I sometimes joke that living in Glasgow is a lot like living in Brooklyn, but with more hipsters and more ridiculous accents. I'm only being semi-facetious when I say this- as far as I can tell, the #1 leisure activity in Glasgow is "attending gigs" (#2 might be "Experiencing Art in Every Form", #3 is "knowing DJs", which is rather derivative of #1, #4 is "Seeing Films", and #5 is "Talking about art, films and music"). And beyond that, every month there's some sort of big festival based around a theme - the current festival is Celtic Connections, which is a 3-week-long folk music festival.
It's like Extreme Brooklyn, I'm telling you. Basically, there is no shortage of things to do here.
There are a million pubs, and almost every pub has gigs; on top of that there are whole bunch of bigger concert venues- no matter what kind of music you like, I imagine you can find something that you'd be interested in - like, this is just SOME music coming up in the next few days - that link lists some of the more popular music venues, and you can see that tickets are generally affordable.
And a lot of it is super indie and interesting! This is the same city that produced Belle & Sebastian, Mogwai, and Franz Ferdinand ("wankers", according to all native Glasgwegians), and probably 7 thousand other musicians - this should tell you something about the music scene. As you can imagine, if you don't pay attention you can miss a lot of awesome stuff. You often end up scrambling at the last minute to see stuff, because who can keep track of all of those dates? I know I can't!
What I'm trying to say here is that seeing live music all the time is a totally normal thing to do. Tomorrow I've got tickets to see Ani DiFranco, and originally I was going to go see Sleigh Bells on Saturday night, but I'm going to a conference all day and then out for dinner with the conference-goers, so it looks like I'll miss that. I've actually missed a bunch of gigs because I had prior engagements: I missed Beach House back in November because I was going to a Thanksgiving dinner party - I wonder if that's part of the experience of the Glasgow music scene? Sometimes things just sell out entirely before you're made aware of them to buy tickets (The National, Arcade Fire), or you hear about it too late (Foals). Am I disappointed? A little bit, but then you see something awesome. And that kind of thinking is exactly what's going on in hipsterville: yes, it sucks if you miss a gig, but someone equally as exciting will come along.
The next big gig I'm hoping to go to after this weekend will be Lykke Li, but there's an up & coming riot grrl band playing at a pub near me in early February, and I have tentative plans to go to Sunday Afternoon Jazz and Dubstep Thursday at two other pubs soon. Do you see what I mean about Glasgow being a music town? In the fall I saw a whole ton of local musicians, KT Tunstall, MEN, LCD Soundsystem, among others... and we haven't even covered some of the great guest DJ spots I've heard. Welcome back to Glasgow! Can't stop, won't stop...
Showing posts with label your love is my drug. Show all posts
Showing posts with label your love is my drug. Show all posts
19 January 2011
05 December 2010
BEER
Today we are going to talk about beer! Because everyone loves beer. And it's what we drink when we're not drinking tea here.
Scottish culture pretty much revolves around pubs. It's a very egalitarian situation - you alternate buying the drinks with whoever is keeping pace with you - and the Scots can drink. I feel like my 4 years of undergrad were training for UK drinking - I am now confident in my ability to drink from 4pm until 11 pm, having eaten lunch at 12:30, with dinner at 8pm (this is not uncommon) AND NOT SAY OR DO ANYTHING STUPID.
So! Beer!
Unsurprisingly, not many American beers make it over here. And if they are here, either a) they're usually pretty good American beers or b) you're in a nice pub. Sierra Nevada is pretty popular, and I've seen a couple places that had Sam Adams and Brooklyn Lager (I was excited). That said, you can get a bottle of Budweiser in most places (Light beer doesn't exist here, so Bud Light is out of the question.) You can also sometimes get Miller Genuine Draft, and then laugh about it because you know it's shit! Last week I had both Miller and Corona, because they were The Cheap Beer Special. We should probably start being embarrassed about anything that you can buy in a 30 rack. Blue Moon is starting to trickle over here, which is hilarious, however - I keep seeing it as a "specialty bottled beer".
The cheapest of the cheap beers here are infinitely better than American cheap beers. The big one here is Tennants, which is made in Glasgow. Tennants is sort of like Budweiser in that nobody actually likes it, but everyone will drink it. Stella and Peroni are both pretty popular, though I have no idea why- one is infinitely worse than the other (hint: Peroni > Stella.) Other cheap beers include Belhaven, Grolsh, Heineken, Kronenbourg, and Budweiser Budvar (which I assure you is different than Budweiser.) Guinness isn't always cheap, but it's easy to get. And, of course, every country needs their hipster beer. We don't have PBR here (but everyone who has been to the states LOVES pbr, it's hilarious); hipster beer here is Red Stripe. These are all pretty cheap, they're about £2 or £3 at a pub. You can get most of these - except for Red Stripe, you need to be able to identify your hipsters - on tap. Tennants and Belhaven are on tap at every single pub ever, and most places will have one or two others on tap too.
