The Hippodrome? The Hippodrome.
So, I've had the "Taxi Song" from _On the Town_ in my head all day. Why? Because I had an interview this evening to be a Front-of-House Volunteer at the Bham Hippodrome, a big theater downtown that gets plays in from London and other travelling shows... Highlights of this season include Stomp, My Fair Lady, Jerry Springer the Opera, Edward Scissorhands, a Christmas Pantomime (which I'm really psyched about), and several ballets. If I get the position--I'll hear next week--I'll essentially usher and get to see the shows free! :) I'm excited.
The interview itself was... interesting.... I was actually the only postgrad there (btw, postgrad is British for graduate student... You're a postgrad if you're in the graduate school--don't ask me), which was a little odd, but I guess not everyone is as crazy in overcommitting as me. So we went around and said who we were and something about ourselves, then we had an exercise where we split into two teams and designed a paper airplane. Yep. A team-building thingy. Various rules, none of which are that imporant, except to say that I was in charge of actually building the airplane, and I used the method I honed in many rigerous years of making paper airplanes with my gum wrappers in French class. And we won! Yay! It's because of good, old-fashioned American ingenuity. Or a gluestick. Or something. And, yes, I am a sad, sad, and strangely competitive person. You hadn't figured that out yet?
In other news, I had my first real class of Production of Texts yesterday. Yes, to obervant people, this means I did actually go to class on Rosh Hashana, which I wouldn't normally do. You see, the thing is, it's the only meeting a week of my main course, and it was slated to be from 5 to 7pm. Well, I figured, 5 is close enought to sundown as makes little difference. But then my professor for this week (it's taught on a rotating basis) asked if we could move the time up to 4pm because he has a rather advanced case of diabetes and doesn't function too well late in the day. I said, of course, and only later realized that was the same day as Rosh Hashana. I thought for a moment: my religious scruples vs. his health needs.... no contest, really. And, besides, the class was so much fun it didn't really count as work. This is the class that only has two students. I think I like the other guy, Matt, by the way. He's kind of quiet... So, our professor basically gave us several old books and asked us what we thought of them. We observed what we thought the binding was made of, the quality of the paper, how we thought it was made, the price and social value, etc. And we talked more broadly about what defines the production of texts and what factors we should consider. By the way, the prof was the same Ian S--- whom I talked with at the party last week. He is a Victorianist and very interesting. He also has a way of pushing people (aka me) to back up my general statements, focus my ramblings, and investigate my platitudes. This is very helpful, although it keeps me on my toes and makes me realize how very much I have to learn. This is not altogether a bad thing. He doesn't do it in at all a mean way, and often I find that I rise to the occasion. He asked Matt and me to list what we thought was involved in the production of texts. I said "the social and cultural context," and he asked me what I meant by that, and really sort of pushed it. I found myself somewhat flustered; it was something I'd sort of come to take for granted at Vassar. But he also said, where do you draw the line on the cultural context? We can never know what it was actually like in any other period, so we're just reflecting what we think it was; we can never be objective. I said, of course we could never be objective; I never thought we could. That seemed to settle it for the moment, but it's still in the back of my mind....
I refined it a bit more in class today, in my Cultural Inquiry class (which, btw, had three people in it today, two auditors (myself included) and one person taking it for credit. But we had a good time). We were talking about the Frankfurt School, and I said that I think you always put your impression on a work when you form an argument about it; that's what the process of writing is about, isn't it? (This is something I've started to pick up from the British; ending sentences with a question that doesn't sound like a question. Kind of the reverse of the American habit of making a statment that sounds like a question--here it's a falling inflection.) You put your stamp on it; you include the examples that prove your point. There is no objectivity; you shouldn't try to pretend that there is. On the other hand, as both of the professors in question said, it's also good to approach--or try to approach--a text without a preconceived thesis--as Eamon G--- instructed me on my Wallace Stevens essay lo these many years ago (specifically one and a half). But ultimately you have to come up with a thesis that is your own.
I don't know where I'm going with this. It's one of my faults--and something I'm struggling with still in my writing sample--that I tend to get lost in my tangents and keep spirling up and away. Sometimes I find interesting things there, though....
One more factual thing--sorry about the wandering into muddled literary theorizing--or something. After my Cultural Inquiry class, the three of us students went out for coffee. I like the other two very much. Alice got her BA here in Bham last year, and she's doing an MPhil B (don't ask me what it is--I think it's between a taught MA and an MPhil A--that is, you take some classes but not as many as an MA, and you write a longer thesis) in Victorianism and Modernism, which is cool. Emma is actually in the MPhil in Cultural Inquiry, and she's a director for a BBC TV show. She's really interesting and down-t0-earth, despite the fact that everyone except for me seems really impressed with the actor she works with. She's leaving this really nice, high-profile--but also high-stress--job to go do an MPhil in Cultural Inquiry. Which is cool. This is going to be a fun class.
I made a salad tonight with baby spinich, apple, and Wensleydale cheese. And Newman's Own Balsamic vinigrette--oh, I knew there was something else I needed to put on my shopping list. I had a protein bar on the train to the Hippodrome and some crisps on the way back (remind me to tell you about the variety of weird-flavored chips they have here), but I wanted something real-tasting. It was quite yummy, actually.
