A Mixed Bag

[kat_lair]

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I have marked 15 essays today. I want to cry. The two are causally correlated.

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In other news, I have finally bought a new laptop. And by that I mean, the same laptop I have now except the newer version. It should be here soon. Yes, it was emotionally painful.

However, I am now lusting after a tablet. It must be 10inch because I need to use it for work stuff but otherwise I'm open for recommendations. Oh, and I'd ideally not use more than ~£300 on it.

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I continue to be in love with Lewis fandom! Back in February I left a prompt about Hathaway going on a series of bad dates and then, two months later, two separate but equally awesome fics about that appeared as a complete surprise. Both are excellent stories with great characterisation and oodles of romance and jealousy and pining and oh my heart! Run, don't walk, to read: Not Quite According To Plan by fortesomniare and The Unfortunate State of My Dates by wendymr and paperscribe. <3

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Here are a couple of things gathered via flist that I wanted to share:

• Excellent article on sexual harassment in geek culture (triggery for sexual harassment/offending): Because, let’s face it: how much of a freak of genetics do you have to be to think that the proper response to somebody - anybody - disagreeing with you about Wonder Girl is to threaten to rape them? In the realm of potential absurd over-reactions, is there anything, anything more insane, than somebody deciding that the only possible response to believing that somebody’s opinion about Mass Effect, or Altair or Black Widow or The Dark Knight Rises or what-have-you is to promise to track them down and violate them with a stick? I mean that is insane. Pants-on-head, smearing-shit-on-the-walls insane.And yet so many of my friends – just about every single woman I know who’s active in geek culture, in fact – this isn’t an abstract thought exercise. This is their daily lives. They are deluged with anonymous threats promising rape and worse… because some rando has decided that they must suffer for the crime of being a woman with an opinion online… and they know what you look like and where you live.

• This Is My Body - a video with some important messages, most universal, although some with US-centric slant as that's where the vid originates from (triggery for sexual harassment/offending and health issues). Because for those of us on the Northern Hemisphere, how many magazine articles and comments have you already seen/received about getting your body 'swimsuit ready'? And really, that's just the tip of the iceberg as you all know.

Watch on YouTube

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And because I wanted to leave you with something light-hearted and silly after that...



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Right, as you were. I'm going to go get some food now and watch 2h of American sit-coms.

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Comments

[citrusjava.livejournal.com]

15! That sounds like a very good reason to cry.

[kat-lair.livejournal.com]

3 of those went straight to the plagiarism panel.

[citrusjava.livejournal.com]

*Wow*. That's a lot! And sounds like so much hard work to deal with.

Wishing you all the American sitcoms you like.

[kat-lair.livejournal.com]

The number keeps gorwing as well, it's 5 altogether now of studens who, as a colleague put it, 'have some questions to answer'. Depressing.

[citrusjava.livejournal.com]

Oh, *wow*! That is depressing.
And it sounds like they're not even be doing it very well, if so many of them are getting caught! ;)
Seriously, that's really disturbing, though.

[kat-lair.livejournal.com]

Unsurprisingly the programme director has hush-hushed all but worst offender as 'poor referencing'. I'm doing a lot of deep breathing to keep calm and professional whilst registering my disagreement about the whole thing.

[citrusjava.livejournal.com]

*shocked*
That's horrible! I didn't know that sort of thing was happening!
How infuriating to find all of those, and have it all hushed up!

[kat-lair.livejournal.com]

It's one of those potaTOH poTAHto things, but what is infuriating is the discrepancies between programmes (I teach across several) as I've just taken a student through plagiarism procedures for far less than these on another programme. Anyway, yeah, something I'll be pushing for the department to address.

[citrusjava.livejournal.com]

Good for you!
And I get it, it can be so different...
I wonder whether that sort of thing keeps happening around me and I'm not even aware of it. I know I was offered a job writing seminary papers for an organized business selling papers to students...

[kat-lair.livejournal.com]

The thing is, we can't even catch people for the kind of cheating that involves buying papers specifically written. None of the students we catch have been that devious about plagiarising and I think for most it's about laziness/lack of time/not understanding referencing conventions/not understanding the topic enough to even start to summarise the information in their own words. We use Turnitin which is essentially a text matching software which will highlight stuff copied from websites, journal articles etc. It's obvious as all fuck when someone's taken something verbatim or with only minumum of changes.

[citrusjava.livejournal.com]

So sloppy! If you're going to cheat, at least make an effort! ;)
Students should at least run their own papers through that software and correct accordingly.

[kat-lair.livejournal.com]

They all have an opportunity and are strongly encouraged to do just that. But only a fraction do.

[citrusjava.livejournal.com]

That is just depressing.

[chocolate-frapp.livejournal.com]

that video was right on but there's no way I would ever add myself to it. I notice they picked all attractive women.
Left out House, Boardwalk Empire and every other TV show I like!

[kat-lair.livejournal.com]

Yeah I agree with you on the women in the vid being quite traditionally pretty and youngish most of them.

And Stargate and Grimm and any RPS and... Yeah, none of these things are perfect. It would have to be a much larger graph to fit everything in :D

[chocolate-frapp.livejournal.com]

I like original Star Trek and I love Next Gen but I don't like the other Trek shows and I only liked the first reboot movie. I used to love Downton Abbey but I ragequit that show after a certain car accident and I got tired of Sherlock really quickly (still love the ACD books and the Jeremy Brett Holmes show).

[kat-lair.livejournal.com]

TOS was before my time so while I've seen most of it after the fact, I never really got into it. Grew up with TNG though which counts as one of my first fandoms before I even knew what fandom was :) I'm a fan of the other Treks too, particularly DS9 as I loved the politics of it all. Never got into Downton Abbey and have yet to catch up with s3 of Sherlock. However, I do have a Sherlock ficlet to post... *wanders off to do that*

[unusual-lullaby.livejournal.com]

15 essays!!
I don't want to make you depressed more.. so... just good luck! I'm sure you can do this! <3

[kat-lair.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much! First lot of marking is done. Have 3 dissertations to wade through tomorrow and then the next lot of essays to keep me occupied over the weekend...