The UK also has cider, which is amazing. Well, we have it in the states, but not in the same way. Basically: you can buy a two-liter of alcohol that tastes like apples for about £2.50 at almost any store that sells alcohol, and it will fuck you up. It also comes on tap, in bottles and in cans. There's a couple major brands: Strongbow and Bulmer's are the two big ones, and then there are some smaller breweries around (Addleston's is good and I think the main local one). A good rule for cider is "the cloudier it is the more you will get fucked up". I really like cider but that's a slippery slope to go down sometimes!
There are some really good local brews too - Deuchar's IPA is made in Caledonia, and it's amazing. I don't usually like IPAs and this is fantastic. Alloa is made in some place called Clackmannanshire, they've got a great beer called Good Times ("Hiya, can I get two Good Times?" sounds ridiculous, but it's delicious) and they make porter called Midnight Sun which is very good too. Caley is heavy; I'm not a big fan but maybe you are. There's a whole group of ales called Heather Ales, which are fantastic, but again not if you're going to be drinking them for a long time.
I happen to really like Hefenweizens, which are German wheat beers - we're close to Germany, so those are easy to come by; naturally I am very pleased. I've had a couple of real German Hefenweizens, and they were lovely, but alas I cannot spell them (I can barely pronounce them).
Scottish culture pretty much revolves around pubs. It's a very egalitarian situation - you alternate buying the drinks with whoever is keeping pace with you - and the Scots can drink. I feel like my 4 years of undergrad were training for UK drinking - I am now confident in my ability to drink from 4pm until 11 pm, having eaten lunch at 12:30, with dinner at 8pm (this is not uncommon) AND NOT SAY OR DO ANYTHING STUPID.
So! Beer!
Unsurprisingly, not many American beers make it over here. And if they are here, either a) they're usually pretty good American beers or b) you're in a nice pub. Sierra Nevada is pretty popular, and I've seen a couple places that had Sam Adams and Brooklyn Lager (I was excited). That said, you can get a bottle of Budweiser in most places (Light beer doesn't exist here, so Bud Light is out of the question.) You can also sometimes get Miller Genuine Draft, and then laugh about it because you know it's shit! Last week I had both Miller and Corona, because they were The Cheap Beer Special. We should probably start being embarrassed about anything that you can buy in a 30 rack. Blue Moon is starting to trickle over here, which is hilarious, however - I keep seeing it as a "specialty bottled beer".
The cheapest of the cheap beers here are infinitely better than American cheap beers. The big one here is Tennants, which is made in Glasgow. Tennants is sort of like Budweiser in that nobody actually likes it, but everyone will drink it. Stella and Peroni are both pretty popular, though I have no idea why- one is infinitely worse than the other (hint: Peroni > Stella.) Other cheap beers include Belhaven, Grolsh, Heineken, Kronenbourg, and Budweiser Budvar (which I assure you is different than Budweiser.) Guinness isn't always cheap, but it's easy to get. And, of course, every country needs their hipster beer. We don't have PBR here (but everyone who has been to the states LOVES pbr, it's hilarious); hipster beer here is Red Stripe. These are all pretty cheap, they're about £2 or £3 at a pub. You can get most of these - except for Red Stripe, you need to be able to identify your hipsters - on tap. Tennants and Belhaven are on tap at every single pub ever, and most places will have one or two others on tap too.
The UK also has cider, which is amazing. Well, we have it in the states, but not in the same way. Basically: you can buy a two-liter of alcohol that tastes like apples for about £2.50 at almost any store that sells alcohol, and it will fuck you up. It also comes on tap, in bottles and in cans. There's a couple major brands: Strongbow and Bulmer's are the two big ones, and then there are some smaller breweries around (Addleston's is good and I think the main local one). A good rule for cider is "the cloudier it is the more you will get fucked up". I really like cider but that's a slippery slope to go down sometimes!
