| My students think I'm smart or something |
[Apr. 30th, 2008|12:42 am] |
Another little trend I noticed in this term's papers was the tendency to throw around vocabulary I'd never seen before. To balance the impression created by the post below, here are five words I learned from my students this term.
adjuvant a.: tending to help.
indelt n.: I still don't know what this is, or whether the word was a typo for something else. From the context, it is some sort of financial or judicial transaction performed at the papal curia.
lubricious a.: sleazy in a slippery kind of way.
misogamous a.: marriage-hating.
scapulimancy n.: divination performed by examining cracks in the shoulder blades of sheep (as practiced by the Mongols). |
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| Medieval history, according to my students |
[Apr. 30th, 2008|12:25 am] |
The three most common punishments for crimes in the Middle Ages were hanging and mutilation.
It was not inconceivable for a monastic house to increase the number of sheep farming in this period.
The earliest recorded human dissections in Europe date from the fourth century B.Sc.
Collette of Corbie's biographer stresses that ... both in life and death her body gave off only sweat odors.*
Sadly, these may be the last additions to my student blooper collection. Next year I'm not going to TA.
*I'm aware that this last line is a direct (if mangled) quote from Caroline Walker Bynum's Holy Feast and Holy Fast |
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| Argh |
[Mar. 27th, 2008|08:52 pm] |
I gave the hockey tickets back to my student today. He was mortified, I was mortified, it was uncomfortable all around. Argh. Thing is, I'm quite sure he wasn't looking for better grades. I think he's taking the course for fun. He's a mature student and a successful businessman, and he probably didn't even consider it a large gift.
Too late I remembered that my politician bosses used to pass some of the swag they received on to local charities. Maybe I should have given the tickets to the Big Brothers or something, and made some kid's day. |
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| A small ethical dilemma |
[Mar. 25th, 2008|03:36 pm] |
Holy %3@&! I just checked my mailbox at the history department, and one of my students has given me two tickets to a hockey game. They're worth $146 apiece. If I was still working for politicians, I would have to report a gift of that size to the Integrity Commissioner's office and get their permission to accept it. However, I don't think the University of Toronto has anything resembling an Integrity Commissioner or a policy on bribery.
The most expensive gift I've accepted from a student in the past was a box of chocolates. As I recall, that experience ended with me being twice as careful to give her paper a strictly justifiable grade, and her making a tearful complaint to the course professor because she got a B when she was expecting an A. So this could easily go sour.
What do you guys think? Should I accept the tickets? If I decline them, how do I do it graciously? |
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| Coconut mystery solved |
[Jan. 22nd, 2007|03:48 pm] |
I finally got around to looking up that student essay's reference to medieval peasants drinking from coconuts. Here's what the source actually said.
Many other types of drinking vessels were in use, made of various materials in silver-gilt mounts. These were chiefly coconut and nautilus and other shells. Coconut was believed, towards the end of the Middle Ages, to have medicinal properties, and remained popular as a material for drinking vessels up to the middle of the sixteenth century or even later. The first English reference is in a will of 1259.*
There's a photo plate of a fancy silver-trimmed hanap made from a coconut. The context of the passage is a discussion of the furnishings of aristocratic tables. There's no way a reasonably literate student could assume that this passage on the exotic tableware of the rich and famous applied to medieval peasants.
Grr. I hate it when the little stinkers try to misrepresent their research. If I'd looked up that passage sooner, I would have written her some stern comments about what happens to people who try to pull that stunt in the so-called real world.
*Gerard Brett, Dinner is Served: A History of Dining in England, 1400-1900 (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1968), 75. |
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| Migrating coconuts? |
[Dec. 15th, 2006|11:03 pm] |
The following quote comes from a student's essay on alcohol consumption in Chrétien de Troyes' Arthurian Romances and the Lais of Marie de France.
For the more common folk, using a coconut was immensely popular throughout the Middle Ages as it served both a functional use, and was thought to have medicinal purposes in using it.
All together now:
"Where'd you get the coconuts?"
"We found them."
"Found them? In Mercia? The coconut's tropical!"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, this is a temperate zone."
