Welcome, Spring Semester 2010

How can you tell classes have started at W&M?

Play the game I fondly call "Count the Coffees".

Four Coffees (i.e. fifth class session of MATH 104 at 9:00am)

As any college student knows, those first few classes don't actually count. Professors are just reading syllabi, learning names, and half the students present won't be taking any the class by the next session.

However, when the coffee cups come out, the academic endeavors have started. One or two coffees are negligible because there's always that guy who can't even walk without an appropriate dose of caffeine, but once you get above "a couple"/"a few" and into "several" coffee cups appearing in a single class, the semester has begun.

(Exception to the rule: 8am classes. Either the students are caffeine-run, or "morning people", and the latter is likely just a myth.)

Friday morning, when I looked up saw four coffee cups without even turning my head, I knew it's time to actually pay attention.

Happy Beginning-of-the-Semester, W&M.

Fall 2009 Retrospect: Turkey Bowling

Logo of the Underdog Sports League of Portland's Big Turkey Bowling
(i.e. the least ridiculous turkey bowling logo I could find)

November 22nd, 2009: RHA Turkey Bowling

Anyone familiar with Christopher Moore's Bloodsucking Fiends: a love story will also be familiar with the noble sport of Turkey Bowling, as played by the Animals of the Safeway night shift. Pick up your 12-pound Butterball, line up ten diet sodas at the end of the aisle, and let the bird fly, so to speak. (The diet soda part is important. Diet sodas are easier to clean up than sugary sodas. The residue's not as sticky with diet sodas, so keep that in mind when you plan to make a turkey-related mess.)

Thank the Great Gobbler that W&M is just as nerdy as I am, because the Residence Hall Association held a turkey bowling championship.

Irene Morrison-Moncure, Class of 2011,
the championship winner, hurling her bird.

Held in the Crim Dell meadow, competitors could enter with a donation of a canned good for charity and bowl a fowl to win Wawa gift cards. And with finals only a few weeks away, Wawa gift cards are like gold. Thanks to the 24-hour Wawa on Richmond Road, W&M students live on Wawa foodstuffs, particularly during finals.

The pins, prior to their meleagrine destruction.

Competitors lobbed their birds down the lane at water bottles (decorated in Thanksgiving decor, of course), sending plastic bottles and frozen birds spinning into the frosty November grass, and fun was had by all.

However, just before I left at the end of the festivities, I discovered an atrocious deception made by these RHA representatives:

Oh, horror! Not a Cornish Broiler Chicken!

The birds were CHICKENS, not turkeys! So what if chickens are probably cheaper and definitely easier to throw? Their bird of bowling was inaccurately advertised! That's some heinous f*ckery most foul right there.

Happy Thanksgiving, William & Mary.

Strike!

Grand Illumination 2009!

Yay! Pretty!

View of the Magazine's fireworks from outside Bruton Parish Church.
Edges of the Capitol's fireworks can be seen on the left.

This was my first Grand Illumination, so it was very exciting for me. I missed the Fifes & Drums, but I arrived just in time for the fireworks, apple cider in one hand and iPhone camera in the other. (Much thanks to the study abroad fundraiser that was handing out cider and cookies!)

I was really amazed by the mass of people gathered in Colonial Williamsburg for the event -- more than I've ever seen in CW at one time. It must have been thousands, all packed together on Duke of Gloucester street, huddled against the cold and gazing up at the fireworks; yet people were saying that this was a small turn-out compared to previous years.

Colonial Williamsburg has really suffered this past year or so, despite the neat programs they've recently started (and the opening of the Charlton Coffeehouse, which I finally visited this weekend and is SO cool, go check it out). It's not a matter of CW being less interesting, relevant, or enjoyable; it's just that everyone's broke. Attraction sites around the country are suffering the same losses, but for a great institution like Colonial Williamsburg to suffer like this, that's a real tragedy.

