A-ha moment

So I'm working on a chapter of my thesis and I discovered a big note to myself: FIX REFERENCE. I look it up and discover that I originally cited an online version of Horace's The Art of Poetry as a placeholder and needed to go back and cite the hard copy instead, meaning I'd have to correct the wording to match my edition.

Here is the passage that I cited:

Poems in the main (I'm speaking to a father and his excellent sons)
are baffled by the outer form of what's right. I strive to be brief,
and become obscure; I try for smoothness, and instantly lose
muscle and spirit; to aim at grandeur invites inflation;
excessive caution or fear of the wind induces grovelling.
The man who brings in marvels to vary a simple theme
is painting a dolphin among trees, a boar in the billows.
Avoiding a fault will lead to error if art is missing.

-Horace, Ars Poetica, in The Satires of Horace and Perseus, trans. by Niall Rudd (London: Penguin Classics, 2005), ll. 24-31, p. 122.

Why do I find this blog-worthy? Because I think it's good advice for how I should approach my thesis. Sometimes I try too hard to meet certain style requirements (length, not citing too much, etc.) and I lose out on actually making a decent point. Style for style's sake doesn't work. It's important, but you also need an argument.

I *knew* I was reading this stuff for a reason!

I can't help but wonder (yes, another Betty post)

• If Matt just ended up taking a job from his father, doesn't that render the whole YETI thing pointless? Someone else probably lost that spot to him.
• Do editors (directors, etc.) really take their assistants to awards ceremonies and let them dress up and sit there rather than hurry around the lobby fielding calls?
• Why didn't Marc just go to that Vogue job?
  
• Really, when you think about it, Betty's done a lot more in her time as assistant than Marc. She orchestrated a number of big deal events for Mode and Player, and wrote articles for Mode, Hot Flash and whatever that one was that Salma Hayek ran. What has Marc done other than cover for Wilhelmina?
• I feel like Betty also has a hard time getting a clue. She's been told more than once that sometimes you have to sacrifice your personal life to get ahead. So why does she whine that no one at work respects her when she blows off important work things? And why doesn't she look to Claire as an ally?
• And why didn't she just have Daniel come with her rather than stay at home with him? He might have been able to help.
  
• Wilhelmina banging her shoe on the UN podium a la Khrushchev - totally predictable, but totally necessary. I'm surprised Betty didn't get more of a punishment for her shoot going so badly.
• I'm also surprised that Hilda and Justin can get into the building so easily. They just wander in randomly - don't most big office buildings have you sign in at the front desk?
• The whole thing with Wilhelmina's daughter is going to get interesting, I think.
  

I don't feel sorry for Kate Gosselin

I was browsing through IMDb when I came across some trivia about Jon & Kate Plus 8. I know this is supposed to make you feel like, "Wow, it's a lot of work to have 8 kids," but none of these statistics seem particularly shocking. For example:

Altogether the family can eat up to two full boxes of cereal a day.

Umm, just wait until you have teenage boys, Kate. We have to hide the cereal in my house because my 16-year-old brother could polish off a box in a day, and still whine that he's hungry a few hours later.

The Gosselins average 2-3 loads of laundry per day.

Two loads of laundry? Whoa, Kate! I don't know how you find the time to do all of your other stuff, like sit on the driveway and whine about how you're completely alone and so exhausted but you're happy to have Jenna the "helper" there, who's not a babysitter, she just likes to come over and play with your kids. We easily average 2-3 loads per day, given that some days we don't do any and some days we might do 5 or 6.

In my parents' generation, everyone had 5+ kids. My dad had a neighbor who had 13 kids. And while you say it's not the same as having sextuplets, it's not exactly easy when you've got seven kids who are less than ten years apart. And they all made it out just fine.

Stop whining, Kate.

Year 5 at HogwartsOxford

Whodathunk, when I signed up for this deal, that I'd be staying on for five years? I sure didn't. Well, here I am, back in Oxford for the fifth time around, and for the fourth and hopefully final year of my doctorate (*knocks on all available nearby wood*).

I'm ready to buckle down and finish this thing. I can't wait to have a job. But I also can't wait to see what year 5 has in store - hopefully more travel, as I haven't done nearly enough since I've been here, and meeting even more interesting people.

I had my Confirmation of Status exam on Thursday (the second major assessment before the final defense), and it seemed to go well. They had a lot of concerns as usual, but I'd rather they tell me these things now than wait until I'm done.

The term officially starts about two weeks from now, but I had to get here early for the aforementioned exam. For the first time ever, I arrived at night in Terminal 4, so I booked a room at the Yotel in the terminal so I wouldn't have to worry about potentially missing the last train/bus if the plane arrived late! If you haven't heard of it before, the Yotel is a "capsule" hotel modeled on the Japanese capsule hotels and the type of amenities you'd find in first class. The rooms are teeny (actually, they're not terrible if you book a premium room, but I couldn't afford that), and they overlap so alternating rooms have a lower or upper bed. There are no closets, just a single hanger for hanging suits and a rack for storing luggage. I couldn't use the fold-down desk because my luggage was in the way, and the bathroom was pretty much a long narrow shower with a sink and toilet all in one. The room was about the length of the bed, that's it. But it was a fun experience, the room service was good and the people were nice, and I felt a bit more relaxed than I would have if I had gone straight to Oxford the night before.

In addition to the usual academic work, the start of term brings the usual Junior Deaning tasks: coordinating talks, meeting freshers and the like. The next few weeks are going to be very busy!

Hopefully I'll get some time to post a bit more this year, and I hope everyone's term is going well. xxx

Eight Years Later

I could say something about 9/11 today, but so many people said it much more eloquently already, so I'll share a post about the day that I thought was very moving. Head on over to jo(e)'s page and read about her sister's memorial of the day.

"Señor de los espacios infinitos, tú que tienes la paz entre las manos, derrámala Señor te lo suplico, y enséñales a amar a mis hermanos..." (A. Sanz, "Todo es de color")