Monday, June 7, 2010
wow
I actually completely forgot about this blog. I'll try and update once I get back to the States. Remind me if you want to read more, because I'll probably forget again. :)
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Growing A Giant Pumpkin Lecture!
Yes, I'm 4 months late but this was a very funny message I got around Halloween:
"Start of Halloween right by listening to Matt Debacco talk about the conditions needed to grow giant pumpkins and the challenges that occur when producing award winning pumpkins. Matt broke the Connecticut pumpkin record in 2008 when he produced a 1353 lb pumpkin. This pumpkin continues to hold the state record."
I'll try to update at some point in life.
"Start of Halloween right by listening to Matt Debacco talk about the conditions needed to grow giant pumpkins and the challenges that occur when producing award winning pumpkins. Matt broke the Connecticut pumpkin record in 2008 when he produced a 1353 lb pumpkin. This pumpkin continues to hold the state record."
I'll try to update at some point in life.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Sorry?
Hi all,
I know I've not been updating, but life here is really demanding. It's a lot of fun but it's tough too: I work 15 hours a week, I have classes 15 hours too and in the remaining time I need to prepare my readings, cook, go (grocery) shopping, keep my room (and the house) clean, and try not to go crazy by a deficit of social contact ;). To the latter purpose I have my partner-in-crime linguist Neda (also first year), and my flatmates Christina (native!) and Leah (Canadian). More about them later.
Instead of giving you guys a nice overview I'll just start right in the middle of things and will progress from that onwards in a random fashion.
My week schedule is the following:
Mon
| 10-12 Writing Center (work)
| 17-18.30 Semantics
| 19-22 Writing Center
Tue
| 9-10.30 Language Acquisition
| 10-13.30 Accent seminar
Wed
| 9.30-12.30 Writing Center
| 13.15-16.15 Syntax
| 17-18.30 Semantics
| 19-22 Writing Center
Thu
| 9-10.30 Language Acquisition
Fri
| 10-12 Writing Center
| 13-16 Phonology
As you can see, they replaced traditional slavery with phd-slavery ;). I would also like to point out the fact that I'm starting 10am *at the latest*, which I find quite heroic.
Also, I work at the Writing Center (writingcenter.uconn.edu), which does not involve being an editor and correcting other people's essays but we "make you [student/writer] a better editor and writer!". For instance, when a writer comes in we can go over the general structure of his/her essay by making a reverse outline (= summarising all your paragraphs in one sentence) or we can look through the MLA guide together to see how citing works, etc. More on this later too.
Now on to more general impressions..
Well, one of the most intriguing aspects of America is that its stereotypes are essentially true. While a few might be slightly exaggerated the overwhelming majority is simply true (an astonishing fact in itself). For instance, some people here truly are very much "horizontally challenged"; at the same time, there's a huge number of people who are frighteningly fanatic about sports and you can see people running everywhere and at all times of the day.
Another stereotype would be the 'superficial friendliness', but I have to admit that I like this aspect of the culture: it's nice to have a (superficially) friendly conversation when you're buying a quarter of milk. It beats the hell out of buying your hairwax at the Etos where your conversation goes "That's 9.45" [give money], [get back change] and an optional "Thank you. Bye". The thing is not to expect too much from somebody who's just polite to you. I think the main difference lies in different (social) rules of general politeness. However, I would like to add that the "how are you?"s are a bit too much - even for me. And don't get me started on the "like" -- horrible, it's, like, they use like in, like, every sentence! In particular, when they feel insecure and/or are telling a story. Guess what? At my job at the Writing Center I get a lot of insecure people who have to tell what they are writing their essays on..
Before I started my first session, I had devised a strategy where I would click my pen every time I'd hear "like" until they would -hopefully- complain about me being annoying by clicking my pen all the time, to which I could then answer that I'm merely clicking it whenever I hear their use of "like" and that it would be in their own power to make me stop.
Well, that's all for now folks! I hope to publish more of these kind of random squibs but unfortunately I can't promise anything!
Best,
Beata
I know I've not been updating, but life here is really demanding. It's a lot of fun but it's tough too: I work 15 hours a week, I have classes 15 hours too and in the remaining time I need to prepare my readings, cook, go (grocery) shopping, keep my room (and the house) clean, and try not to go crazy by a deficit of social contact ;). To the latter purpose I have my partner-in-crime linguist Neda (also first year), and my flatmates Christina (native!) and Leah (Canadian). More about them later.
Instead of giving you guys a nice overview I'll just start right in the middle of things and will progress from that onwards in a random fashion.