There are some really good local brews too - Deuchar's IPA is made in Caledonia, and it's amazing. I don't usually like IPAs and this is fantastic. Alloa is made in some place called Clackmannanshire, they've got a great beer called Good Times ("Hiya, can I get two Good Times?" sounds ridiculous, but it's delicious) and they make porter called Midnight Sun which is very good too. Caley is heavy; I'm not a big fan but maybe you are. There's a whole group of ales called Heather Ales, which are fantastic, but again not if you're going to be drinking them for a long time.
I happen to really like Hefenweizens, which are German wheat beers - we're close to Germany, so those are easy to come by; naturally I am very pleased. I've had a couple of real German Hefenweizens, and they were lovely, but alas I cannot spell them (I can barely pronounce them).
23 November 2010
pot kettle black
For a while there, we had coffee in the office. Then some sort of bureaucratic restructuring occurred and then we no longer had departmental coffee. I suppose that's fair, they do make everyone buy their own tea. So I am trying to switch over to tea! At least in the office. This means I drink about 7 cups of tea a day and alternate between doing work and going to the bathroom every hour or so.
As we all know I love coffee more than most things, so this was a bit heartbreaking. But at the same time it makes me feel really Scottish.
28 October 2010
a day in the life
Every week or so I go over to Glasgow University. Glasgow University is sort of like the BU or NYU of Glasgow, whereas Strathclyde, which is my school, is more like MIT. Glasgow Uni is this amazing, magical, campusy place (complete with trees!). They've got an English language/linguistics department and a literature department, and their library is amazing, whereas Strathclyde is in the middle of the city centre and much less humanities-oriented. (Basically I have a giant crush on Glasgow University.)
Today I listened to a lecture about relative pronouns in the morning and spent my afternoon reading original texts from the 1600s. While this is not the book I actually read (predictably, the special archives collection won't let me take take pictures); I was actually reading about Early Modern English Women's social roles. Last week I was granted access by Oxford to download their full-text Old English and Middle English databases; which means now I have the entire written (documented) early English corpus on my computer. Also today I met with one of the big people in corpus linguistics and a few weeks ago I met with someone who headed the Oxford English Dictionary's recently-published Historical Thesaurus project, both at Glasgow University.
YOU GUYS HOW IS THIS MY LIFE I DON'T EVEN KNOW
Today I listened to a lecture about relative pronouns in the morning and spent my afternoon reading original texts from the 1600s. While this is not the book I actually read (predictably, the special archives collection won't let me take take pictures); I was actually reading about Early Modern English Women's social roles. Last week I was granted access by Oxford to download their full-text Old English and Middle English databases; which means now I have the entire written (documented) early English corpus on my computer. Also today I met with one of the big people in corpus linguistics and a few weeks ago I met with someone who headed the Oxford English Dictionary's recently-published Historical Thesaurus project, both at Glasgow University.
YOU GUYS HOW IS THIS MY LIFE I DON'T EVEN KNOW
23 October 2010
the dream of a common language
The Scottish accent is famously a pretty dense thing to decipher. It's a British English accent, but with more to it. I don't know how else to describe it - and on top of that, the Glasgow accent is like the Extra Super Mega Scottish Accent. It's like listening to Sean Connery talk every day. (Some people are less mumbly.) After living here for about 5 weeks I'm starting to not notice it anymore; it's starting to sound pretty normal to me. Ordinarily this would be a terrifying concept to not notice something as big as an accent, but I am generally taking it as a good sign - This is a vast improvement over my first few weeks here, when I understood about 45% of what was being said to me at any moment in time. Though I'm a native speaker of English, sometimes I may as well not be!
Here's a fairly accurate clip about the Scottish accent:
Anecdotally: the other day I was skyping with A, who is in South Korea, when a guy with a fairly standard Glaswegian accent came by to look at our shower and reported back to me that there was nothing especially wrong with it...and A was dying - "DOES EVERYONE SOUND LIKE THAT?!" Yes. The answer is yes.
You wouldn't think this, but American English and British English are more different than you'd expect. Scots English is different enough from British English (it even has its own dictionary: The Dictionary of the Scots Language) but from what I can tell it's close enough to British English for my general purposes.
There are still a lot of words I don't quite "get" yet, and I feel ridiculous saying almost all of these things. Here everyone would say "loads" where we would say "lots", and the word "wee" is liberally used here to describe something that is small. "What's on?" is equivalent to "What's happening?" or "What's going on?". I have to remember not to ask for "a bathroom", as I will be directed to a shower room; I need to ask for a toilet instead, and "loo" is often thrown around instead. Then there are the things I absolutely cannot wrap my brain around: I keep calling the kettle the teapot, and if I am looking for push pins, I am looking for "drawing pins", which go in a "notice board", not a cork board.
