Here are my views concerning the great assignment debacle. First of all. I would never lose an assignment. If I did, if the assignment was a reasonably minor one, what I would do is simply state that I would give the student, whose paper I lost, a pass - and the letter/number grade that they would get on it would be whatever they get in the course. I debated if I would just give full marks, but with all due respect, not all students are good students and so, that would be too much. That I think, that is without losing the assignment, the fairest way for that to be approached. If you did well on this paper, then you should do well on the rest. Of course, if you didn't, then it's unlikely to make or break you in the course.

As a TA, I need to stress, as I have in the past, the importance of listening. Secondly, it's also very important that work gets handed in when it is supposed to. Then, there's more grammatically oriented things like not repeating a word in a sentence, or even too close to that sentence. Also, it is always important to be clear and concise, particularly in a humanities paper/assignment. With all due respect to English students, flowery crap won't get you anywhere and if it takes too long to say something, you're likely to lose marks. I have that problem on occasion and so I make a conscious effort to be as direct as possible. Save the flowery shit for creative writing. Then you can write long-flowing sentences with lots of big words. In other words, don't use "words" to mask what you don't know because the person marking it is gonna see right through your lack of critical thinking. Here is an example of a bad sentence: "...is a strong feeling that any reader can relate to because it's a very strong feeling. Readers might not necessarily relate to that particular feeling, but they have all experienced strong feelings either for a or against something." That is nothing but vague generalities with seemingly pervasive rules of life that do little more than show what the writer did not know.

It's also not a good idea to make loaded statements, especially ones that are beyond the scope of a paper, and especially when you can't, for a variety of possible reasons, back it up. For example, the following statement is wrong "this scene is also realistic because it's natural for people to want to explore new and strange places when they arrive". Not only does it not answer the question (the students had to find 10 points in Odyssey 9.105 - end pertaining to suspense, realism, and feeling. This is a relatively simple task, find the line, then say why it is so paying particular attention to the multitudinous literary techniques out there.) In this case the student is not only not explaining there example, but to cover up their holes, they've thrown in some vague philosophical statement that is purely opinion and cannot be backed in an assignment of this size.

One last point. Movie's are not perveyors of knowledge, and just because something happened in a movie, doesn't mean that it holds true for literature, life, etc.

So, today was about as good as it gets in terms of weather on planet C. 15 - 17 degrees with beautiful sunshine, that's just perfection really. And this, this is why I love October and the fall.

So, I know this person. And, this person has been living in a house for a wee while. Well, they've just found out that not only are his/her roommates fulltime drug dealers, but they also grow the stuff, and, are involved in counterfeit production - and on a grand scale (were talking $1000's and $1000's). I have agreed that they need to get out of this situation, regardless of the amicable relationship with these roommates as while nothing may happen, there is still that room for many bad things to happen. So the question is, how does this person get out of their living arrangement without causing any problems. Notifying the landlord and police have been ruled out - the real problem is dealing with the lease. Any suggestions?

So who wants to go watch some cycling? Damn choppers are distracting me.