And that's the story of me.
The interview itself was... interesting.... I was actually the only postgrad there (btw, postgrad is British for graduate student... You're a postgrad if you're in the graduate school--don't ask me), which was a little odd, but I guess not everyone is as crazy in overcommitting as me. So we went around and said who we were and something about ourselves, then we had an exercise where we split into two teams and designed a paper airplane. Yep. A team-building thingy. Various rules, none of which are that imporant, except to say that I was in charge of actually building the airplane, and I used the method I honed in many rigerous years of making paper airplanes with my gum wrappers in French class. And we won! Yay! It's because of good, old-fashioned American ingenuity. Or a gluestick. Or something. And, yes, I am a sad, sad, and strangely competitive person. You hadn't figured that out yet?
In other news, I had my first real class of Production of Texts yesterday. Yes, to obervant people, this means I did actually go to class on Rosh Hashana, which I wouldn't normally do. You see, the thing is, it's the only meeting a week of my main course, and it was slated to be from 5 to 7pm. Well, I figured, 5 is close enought to sundown as makes little difference. But then my professor for this week (it's taught on a rotating basis) asked if we could move the time up to 4pm because he has a rather advanced case of diabetes and doesn't function too well late in the day. I said, of course, and only later realized that was the same day as Rosh Hashana. I thought for a moment: my religious scruples vs. his health needs.... no contest, really. And, besides, the class was so much fun it didn't really count as work. This is the class that only has two students. I think I like the other guy, Matt, by the way. He's kind of quiet... So, our professor basically gave us several old books and asked us what we thought of them. We observed what we thought the binding was made of, the quality of the paper, how we thought it was made, the price and social value, etc. And we talked more broadly about what defines the production of texts and what factors we should consider. By the way, the prof was the same Ian S--- whom I talked with at the party last week. He is a Victorianist and very interesting. He also has a way of pushing people (aka me) to back up my general statements, focus my ramblings, and investigate my platitudes. This is very helpful, although it keeps me on my toes and makes me realize how very much I have to learn. This is not altogether a bad thing. He doesn't do it in at all a mean way, and often I find that I rise to the occasion. He asked Matt and me to list what we thought was involved in the production of texts. I said "the social and cultural context," and he asked me what I meant by that, and really sort of pushed it. I found myself somewhat flustered; it was something I'd sort of come to take for granted at Vassar. But he also said, where do you draw the line on the cultural context? We can never know what it was actually like in any other period, so we're just reflecting what we think it was; we can never be objective. I said, of course we could never be objective; I never thought we could. That seemed to settle it for the moment, but it's still in the back of my mind....
I refined it a bit more in class today, in my Cultural Inquiry class (which, btw, had three people in it today, two auditors (myself included) and one person taking it for credit. But we had a good time). We were talking about the Frankfurt School, and I said that I think you always put your impression on a work when you form an argument about it; that's what the process of writing is about, isn't it? (This is something I've started to pick up from the British; ending sentences with a question that doesn't sound like a question. Kind of the reverse of the American habit of making a statment that sounds like a question--here it's a falling inflection.) You put your stamp on it; you include the examples that prove your point. There is no objectivity; you shouldn't try to pretend that there is. On the other hand, as both of the professors in question said, it's also good to approach--or try to approach--a text without a preconceived thesis--as Eamon G--- instructed me on my Wallace Stevens essay lo these many years ago (specifically one and a half). But ultimately you have to come up with a thesis that is your own.
I don't know where I'm going with this. It's one of my faults--and something I'm struggling with still in my writing sample--that I tend to get lost in my tangents and keep spirling up and away. Sometimes I find interesting things there, though....
One more factual thing--sorry about the wandering into muddled literary theorizing--or something. After my Cultural Inquiry class, the three of us students went out for coffee. I like the other two very much. Alice got her BA here in Bham last year, and she's doing an MPhil B (don't ask me what it is--I think it's between a taught MA and an MPhil A--that is, you take some classes but not as many as an MA, and you write a longer thesis) in Victorianism and Modernism, which is cool. Emma is actually in the MPhil in Cultural Inquiry, and she's a director for a BBC TV show. She's really interesting and down-t0-earth, despite the fact that everyone except for me seems really impressed with the actor she works with. She's leaving this really nice, high-profile--but also high-stress--job to go do an MPhil in Cultural Inquiry. Which is cool. This is going to be a fun class.
I made a salad tonight with baby spinich, apple, and Wensleydale cheese. And Newman's Own Balsamic vinigrette--oh, I knew there was something else I needed to put on my shopping list. I had a protein bar on the train to the Hippodrome and some crisps on the way back (remind me to tell you about the variety of weird-flavored chips they have here), but I wanted something real-tasting. It was quite yummy, actually.
And that's the story of me.
posted by L @ 8:48 PM
2 Comments:
At 4:54 AM,
L'Écureuil said…
nick a---- here uses the same teaching method (but of course to a lesser extent -- in his introductory and intermediate classes, at least). it's intense.
At 2:55 PM,
L said…
I love learning stuff. I love professors. I love school. Wow, I'm doing the right thing, eh?
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