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Today was my first day out since Sunday and it felt a little weird, so of course I took a cab to school even though it's only about 8 blocks away. I caught the flu over the past weekend and have been in bed with fevers, body aches and a hacking cough for the past three days. The worse part is that I don't cease to have a conscience, even when I’m sick. So I the whole time I was in bed and unable to open my eyed to even watch TV, all I kept thinking was " I have so much homework to do, and my thesis isn't finished yet"

I knew this was going to happen sooner or later, I was just hoping it would happen after finals. I have been running on high stress, no sleep and too much caffeine for the past two months. My doctor warned me that the next time I got sick it was going to be serious. He recommended that I slowed down and "took it easy.” But this just seemed impossible to me on my last term of grad school and my tenure year.

My body, however, had other plans for me. It decided to take a well-deserved 5 day vacation. I endure the flu, and slept more in five days than I have in the past four months put together. I went back to school today and realized that the work that I have to turn in isn’t as much I thought. I am almost done with the second draft of my thesis and feel confident I will be able to turn it in on time.

The next four weeks are going to be intense, but I'll try to remember to take breaks here and there.

MDL

Simple English

Note: this post was originally written to be turned in as a journal response for one of my classes. It may not be written in "simple english" :-)

I recently came across a “Simple English” link in Wikipedia listed as a seprate language. I assumed it meant Basic English, a language created by linguist Charles Kay Ogden, which like Ido and Esperanto, promised to unify the world in one common language. Well, Wikipedia’s Simple English is not a constructed language, it’s just simpler English. The idea behind this, is to make articles more accesible to ELL’s (English Language Learners) and to children. Sounds fair enough, right? Well, it isn’t. I find that by reading the Simple English version of an article, the reader gets an over-generalized version of it. Being an ELL does not equate having no prior knowledge or ability to learn new terms or make connections. As a former ESL student, I owe my English proficiency to the challenging text I was exposed to during the first few years. Having literature above my proficiency level pushed me to investigate more, look words up, make connections and ask more proficient readers for clarification. By “translating” articles into Simple English, Wikipedia is only perpetuating ignorance and limited knowledge.

Wikipedia also claims that another target audience for this project is children. Well, as a teacher, I don’t recommend Wikipedia as a tool for research for my students because of it’s ever-changing nature. I often do preliminary research in it as a way to link to the primary sources, of course always verifying their validity. If I give assignments that require my students to do internet research, I provide them with child-friendly links with fully published articles such as FirstGov for Kids or the ThinkQuest Library. NOT wikipedia.

Chickflicks and Easter

I just got home. As I type this I’m still in shock. Well not so much in shock as I am mad at myself for watching Premonition. Now, I know what you’re thinking chick flick=depressing and cheesy. Normally I would agree, but this was a promising chick flick. Well, I’ll spare you the pointless torture that was….all you need to know is that this is kind of movie that you should never attempt to see. Not even on a rainy Sunday and there’s nothing else to watch on TV. Watch public access instead… and if for any reason you ignore my warning and watch it, don’t say I didn’t warn you. after seeing this train wreck of a movie, all I wanted to do was take a nap and hope that when I woke up I would realize that it was all a premonition. a premotition about seeing a really bad movie. only in my premotition i would get to stop it from happening.

Well, that being said, I need to address the issue of Easter. I mean, I know I’ve been an oveja descarriada for some time now, but what is the connection between the death and resurrection of Jesus, bunnies and eggs painted in pastel colors? Ummmm…. For starters Bunnies don’t lay eggs (especially not colored ones) and from what I remember, there are no references in the bible to bunnies or eggs with Jesus. I also don’t understand the hat obsession mothers of little girls seem to have during this time. I’m pretty sure this is a cultural thing or a consumerism thing. Nevertheless, I don’t know why this didn’t bug me this much in the past 15 Easters I’ve witnessed living in New York. Semana Santa (Holy Week), as I remember it, was a time of reflection and fear. We weren’t allowed to raise our voices or even go to the beach during this time, especially on “Good Friday” (this brings another question to mind, why is it GOOD Friday? What’s good about it? Wasn’t this when Jesus was killed?) …. I’m not saying that I prefer the religious version but somehow it made more sense than bunnies and eggs and horrible pastels.

Sorry if I have offended anyone, I’m just trying to make sense of the season.

MDL