Mouse: Remixed

So our very humane trap caught a mouse within an hour. Yay for us, being so smart and loving! Yay for hippies! Yay for coddling the smug bastard of a mouse into a new home... or... not.
Apparently the husband killed the mouse. I was very upset about this, but did some reading about it- you can't catch and release a mouse unless you are going to release it miles and miles from your home, and it was past 1am and below -20 when the husband came home. I understand not wanting to sit beside mr. smug supreme in the car so that he can be let go. I was still very sad (and took the opportunity to remind the husband that I still need to learn how to drive again- I have kept paying for my license, but haven't driven seven years, and never in the city. Plus our car is standard, and all of my driving experience, except my initial few weeks of training, have been on an automatic)- I was already contemplating letting it go just because it clearly didn't know it was caught. It oscillated between grooming itself and throwing itself at the top of the cup to get more cream cheese. And pooping. I probably should have just knocked the cup over and told the husband that the cup wasn't heavy enough. As far as modes of execution go, the mouse froze to death. Apparently this is one of the most humane ways to let them go, which made me a bit more happy.

This happiness was crushed shortly after when I dragged my lazy bum out of bed an hour after the husband had left (to be fair, I usually stay up quite late working, and then sleep until ten or so) and found that he had re-set his trap. I say "his" trap because we had both made humane traps- he had made the glass trap, and I had made a bowl trap (a ramp for the mouse to get up into a metal bowl that has been oiled- the mouse can get in, but can't climb back out) . So, he has reset his trap, which leaves me a bit hurt. We we had agreed to leave my trap up to give it an equal change at mouse-catching, mostly because we had bet each other a massage that our trap would catch more mice, and here he was mocking me by trying to catch way more mice because his trap is better. Unfair!
And then, I noticed the mouse poops. I immediately put more cream cheese into the glass (it is the more effective trap) so that it would be fresh and attract this other mouse.

How many can there be? Will this trap be successful a second time, or does it now smell like mouse-leader death? internet, if you have a god/dess, please pray for our mouse problem. Pray that I learn to drive in time for our next mouse release, and also that we catch these mice before they give us all the red death. This effects you too, internet. That is how plagues work.

PS: I really enjoyed reading that comment that was mostly me commenting on my own blog. It was great, real satisfying. I know that there are a group of people that are keeping track of when I blog, because there is a flux of traffic here whenever I post. Do you like what you're reading? I am very excited to finally be doing this blogging thing- I think this medium is crazy interesting, effective, and versatile. And I want to keep it up, internet. Tell me what you've liked and haven't liked. And, perhaps answer this question:
Have you had mice? How did you get rid of those mice? How many mice are probably in our walls still if one is dead and one is pooping next to a trap? Were you humane about it? If this were reality TV, would I learn to drive in time to release mouse deux?
Ha! I have fooled you, internet. That was more than one question!

Of Mice and (Wo)men. Yes, this title is that corny.

So we've had a mouse. Not just any mouse, but a mouse(!). This thing is the smartest and boldest rodent I have ever met. Seriously. We've had trouble with mice before, as ours is a hundred year old house with plenty of mouse-doors and such. We've also had trouble with humane traps- mice quickly become too smart for any trap at all, and our mice are organized! We had tried everything- live traps, snap traps, poison (I hate this, btw. This is inhumane, plus it almost killed my aunt's dog the day before our wedding, which is another post for another day. Also, the poison has never killed a mouse). We have tried glue traps. The only glue trap that has ever caught a mouse in this house was the one that my husband forgot about for years. We didn't know this particular mouse was in the house until it started screaming. Don't use glue traps. Just don't. Not only are the inhumane, but mouse get way too smart for them very quickly. In fact, our mouse was all "bitch, please. What do you think I am? A vole?"
Did I mention that our mouse is bold? Yeah, so bold that he started calling himself "sir mouse-a-lot." So bold that he not only stole food from our rabbits, but mocked them. "Oh yeah," said our mouse, "well your mama's ears were so big she couldn't wear fashionable hats!"
(Ophelia, our lop, responded by saying:

and Wolfgang Van Halen the 2nd replied to with:


