Tag: phdlife

The Summer of Sims and Prelims

.Reading time 3 minutes.

Last summer during lockdown, I played Sims for the first time. And me being me, I quickly became obsessed. By the end of summer, I had bought all but 3 of the packs. (I don’t have My First Pet, Kids Room, or Toddler).

Over the past year, Sims has been my way of relaxing and escaping from academic stuff. Building and creating are my favorite parts of the game. I’ve been uploading my houses and such into the gallery for other people to download. If you play and are interested in seeing what I create, my username is GingerSnap425. Look me up, follow me, download my shit! (haha!)

Screnshot of my Sims account, GingerSnap425

This summer is the summer of prelim exams for my cohort. Before I can start dissertating, I have to pass a prelim exam of 3 questions from my dissertation committee; one in pedagogy, one in theory, and one in history. There are a total of 70 readings to prepare for the exam; 52 on a general list, and 18 that I added. I’ve read some of them already in classes over the past 2 years, so I just have to gather the notes and annotations I already have for those. And, let’s be honest here, I have no intention of reading Phaedrus again. (Sorry, not sorry, Plato).

I get 3 days to answer the questions, and it’s open book. Right now, I’m planning on taking mine August 27-30. Doesn’t seem too difficult, right? Hahahaha! At least it’s not like the bar exam. That’s what they’re telling me, anyway.

So, as I’m reading and annotating and reading some more, I will be building and creating in Sims to relax from it all. It’s something completely mindless which is what I’ll need. I remember when I was studying for the bar exam way back when, and I would watch the MTV reality show “Sorority Life” for the same reason. Remember that show? It was gloriously awful as most reality tv is. Doing something that takes no brain power is a must when your work consists of nothing but brain power.

And I think I’ll be writing posts about my adventures in Sims. I’m not entirely sure what to write about yet, but here are a few thoughts:

  • write about each of the packs I have, and my favorite/least favorite parts of the pack
  • build a house using only the base game and one pack (this is very difficult for me)
  • have people give me building/character creation challenges to complete

If there is anything you want to see or read about, or if you want to give me a building/creation challenge, go for it! I’ll do my best to create it, and then I’ll write all about it here!

Teacher’s Log – Scholastic date 11.07.2019

.Reading time 2 minutes.

The discourse communities project went as well as expected. As typical, there are a group of students who have continued to take risks with their writing and have fully embraced the idea of writing isn’t limited to essays. I saw genres of news articles, informational pamphlets, emails, and Instagram posts. And there is another group of students who are doing the bare minimum. This is the group that I always feel I failed in some way. I know it’s probably not true, and the reality is that not every student is going to be as excited about writing as I am. But, I can’t help but feel as if I failed to reach them in some way.

While teaching, I’ve also been working on the projects my students will be doing next semester. Writing a critical incident analysis, creating a research question and a survey to test that question, writing a proposal, and lastly, creating a poster presentation of all of my work. These projects have been very interesting. I researched the link between writing anxiety, self-efficacy, procrastination, and microagressions of a patriarchal society. Procrastination is of interest to me, especially. As you can see, even though all of my blog posts have been written in class; guess who procrastinated in actually posting them?

You think I would’ve learned something in preventing that in all of this research. But, alas, I have not. What I did learn is that first-year writing students have A LOT of writing anxiety, and it contributes greatly to procrastination. I also learned that while those who identified as women didn’t believe they had been made to feel inferior due to their gender; many of them still heard microaggressions from men. These included statements that began with “what you should’ve done…” or “what I would’ve done…”

Now obviously, my sample size of 36 isn’t exactly representative of all first-year writing students, but it does create many questions for future study. Whether or not I will complete those futures studies remains to be seen. But, it would be very interesting to learn more about nonetheless.

Teacher’s Log – Supplemental

.Reading time 2 minutes.

I can’t believe I forgot about the Doctor Who activity I had my students do!

On the last day before rough drafts were due, we watched the Doctor Who episode, “Midnight.” For those not familiar with the episode, it’s from season 4, episode 11. Amazon Prime’s description of it is…

The Doctor is trapped, alone, powerless and terrified, on the leisure planet Midnight. Soon, the knocking on the wall begins. Only a woman called Sky seems to know the truth – but as paranoia turns into a witch-hunt, Sky turns the Doctor’s greatest strengths against him, and a sacrifice must be made.

-Amazon Prime https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B00C104Y54/ref=atv_tv_hom_1_c_Nw77I8_2_1

It’s a bit of a spooky episode which is perfect for right before Halloween!

At a certain point in the episode (right after he asks “Could you really murder someone? Or are you better than that?”), I stop the video. Students must then decide if they would side with the Doctor, or throw the woman out of train. I give them 5 minutes to write a post to me, telling me their decision, and the reasons for that decision.

After their decisions are made and submitted, we finish watching the rest of the episode. The first question I asked when the show finished was “Would it have made a difference if I had added the constraint that your decision would have been on a discussion thread where everyone else in the class would’ve seen it?” They overwhelmingly said yes!

We spent the rest of the class time discussing all of the rhetorical moves made throughout the episode (there are a lot!). It’s always a fun way to end the first part of the unit.