Belated Blog Post #2: Parking Problems at EMU

When job candidates for different positions come to campus, my standard “tell all” statement is this: I like working at EMU quite a bit, but I really get annoyed with the building I work in (Pray-Harrold) and I also get really annoyed with the parking situation.

Parking is a common problem at just about every college or university, but it’s a big deal here because EMU is fundamentally a commuter school. I don’t know what the statistics really are, but I’ll bet about two-thirds of our students drive five or more miles to get to school (which is quite a bit different from that liberal arts school in Ann Arbor), and some of these students drive a heck of a lot farther than five miles. The same goes for the faculty. My wife and I are somewhat unique in our department in that we can walk to school, though the fact of the matter is we often don’t (too much stuff to carry back and forth, bad weather often makes walking unpleasant, neither one of us walks when we teach at night, etc.)

So, you’d think that there would be a fair amount of attention to the plight of commuters, or rather, of parkers. Sadly, not enough. Part of the problem is there just are not enough parking spaces. But in my opinion, the bigger problem is that there is not enough parking enforcement.

Broken parking gate

Here’s a photograph of part of what I mean. For some reason, it is near routine for the gates at the enterance to various parking lots to either be broken like this or to be raised entirely. And just to make the obvious even more obvious: if the gate is broken or otherwise doesn’t work and if this happens all the time, then that more or less defeats the purpose for having a gated parking lot in the first place. I took this picture with my cell phone last Tuesday; the gate was still broken on Friday, and I would bet a month’s salary that it will be broken when I go into work today.

There’s also the problem of a serious lack of enforcement, and everyone knows that this is a problem. It’s fairly common for students and others to park illegally in the faculty/staff lot that is near the building where I work. I understand why students do this, but if I had done this at my undergraduate institution (and actually, I didn’t have a car as an undergrad), I would have certainly have been towed away.

It’s worth noting that if EMU really wants to enforce parking, they can. For example, faculty and staff can buy a parking spot. I’m not sure how much money it is, though I do know it’s hundreds of dollars and there is a fairly long waiting list to get a spot. As far as I can tell, one would pity the fool who parks illegally in one of these golden ticket spots.

Now, one of the things that’s potentially interesting about all of this is that one of the issues (supposedly) on the table for the next faculty union contract talks has to do with parking. Essentially, faculty don’t pay for their own parking right now– or rather, faculty receive parking as part of their current benefits package. As I understand it, the administration wants to start charging faculty what they charge students– I believe $75 a semester, though it might be less– for faculty/staff spots.

We’ll see if that actually comes to pass; I have my doubts. But if the administration is successful in charging faculty for parking, then:

  • I’d rather pay a few hundred dollars a year to guarantee that I have a spot;
  • They’d better fix the gates; and/or
  • A lot more faculty (including me) will just walk.

The Beer Watcher: Brewing, part 2

Technically, I believe the process is called “racking.” Neither Steve B. nor I were there, so here’s the report from our beer master, Bill H-D:

Ok, the beer has been racked to the secondary fermentation vessel. All went well. No spills, no drops. Our still immature little IPA has quite a lot of character already – it is way more hoppy and “dry” tasting than Taste the Joy was. No off flavors or spoilage that I could pick up during the taste test either. So we are on track. In about 10 days, I’ll start testing the specific gravity to see where we are with alcohol content.

Bill uploaded pictures to his flickr account; here they are:

racking 1
First, there’s the cleaning (I hope he cleaned the tub before this…)

racking 2
Second, there’s the “dry hopping,” where Bill is pouring even more dry hops into this big glass bottle called a carboy.

racking 3
Here Bill is preparing the siphoning set-up, the so-called “racking” of the wort from the fermentation bucket to the carboy, which is now on the floor.

racking 4
“Siphon action,” as Bill labels it.

racking 5
Here the wort is getting sucked out of the fermentation bucket. That residue on the side of the bucket at the top? Flavor crystals, my friend.

racking 6
This is Bill taste-testing the beer– the label on Bill’s Flickr site is “taste test, mmmm, hoppy!”

racking 7
And here is the wort in the carboy ready for secondary fermentation, which will generate even more rich beer-y goodness.

As witnessed in photos, it looks to me like this is what Bill said it was: probably the least time-consuming part of the process. Right now, it looks like we’ll bottle a couple weekends from now. Stay tuned….

Belated Blog Post: Yet more on handwriting

It’s been a super-busy week around here at EMU and it promises to be even more busy next week. Our department is hiring two positions in literature and a department head. The department head position in particular means a lot of meetings and hallway discussions. And of course other business in the department goes on. Counting things having to do with job candidates and other events I either have to attend or things I should attend (and not counting stuff like teaching and office hours), I have nine meetings and/or “events” on my calendar next week. Eek.

Anyway, Nick Carbone sent me a link to the Inside Higher Ed article “The Surprising Process of Writing” by Shari “the Nomad Scholar and not her real name” Wilson. The basic premise of the essay is Wilson thinks her students write better essays when they write them out by hand. She offers a series of explanations for this: “the process of writing in-class in a timed situation seemed to discourage the kind of overwrought, constipated writing that some students produce with a typed paper;” “handwriting encourages students to focus on the writing process;” and, most problematically, “handwriting brings writers closer to their work — which may encourage excellence with particular students.”