That's right, mouse. We know all about hats.
Aside from terrorizng our loving and lovable lagomorphs, this mouse was mostly a terror and a pain. And besides all of this, we caught him, and we did it with a trap that was pretty much free, and without killing/torturing him. Heck yes.
Here's how we did it:
Get a glass (about a dollar ten at ikea)
Put something delicious at the bottom (free: anything in your fridge that is spreadable. We used cream chees)
Prop the glass up onto a nickel (0.05$ in Canada)
Wait (also free)

It took less than an hour for us to catch our mouse.
For me, being too squeamish to remove the mouse, and with the husband being gone and all, this meant two hours of mouse-mocking.
I saw him throw himself at the top of the glass to get the cream cheese. I contemplated letting him to and blaming it on a bad trap. I had to leave the room to stop myself from doing this.
Anyways, humane traps, all the way. Also, they are cheap!

Why I've been away

My family is pretty tight. We're all close, and there's a lot of sickness in my family, particularly cancer. My mom and my dad's sister are both survivors of various cancers, and make frequent trips to the city I live in for related checkups and appointments. So the other day, when my aunt's daughter gets a phone call informing her that my aunt should have next of kin with her at the appointment because she will be getting some very bad results on a few tests she's recently had done everything stops. We went out for dinner. We rented movies. We played games. I handed in two essays late, and all of my professors understood (because I have wonderful, understanding professors). Imagine how frustrated we were when my aunt's results were clear.
*blink*
Our initial responses were joyful, as they should have been. And then we got thinking, and when my mom had her appointment (half an hour later), she asked the doctor about what might have happened. You know, because news like that is really hard to take, and can really influence life decisions. People take trips they can't afford to take when they think a relative might be dying. In this instance, my aunt's daughter (my cousin) did not travel the 10 hours she would have had to travel to see her mom, but sent her daughter (my second cousin) to my aunt's hometown for a visit and was planning on making the 15 hour trek to visit her mom at home after the appointments. What did the doctor think? That someone thought they saw something that wasn't there on her lab samples, and really, really felt for the family. So, after all of that, we're grateful.

In other news, I gave my second guest lecture. Let me tell you, internet, that this class has restored my faith once again, but troubled my allegiance to the academy. I wrote a quiz for them (it has been the habit of the prof to give them quizzes on the last day dealing with a text, and left that as optional for me), and told them they didn't have to take it if we could, instead, spend the allotted ten minutes discussing pedagogy and assessment. And then we did. !!!!! They had amazing things to say about learning styles, about how some small assignments are useful and others are simply not. Many of them expressed their own difficulty remembering ten random details from a text they had spent a week and sometimes more reading, and feeling disheartened at having to do so to prove they had read the text. Some of them enjoyed the effect of the quizzes, and said that because they knew the quiz was coming they found themselves taking more time for reading. We got into complexities, we did. And then, there was forty minutes of lecture and discussion, and they were incredibly engaged! Do you know what I noticed, internet? I noticed that every student that felt comfortable speaking up yesterday had something a little bit different to say about the text (and its relation to life, culture, politics, literary analysis, course themes, the real world, etc) that we could have had an entire class on. I cannot begin to tell you how encouraging this is, to see people excited about reading texts. On the other hand, I cannot begin to tell you how frustrating it is, having to say (not exactly like this, there was more tact in the classroom, but the overall message is:) "yes, the final fight scene is very childlike, a direct reference to the childhood fights between the two characters. But this lecture isn't on that, and now we have to move on to talk about language as a colonizing force, because that's what my notes are on and we only have fifteen minutes left. Good point though, really."

And I was left with a beautiful dream about a class structure that allowed professors the freedom to let their students discuss whatever elements of the text they've latched onto (with guidance, of course), instead of one that makes professors anxious about organization, structure, and, I hate to say it, but, legitimacy.

Once upon a time I gave a guest lecture and did not die of nerves.