There's an interesting article floating around that discusses how language is directly influenced by the people speaking around you - I can guarantee this is is true. I am trying to let some Britishisms into my language though - I can hear myself trying to replicate the intonation patterns of native UKers, and I'm catching myself describe things as "quite _____", more so than I usually would. Especially in an international setting - where most people have learned British rather than American English - it's often easier to use Britishisms as common ground.
That said, I definitely can't replicate a Scottish accent at all. I sometimes still catch myself being very embarrassed when I speak, because my accent is so flat and boring and very, very American, while a good Glasgow accent is so sing-songy, and all the back vowels are dipthongized. (If you are not a linguisticky type person, this means that they actually have two vowel sounds smushed together. [iu] for /u/ sounds are the most noticable, though /o/ and /a/ have some pretty good ones too. I can't find you a page about this that doesn't involve a lot of knowledge of phonetic background information, but you can probably find something accessible on youtube.)
While I can use a lot of the lingo properly, I can't help but feel like I must sound like an idiot with my ridiculous American accent. (Thankfully, the phoneticists around me say I don't have much of a Boston accent but more of a Canadian accent - looks like Mom's Canadianness rubbed off on me more than I thought! I don't hate Boston accents, but now I am very glad to not have too strong of one.)
Here's a fairly accurate clip about the Scottish accent:
Anecdotally: the other day I was skyping with A, who is in South Korea, when a guy with a fairly standard Glaswegian accent came by to look at our shower and reported back to me that there was nothing especially wrong with it...and A was dying - "DOES EVERYONE SOUND LIKE THAT?!" Yes. The answer is yes.
You wouldn't think this, but American English and British English are more different than you'd expect. Scots English is different enough from British English (it even has its own dictionary: The Dictionary of the Scots Language) but from what I can tell it's close enough to British English for my general purposes.
There are still a lot of words I don't quite "get" yet, and I feel ridiculous saying almost all of these things. Here everyone would say "loads" where we would say "lots", and the word "wee" is liberally used here to describe something that is small. "What's on?" is equivalent to "What's happening?" or "What's going on?". I have to remember not to ask for "a bathroom", as I will be directed to a shower room; I need to ask for a toilet instead, and "loo" is often thrown around instead. Then there are the things I absolutely cannot wrap my brain around: I keep calling the kettle the teapot, and if I am looking for push pins, I am looking for "drawing pins", which go in a "notice board", not a cork board.
There's an interesting article floating around that discusses how language is directly influenced by the people speaking around you - I can guarantee this is is true. I am trying to let some Britishisms into my language though - I can hear myself trying to replicate the intonation patterns of native UKers, and I'm catching myself describe things as "quite _____", more so than I usually would. Especially in an international setting - where most people have learned British rather than American English - it's often easier to use Britishisms as common ground.
That said, I definitely can't replicate a Scottish accent at all. I sometimes still catch myself being very embarrassed when I speak, because my accent is so flat and boring and very, very American, while a good Glasgow accent is so sing-songy, and all the back vowels are dipthongized. (If you are not a linguisticky type person, this means that they actually have two vowel sounds smushed together. [iu] for /u/ sounds are the most noticable, though /o/ and /a/ have some pretty good ones too. I can't find you a page about this that doesn't involve a lot of knowledge of phonetic background information, but you can probably find something accessible on youtube.)
While I can use a lot of the lingo properly, I can't help but feel like I must sound like an idiot with my ridiculous American accent. (Thankfully, the phoneticists around me say I don't have much of a Boston accent but more of a Canadian accent - looks like Mom's Canadianness rubbed off on me more than I thought! I don't hate Boston accents, but now I am very glad to not have too strong of one.)
16 October 2010
Help, I'm Alive!: A One-Month Retrospective
[editor's note: Two years ago in late July, I was in Edinburgh, Scotland for a weekend, with food poisoning. Today I am back there on a hike with some Germans, hopefully without food poisoning. Through the magic of the internet and auto-posting, I present the following.]
You guys, I have been in Glasgow for a month! I can't believe it's been a month already. Things are going so, so well - this blog has sort of shown the ups and downs of the first few weeks of moving to a new country by myself, but I definitely feel like each day is better than the last. There's a lot of things that I am still working out - like what side of the street and which side of the stairs to walk on. (This is more complicated than you'd expect.) Sometimes I still have difficulties figuring out where I would go to buy things - we don't have Wal-Mart or Target or CVS here - but this is getting better. Some days I wake up and just really want to see something instantly recognizably American, like peanut butter and jelly or the word "eggplant", and some days I want be able to talk to someone from home and not have to wait for 7pm to be able to do so. But moving to a new place by yourself is an emotional rollercoaster, let alone a new country or a new continent! I think I am doing very well. I have tentative friends! It's all very exciting.
