Estación Liceu

Strange Days

Ok, the title of this post is a little shout-out to J. Morrison but it really has been a weird past couple of days. Finals week is always a little nutty because it's a significant change to the routine of the past 16 weeks; there isn't class to teach which frees up some time but on the other hand, the correcting and grading and student issues and meetings... it adds up.

In addition, I have been taking a class. I spent most of Sunday running around getting materials to create a physical model of how a second language is acquired. I spent part of Monday finalizing the assembly of what turned out to be a beehive and then writing a paper to explain the metaphor. In doing so, not only did I think about SLA theory but I also learned lots about bees and honey. For example, honey is essentially bee vomit, something I had heard that before but wrote off as an urban legend. Lovely.

On Monday night I took the final exam for my class, got home late, and then got up today for... Jury Duty! Yep, I got to do my civic duty and it was something else. Today's event was a one day trial so I'm all done for the moment. The good thing was that it was an easy case to decide but the strange part was the defendant. He chose to represent himself and it was just a disaster. As much as he was obviously guilty and did something rather awful, I almost felt bad and embarrassed for him because he was so pathetic. It was just weird but at least I didn't have to make some sort of heart-wrenching decision that could have the potential to be haunting.

Tomorrow I'm going to spend several hours on campus, meeting with students and doing some grading. Then I'm having a late lunch with a friend, running some last-minute holiday errands, and heading home for... more grading!

posted by Kelly @ 8:14 p. m.