Tuesday, February 01, 2005
It's All Geek To Me
Well, I've been busy not doing anything interesting enough to blog about (which is, of course, why I'm blogging about it ... and when the fuck did "blog" become a verb and why am I using it??? But I digress. Frequently.)
For the past few semesters I've been taking business courses. Courses for which I am not particularly suited but which, alas, my employer requires should I have any sort of ambition or intention of improving my lot at work (although I would like to boast here that I have a B+ average, which isn't bad for a bored chick).
As we haven't had a raise in eleven years (BUT I'M NOT BITTER) and cannot expect to gain greater fiscal compensation through either longevity or merit (AGAIN, NOT BITTER) I've decided I might as well put on the academic kneepads and haul myself through a few semesters of pain in the hopes of one day getting one of the more highly-paid positions and cut back to maybe just two jobs.
I'm a fine and glowing example of enthusiasm for all of our students. No wonder they worship me.
This term, I just couldn't face another business course. I guess all of the Tsunami stuff brought it home to me that life is either too long or too short to spend it doing something you hate. I immediately dropped the Business Management course for which I had registered and signed my silly ass up for Linguistics.
Linguistics (Practical Phonetics) has little or nothing to do with business. It's more closely related to music and math, but it's interesting as hell, particularly the IPA. I'm beginning to get my head around it, and find it utterly fascinating. It's basically learning how to write down sounds. For instance the "v" in the word "vent" in English has the same sound as the "w" in "wie" in German. They're both represented by the same symbol (and off the top of my head here I'd say it was a voiced labio dental fricative, but I dunno and I'm too lazy to look it up). It's just terminally neat to me that you can WRITE the sounds of a language that you neither understand nor speak, if only you can train your nasty Western ears to hear the subtleties in that language.
If there's anyone out there who doesn't think I'm a complete and utter geek by this point, I would like to hammer it home by confessing that my husband and I own our own hand-crafted IPA flash cards. They are things of beauty. I will, however, hastily add that it is he who made them and not I.
Anyhow, I need three more business courses for a certificate, four more after that for an advanced certificate, and if I do another nine after that I will have both a diploma and cirrhosis. This Linguistics course will either count as a Humanities elective if I keep on taking the business program, or I can use it towards an Associate of Arts degree (20 courses and this will make #4 that I have completed) if the business courses just aren't bearable, so it's not a total waste of academic effort.
And besides, I get to say things like "fricative" and not get arrested.
On the knitting front, I have completed two more dishcloths, neither of which I can be arsed to photograph. One is for a friend and one is for my dentist's hygienist who can't stand the big dishcloths because she can't get them in a glass to really wash it out properly, so I made her a little 5" square.
That makes eight completed items of my self-imposed "100 things". At this rate I'll be done by this time next year. Finger puppets are starting to look very appealing.
I'm my bloggery wanderings I went over to visit maryse and found a fun quiz to take.
Quiet Girl
What kind of little girl were YOU?
brought to you by Quizilla
This result is complete and utter ass. The first part is right, but to the "poster child of introversion" assessment, all I have to say is a loud and enthusiastic voiceless bilabial trill. (Otherwise known as a raspberry.)
Carry on.
# posted by Rabbitch @ 1:41 AM 
Comments:
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Maybe quiet girl is the ONLY answer. That's what I got too. 'Cept, with me it kinda fits.
Sounds like you lasted longer than I did in Business Management. I knew after Day One that continuing would be purely dellusional foolishness and got my ass out of there. My first day was my last.
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Sounds like you lasted longer than I did in Business Management. I knew after Day One that continuing would be purely dellusional foolishness and got my ass out of there. My first day was my last.
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