"The swallow may fly south with the sun or the house martin or the plover may seek warmer climes in winter, yet these are not strangers to our land?"
"Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?"
"Not at all. They could be carried."
"What? A swallow carrying a coconut?"
"It could grip it by the husk!"
I don't know if I'll get to the library before handing the essays back, but for future reference, I'm going to have to look up this footnote: Gerard Brett, Dinner is Served: A History of Dining in England 1400-1900 (London: Rupert Hart Davis, 1968), 75. |
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| Teaching |
[Oct. 30th, 2006|07:21 pm] |
Never teach for six hours back to back. That way lies madness.
I gave my first university lecture tonight. It was a two hour filibuster on service and apprenticeship in the High Middle Ages. While it wasn't exactly an impassioned oration in the style of Peter Kormos, I think it was a serviceable presentation. I need more weird stories about apprentices though. There weren't nearly enough lurid anecdotes.
Now I'm going to find myself some food and alcohol. |
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| Corrupting young minds |
[Sep. 23rd, 2006|12:36 am] |
Daily Life in the Middle Ages is just the perfect course to TA. I get to use my repertoire of anecdotes about medieval food, sex, violence and bodily functions in every single class. Today, for instance, the conversation segued from the stews of Southwark to the infamous testicle-twisting trial by combat in Galbert of Bruges' Murder of Charles the Good. The latter got a visceral physical reaction from the guys in the room.
This is too entertaining to be work. South American colonial history wasn't nearly this much fun. |
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| A sign that marking exams will be painful |
[Apr. 25th, 2006|08:01 pm] |
My students wrote their final exam last night. Best question of the evening: "Do I have to define these terms, or can I define some terms that I know?" |
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| A book I want |
[Mar. 22nd, 2006|03:16 am] |
Some time back, I stumbled by accident on Gerald Graff's book Clueless in Academe and found that it explained really well why some of my students were crashing and burning on their essays. Basically, the kids know how to research and write, but the whole process of structuring an academic argument is alien to them.
Now I see that Graff and his wife Cathy Birkenstein have written a guide to rhetoric for students called They Say/I Say. I wish I had a lot of money; I'd hand out copies of it when I give back my current crop of essays. Better yet, I wish I'd been teaching from it before the essays came in. |
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| Essays |
[Nov. 26th, 2005|02:54 am] |
I have been marking essays all day. I've been marking essays all week. I'm going slowly insane.
The course is on pre-Confederation Canadian History. The students had a choice of answering one of five questions or making up a topic of their own. After finding a footnote on piracy in one of their readings, I told them repeatedly that someone should write a paper on pirates. What do I get? Fifteen papers on the economic impact of the fur trade in Western Canada and not a single swash or buckle. *Sob!* What's wrong with kids these days?
Also, what exactly does "The encapsulations of their characteristics derived from their nationality to self-governed identity" mean? It comes from a paper by a student who seems to be suffering from a fascinating learning disability. There are words and they are arranged in grammatical sentences but they hardly make any sense at all.
Thank goodness for ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) yaksman, with whom I went out to dinner last night. I have been a hermit for the last week and I am slowly losing my mind. |
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| Hello, *sniffle*, I'm your TA |
[Sep. 21st, 2005|07:49 pm] |
Today I had my first tutorials of the year. So, because I rarely escape Murphy's Law, I woke up with a wretched head cold.
I went ahead and trooped out to Erindale anyway, since it would be awkward to miss the first class when I don't even have contact information for most of my students anyway. The classes went well, considering that my nose wanted to drip every time I looked down. In previous years I've taught first year students, but these ones are all second year and above. One of them even has a Ph.D. in English literature; she's just taking the course for fun. As a result, the quality of the discussion was significantly higher than I was expecting. This is definitely a good thing, but it will keep me on my toes.
I hope all this competence doesn't mean that the final exams will be free of goofy errors. One of the perks of a History TAship is being able to keep a collection of funny things that students have written. It would be a pity if I don't find anything to rival "Montezuma sent emissionaries to the Spanish" or "As beaver stocks declined, the Huron turned to hunting other skinned animals." |
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