My week schedule is the following:
Mon
| 10-12 Writing Center (work)
| 17-18.30 Semantics
| 19-22 Writing Center
Tue
| 9-10.30 Language Acquisition
| 10-13.30 Accent seminar
Wed
| 9.30-12.30 Writing Center
| 13.15-16.15 Syntax
| 17-18.30 Semantics
| 19-22 Writing Center
Thu
| 9-10.30 Language Acquisition
Fri
| 10-12 Writing Center
| 13-16 Phonology
As you can see, they replaced traditional slavery with phd-slavery ;). I would also like to point out the fact that I'm starting 10am *at the latest*, which I find quite heroic.
Also, I work at the Writing Center (writingcenter.uconn.edu), which does not involve being an editor and correcting other people's essays but we "make you [student/writer] a better editor and writer!". For instance, when a writer comes in we can go over the general structure of his/her essay by making a reverse outline (= summarising all your paragraphs in one sentence) or we can look through the MLA guide together to see how citing works, etc. More on this later too.
Now on to more general impressions..
Well, one of the most intriguing aspects of America is that its stereotypes are essentially true. While a few might be slightly exaggerated the overwhelming majority is simply true (an astonishing fact in itself). For instance, some people here truly are very much "horizontally challenged"; at the same time, there's a huge number of people who are frighteningly fanatic about sports and you can see people running everywhere and at all times of the day.
Another stereotype would be the 'superficial friendliness', but I have to admit that I like this aspect of the culture: it's nice to have a (superficially) friendly conversation when you're buying a quarter of milk. It beats the hell out of buying your hairwax at the Etos where your conversation goes "That's 9.45" [give money], [get back change] and an optional "Thank you. Bye". The thing is not to expect too much from somebody who's just polite to you. I think the main difference lies in different (social) rules of general politeness. However, I would like to add that the "how are you?"s are a bit too much - even for me. And don't get me started on the "like" -- horrible, it's, like, they use like in, like, every sentence! In particular, when they feel insecure and/or are telling a story. Guess what? At my job at the Writing Center I get a lot of insecure people who have to tell what they are writing their essays on..
Before I started my first session, I had devised a strategy where I would click my pen every time I'd hear "like" until they would -hopefully- complain about me being annoying by clicking my pen all the time, to which I could then answer that I'm merely clicking it whenever I hear their use of "like" and that it would be in their own power to make me stop.
Well, that's all for now folks! I hope to publish more of these kind of random squibs but unfortunately I can't promise anything!
Best,
Beata
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Some impressions
Hi again!
It's been quite a while and so much has happened since I left. I won't try to tell you everything. Instead, I'll just opt for writing anything that pops up in my mind.
First off, everything here in the US is big. And I mean really big. And I mean everything. For instance, the shampoo bottles are at least twice as big as those in Europe. I'm not going to say anything about the boxes of cereal. When I got an icecream yesterday I asked for one scoop: 1 American scoop corresponds to roughly 6-7 Dutch scoops. It's not so much overwhelming but I can't help being surprised at the sizes here.
Which neatly brings me to the subject of New York City. Actually, I didn't like it at all! It was so crowded! I liked the financial district, though. Times Square also was worth a visit, despite the incredibly number of people trying to prevent you from reaching it. The best of my stay was my cousing's company, though! I even learned quite some things about the US system and NYC in particular.
To be fair, maybe NY isn't so bad when the tourists are gone and the temperature drops, but I wasn't convinced by it!
The temperature.. not only is it hot & humid here (30-40C), which causes you to sweat like crazy all the time, but they use Fahrenheit, which is just a ridiculous scale. Also, they mostly use the British system, which means I'm stuck with ounces, feet, inches and I don't know what else. Some things are based on steps of 12 (i.e. instead of 1 unit corresponding to 10, 2 units to 20 3 units to 30, etc. things are different: 1 unit corresponds to 12, 2 unit correspond to 24, and 3 units to 36, etc.) but some other things (don't ask me which ones) have a 16-base scale (i.e. 1 item equals 16, 2 items equal 32, etc)!
Finally, I'm going to leave you with an interesting bag that I got in the airplane:
They don't look so special, these pretzels from Snyder's of Hanover, but they have some interesting information on the back:
Not only are they explicitly "not connected with Snyder of Berlin" but they also list a lot of things this package does not contain, such as fat, vitamin A, C and Calcium (these thus also form 0% of your Daily Values).
It was by far not the only weird thing in the plane: we arrived at JFK (airport) around 7.30pm local time but at 7pm (evening yes) we got served breakfast -- trust me, that really confuses your system when you soon afterwards land and you interpret the dusk as dawn! However, I met a nice Italian on the plane, which made the trip a lot of fun! Oh, and I found Gran Torino quite a good movie, definitely worth watching!