It's an amazing opportunity to be here, and even more of an amazing opportunity to be working with the man who invented my field in addition to meeting all these other important linguists and literary people across three institutions (Strathclyde, Glasgow University, the University of Edinburgh). I am very, very lucky. There's no second-guessing crossing an ocean to do something and the more I am getting into what I am actually doing the more I am absolutely certain this is was absolutely 100% the right choice for me. I love all the work I am doing, and the people around me are so passionate about their work, so deeply involved that I can't imagine them doing anything else. I've been in contact with all these important linguistics people - the other day I met the woman who headed the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. (No big deal or anything...only one of my life goals achieved! She was so interested in what I had done and what I am doing here.) Glasgow Uni and Strathclyde are already both aggressively courting me for their PhD program next year; I just want to tell them to cool off a little bit!
I can't believe this is my life. I am so, so lucky.
I definitely still feel like I have a giant American flag tattooed on my forehead, but with every day I feel more integrated into Scottish life. Maybe soon I will start talking with a Scottish accent. (Or at least write a blog post about it, as I keep meaning to.) Or maybe that will just have to wait for month two...
You guys, I have been in Glasgow for a month! I can't believe it's been a month already. Things are going so, so well - this blog has sort of shown the ups and downs of the first few weeks of moving to a new country by myself, but I definitely feel like each day is better than the last. There's a lot of things that I am still working out - like what side of the street and which side of the stairs to walk on. (This is more complicated than you'd expect.) Sometimes I still have difficulties figuring out where I would go to buy things - we don't have Wal-Mart or Target or CVS here - but this is getting better. Some days I wake up and just really want to see something instantly recognizably American, like peanut butter and jelly or the word "eggplant", and some days I want be able to talk to someone from home and not have to wait for 7pm to be able to do so. But moving to a new place by yourself is an emotional rollercoaster, let alone a new country or a new continent! I think I am doing very well. I have tentative friends! It's all very exciting.
It's an amazing opportunity to be here, and even more of an amazing opportunity to be working with the man who invented my field in addition to meeting all these other important linguists and literary people across three institutions (Strathclyde, Glasgow University, the University of Edinburgh). I am very, very lucky. There's no second-guessing crossing an ocean to do something and the more I am getting into what I am actually doing the more I am absolutely certain this is was absolutely 100% the right choice for me. I love all the work I am doing, and the people around me are so passionate about their work, so deeply involved that I can't imagine them doing anything else. I've been in contact with all these important linguistics people - the other day I met the woman who headed the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. (No big deal or anything...only one of my life goals achieved! She was so interested in what I had done and what I am doing here.) Glasgow Uni and Strathclyde are already both aggressively courting me for their PhD program next year; I just want to tell them to cool off a little bit!
I can't believe this is my life. I am so, so lucky.
I definitely still feel like I have a giant American flag tattooed on my forehead, but with every day I feel more integrated into Scottish life. Maybe soon I will start talking with a Scottish accent. (Or at least write a blog post about it, as I keep meaning to.) Or maybe that will just have to wait for month two...
25 July 2010
Brain so good, coulda swore you went to college
I am starting a new research project with a professor at BU this week. I'm very excited, there's something wonderful about starting a new project. I don't know all of the details about my role as Unpaid Academic Slave Labor, but I do know that I will be spending a lot of time in two libraries. One of them is the BU library, which pretty much anyone can walk into.
The other one is Harvard's Widener Library.
Harvard has a lot of libraries. They all seem awfully specific. Some are more strict than others, but overall the general rule is that if you want to use one of their libraries, you just have to be somehow affiliated with Harvard and be able to prove it.
It just so happens that Widener has the strictest policy for visitors. It is "a research institution for the use of Harvard students, faculty, staff, and visiting researchers, and is not open for public visitation or tours by individuals not affiliated with the University."
If you are one of the following:
a) a Harvard Alumni
b) a faculty member at another institution
c) a doctoral student at Harvard
You are allowed in Widener. Your access is varied depending on your status (ie, alums can only use the Reading Room but not the stacks).