So if you and your family are looking for somewhere to visit this holiday season, consider spending a day in Colonial Williamsburg. And attend 2010's Grand Illumination!

(The holiday parade being canceled due to bad weather was a real bummer, though. I'll just have to make sure to see it next year.)

And so the holiday season truly begins...

reconciling lit with tech

Though I will never be as intimate with technology as the almighty programmers, I am a product of my generation and have a great love for technology, and consider myself fairly tech-savvy (enough to coach my mother on computer use). I don't know how the world functioned before Google, Gmail, and iPhones, I really don't, especially for schoolwork. (For example: I had a meeting with my group for a final project, where the four of us sat together with our laptops and shared research links over Gmail chat, no lie.)

I'm addicted to Wired articles, and this one made me squeal aloud with delight: Print: Applying Quantitative Analysis to Classic Lit.

Using Google-esque search technology in the analysis of literary mechanics? I am all atwitter! (I may have to tweet about this.) My English major heart has finally been wedded with my Google love affair.

Now if only my English professors would get over their stereotypical technophobia, we could have some real fun with this. Most of the linguistics professors here seem well-integrated with technology (due to a closer relationship with language mechanics rather than the more nebulous analysis?), but most lit professors seem to have a real avoidance of technology. Features like this, though, hold some real promise for bringing the study of literature into the Era of Google.

Doesn't the idea of literary word clouds sound fascinating? I love word clouds in general, but now I'm terribly curious about what word-frequency indicates in a piece of literature.

Here's an experiment:


This is a word cloud of the text of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (though not Through the Looking-Glass, maybe I'll do that next). Isn't it lovely? It looks dreamy, like a thought-bubble emerging from Alice. Aesthetics aside, this cloud tells us a lot, thematically speaking. To have words like "know", "thought", "went", and "time" appear so large is a strong indication of the existential qualities of the novel. I would have thought "Rabbit" to be bigger, though. And "curious" as well. Hm.

If there were a word cloud of the complete works of Oscar Wilde, how big do you think "fascinating", "shame", and "vermilion" would appear? I know for a fact that Wilde rhymes with "vermilion" at least three times in his volumes of poetry. I'm not sure what that says thematically, but I know it indicates that he's a great big show-off. What a marvelous paper that would be. "The Statistics of Showing Off: Frequency of Word Usage in the Works of Oscar Wilde". I sense a thesis coming on.

Last Day of Classes

What the last class of the semester looks like:

Last class of intro psych in Millington Hall,
and someone's ready for the semester to be over.

This would be reason #37 to get a soft and cushy laptop case. Works as a good impromptu desk-pillow! HUTF.

(And of course everyone else is saying, "How can she sleep? This is our last chance to hear about the final!" and then they realize that this means they have an advantage over sleeping-girl, and feel superior in that wonderfully "TWAMP"-y way.)

Happy Last Day of Classes, W&M. Don't go too crazy at Blowout. By 4pm I'd already counted three paramedic vans racing down Jamestown Rd. A little early for alcohol poisoning, don't you think? Be safe.

Raining Finals

This is what rain during the last week of classes looks like at W&M:

Sea of umbrellas in the mudroom of Swem library, Wednesday night.

Happy studying, Swemmers.

Swemming

The view from my current hideout in Swem,
where I'm sure to be all night.

Even though I really need to be working on the final that's due tomorrow morning, I had to share with you all the following TSM (Typical Swem Moment):

[For those of you who aren't W&M-savvy, the Earl Gregg Swem Library is the campus's main library, and thus where most of us live during finals.]

Going into the women's bathroom on the 3rd floor (i.e. the silent tomb of death -- the floor, not the women's bathroom specifically), I see a girl brushing her teeth.

Seriously. Brushing her teeth.

Either this is because she's been in the library for so many days now that she has to perform her hygiene rituals here, or she just had to get the taste of that essay out of her mouth.

All right. Back to that final.