7 posts tagged “sewanee”
That being said, it's delightful to have someone who knows what they're doing take your picture.
The photo to the left was taken by my editor, Buck, as part of a promotional packet for the admissions department, an attempt to highlight the Domain's extensive hiking trails and miscellaneous outdoors-ery. We hiked from Proctor's Hall to Morgan's Steep, and then about half a mile towards Bridal Veil.
We took about thirty pictures, most of which will probably never see any sort of publication, besides what little necromantic power I can bring into the equation. There are about a dozen of my favorites on my brand new (and likely to be seldom-used) Flickr account.
Quite frankly, Flickr's just an easy way to organize photos quickly and effectively -- it's communal aspects don't particularly appeal to me. Photobucket, while a good place to store individual images, is quite cumbersome with regards to albums or sets of related photos, hence my defection, at least for today.
[Editor's note: One of the best things about blogging is that it lets me and my like-minded narcissicists become the kings and queens of our respective e-domains. Which means that I get to make the rules. And no one can call me vain for posting pictures of myself. As pro-consul of this here blog, I deem that all who think me vain just GTFO right now.
There. That was fun.]
Subject: [girl] gets smoked by professor
From: [redacted]
Date: Mon, March 3, 2008 10:22 pm
To: [redacted]
Cc: [redacted]
[girl]'s been disrupting her Psych class with [professor]. She and
[professor] have been having it out over email and [her] stupid ass has
replied all to the entire class and so this is getting sent out to pretty
much every frat.
On Feb 21, 2008, at 11:22 PM, [girl] wrote:
Hi [professor] - Thank you for this email because I was overly
discouraged/ frustrated after lab today. I have been working hard all
semester to participate as best I can and fully engage myself. I am
extremely interested in psychology, and do my best to stay on topic
butsometimes it is HARD over such a long class period. It is really
hard as astudent to try to add meaningful commentary and hear the response
"that is completely irrelevant" from a professor. I thought that in psych,
nothing is irrelevant, there are always confounds to experiments that
should be discussed.I am a curious learner, I like asking questions and
bringing in new ideas - I understand that you are interested in your own agenda
as a teacher, that's your duty, but isn't it also your duty to give the
students who desire it active time to participate and feel
appreciated?After today, I have no desire to participate in class anymore
because of how you made me feel. However, thank you for your apology, its greatly
appreciated.[girl]
PS I truly was not talking at the end of class - a lot of the rest
of the class was and that sound builded up. I know when to be quiet, pay
attention, and listen.
And the response:
Hi, [girl],
your email deserves another response from me. You're right in
general that the instructor should give students who desire it active
time to participate and feel appreciated, but apparently it's time
for at least one instructor to be a little more brutally honest with
you since you can't seem to take a hint. It's also the instructor's
obligation to keep the class on track and keep any one student from
dominating the conversation/discussion, ESPECIALLY when that student
continues to disrupt discussion by being off-topic and not
understanding the point of the discussion.(1) You (and your group) were definitely a continuing distraction and
annoyance througout most of the class yesterday and it was really
ticking me off. It made it difficult at times for the entire class to
hear and attend to the presentations of other groups. Perhaps at the
particular time I addressed your group, you weren't talking. I don't
know. But it is a fact that your group was disruptive during most of
the class's attempt to discuss other groups' projects, and then when
you were paying attention to others' presentations your contributions
were largely off-topic.(2) you truly don't seem to understand the difference between simply
wanting to contribute noise/talk instead of contributing something
productive and on-task. It seems to me as an instructor and to the
rest of the class in general that despite your enthusiasm for
participating, your contributions are mostly off-topic and
distracting, as if you talk before thinking, or as if you're really
not understanding what's going on. Yesterday was an example of this.
I repeatedly tried to tell the class as a whole, and you in
particular, that your personal experience/intuition about the
possible results of a study and the underlying explanations for those
results was not the topic or point of the discussion. After several
weeks of trying to politely listen to your input then having to
return the conversation/discussion back to real point, I think it was
about time someone did indeed shut you down a bit.If you really think that "in psychology, nothing is irrelevant," then
you need to do something else with your time. If you really think
that you "know when to be quiet, pay attention, and listen," you are
sadly mistaken and I can't imagine I'm the only instructor or fellow
class student that thinks this. There's a real and important
difference between constructive engagement and participation in class
and simply talking about what ever tangential information pops into
your head. Clearly I took the wrong tone in my previous email. I was
hoping that by taking an apologetic approach it would lead to a
productive conversation (with give and take) about your behavior in
class. Instead you seem to think that you're not at fault at all, and
I find that just another bizarre example of how clueless you can be.
I withdraw that previous apology -- it was not warranted nor deserved
-- and simply ask that if you continue to attend lab, do not continue
disrupt class and attempt to dominate the discussions.[redacted]
Visiting Asst. Prof,
Dept of Psychology & Dept of Math & Computer Science
[redacted]
(###) ###-####
Overheard, on the subject of accidental sodomy:
"It seriously took me, like, 10 or 15 seconds to open the door, which is an eternity when you think someone's about to shit in your car."