Most of the comments on the Inside Higher Ed site basically says “this doesn’t seem right to me,” there was some discussion on the WPA-L mailing list about why this argument doesn’t ring true, and I of course feel the same way. But quite frankly, the explanation as to why Wilson thought her students’ handwritten work was better than the typed assignments strikes me as obvious: the writing situations were different.

The handwritten assignments were in-class writings, and while Wilson doesn’t give examples of any assignments, I would assume that the in-class assignments were a great deal more specific in terms of subject and purpose than the out-of-class assignments. An in-class assignment might be something like “In her chapter in the assigned reading, Smith makes three points about ‘X;’ explain one of them and why you agree or disagree.” Or maybe “Compare these specific Smith and Jones readings.” In contrast, I would guess/bet the out-of-class assignments are quite a bit less specific– “Tell your reader about an important event” or something like that– and there may have been additional burdens, like providing some research.

So what I’m suggesting here is the handwritten assignments were “better” because students had a clearer sense of purpose (answer this question) and they had a clearer sense of audience (no one else is going to read this; this is from me to Wilson, or whatever her real name is). Simple as that.

Wilson writes that she “typed up a student’s handwritten midterm and compared it to two computer-generated essays,” but I don’t think that’s a fair test. If she really wants to make this comparison (and by the way, I think it is ultimately an idiotic comparison because the vast majority of writing tasks our students complete in school and elsewhere are done at the keyboard anyway), why not ask students to complete an out-of-class writing assignment by hand? Why not arrange for one of these in-class assignments be done in a computer lab someplace? That would be a more realistic test, seems to me.

All I know is this: I was teaching a class a few years ago where there was an in-class writing activity– an essay test, if I recall. For reasons not worth explaining, I was able to give students a choice between writing their exam out by hand or using a computer. I thought that maybe five or six out of the 20 or so students might take me up on the computer offer. To my surprise, all 20 students opted for the computer, and when I asked them why, the answer (with a shrug) was basically “this is how I write.”

So, I hear there’s a big football game in town…

Yes, I know about the Superbowl, of course. It’s been quite the piece of news around here lately because it’s in Detroit’s own Ford Field. But I don’t feel a whole lot of involvement. Here’s why:

  • I personally don’t care much for pro football (I like the college game, to an extent). Mind you, I have nothing against professional football– if it’s on with family and/or friends, I’ll watch it– but I don’t really make it a point to watch football. I don’t really root for any teams, perhaps a result of growing up in pro-free Iowa, I don’t follow the mirad of details of the game, and I don’t really care who wins this weekend. Since the Steelers have the same colors as the Iowa Hawkeyes, more or less, I’ll go with them.
  • Annette cares even less about pro football than I do. I think that if you quizzed her on the basic rules of the game (how many “downs” are there? and how many yards does the offensive team have to gain to get a so-called “first down?”), I’m pretty sure she’d answer “I don’t know” and/or “why the hell should I care about that?!” many times. Therefore…
  • … I’m pretty sure that there will be no Superbowl activities around here. We haven’t been invited to any Superbowl festivites and I don’t expect to be at this stage. Actually, Annette is going out to dinner with something for work that night, so it will probably be just me and the boy around the house here. Will and I will probably watch the game some (I suspect Will will get bored with it though, to be honest), make some pizza, maybe play some games, etc. It’s probably just as well to be left out. Years and years ago, back when we lived in Oregon, Annette and I were invited to a Superbowl party and we were by far the worst guests. “When is a new commercial coming on?!” we whined.
  • And besides, the important game is tomorrow afternoon when Iowa and Michigan play in basketball. Go Hawks!

Blog-o-lingo?

I received kind of a strange email today from… well, I’m not going to say, because that wouldn’t be right for now; let’s just say it was someone employed at a national publication who said it might be appropriate to describe him or her as a “friend or an interested party.”

Anyway, this person was asking me (as an “expert” of sorts on blogs) about any sort of particular language/termonology unique to blogs and blogging. An example this person gave included blogola (which I assume is like payola?)

It’s an interesting question, but I don’t really have much to offer. There is of course the term “Carnival,” a sort of anthology-building blog community– see “Blog Carnival.” Then there’s “blogosphere” and I think there was (for a while, at least) something “klogs,” which were supposed to be “knowledge blogs.” I saw a comic strip– Non Sequitur I think– that referred to newspapers as “dinosaur blogs.” I liked that.

The one blog lingo that always bugs me is kind of the opposite of lingo: it’s when newspapers and other sources feel compelled to explain/define the term “blog” in some stupid and inevitably old-fashioned way, usually an awkward one. As in “a ‘blog,’ or ‘web log,’ is an internet published journal,” or something like that. To me it always sounds kind of like “a ‘car,’ often times called an ‘automobile’ or just ‘auto,’ can take passengers from one place to another.”

In any event, what do folks think? Any good blog terms of art and/or lingo out there?