The Canadian Cities Tour

Hoooo doggy.  I’ve been recently enjoying the travel-related benefits of my job, having returned last week from a two week jaunt to Montreal, Ottawa, and Halifax.  It was fun, tiring, boring, exciting, and refreshing.  Now I’m back, I’m starting to slip back into my regular routine, and I’m writing this from work when I should [...]

I’d rather be (insert anything here)

It’s 9:08 p.m., I have 19 more papers to mark for tomorrow, and there’s a fucking blizzard outside right now.  Snow, in March.  Snow, and lots of it.  Earlier this week people’s basements were flooding, and now we’re right back to mid-January and I kind of want to drink some floor cleaner and call it [...]

Burn out

Holy fucking shitballs.
That’s pretty much the summation of my thoughts and feelings these days.  Jesus creepin’ shit.  I cannot wait until this course is over, until winter is over, until this cold comes and goes.  Hot damn.  Things have been so incredibly busy – or, at least, busy enough that I can’t survive on my [...]

What the hell

happened to last week?  Reading week was supposed to be my breath of fresh air, my time to plan and organize the second half of my academic writing course, and here it is, Monday of The Week After Reading Week and I’m scrambling to get my shit together.  Ugh.  I have no energy and find [...]

Glutton for Punishment

I’ve realized over the past few weeks that this course I’m teaching has essentially taken the place of my thesis: I had a couple of months off of anything academia-related, and come January I’m right back into assignments and research and writing, with a little grading and hand-wringing to top it all off.  I’ve been [...]

Teach This

I’ve made it through two of the 13 weeks that make up the Academic Writing course I’m teaching at my alma mater.  It’s been eye-opening, exciting, but mostly horrifying.
Teaching a classroom of students how to write academic papers doesn’t seem too lofty a task, particularly if you’ve spent the better part of your life writing [...]

Teach what now?

Which one of you keeners wants to clean the chalk brushes?
My course outline is due today.  Can you guess how much more work I still need to do on it?
Yeah, lots.  I don’t know when I’m going to finally switch over into ‘adult mode’ and start doing things on time, responsibly, and in an overall [...]

Classic Convocation

This past weekend I flew to Montreal to partake in one final au revoir to Concordia and all things MA-related.  Convocation was on Monday, and the weekend was spent catching up with friends, and catching up with the city that I’ve always felt I left too soon.  It was glorious, albeit far too short a [...]

Mo (Borrowed) Money, Mo Problems

I recently recieved a letter from the National Student Loans Service Centre, informing me that it was “that time” – time to start paying back my student loans.  Yikes.
I was anticipating this notice, so it came as no surprise, but for some reason I was caught off guard when I read how much my minimum [...]

Peace out, school

Last night I took on the monumental task of going through the entire bottom row of my bookshelf and cleaning out all of the binders I have kept full of notes and assignments from every single university course I have ever taken.  I have been lugging, from one apartment to the next, somewhere around 10 [...]