Now, I'll leave you with this update -- next time I'll tell you about the campus and the introduction days!
Take care,
Beata
It's been quite a while and so much has happened since I left. I won't try to tell you everything. Instead, I'll just opt for writing anything that pops up in my mind.
First off, everything here in the US is big. And I mean really big. And I mean everything. For instance, the shampoo bottles are at least twice as big as those in Europe. I'm not going to say anything about the boxes of cereal. When I got an icecream yesterday I asked for one scoop: 1 American scoop corresponds to roughly 6-7 Dutch scoops. It's not so much overwhelming but I can't help being surprised at the sizes here.
Which neatly brings me to the subject of New York City. Actually, I didn't like it at all! It was so crowded! I liked the financial district, though. Times Square also was worth a visit, despite the incredibly number of people trying to prevent you from reaching it. The best of my stay was my cousing's company, though! I even learned quite some things about the US system and NYC in particular.
To be fair, maybe NY isn't so bad when the tourists are gone and the temperature drops, but I wasn't convinced by it!
The temperature.. not only is it hot & humid here (30-40C), which causes you to sweat like crazy all the time, but they use Fahrenheit, which is just a ridiculous scale. Also, they mostly use the British system, which means I'm stuck with ounces, feet, inches and I don't know what else. Some things are based on steps of 12 (i.e. instead of 1 unit corresponding to 10, 2 units to 20 3 units to 30, etc. things are different: 1 unit corresponds to 12, 2 unit correspond to 24, and 3 units to 36, etc.) but some other things (don't ask me which ones) have a 16-base scale (i.e. 1 item equals 16, 2 items equal 32, etc)!
Finally, I'm going to leave you with an interesting bag that I got in the airplane:
They don't look so special, these pretzels from Snyder's of Hanover, but they have some interesting information on the back:
Not only are they explicitly "not connected with Snyder of Berlin" but they also list a lot of things this package does not contain, such as fat, vitamin A, C and Calcium (these thus also form 0% of your Daily Values).
It was by far not the only weird thing in the plane: we arrived at JFK (airport) around 7.30pm local time but at 7pm (evening yes) we got served breakfast -- trust me, that really confuses your system when you soon afterwards land and you interpret the dusk as dawn! However, I met a nice Italian on the plane, which made the trip a lot of fun! Oh, and I found Gran Torino quite a good movie, definitely worth watching!
Now, I'll leave you with this update -- next time I'll tell you about the campus and the introduction days!
Take care,
Beata
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
First post
Dear all,
As some of you may know I managed to get a PhD position at the Linguistics department at the University of Connecticut (UConn) in the States. As during my semester in Edinburgh as an exchange student (see Edinblogh), I will bravely attempt to keep up a blog. (The title is a pun on the fact that UConn is situated in the middle of nowhere.)
Topics include the American dream, campus life, and some linguistic stuff. Feel free to skip these last posts, though :)
I hope you'll enjoy reading, and if you have any comments, please don't hesitate to tell me!
On a related note, at any time you can sign up for an e-mail alert list for new updates: just mail your e-address and I'll add you to the list (alternatively, if you have a gmail account, it seems you can become a follower of my words!).
For now I can tell you that I will be flying to New York on August 13th, while my phone contract expires on the 14th, so please don't try to call/text me. I'm not too sure yet when exactly I will arrive at my room just outside of Storrs (= university campus), but when I do I hope to find an internet connection. I'll post pictures of the room before I unpack.
Finally, a picture taken seconds before my M.Phil defence:
Cheers,
Beata
As some of you may know I managed to get a PhD position at the Linguistics department at the University of Connecticut (UConn) in the States. As during my semester in Edinburgh as an exchange student (see Edinblogh), I will bravely attempt to keep up a blog. (The title is a pun on the fact that UConn is situated in the middle of nowhere.)
Topics include the American dream, campus life, and some linguistic stuff. Feel free to skip these last posts, though :)
I hope you'll enjoy reading, and if you have any comments, please don't hesitate to tell me!
On a related note, at any time you can sign up for an e-mail alert list for new updates: just mail your e-address and I'll add you to the list (alternatively, if you have a gmail account, it seems you can become a follower of my words!).
For now I can tell you that I will be flying to New York on August 13th, while my phone contract expires on the 14th, so please don't try to call/text me. I'm not too sure yet when exactly I will arrive at my room just outside of Storrs (= university campus), but when I do I hope to find an internet connection. I'll post pictures of the room before I unpack.
Finally, a picture taken seconds before my M.Phil defence:
Cheers,
Beata
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