adastra

26 January 2018

When your Teaching is Successful

What a day in teaching! Today was the penultimate session of my Introduction to English Linguistics. Early during the session, I got a bit angry at one person who was talking on the phone, and asked them to please go outside if they must talk on the phone during my lecture. Shortly after, once I distributed the exercise handouts, that person plus five other people left the session. I’m not quite sure if it was because of my little rant or because the exercises were too hard… anyway, I thought it was rather funny, and I was pretty glad they […]

1 January 2018

Personal Achievements of Awesomeness in 2017

2017 is over, and it was one of the most eventful and life-changing years I have lived through. A ton of things happened, all of which took my life into positive new directions. I received the result of my master’s thesis and graduated as “Master of Arts” with an excellent grade. The supervisor of my master’s thesis asked me whether I want to do a PhD, which is an amazing accomplishment and a show of confidence and trust in me. I said yes, and I started working on my PhD project in April. I ended an 8-year relationship. I started […]

9 October 2017

Hair, Soap and Hair Soap

I’ve had really long hair pretty much all my life. I’m a huge fan of long hair in general, and I think it just looks wonderful when people have really healthy, shiny, long hair – regardless of gender. I’m all for crushing gender stereotypes and destigmatizing long hair in men, but that’s a whole other topic. But let’s get back to my hair; I’ve also had really unhealthy hair pretty much all my life. Split ends have been a part of my hair ever since I started growing it when I was nine years old. But to be honest, I’ve […]

30 December 2016

Twenty Sixteen and Me (and Games)

The year is almost over, meaning that it’s time for my traditional “what I did this year” post. The year of 2016 is universally hated, in my opinion wrongfully – it’s not the fault of a slightly arbitrary measurement of the earth’s rotation that so many bad things have happened. Many inspirational people have died, but many more will likely die in the next couple of years. Many bad things have happened around the world, but considering that soon one of the most powerful nations in the world will be led by a group of imbeciles, I don’t even want […]

21 October 2016

Stamps and Letters

Well… I’m prepared for my retirement, as I have recently unearthed my stamp collection. Though this is probably the most old-man hobby ever, I actually spend some time in my teens collecting, or rather, organizing stamps. At some point back then, I discovered bags and boxes full of stamps in the attic, which apparently my grandmother had collected. Since apparently I had nothing better to do as a kid, I started putting those stamps into a stamp album… and for a while, I collected stamps of the letters we received. I also got a bag of stamps from some store […]

12 September 2016

A Tall Giant

Majestic mountains misted in silver, Stand surrounding a spectacular secret A hill, hidden among them, hedged by streams. From afar it looks feeble and small, Dominated by the dwarfing, distant peaks. As I approach the apex that expands across the plane, across the vast valley between the valiant summits, that modest mount mesmerisingly grows. Through rills and rushing rivulets I walk, that weave a web, wreathing like earth’s veins, until at my toes a tall giant stands. I clamber and climb up the craggy path, Through sparse grass and greenery that grows on the rocks, Past cattle that cowers cautiously […]

3 July 2016

Postcards All Around the World

Earlier this year I decided to sign up for postcrossing again, and in this blog post, I’d like to share my experience with this project. It’s a project with a very simple concept – first, you request an address of a random stranger somewhere in the world and send them a postcard. Once you’ve done that, you will receive a postcard in return, but not from the same person – from another random stranger somewhere in the world. In our increasingly digitalized world, this project aims to bring joy to mailboxes that otherwise only see bills and spam these days. […]

1 May 2016

The Magic of The Magicians

“Hogwarts for adults” is how Syfy’s new show The Magicians is popularly described – but it’s SO much more than that. I admit the parallels are pretty obvious; both The Magicians and Harry Potter are about a guy who discovers magic and proceeds to go to magic school. Both stories have a truly terrifying, seemingly omnipotent villain. And in both stories, the school teachers seem surprisingly unhelpful in solving problems. But compared to the complexity of characters in The Magicians, Harry Potter seems terribly flat. Actually, I would argue that The Magicians is rather the spiritual heir to Buffy the […]

21 November 2015

Tutorial Time Management

I’m five weeks into the semester – and into being a tutor to students of English Studies. As you might recall, I was terribly nervous about this before the semester began. By now, I’m not that nervous anymore, but some of my doubts persist. In particular I’m having a bit of trouble with the time management of my tutorials, that is, figuring out how to fill the hour with meaningful content. So far, this has worked moderately okay-ish, depending on tutorial and topic. One of the tutorials I’m giving is on Academic Writing and Research. This tutorial is basically a […]