O Christmas Tree

After a wonderful Thanksgiving, we have turned our attention to the end of the semester and Christmas. On the one hand, we have lots to do and no time to do it, it seems, before the end of the semester. On the other hand, Advent is here and it's time to prepare for Christmas! We bought our tree today in Hastings...it is a Minnesota-grown (just like my hubby) spruce.

We were hoping for a tiny little tree like the one we found last year in the 'economy lot' of a tree farm...but due to complications finding the tree farm this year (last year's tree farm closed, so we had to find a new one), we just stopped in Hastings on our way home at a little tree lot next to a store. So due to the limited size of the place, there were no scrawny, little trees here. Still, we found about the smallest one, and decided it would do nicely.

We had decided to try putting the tree on top of a little end table this year, so it would fit better in the tiny little corner of the room we had alotted for it...unfortunately, this slightly-larger-than-planned tree did not fit at first. We trimmed a good 5 inches off the top, though, and it fit just fine. Here it is, in its current, undecorated state.


Incidentally, for anyone who hasn't seen me (Jess) since Thanksgiving break, we trimmed a little off of my top too. Actually, it was my sister Liz doing the trimming, and she trimmed quite a lot--12 inches! That hair is currently on its way to Locks of Love, where it will be put to good use.

here we go a-traveling...

Andy and I are about to hit the road for five and a half days of fun-filled merriment with family! Tonight we will be attending an awesome "pre-Turkey Day Dinner" at Pete's house in Red Wing, then staying with Andy's parents for the night. On Wednesday, we're off to Madison, where we will be seeing a stage production of David Sedaris' Santaland Diaries before celebrating Thanksgiving with Jess's family.

So, we may or may not be in touch over the next five days or so...we'll be returning home on Sunday evening sometime. Happy Thanksgiving everyone :)

happy November 15th!

Well, today started out like any other gray, rainy day in November, but it certainly isn't ending that way. Among the boring features of the day: fulfilling my TA duties by sitting through a lecture on central tendencies and other basic stats things, sitting in my office for 'office hours' as a TA, then sitting through two hours of class on a topic I'm really not that interested in and will never do research in.

So that covers the boring part of my day...and now for the exciting part...I now own new knitting needles--size 2 dpns, for my first-ever sock effort, which will commence at some point in the near future...and I got a package in the mail! Packages are exciting in and of themselves, but even more so when it means that the yarn you ordered online has finally arrived, so that you can start making your first ever grown-up big-person hand-knit actual sweater!

The sweater pattern I chose looks like this on the model lady:


And the yarn I chose is Andean Silk, from KnitPicks. The color is hollyberry, which is a little less purple and more red than it looks in this picture:

So, that's my formerly-boring-but-now-turned-exciting day! And a happy November 15th, to you too :-).

Grading Grading Grading

I am spending all of today grading rough drafts, written by undergrads. Now, I could go on and on complaining about the awful quality of writing, the sub-par understanding of research, etc. but that doesn't seem very productive, does it? Instead, I'd like to take a little poll concerning methods of grading (I know, also not productive, but I'm curious). Now, there are a variety of ways to grade a paper, some of which seem more "fair" some seem more "nice", etc. As a TA, though you may have the loveliest of TA assignments (as I do this semester), it can still be rather frustrating to grade assignments that you didn't create/assign, as you're never quite sure what the purpose of the assignment was, what the instructors are expecting, how nice you should be to the students, etc.

For example, consider the case of the "rough draft assignment"...is the point of having students turn in a rough draft:

• a) to make sure they start work on their papers and don't put it off until the last minute,
  
• b) to give them lots of guidance/feedback to ensure a quality final draft, or
  
• c) to have them earn points/grade as if it were the final draft but on a smaller scale (so they need to do a decent job to get a decent grade, even though its "just" a rough draft)?

What do you think?

Also, say you have an 8-page rough draft to read through and grade. You also have a grading criteria/feedback sheet that breaks the 20 possible points down into smaller point values possible for each section...do you:

• 1) read through a section and grade it according to points--e.g. this paper doesn't state a hypothesis so they lose 2 pts, this paper doesn't state the study design very well, so they lose a point there, etc. (in which case you made end up giving the paper the equivalent of a D or C, when it really wasn't that bad of a draft, it just wasn't fabulous)
  
• 2) read through and give full credit for any section that's attempted, i.e. they tried to write a hypothesis, even though it makes no sense, so just give them points for it and make lots of comments on how they should make it better (in which case, what is the point of the point system?), or
• 3) read through and decide how good, overall you think the paper was--e.g. A papers are pretty obvious, as are C or lower papers, and then assign points so that they somehow add up to that grade (in which case you could just as easily write "A, because it seems like it" instead of breaking it down into points)?

I'm curious. What would you do--a, b, or c, and 1, 2, or 3?

alone for the weekend

Andy is gone this weekend, participating in a Nelson family tradition (for the males, anyway): deer hunting. So, while he is gone being stereotypically masculine, what am I doing? Oh, staying home, knitting, doing laundry, that sort of thing. Honestly, you'd think this was us:


But anyway, we don't have any exciting news in our lives to report, but we are pleased to announce that BOJ is born! Katie & Alex have a brand new baby girl, named Abigail Anne, who was born on October 30. I hope they don't mind that I borrowed this picture from their blog:


So congratulations to them! Little Abbie and the whole family are all doing well, we hear.

As a side note, Hard-Working-Jess made a brief appearance this morning, when a whole half-an-hour was spent on homework! Alas, she has slipped away again...

Missing Persons Report

Missing: Hard-Working-Jess.

Last seen with: Slacker-Jess.

What happened: Slacker-Jess is sneaky. She looks just like Hard-Working-Jess, but has a whole lot less motivation to do school work (or any work for that matter, except knitting). Slacker-Jess craftily came in and took over Hard-Working-Jess's life after the fyp and two class presentations were done...and Slacker-Jess has had so much fun that we're beginning to worry she won't let Hard-Working-Jess take over again when needed!

If you have any information as to the whereabouts of Hard-Working-Jess, or how we can tempt her to come back and resume her rightful position as motivator and assignment-finisher, please let us know!