ritas kleine welt

stolen from charmingquark's blog.

listed below are the top 100 books of some 250.000 watchers of ZDF (channel 2 in germany). bolded are the ones i read. (in brackets are, as usual, my redundant comments.)

this year's first years are a bunch of unmotivated, lazy students. it seems like nothing i do might interest them. not even remotely! i don't know. either my questions are really that stupid and the answers so obvious, or they just can't be bothered with using the grey matter between their ears. whatever i do, i receive blank stares -- and an occassional blink, as if to show me these are not puppets sitting in front of me, but actual people.

let's hope next week it picks up, now that we have covered the least favourite bits (poetry and history of english theatre).

i am not saying it often, but i do llike my students very much. they are so tiny and cute and i can inflitrate their minds with all sorts of icky stuff and useless knowledge. well, useless outside university circles anyway. their oral exams are just about three weeks away and they start getting this slightly panicy look. like a rabit sitting eye to eye with a gigant eagle. and no matter how often i tell them, 'don't worry! it'll be like a pleasant chat over a cup of tea,' they are still scared stiff. bless them. but i am very confident that they will be little smarties pants and will perform terrificly. till then, though, they will remain walking bundles of nerves. they just don't know yet, how much they actually know!

the usual appologies to the poet who originally wrote a piece of beauty, crack-pot imagery and was a genius all round. sorry, john! i am unworthy.

but now, the tramp poems continue. and where is my aspirin?

edit: now with accompanying wordle.

this poetry community makes me do things that usually lay away hidden safely for matters of public safety. but since i have no more reputation to lose among the participants in the poetry seminar, i may as well start going on the rampege here. so follow along to some craziness that better be handed a straightjacket before the semester is out.

quite some time ago, i hit upon this nifty little web-toy callded wordle. it so happens that with all the silliness that has been coursing through my mind lately and with the literal output of doubtful value, i remembered this helpful application. it is quite interesting to see how one's thoughts, although applied to the same subject, shift towards different aspects. in that respect, wordle is quite a great tool to help one see one's own meandering thoughts more clearly.

after a two-year abstinece from the annual spring book fair in leipzig, mysterious s. and i decided to throw ourselves into the masses and see what's in store. and maybe collect the odd signature for our books. let me just say that one was brave (nearly being squished to death) and successful (twice!).

i would like to announce the end of correcting essays for this semester. and i would also like to announce that i am terribly proud of my literature students. out of 24 taking the exam, 16 of them share 9 A's and 7 B's between them. turns out they are a bunch of goody two-shoes after all. who would have thought. if now they would only overcome their phlegmatic attitude in the actual seminar sessions... but thank god, for small favours!

thanks for listening.

sincerely,

me

for the next two years i have landed a job at the english department here in leipzig. starting 1 april, i have half a position as a lecturer for british cultural studies and literature.

life is double-plus uber-good!

... is a bumpy one and on every street corner you'll find a roadsign on which is written, 'final destination -- 3,500 words away. procrastination -- here.' research is great. writing down all the stuff that's floating round your brain and bringing it into some sort of order is boring. writing stinks!

update: 3,010 words. whoohoo!

update numero dos: 3,734 words. copy-paste rocks! lucky i am stealing from myself. otherwise i'd be in deep trouble!

i am not much of a poetry person; my nature is far too prosaic for that. however, there is one poet i really like. maybe it has something to do with the fact that he was one of the guest poets from the "20th century literature" module in bangor, two years ago. anywho. the point is, peter finch rocks. and he has a web page and a blog to prove it. i especially advice you to read "Zen Cymru" and "A Welsh Wordscape".

today was pretty much the first time that the first-years appeared at least to be semi-interested in EngLit as we discussed "the importance of bein earnest", "waiting for godot" and "the caretaker". admittedly, it was a HUGE work-load, but we pulled through, thanks to the expert group who prepared summaries and background info on the playwrights. even my constant harping on about Godot didn't put off more students that usual from joining the discussion. discussion here means: me asking questions and answering them myself when after roughly a minute of silence there's no show of hands... a few of them even asked questions themselves! isn't that shocking?!? and which is even more amazing, those couple of students who raised their hands voluntarily seemed genuinely interested in the topic. so this might be the key to cracking their shells: from now on i shall produce total puzzlement among the group and keep them in that utter state of confusion.

Since dear Rita tagged me and my poor journal is 'friends only' here we go!