Literature.

My current project:
ذاكرة الجسد (Memory in the Flesh), Ahlam Mosteghanemi (Arabic/English)

Okay, so the Arabic here is fantastically styled and metaphoric and far more difficult to read than Elias Khouri(English spelling?)'s more straightforward storytelling in Gate of the Sun (باب الشمس)(which, don't worry, I haven't put down; I kindle my interest by keeping a diverse literary portfolio), but I'm having a wonderful time trying. And, يا سلام, the translation! It's fabulously eloquent and I can't imagine translating anything with such literary prowess.

I mean, consider just the dedication. The power! It kills me!

الى مالك حدد، ابن قسنطينة الذي أقسم بعد استقلال الجزاءر ألا يكتب بلغة ليست لغته . . . فاغتالته الصفحة البيضاء . . . و مات متأثرا بسلطان صمته ليصبح شهيد اللغة العربية، و أول كاتب قرر أن يموت صمتا و قهرا و عشقا لها. و الى أبي . . . عساه بجد هناك من يتقن العربية، فيقرأ له أخيرا هذا الكتاب . . . كتابه.  

To the memory of Malek Haddad, Son of Casantina, who swore after the independence of Algeria not to write in a language that was not his. The blank page assassinated him. He died by the might of his silence to become a martyr of the Arabic language and the first writer ever to die silent, grieving, and passionate on its behalf.
And to the memory of my father, who may find someone there who knows Arabic to read him this book, his book.
-------------------------------

يا سلام! الجمال!ل
Almost nothing in this world makes me happier than good literature.

Sigh.

xkcd

5 Things I Am Grateful For Today
1) The fact that it snowed lightly almost all day, justifying my clothing choices--soft boots, a cozy white hat, and an outrageously bright snow coat.
2) My linguistics class--some days the lighthearted atmosphere in there is a real breath of air to a drowning girl.
3) The fact that no one came to my office hours so I could count listening to music and playing on Facebook as productive, employed time.
4) One very nice compliment.
5) The fact that I finished my homework before 10 PM and might even get to see my friends tonight.

This started out as "5 Things I'm Looking Forward To This Week," but (pathetically) I couldn't even think of one. I think I read on one of those inspirational chocolate wrappers that happiness comes from having something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to. Well, I certainly have enough to do, so if I want to be happy I guess I'd better spend a little more time on the other two.

Mashrou' Leila.

http://www.myspace.com/mashrou3leila

Love, love, love, love, love.
Check out فساتين (my favorite); if you speak Arabic at my level/higher you'll be psyched; we can understand most of it.



بتذكري لما قلتلي
انك راحت تجوجيني
...بلا فلوس و بلا بيت

Snowpocalypse Not.

original

BYU shut itself down at 3 PM yesterday after wildly abusing the Y-Alert text messaging system (really, fifteen messages?) to make sure every single one of its 30,000 students knew about an impending blizzard that would (and I quote) "far surpass anything that we've seen, probably for the last several years. The combination of snow, extreme cold, and possibly damaging winds will make travel extremely hazardous." A counselor in the Kennedy Center sent all her employees home at 12 to escape the traffic, and when I showed up in her office she looked to be on the verge of tears. "Be extremely careful in the snow!" she exhorted as I left. The testing center, which decided to close at 4 PM, forced my organic chemistry professor to extend our exam until next Monday, giving those who hadn't taken it yet an extremely unfair advantage (in a class graded in fierce competition, that's insane). My roommate, who was supposed to work a five-hour shift on campus yesterday and all day today, simply won't get paid for those hours (she can't come to work if campus is shut down). And my neighbor's kids, who excitedly set up an insulated tent in the backyard in order to weather the storm "like Bear Grylls," sat out there for hours while not one flake graced our sorry ground.

Let's just say I'd hate to be:
1) the meteorologist who decided citywide alerts were necessary
2) the dude who decided it was necessary to shut down the entire university

"Are you sure, Cecil? Shut down campus? That might be a little drastic."
"I'm sure, Steve. This blizzard will far surpass anything that we've seen, probably for the last several years! We'll be stuck inside for days! Students need to stock up on groceries and flashlights or get the heck out of town!"
"But consider the logistics of the situation. Eleven professors trying to pack in exams before Thanksgiving, thousands of students in classes on campus, thousands more employees with jobs to work..."
"Give the order, Steve. Break out Y-Alert."

Luckily, I'm not the only Utah blogger laughing.
http://h00plah.blogspot.com/2010/11/hide-yo-kids.html 
http://www.cjaneprovo.com/2010/11/imaginary-blizzard.html
http://jayniemoon.blogspot.com/2010/11/dear-utah-we-caught-wind-of-giant-storm.html
http://www.formerlyphread.com/2010/11/fake-blizzard.html
http://jbod97.blogspot.com/2010/11/remember-that-freak-blizzard.html

Friendship.

high school

lol, aka paradise

 college

The Friendship comprises seven girls who've been best friends since, well, ever. We're twenty and twenty-one years old and since we all bounce in and out of Utah between future-oriented endeavors we're never too far apart. We're sisters in the best sense of the word and have been for a decade or so.
 