First, some housekeeping. Literally. The Husband and I were gifted a set of wallflowers for our wedding, and put them up the other day to try and make our dining room look like a friendly space, rather than a bright red, dark hole. Seriously, you guys, it's kind of gothic-ish in there. Or it was, until we put these things up.
Here is how it went down:
Husband: puts tacks into wall
Me: puts flowers over tacks.
Us: small talk.
Me: Stepping back. "Um, did we mean to make a Jesus fish?"
Husband: "It's not a Jesus fish, where do you see a fish?"
Me: "Well, that is the eye, and..." (pointing to the glaringly obvious fish shape on our wall)
Husband: "Shall we call it Moby?"
Me: "That's too obvious. Ishmael?"

So today I gave the guest lecture that I mentioned being terrified about earlier, and it went stupidly well. I learned that lecturing is not at all like giving a seminar, mostly because the dynamic is so different. In my experience, nervousness during a seminar stems from the fear that all of your classmates have a more sophisticated reading of the text than you do, and that they are waiting for you to finish so they can bust it out and make you look stupid. Today, my nervousness had more to do with delivery. Am I covering the most important parts of the material? Are they engaged? Am I being clear enough? Are they understanding me? Do I need to clarify anything? I stuttered at least twice, lost my place in my notes as many times, laughed nervously a ton, and actually stopped at one point to say "can you tell that I'm nervous?" At this point, they laughed. Not the "OMG, how can you expect to teach if you're so imcompetent that you're nervous" type of laughter, either. This was the understanding, "of course you're nervous, you're doing okay" kind of laughter. I felt better. Then we broke into groups and looked at passages and discussed them as a class. The discussion went beautifully- they were engaged and articulate, and at one point they even started debating! I take no responsibility for this, the class that I was in front of were just a set of students who worked well together, enjoyed the material, and all decided to focus and participate. That being said, the experience was super empowering and fulfilling- I can do this!

Yes: it is always this busy.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

OMG internet! I checked my stats, and yesterday, there were seven (SEVEN), yes, seven (7!) of you. So I know you're out there, and you're reading the stuff I write (and looking at pictures!)

A few things before getting down to business:
You may have noticed that I seem to love rabbits. This is correct. None of the pictures of rabbits are my rabbits, however. If you are good to me, dear internet, you may someday see pictures of my rabbits (and they are the best rabbits ever). Similarly, deducing that I love smirnoff ice based on that lone picture will get you banned from my blog. For reals.

In news related to school, I had a great talk with a professor today about doctoral studies and comprehensive exams. Before these exams terrified me, and to be truthful they still do, but having an idea of what to expect tames the beast a little, if you know what I mean. She described the exams as this:
*you choose two sub-areas within your discipline to become an expert in (scary stuff!)
*you outline a list of 150 books! For each sub-area!
*you read 150 books. X2!
*you sit an exam that your supervisor writes for you.
*If you don't do well enough they make you write an additional essay.

This information is incredibly comforting (if you are thinking that feeling this way makes me crazy you are correct). Why? Because you get to choose your list of books and then read them- the whole thing is set up such that if you aren't a total failure you inherently know everything in the exam. I am not pretending that this is easy- 150 books is still 150 books. That's a ton of content, theory, and nuance to get through and understand. However, having the material beforehand is a major comfort. Maybe this stems from my grade twelve English class, when my teacher decided to focus really well on some of the texts that would probably be covered, so much that we didn't end up getting to everything. There were questions on my grade twelve exam on texts that I hadn't read (and I read everything for that class). We didn't even start talking about what would be expected on the exam until five days before it. No one bothered telling me that the essays I had been writing, that were getting 10/10 with my teacher would only get me a 3/5 on this exam (perhaps because the teacher didn't know). The whole system of standardized testing will get its own post, but let me just say that my grade twelve english exam is THE blackspot on my academic record.
I digress. The best part about the doctoral comprehensive exams, neigh, the second best part, is that if you don't do well enough they give you an additional essay. This suggests to me (and please, tell me if you've been there and know that this isn't true) that no one right-out fails. Maybe your score isn't as good as it should be. Here, write another essay. And, you know what? I LIKE writing essays. That's right. Sometimes I even love it. The really great thing about this is that you get to read 300 books related to the subjects that you want to teach. That makes for a wonderful background, and, ideally, a diverse one. The very word "comprehensive" suggests that in an ideal world you and your supervisor will devise a list of texts that covers the entire range of scholarly conversation in the area you are interested in, including scholars that disagree with one another, or that you disagree with, which can be very important in academia.
In other news, nest Wednesday I will guest lecture to the science fiction class that I am marking for on this . On the one hand, it is long, and dense, and interesting, and terrifying (this is not the extent of my literary analysis, for anyone who is doubting me right now, merely my initial reaction to the task) . On the other hand, I am interested in gender and feminism, have read the piece before, and will be lecturing to a second year class. Plus, the prof is willing to go over my notes with me the night before, and will be there to supervise/step in if need be. Not that she will need to (yes, she. She is the coolest professor ever, a wonderful friend of mine, and a lady who teaches sci-fi. No, you cannot have my friend group), but having that support makes the whole thing feel... safer. This is all probably mostly indicative of my own anxieties. Yes. Yes, it definitely is.


