Happy King Tut Day: Belated

This post was originally prepared several weeks ago and scheduled to post yesterday, but on account of realizing it also fell on voting day, when I was planning to get all up on my political soapbox, I bumped it.

Sorry boy king.
The tomb of King Tut was discovered on on November 4, 1922.  The son of Akhenaten and one of his sisters identified as “The Younger Lady,” King Tut is said to have ascended the throne at approximately nine years of age in 1333 BC.  He died young, at about age 18, of causes still under debate and without an heir; although mummy remains of two female fetuses are believed to be his children by his half-sister wife, Ankhesenamun.

Now it is Tuesday, so before you get all bent out of shape about a serious topic supplanting Tuesday Titters, I have more.  If you’ve got 3 minutes, honor the boy king and check out this very special presentation about King Tut.

You won’t regret it.  Seriously.

Task Mistress Day 49; Tasks 5 and 6 out of 101/1001

I’m combining these tasks because they relate to pretty much the same thing, my anthropology class.

5.  Read remaining 3 chapters for anthropology class. (4/11/12; 5/7/12)

6.  Refrain from throwing my text book at my anthropology teacher who writes the worst tests known to man and is planning a cumulative final. (4/11/12; 5/8/12)

I was really disappointed with my anthropology class over all.  My professor was very nice, and extremely knowledgeable, but I felt the class was not what it was advertised to be and despite being an accomplished anthropologist my professor was not a great teacher.

Anyway, I got the reading done, which was kind of interesting; the last 3 chapters were about the Homo genus, which is what I was looking forward to in the class.  I just wish it wasn’t crammed into the last 3 weeks.

The final wasn’t too bad, despite being cumulative, and compared to previous tests it was down right easy.  But, then, under student pressure he sent us a study guide which listed all the specific pages he was drawing from for test questions.  So, if you bothered to study those specific pages you, in theory, should have been able to do well.  I think, however, that most students are stupid and didn’t trouble themselves to do even that little bit.  When final grades were posted it was obvious he had to put a healthy curve on the grades.  How do I know?  I scored 117.25%  Even if I got every answer correct, which I know is not the case because I looked up a few questions I was stumped on and got at least one of them wrong, that means there was at least an 18% curve.

*Sigh*

Well, I am glad I controlled my urge to pitch my book at him.  He’s a nice guy really.  Just, he shouldn’t write tests.

Is it May 8th yet?

So, that’s the date we’re aiming for.  On or before May 8th I will be finished with Spanish.  While I don’t absolutely loathe the class, I am getting a bit tired of it already and we’re only 3 weeks into the semester.  We are studying indirect pronouns, preterite verb tenses and, because it’s so important to appreciate other cultures, Cuba.  I have to write an essay about what a santero would advise his client.  Now, all I have to go on is a video, all in Spanish of course, to figure out what’s going on.  I infer that a santero is like a fortune teller.  So, I imagine the conversation would go something like this (only in Spanish, of which mine still sucks despite my good grades, and most of you wouldn’t be able to understand anyway):

Client:  Oh, santero, can you tell me the winning lottery numbers for Saturday’s drawing?

Santero:  Honey, if I could do that kind of voo-doo I wouldn’t be playing this charlatan’s game.

Of course, I’ve probably just been extremely insensitive to the Cuban culture.  But seriously I’m getting really tired of this class.  I’d much rather be doing almost anything else.  I have a hard enough time with my English grammar, and now I’m supposed to be managing grammar in a foreign language.  *Shudder*  I have a test on Tuesday.  No fun at all.

Which leads me to realize that I have been so hung up in the SOPA crap that I haven’t regaled you all with tales of my educational adventure.

So, the important details you’ve long been pining for:

My writing teacher is hot, for what that’s worth.  So far the first two weeks have been dull, and I hope that it stays that way.  However, I’m pretty sure that she has never seen the movie 2001, which would make more sense to all ya’ll if you were in my class.  Also, I said that Nicolas Carr, the author of “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” for which the whole movie reference is key, needed to get over himself and grow a pair.  Yes, I actually said that out loud in class.  Everyone laughed.  It sort of popped out before I realized what I was saying.  But, I think most of the kids in my class are young enough to be my children so they probably were just shocked to hear an “old person” say a pair in reference to testicles.

My astronomy professor, who called himself gibbous, is a horrible lecturer.  I cannot vouch for his personal attributes as it’s an online class and I’ve never seen the professor in the flesh, gibbous or no.  I spend a great deal of time saying much more colorful things than grow a pair at him, but as I just have to listen to recordings of his lectures it’s not likely to get me any attention.  It is unfortunate that he’s such a miserable lecturer because the subject itself is fascinating.

My Pre-historic Anthropology professor is pretty personable and interesting.  His class, despite being crammed cheek to jowl in one of the amphitheater rooms with tiny little seats smaller than movie theater seating and itty-bitty drop down table tops that aren’t even as big as a 8×11 notebook, is pretty engaging.  However, by the time class is over I’m stiff and sore, and wanting to holler to the students around me, “Get up a half hour earlier dammit and take a freakin bath before you come to class!”  Although yesterday a young co-ed apparently had sensed my vibe and, in effort to be well groomed, experimented with the other end of the stinky spectrum and came off smelling like she’d bathed in a vat of vanilla and magnolia fragrance then topped it off with a pound of baby powder.  It was both clean smelling and sickly-sweet vomit inducing stinky at the same time.

And, lastly there’s my biology class, which is online and so far rather low pressure.  However, things appear in the homework that weren’t in the lessons.  Curious and curiouser.  Like a lot of statistics and chemistry stuff.  Luckily I did well in chemistry so I was able to fill in those blanks.  Enough people complained about the statistics bit that we got three points of extra credit to make up for the 3 statistics questions.  Beyond that it’s been pretty unremarkable.

So far, besides being a bit ready to be done with Spanish, the work load and courses haven’t been too bad.  Well, except Wednesday when I had so many assignments due on Thursday that I worked about 10 hours straight on homework.  But I don’t think things will be bad like that all the time.  Which is good.  Which is way better than last semester.  Way.

Still, is it May 8th yet?  I’ll be really glad to be done with Spanish.

 

Not your typical children’s reading material

All too soon all ya’ll will be sick of me an my school stories and the semester’s barely begun.  However, I just have to share this family togetherness vignette:

Yesterday evening, as the wind howled and the snow flew, the spud, Leif and I piled on my bed and read my new textbooks.  Eventually, Leif and I wandered off to make dinner, and when the food was ready Leif went looking for the spud.  Apparently, she was still engrossed, nose buried in my anthropology text.

Leif:  What are you doing?  Reading?

Spud:  Yeah, I’m learning about gorilla skulls.

Leif:  That’s a human skull.

Spud:  Well, gorilla skulls and human skulls.

Leif:  Cool.  Dinner’s ready though.  Go wash your hands.

Spud:  Awwwww! I wanna read about more gorilla skeletons.

The quest for knowledge:  Get ’em hooked young.