I know that it's just not enough
My words were cold and flat
And you deserve more than that

Another aerorplane
Another sunny place
I'm lucky I know
But I wanna go home
Mmmm, I've got to go home

Let me go home
I'm just too far from where you are
I wanna come home

And I feel just like I'm living someone else's life
It's like I just stepped outside
When everything was going right
And I know just why you could not
Come along with me
But this was not your dream
But you always believe in me

Another winter day has come
And gone away
And even Paris and Rome
And I wanna go home
Let me go home

And I'm surrounded by
A million people I
Still feel alone
Oh, let go home
Oh, I miss you, you know

Let me go home
I've had my run
Baby, I'm done
I gotta go home
Let me go home
It will all right
I'll be home tonight
I'm coming back home

"i love it when you talk statistics to me. it gets me excited in ways i can't explain"

i'm getting better at stats, which i feel is a huge accomplishment. i may still fail the homeworks because while i understand what's going on when sanjiv does it, i usually find a way to mess it up on my own. it's usually a really dumb error, which makes me feel a little better, but still sucks. i do, however, finally get MCAR, MAR, MNAR, and several of the options to deal with them. AND i finally think i understand homoskedasticity v. heteroskedasticity. AND i think i may have successfully calaculated a regression by hand. woo-hoo!!!

in other news, the dept. is still intact. good for us. we'll see if anything happens now. i had a lot of fun after the meeting when we were all hanging out at ABC. we're a great bunch. i didn't actually drink and have to say that people are funny to watch when you're sober. i say this knowing that i've been at the other end of the comment. yeah. moving on...

aside from that goodness that resulted, i have to admit that i'm a tad bit annoyed with the bs politics. it's stupid petty, insecure crap that's starting to get annoying and in my way. i just want to sit people down and say, "hey, the dept is not about you or you or you AND DEFINITELY NOT YOU, or you or you..." seriously, people, this is higher ed, in case you didn't notice. most of us graduated middle-school, which means there are no popularity contests, no playground fights, no purpose to all of this. get your s**t together and BE AN ADULT.

okay. i think i'm done.

simply fabulous

it's been a crazy couple days, so this is going to be short because i'm playing catch-up. things will hopefully be better after tomorrow afternoon, or at least all the sociology grad students plan to be super drunk at ABC. yay us.

the pic is from boston. my new motto is "everyone needs a friend to take ridiculously silly pictures with." lauren, you are such a person. my life would be purposeless without you. haha. in related news, i'm getting good at taking self-portraits.

that's all for tonight. tune in soon when i have time to post something great. i'm off to write four propositions on whether secularization exists or not. yay me.

living in the middle

so i went to a church group last night. it was for 20-somethings and i had a good time, save the fact that i was the only single and NON-PREGNANT female there. oh yes, they were all married 20-somethings with buns in the ovens. (no worries - i didn't drink the water, just in case) i asked if there were going to be more singles involved and of course they thought that i wanted to use it as match.com, which i don't. it's just been my experience that married couples have different priorities than singletons.

anyway, i had an uncomfortable feeling last night after i left the 20-something group. there's really no place for me as a Christian academic. as an acedmic i'm supposed to be above needing religion, and to think that Christianity is a particularly hideous version (and for some obvious reasons, some with which i'd agree). as a Christian, i'm supposed to think that academic are too lofty, too rational, and that academic thought is completely inapplicable to my faith, when in fact i see a lot of times when it is not. i am the outcast of both communities. i feel so alienated. to say that i believe in Christ in academia would get me laughed at, and to say i believe in intellectual achievement in Christianity will get me a lecture. is there a way to make both religion, or even having a faith in God and Christ, work with being an intellectual? how can i accomplish this? can i make a middle-ground work or am i doomed to be the free-floating Christian academic who is silent in both areas?

part of the issue is that i'm still trying to navigate my faith. since the "incident" happened almost two years ago, i've had thoughts of why i should be rational and above needing religion. and i know, as a sociologist, that we tend to the faith of our parents, but i've come to the conclusion that i want to be Christian, that it's my choice and that i like what faith brings to my life. but how do i do this? as someone who's single and pursuing a career as the central focus of her life, how do i make this whole thing work? i want to give up because i'm not sure i can...