But on Friday we celebrated our first wedding, and our beautiful Elizabeth Witham became Jerret and Elizabeth Elton. As the Friendship teased and giggled during our best-friends-of-the-bride photo shoot outside the temple we realized things would never be the same. In many ways they'll be better--more adult, more real, and more individual. But in other ways, we're really going to miss each other.

Congratulations, Liz! You were an elegant bride.

One F-ship wedding down...six to go?

{Also: I, the pre-med-pre-missionary/least likely to marry anytime soon, caught Liz's wedding bouquet. Ironic.}

Frustrating.

I'm always so depressed and angry with myself after my Arabic speaking appointment.

This is how it goes. My partner and I are the last pair of the week to meet with our graduate student. We step into his room at 4:45 PM every Friday afternoon and it's obvious the poor guy has had enough--eighty American students butchering the Arabic language per week is just about eighty too many. So without speaking to us he leans back in his chair and closes his eyes, not bothering to hide his frustration. It's legitimate frustration, too; I suck on pretty much all fronts when it comes to speaking, and because I know that, I get even worse. Inevitably, my partner slips into Shami and I stumble into fusHa, both of which make our grad student angry (we're supposed to be speaking Masri). We've given up trying to memorize the اولادنا scenes; any more of سعيد and his سرير لوحده and I might just give up on life. So we read the scenes from my paper and then I stutter through the monologue I so carefully prepare, forgetting half of it and mispronouncing the other half due to the fact that I'm insanely nervous and if you asked me to speak in ENGLISH in front of someone who was judging me I might just pass out, let alone do so in Arabic.

I guess the thing that bothers me most, though, is that we never get any positive feedback--or really any recognition at all. Our grad student just closes his eyes and tells us what we've butchered most severely, then asks us for our point sheets (grading is wildly subject to mood) and we get out. I think I'd have a more positive speaking experience if I were asked real questions--I don't expect anyone to remember things about my life, but it'd be nice to have a little personal inquiry once in a while, or at the very least a single positive comment. I get so down on myself about my speaking abilities that I really do think it makes me worse. I'm a person who thrives on verbal recognition--if someone compliments me on even the smallest thing that I do right I feel all right about myself, even if they chew me out for my errors afterward; if instead all they go on about is everything I screw up I just leave feeling horribly, completely incompetent.

Comments.

original

As a scientist, I don't comprehend the concept behind "making comments in class." In all honesty, I cannot comprehend why anyone would raise their hand during a lecture unless they had something academically substantial to contribute to the collective enlightenment of the class--a question relevant to everyone, an argument exposing a flaw in the presenter's argument, or a well-researched connection to something equally well-researched.

However, as I've observed while learning to function in non-science classes, comments that fit the above criteria are the exception rather than the norm, and to help me make sense of this concept I've started to classify the types of comments I hear every day into six general categories. It's no wonder I'm confused--no one taking electrical physics raises his hand to inform the class that the principles that drive three-dimensional charged-field magnetism are "just so true, because, like, I was talking to my roommate/boyfriend/spouse last night, and we realized that people do this ALL the time. I mean, when I was on my mission, I had this investigator who..."

The Six Major Types of Comments in Liberal Arts Classes
1) Corroboration
2) Parallel example: Course-relevant/Scholarly
3) Parallel example: Individual-specific
4) Expansive example: Intelligent
5) Expansive example: Unfounded logic leap
6) "I feel..."

Corroboration comments consist of a student raising his or her hand to agree with the professor. No insight or additional information is added. Inexplicably, the student must just agree out loud. These people always make me wonder. If they feel such an urge to comment when they understand a principle, and they only comment once or twice per lecture, what does this say about how much they understand?

Parallel example: Course-relevant/Scholarly comments are rare--diamonds among dust mites. Comments in this category are exactly what they sound like--intelligent, relevant, and thought-provoking. Sadly, comments like this are almost extinct, having been brutally forced out of their natural habitat by attention-seeking opinion whores packing rounds of personal pronouns.

I find Parallel example: Individual-specific comments absolutely incomprehensible. What illogical,  egocentric force drives a person to raise his or her hand to share an irrelevant story from his or her daily life with a class of fifty others with no vested interest never fails to shock me. Extensive comments about a movie one has seen or a book one has read (unknown to the rest of the class) also fall here.

Expansive example: Intelligent comments are indicative of deep thought; these comments concisely and effectively articulate connections between ideas, great works, languages, historical figures, or contemporary society and the topic at hand.

