I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity.
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so
What I have been telling you, from alpha to omega, what is the one great thing the sigil taught me — that everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken at will from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness. If the sigil were proved to be the top of a tomato-can, it would not alter that big fact, nor my fixed faith. No Harrowby, the common names we call things by do not matter — except to show how very dull we are ...
December 15, 2004 - 12:04 p.m.
I came online just to update and I�ve wasted over an hour already, not good. I have so much to do today.
I haven�t started grading my tests yet and I�m afraid to. The calculus class at least finished the test on time. I know it only took me 15 minutes and if they were really prepared it wouldn�t take them more than 20. Half the questions involved just writing down the answer, no work, so you either know it or you don�t. They of course spend all their time looking through their unorganized notes.
The fundamentals test is the one I�m more worried about now, they didn�t finish the test. I�m really having second thoughts about giving open note tests. They use their notes as such a crutch that they can�t get themselves to just answer the question. They feel the need to find the subject in their notes then read all of them before they start on the problem.
It is amazing how students either don�t listen or get stubborn. I told them that when you are solving a quadratic equation the first thing you try doing is factoring, and only if you can�t do you use the quadratic formula. I won�t take off for using the formula but I�ll take off major credit if they make a mistake in simplifying the answer since the only reason they need to do that is because they didn�t factor. I still saw students using the formula and then either not simplifying or getting it wrong. They just hate having a choice of methods to use on a problem and even though they already knew factoring they took learning the formula as a license to forget it. I also told them to never use the method of completing the square since that is the hardest way. So of course I saw someone do that even though he didn�t even have to memorize the quadratic formula since he could look at his notes.
So I have to figure out what to do next semester. Last semester the open note worked pretty well, this semester it didn�t. I was thinking of limiting them to one page of notes but that isn�t fair to people that can�t write small and neat. I considered giving them a page of formulae but that is just a gift, making it an open note test forced them to take good notes. I could just make them traditional tests but I�d probably end up having to curve the tests if I wanted most of them to pass, that or give really easy tests. I don�t want to do either.
What I might end up doing is just do some variation of collecting the homework. If they actually do it all they can learn the material. One idea I had was to give random quizzes straight out of the homework. If they had done the homework all they�ll have to do is copy it over. I won�t give partial credit on them so it won�t take me forever to grade them. How does that sound to you? Of course some of them will just copy the homework each day from somebody else. One thing I�ll do is make sure nobody has a Xeroxed sheet in front of them on the quiz. If they copy they�ll have to do it by longhand.
As you can see work has been bothering me much more than usual lately. I usually don�t let it get to me.
I rushed from school last night down to Arlene�s Grocery to see Ruth Gerson. This was her first show since giving birth to her second daughter. I asked her if her older daughter, Emma, had let her rehearse, and she told me no, that she only had one rehearsal before the show. It didn�t matter, she was great. Good thing too, I hadn�t had enough sleep. She was really on and so was her band. The energy level was so high I forgot that I was exhausted.
It was great to hear Ruth again and it was great to talk to her too. I decided to be brave and honest and tell her that I forgot the name and gender of her second child. It is Hazel, and she�s a girl. She only found out after they named her that Hazel is the title of a Dylan song, so now that�s what they are telling people is the origin of the name. It is really a contraction of the two names they were deciding between, Hannah and Razel. Is Razel right? Who knows what Hebrew name that is close to? I didn�t want to tell her I�m a bad Jew and don�t know the name. The kid�s Hebrew name is Chaya.
I�m going to try and spend the rest of the day grading tests and making up the finals. Tonight I am going to the Knick game. It would be nice if I could leave here a bit early and get some Festivus shopping in first. I�m not sanguine about the possibility. I�ll try and get some down between classes tomorrow.
Last night I was tracking down a google hit to my diary and came across the entry I wrote the day before my intestine perforated, Another Day Another Test. I had never noticed the irony. If that had happened in a story I�d say it was contrived.
After reading that entry I read most of the entries after it perforated but before I knew what had happened. I didn�t cringe like I usually do when reading old entries, these were pretty good. What really struck me was that I liked the person writing them. I had a nice mixture of the events of my life and my thoughts. Reading them in retrospect is different than reading them at the time. I know how things are going to work out, I know that I was much sicker than I the author of the entries thought. The effect is to give the series a dramatic story arc.
People often commented then about how brave I was or how well I handled adversity. That is really just about the way I parse the universe. Yes I was in agony a good deal of the time; but that was just my body. My soul was in as good a shape as it has ever been. I was feeling at peace with the universe. Most of all I wasn�t lonely, I felt more connected then than I ever have. So what if my body was falling apart, I was happy.
I signed the Pro-Truth Pledge:
please hold me accountable.
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Horvendile December 15, 2004
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