If you are d) EVERYONE ELSE you have to apply for visiting privileges. Even if you are a doctoral candidate at another school, you still have to apply. These visiting privileges are for six days total for a twelve month period. To obtain visiting privileges, you must present a letter to the Library Privileges Office from the reference librarian of their university or Boston metropolitan public library stating that the specific library materials needed are not available elsewhere.
Let's review for a second: I AM APPLYING TO GET ACCESS TO ONE OF THE MOST SUPER-STRICT OF LIBRARIES IN THE UNITED STATES.
The other one is Harvard's Widener Library.
Harvard has a lot of libraries. They all seem awfully specific. Some are more strict than others, but overall the general rule is that if you want to use one of their libraries, you just have to be somehow affiliated with Harvard and be able to prove it.
It just so happens that Widener has the strictest policy for visitors. It is "a research institution for the use of Harvard students, faculty, staff, and visiting researchers, and is not open for public visitation or tours by individuals not affiliated with the University."
If you are one of the following:
a) a Harvard Alumni
b) a faculty member at another institution
c) a doctoral student at Harvard
You are allowed in Widener. Your access is varied depending on your status (ie, alums can only use the Reading Room but not the stacks).
If you are d) EVERYONE ELSE you have to apply for visiting privileges. Even if you are a doctoral candidate at another school, you still have to apply. These visiting privileges are for six days total for a twelve month period. To obtain visiting privileges, you must present a letter to the Library Privileges Office from the reference librarian of their university or Boston metropolitan public library stating that the specific library materials needed are not available elsewhere.
Let's review for a second: I AM APPLYING TO GET ACCESS TO ONE OF THE MOST SUPER-STRICT OF LIBRARIES IN THE UNITED STATES.
21 July 2010
Dear Linguistics, YOUR LOVE IS MY DRUG
1. So I went on that job interview. And I didn't fuck it up ... until they very end!
I talked to the ladies who currently are Administrative Assistants-slash-Grammatical Editors; they gave me a cup of coffee, an article to edit, and a red pen. It's like my dream job interview! And apparently nobody's ever done that well on their practice document before, so they were a little bit floored. Basically, they were like "We really like you, we'll let you know by Friday. Is there anything else you want us to know?"
And I was all, "Well, I'm sorry that you didn't get back to me earlier in the summer when I had full availability; I can only do this part-time right now - I've been working (will be starting to work, ahem, whatever) with a professor at BU and then I'm moving to Scotland for grad school."
Lady: (jaw drop)"Well, thanks for taking the time to come in."
And then I walked out. I haven't felt that badass in a while.
2. SPEAKING OF BADASS (this is relative, perhaps if you are not me, you will not feel the same way)
I heard back from another professor I e-mailed recently. He's been busy wrapping up this project which is essentially a corpus of Old English Poetics and language "to detect relationships between, and structures within, poetic texts in [the] Old English [corpus]". He had been away for a week, which means he just got my e-mail and apologized if he missed out on having me on board due to this fact.
But he also warned me that
a) they had run out of funding
b) they were nearly finished with it
c) I AM ACTUALLY OVERQUALIFIED TO DO THIS.
3. Oh, and Sarah Palin called herself Shakespeare and I wrote about it.
YOU GUYS, THIS IS AWESOME.
I talked to the ladies who currently are Administrative Assistants-slash-Grammatical Editors; they gave me a cup of coffee, an article to edit, and a red pen. It's like my dream job interview! And apparently nobody's ever done that well on their practice document before, so they were a little bit floored. Basically, they were like "We really like you, we'll let you know by Friday. Is there anything else you want us to know?"
And I was all, "Well, I'm sorry that you didn't get back to me earlier in the summer when I had full availability; I can only do this part-time right now - I've been working (will be starting to work, ahem, whatever) with a professor at BU and then I'm moving to Scotland for grad school."
Lady: (jaw drop)"Well, thanks for taking the time to come in."
And then I walked out. I haven't felt that badass in a while.
2. SPEAKING OF BADASS (this is relative, perhaps if you are not me, you will not feel the same way)
I heard back from another professor I e-mailed recently. He's been busy wrapping up this project which is essentially a corpus of Old English Poetics and language "to detect relationships between, and structures within, poetic texts in [the] Old English [corpus]". He had been away for a week, which means he just got my e-mail and apologized if he missed out on having me on board due to this fact.
But he also warned me that
a) they had run out of funding
b) they were nearly finished with it
c) I AM ACTUALLY OVERQUALIFIED TO DO THIS.
3. Oh, and Sarah Palin called herself Shakespeare and I wrote about it.
YOU GUYS, THIS IS AWESOME.
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