Expansive example: Unfounded logic leap comments confuse everyone involved (including the commenter). These are the comments in which a very confused student makes connections to something he or she doesn't fully understand, and no one knows whether to laugh or to pretend like they didn't hear. For example, after an exhaustive lecture on protein complexing in homologous recombination in my molecular biology class last year, one girl raised her hand to ask, "Is this why we have gay people?"

"I feel..." comments express the emotions (and not the opinions) of the commenter. These comments match Parallel example: Individual-specific comments in sheer irrelevancy. Why fifty other students and a professor should care what YOU feel about Principle X is absolutely beyond me.

News.

BBC Provo, 8:55 AM Greenwich Mean Time (2 AM MST):
Jessica Sagers announced Monday that she does, in fact, have emotions. "I know I always seem like I'm in the same mood, but please don't think it's that simple," said Sagers, smiling inexplicably in an impromptu conference later that day. "Very few--if any--people know when I'm unhappy." Responding to questions posed about her ability to cry, she was taken aback. "Are you kidding? I cry all the time. I just don't do it around anyone if I can help it. And if I'm exhausted, stressed, scared, or despondent enough, I won't be able to help it, so keep your eyes open." Confused at the press's apparent inability to distinguish whether she is, as she claims, a human being, she offered some suggestions to help the layperson differentiate between her moods. "Any jewelry in the shape of a heart, that's a dead giveaway for sadness. Red eyes--I mean excessively red, the I've-stayed-up-all-night-and-will-probably-have-to-do-so-again-tonight red. Troubled skin. It's not that hard. Of course I'm going to tell you I'm fine. I don't want to talk to you, probably, so it's the easiest thing to say. Don't take it personally. It's me, not you."

Thinking.

An excerpt from this fabulous student blog.

-------------
Not long into their interview with public radio host Ira Glass, one of the three college-aged interviewers, a young girl, asks, with a desperate smile etched on her face, how to decide “which of her passions” to pursue.
“Like how do you determine, how…” she begins.
“How do you figure out what you want?” Glass interrupts.
“How do you not only figure out what you want, but know that you’ll be good at it?” she finishes.
There’s a pause. In this moment, when Glass prepares his answer, the young girl’s earlier admission that she’s a pre-med, and doubting her decision to attend med school, hangs in the air. Glass can relate: he too had been considering med school when he stumbled into his first radio internship, after his freshman year of college.
He proceeds cautiously, softly: “Honestly, even the stuff you want you’re not necessarily good at right away…I started working at 19 at the network level, and from that point it took me years. The key thing is to force yourself through the work, force the skills to come. That’s the hardest phase.”
One of the other interviewers, a young man in a baseball cap, interjects: “Do you think hard work can make you talented?”
“Yes. I do.”
The students let this sink in.
“In the movies there’s this idea that you should just go for your dream,” Glass continues. “But I don’t believe that.”
By the students’ reactions, this is not what they expected to hear.
“Things happen in stages. I was a terrible reporter, but I was perfectly good at other parts of working in radio: I am a good editor…I feel like your problem is that you’re trying to judge all things in the abstract before you do them.”
A beat.
“That’s your tragic mistake.”

Ecstasy.

this comes from a website for one Mrs. Beard's first grade class in michigan. clearly, mrs. beard knows her stuff.

Today I found the Middle Eastern Collection on the fifth floor of the library, and I couldn't help feel happy tears in my eyes when I discovered I could read.

I never experienced that revelation as a child; I grew up with words in my mouth and have never remembered life without books. As a two-year-old I am told I flipped through magazines in the airport, proclaiming racy headlines to amused onlookers; my parents loved to show off their first baby's unnatural affinity for the written word. As a six-year-old I stored handwritten short stories on pink Post-it notes in my closet; at twelve I dissolved into Betty Smith and at seventeen into Conrad and Faulkner, and for the past three years I've consumed just about everything I can find.

But today between the fifth floor stacks, my back to the Welsh Bibles, I realized I can read in Arabic--not just in my textbooks, not just in my drills, and by all means not very well--but it's true, I really can read. Despite not understanding every word, I am trained to guess at meaning and well enough founded in grammar to make out the shape of syntax, voice, and flow.

And so in bliss I researched milestone works in contemporary Arabic literature and checked out two novels with true literary merit, a version of each in Arabic and in English. With them I'm going to challenge myself. And whether I get through six pages or six hundred, one fact remains: I can read.

Cognates.

An amusing list of interdisciplinary cognates, all equally relevant to my life.
Click to enlarge (if you dare).

case

substituent

form

syncope

trace

geminate

كل شيء courtesy of Wikipedia/Google Images.