Here's a another Halo 3 article I just wrote at 3 in the morning for one of the longest-running college newspapers in the country, the Sewanee Purple. The assignment was to be "over the top" and "funny" which translates into "blatantly rip-off The Onion." My mom was right -- I am a no-talent hack!
Delicious bags of tea: Halo 3 bursts the Sewanee Bubble
Joseph Leray
Associate EditorThose of you with girlfriends may not know this, but Halo 3, the testerone-fueled love child of Microsoft Game Studios and its subsidiary, Bungie Studios, came out last week. It was kind of a big deal.
How big of a deal, you ask? Well, it grossed $170 million within the first 24 hours of its release. I don’t know much about math, but I do know that 170 million is way higher than I can count, even if use my fingers and toes.
Furthermore, the release of Halo 3 caused massive damage at the offices of competitor Sony Computer Entertainment: Chairman Kaz Hirai spontaneously combusted and President Jack Tretton chewed his legs off. Both were immediately stricken with impotency.
But the throngs of fuzzy-knuckled Halotards™ already knew this. More interestingly, though, is just how far Halo fever has spread, and the resulting social implications.
Dr. Celeste Ray, chair of the Anthrolpology department weighs in: “The social structures and customs that have been built up by Halo 3 are really interesting. Halo “culture” seems to consist mostly of energy drinks, nicotine, and the ability to be horribly rude behind an internet identity. Homophobia and racism abound.”.
Another defining aspect of the Haloverse™ is the act of “teabagging” the still-warm, bullet-ridden corpses of one’s opponents as a means of humiliation. Teabagging someone involves squatting over their dead body and bouncing up and down as fast as possible, like the first, tiny delirium tremors of a four-month-old fetal alcohol victim.
“It is, essentially, the mortification of Hector by Achilles for geeked-out white kids, a way to braggadociously compensate for daddy issues ” says Ray. “I think there may be lewder connotations, but the jury’s still out.”
Nevertheless, Vice-Chancellor Joel Cunningham has entered the fray. “I’ve been playing Halo for years,” says Cunningham. “Up until the release of Halo 3, I used to hold regular Halo 2 tourneys. It was a great way to meet people. I’ve been teabagging Sewanee students for years.”
The irrational dedication routinely displayed by fans of the series is another interesting phenomenon, explains Ray. “You wouldn’t believe how upset Joel got when he found out that Master Chief dies at the end. Geez, you would’ve thought that Bill Gates personally came over and killed his pets or something.”
Vice-Chancellor Cunningham has won a total of six Halos during his long, illustrious career. He can be found winning the Halos on Xbox Live under the alias “Roncore.”
I doubt I'm going to sleep any time soon, a pattern that I think will perpetuate itself for the rest of the semester. I love my life, but I hate this night.
This might be the most thought-provoking question anyone has ever asked me:
If you had to give up either oral sex or cheese, for the rest of your life, which would you pick?
Holy shit. I have to choose between oral sex and cheese?! That's pretty diabolical.
The answer, however, is quite clear. I would give up oral sex in a heartbeat if it meant I could continue eating delectable cheese. With all due respect to fellatio and cunnilingus (and, to a lesser extent, analingus), there are *ahem* alternative means to similar ends.
There is no replacing cheese. Ever.
Personally, I would like to find a way to combine the two, a la Ken Kesey, who, according to Paul Krassner's Pot Stories for the Soul, once performed cunnilingus while eating with the aid of a Hershey Bar. I don't know how that works, but my interest is piqued.
Overheard at Purple Haze:
"I would just whip my dick out and piss all over those people in there."
I remember being in Paris, looking over the Seine, drinking 1664 with my dad and feeling absolutely content. I was content to be in France, content to be home soon, content with my adventures in London, and looking forward to PAX with the jittery stomach of school boy waiting in the hall to pass a hastily-scrawled note to his would-be girlfriend.
I was even looking forward to coming back to school.
Intellectually, I know that I don't adjust to change well. I know that the first few weeks will be kind of difficult, as I settle back into school, surrounded by all the stupidity and vapid whores that money can buy. I also know that, despite the fact that the people who made my first two semesters amazing are scattered throughout western Europe and my one true friend from home is 8 hours away, I will eventually make new friends and won't be quite so lonely. At the very least, I'll busy enough to not need them.
It my brain, in my mind, in my frontal lobe, cerebellum, medulla oblongata, cortex -- I know these things to be self-evident and true.
But goddamn if it wasn't hard to pack up and leave my house this morning. In the midst of keeping a stiff upper-lip, my Mom called me, crying. Which, y'know, helped a lot.
In other news, highlights from the 4-hour trip through the mid-southern countryside include --
- A box of ties flying out of the back of the Green Goblin and exploding all over the street. Thankfully, the street was deserted, and I was able to recuperate most of them. Except that silver one. But Jessie gave it to me, and she kind of sucks now. I wasn't distraught to lose it -- it was ugly anyway. I did lose the first tie I ever owned, though. My mom bought it for me before my first 6th grade band concert
- A field full of presumably empty propane tanks painted various shades of green, yellow, blue, and red. An unintentional and Warhols-worthy testament to rural Americana.
- A group of Mennonites playing soccer. Fully clothed, in dark grey dresses and slacks, with those little yamulcas in their hair.
