Random Quote
The important thing is not to stop questioning.
---- Albert Einstein
Always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual.
---- Terry Pratchett
Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
---- Malcom Forbes
Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.
---- J. Robert Oppenheimer
Those who know nothing of foreign languages, knows nothing of their own.”
---- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749 -1832)
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
---- H. G. Wells
Drink coffee! Do stupid things faster!
---- unknown
Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.
---- Edward R. Murrow
Sleep is a symptom of caffeine deprivation.
---- Author Unknown
A magician pulls rabbits out of hats. An experimental psychologist pulls habits out of rats.
---- anonymous
America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.
---- Evan Esar
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
---- Lily Tomlin
It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.
---- Franklin D. Roosevelt
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
---- Sheik Abd-al-Kadir
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
---- Isaac Asimov
One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothin' can beat teamwork.
---- Edward Abbey
It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.
---- Arnold Toynbee
Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted.
---- Fred Allen
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
---- Thomas A. Edison
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
---- John Ciardi
We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.
---- Thomas A. Edison
Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.
---- Isaac Newton
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.
---- George Orwell
Arguments over grammar and style are often as fierce as those over IBM versus Mac, and as fruitless as Coke versus Pepsi and boxers versus briefs.
---- Jack Lynch
There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.
---- Pablo Picasso
Making Progress & English teachers moonlighting as porn stars
The semester is almost over. I’ve gotten caught up in all of my grading, other than the finals which I’ve yet to give. The next two weeks are going to be busy. I’ve rescheduled my classes into individual meetings with students to have 15 minute oral final exams at Starbucks. I’ve always had the 15-20 minute interview with students, but previously have done it in the classroom. This time it’s at starbucks. A colleague of mine has done this and found that students enjoyed it. The starbucks atmosphere also adds some authenticity at least situational context-wise. I’ve also scheduled all 3 sections of freshmen English to meet tomorrow night at 5:30 for the written exam. It’ll be nice to get it over all at once and in a room that is better suited to testing than our classrooms.
Tomorrow I will also start a 10 week Korean language course that runs Monday through Friday 9am to 1pm. Obviously for the two weeks of final exams I’m not going to have too much free time, but it will be worth it. I took a course there last year and am looking forward to improving my language skills over the winter.
Since I am basically caught up on everything, this weekend I managed to get a little work done on a board game I started last vacation. I plan on having it completed by the end of the month. I also started another chapter in the book I am writing. Though I still haven’t finished the listening chapter. Overall it feels like I am making progress in a number of areas and I am satisfied.
Since I won’t be teaching for again until March 2nd, I suspect that blogging will be light until then. I am reading a book and am planning on writing a review of it once I finish it so there will definitely be some posting, just not much.
In other news you may be interested in reading about English teachers moonlighting as porn stars.
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Sunday Dec 3, 2006 at 07:23 PM
Random_Ramblings | Teaching |