Square yard of space.

original

If last year’s model was pristine and white, all clean lines and stark decoration, this year’s is sanguine and lavish. The overwhelming color is luxuriously cranberry—venous blood and lukewarm Merlot. Persian rugs adorn my floor in haphazard piles, prickly gold trim spinning ribbons through forests of plush, and a small gold chandelier radiates thick yellow light from a ceiling painted in stylized Arabic. No windows, no doors, no one else, of course. Books, sure—indulgent novels, nothing with even the aftertaste of information. Ambient acoustic guitar. A four-poster bed drizzled with pillows—burnished red, deep brown, burnt pink, sparkling gold. Kunafe min is-shar3a fi al-Quds and dark chocolate fondue.

لامتحاني الكبير

original

Arabic exam,

I walked into class today and there you were, all graded and ready to be passed back. I was deathly nervous when my name was called, and when you were passed to me, I wanted to do anything but look. I turned you over and hurriedly scanned the first page for a number, and on seeing one, my heart dropped. Confusedly, I flipped into the test to see what had gone so terribly wrong . . . only to realize I'd seen just half my score. Imagine my relief when I realized 464.5/500 makes you one of the highest rated packets of stapled papers in the class--such an outlier you were thrown right out of the curve. Congratulations, يا حبيب. We did it.

مع الحب
منى

P.S. Suck it, ochem.

F.

originals. visit the link; this guy's blog is fantastic.

Dr. Ess,

Thank you. After five hours in the testing center on Halloween Saturday I emerged so depressed and drained I’d have made a better zombie than my costumed roommate (if I’d had the energy to enjoy the holiday). It’s my fault, really. I spent days carefully completing every recommended end-of-chapter problem. I re-copied my notes and memorized important maxims and tables. I rationalized the reasons behind each reaction mechanism. I built models and visualized each step. Call me naïve and idealistic, but I thought I was ready. At least, I've been effectively able to gauge my own exam-readiness well enough to maintain a 4.0 the past five semesters. It’s your first semester teaching, but maybe it’s me that’s mistaken. Regardless, thank you. I could have explained the problems I got right in my sleep, so next time I’ll skip the library time and run straight into the fire.

Your next exam begins the day one of my best friends gets married.  Thank you for assuring me that if I miss your review, I won’t run the risk of missing anything relevant.

Sincerely,

99.5/150
(class average 57%)

Really?

original

Every Wednesday morning after I've successfully magicked my lecture slides onto the consistently malfunctioning projector screen, one kid walks up to the front of the class and sets a little white tape recorder on the table in front of me. Okay, I was a little weirded out the first time, but decided it was harmless. It's one kid. Maybe's he's, like, ADD or something and can't listen for long periods of time. Whatever. But tonight I was preparing for tomorrow's lesson while giving some extra help to a few other students in my class, and the subject of the audio recordings came up. Apparently Mr. Tape Recorder has been distributing the sound files to the entire class, and my students re-listen to me to help them study.

Are you serious?!

Those must be the most pathetic audio recordings of all time. OF ALL TIME.
Imagine you're reviewing for my exam.
"Okay, so on this slide, yeah, right there, you can see, well maybe you can see, I'm a little close, but see here, where the tissue branches into a V? See that? The cross-section of Enterobius vermicularis? No, not the structure rimmed with cells, the one with lateral alae. What's--oh, the wing-type things. Yeah, they're called alae, and they're lateral cause they're on the side, see?"

omg.

Hallows.

i have no idea where this is from. it is of no relevance but i like it.

The Year(s?) Without a Halloween
(a memoir)

Jessica, a career-confused blonde twenty-year-old of the quiet variety, loved Halloween. She loved to dress up and do crazy makeup, and this year she already had a costume all picked out. But Halloween time neared and our protagonist couldn't seem to catch a break. All of her exams piled up and she became very, very stressed. "Oh no," she exclaimed. "Something tells me this next weekend may just have to suck." And she was right. She spent Friday night alone in her lab in the Widtsoe building building organic models of tetrahydrofuran in preparation for her organic chemistry exam. She passed out in her Snuggie sometime around two AM and awoke at eight on Saturday morning to study for two hours before taking the aforementioned exam. At ten she made her merry way to the testing center. The sky was bright and warm and both her hair and the car radio were less staticky than usual. The testing center people swiped her card and let her in. Five hours later, she fell out of the testing center into the cold, dark rain after subjecting herself to a twelve-page deluge of organic reactions she couldn't have dreamed up, let alone explain. So much for studying. Exhausted and frustrated, she drove to Bajio and got a salad (high point), then crashed at her house to write an intense linguistics research paper, which she finished around eleven p.m. She was lucky enough to finally make it out to join her friends around that time and watch a funny movie with them (high point). But she never even got to put on a costume and it was as if Halloween never happened. And then she thought into the future and realized that Halloween wouldn't happen for her until 2013, because she's pretty sure missionaries don't get to dress up and wear crazy makeup.

The End.