In the interest of knowing you are out there (because I do):
what has your experience in academia been like?

On Being a Grad Student: Habits

I recently attended an information session for potential grad students at my school, and, in addition to giving my very fresh-faced-and-hopelessly-naive account of my experience of the program thus far, I was taught that graduate school is, in many ways, an exercise in breaking the bad habits that students pick up during their undergraduate degrees (in addition to inspiring this post, this experience also ensured that this post over at Shitty First Drafts really resonated with me). Thus, I have decided to look at just which habits I am currently unlearning.
Before I can actually say too much more, I have to admit that my undergraduate experience was very post modern in the sense that I wasn't ever really a single student, but at least three. Behold:

1.) In my first year I was, pointedly, First Year Student. I don't mean that I was in my first year and therefore _____, but rather that this was a specific point in my formation as a student. I was coming from a mostly working-class background in a small town to the biggest city that I had ever been in. I was an integrated education student (more on this later) majoring in English Lit and double minoring in history and theatre (which I loved to talk about because it just sounded so smart). Having graduated in the top ten of my graduating class I went in with a bit of a big head. On my first day of class I learned was an AP class was, and suddenly felt like a huge imposter- sure, I was in the top few of my graduating class, my my school didn't even have an AP program! All year long I read everything I could get my hands on that seemed even remotely like stuff I would probably need to know to succeed at university and feeling like a huge failure. At the end of the year I received a letter asking me to take an honors degree in my major.

2.) Super Student. In my third year of study, after I had gotten over the fact that I was OMGANHONORSSTUDENT(!) I made the commitment to pursue graduate school, dropped out of education to focus on my new goal, and, ultimately, felt the need to make up lost time. This year I took four honors seminars, the introductory and intermediate courses in Biblical Hebrew, and a course in playwrighting. I spent all of my time reading, writing, and memorizing verbs forms and vocabulary. My social life suffered horribly, but my GPA went through the roof. The degree ended up taking five years regardless, though that had everything to do with some family and medical issues that I won't go into at this moment.

3.) Year Five. I had a terrible case of senioritis in my fifth year. I had been accepted into my top choice of graduate schools and was done with undergraduate work. I read maybe half of the required material and wrote papers that I will never look at again for fear of dying of embarrassment. (I also met, became engaged to, and married my husband during this year, in addition to learning a ton of cool stuff like how to camp in the winter).

My point? My point is that I really think that this degree is really producing a new stage of student in me, given my past with making and breaking habits on a yearly basis. But anyway.
*So far the biggest change has been in procastination. I (mostly) don't do it anymore, because there simply isn't time. Want to get everything read on time/well enough to engage with the material in a seminar discussion in class? Don't put it off for hours. Because you can't.
*The only other major change in my student-ness has been my relationship to editing. Perhaps the only consistent habit that I had through my undergraduate degree was my desire to research and produce work in a mad dash, print it, rush it to school barely in time for the deadline, and just not think about it anymore. As a master's student I really can't do that anymore, and so have been forcing myself to re-read and edit even the limited amount that I have produced to the point that it almost makes me vomitty.

Really this entire post has been an excuse for me to feel good about actually having everything read on time for class and getting over my fear of editing. And it worked!