blahpook US

Member Profile

Real Name: Leah
Birthdate: May 23rd
A little about me...

About me:
Going to school for my PhD in bookishness. Gets overly enthused about kitchen accessories and cooking. Dreams of being a rock star pirate ninja.

Favorite quotes:
"Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could."
— Louise Erdrich (The Painted Drum)
"Can you be happy with the movies, and the ads, and the clothes in the stores, and the doctors, and the eyes as you walk down the street all telling you there is something wrong with you? No. You cannot be happy. Because, you poor darling baby, you believe them."
— Katherine Dunn (Geek Love)

In love with:
(1) the hubby, (2) chocolate, (3) hot pink, (4) alternative universes, (5) happy music, (6) chocolate.

About my videos:
I post (and promote) what I enjoy watching, and hope that others like it too. Most of my posts fall into two categories:
(1) Things that make me happy
(2) Thought-provoking acts of rhetoric, (whether I agree with the message or not)
(3) Things that advance my own secret personal agenda to take over the universe

About my comments:
Despite dreams of being a literary genius, most of my comments in general are limited to the standard vocabulary of a 13-year old girl. I am notorious in particular for the following:
(1) "Fabulous" and its cousin "Awesome." As in the 'hot dog' sense of the word and not the 'universe' sense. If you don't know what I'm talking about, please see #3.
(2) "LOL." I will say in my defense that I only use this in instances where I am literally laughing out loud. I laugh easily so this is not a feat, but I will uphold my principles on this. I try to avoid LMAO and its variations, unless I find that my ass has literally been laughed off.
(3) I will sometimes quote things simply for my own amusement. For example, AWESOME like a hot dog (from Eddie Izzard's "Circle): The universe is awesome using the original version, the meaning of the word awesome, yeah? Not the new one which is sort of for socks and hot dogs: "I saw an advert for 'awesome hot dogs, only $2.99'. If they were awesome you'd be going "I can not… breathe for the way the sausage is held by the bun. It is… it is speaking to me. It is saying 'we are lips and thighs… of a donkey. Please eat us… but do not think that we are lips when you eat us, otherwise you'll throw up'." Which is true! It's awesome! America needs the old version of awesome, because you're the only ones going into space. You've got a bit of cash and you go up there, and you need 'awesome' because you're going to be going to the next sun to us. And your President's going to be going "Can you tell me, astronaut, can you tell me what it's like?" "It's awesome, sir." "What, like a hot dog?" "Like a hundred billion hot dogs, sir."'
(4) In instances where I am not limiting myself to a teenaged vocabulary, I am excessively wordy.
(5) I like making lists.

Latest favorites from the personal queue:
--German Robin Hood
--This Girl Can
--Why being stuck on the tarmac with the Philly Orchestra Rocks

Member Since: April 29, 2007
Homepage: http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1293927-leah
Last Power Points used: October 6, 2012
Available: now
Power Points at Recharge: 1   Get More Power Points Now!

Comments to blahpook

15 Comments

JiggaJonson says...

Very true. Speaking from experience, think of it this way, one 2 page paper for an average of 30 students in the room X 6 classes in the day (you do get one prep) = 180 papers you have to comb over and correct. Even if you limit your time to 5 minutes per paper that's 900 minutes (or 15 hours) of work you're taking home.

I can also tell you from experience that the day after a student hands something in, they expect it to be graded. Hell, I've gotten a "How did I do on that paper?" at the end of the day before I even went home. Aside from that though, the students really need quality feedback if they are to improve. You have to get them graded asap for their sake and for yours because the world doesn't stop just because you have a pile of papers to grade.

To make a long story short, every assignment is like that. After too much of it it's VERY easy to get burnt out quickly and the summers off are the times when you can plan ahead for the coming year and re-cooperate from the enormous work load that was on your shoulders during the school year.

So yeah I get summers off, because the rest of the year I'm working 60-80 hour work weeks and not getting paid for any overtime.

In reply to this comment by blahpook:
This is one of the best (if not overly optimistic) responses to this I've seen on the internets so far:


"How many hours a day do you work? 8? I arrive at my school at 7:30 a.m. and leave between 5:30 and 6:30. If I have to meet with a parent, it can sometime go later than that. When you leave work do you take your work home with you to work on later? I review lesson plans and check papers for at least an hour every night, many times longer. Do you work on the weekends after putting in your 40-hour week? I spend many hours every weekend checking papers and preparing for the coming week. Do you have to have a license to do your job? If you do, who pays for that license? I have to have a license, and I have to pay for that license myself. If you have to have a license, do you have to complete a mandatory number of continuing education classes? I do. If you have to complete continuing education classes, do you have to pay for them out of your own pocket? I do. When do you think I take those classes? I take them during the summer. I am at my school until at least the second week of June, and return by the second week of August. That hardly constitutes a whole summer. When people say to me, "It must be nice to have the summer off and still get a paycheck." I always say to them, "Do you remember all of those extra hours I put in over the school year? I am just getting paid for them now." When do you get paid for your overtime hours? Do you have to wait until summer to get paid? Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining, I am just telling you the facts. I love my job! I would never want to do anything else. Do you love your job? Do you have children? I hope you have respect for their teacher/s, because most of them work as hard as I do and deserve your respect. And by the way, I like Ann Coulter. and Sara Palin, I think they are brave women. But, I also think Ann misspoke on this one. I would love to have her come and spend a week with me. I bet she would go home and write a book about how fortunate we are to have good teachers."

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