go to more lectures

tonight went to a VERY interesting lecture. it was an introduction to the work of a famous philosopher/theorist who will visit soon….someone whose insights into science have potentially useful applications in literary study… reminded me a bit of an article i just read in The American Scholar: “Biology Crushes Lit Crit.”

Went to hear Temple Grandin (expert on animals and autism) speak today. At one point, she was discussing fear as a motivating force in animals, and she shared a great anecdote: A researcher was using chimps that had been “abducted” from the wild as babies, with the use of burlap sacks. After the chimps were several years old, the researcher placed a piece of burlap in their habitat. They immediately buried it. (Not the normal response to new objects.) They remembered the texture, and associated it with the fear they had felt.

Kinda like how my (adopted from the pound) dog freaks out when he meets guys with dark baseball caps, I guess.

today i went to a pedagogy workshop open to all grad students at the university & learned some interesting stats about attention and memory. we only made it through about half of the planned topics, but the instructor is sending the rest to us via e-mail. i picked up a few good teaching tips—but more than anything, the workshop made me feel grateful for the awesome pedagogical instruction i’m getting from my home department: i now realize that teaching assistants in other parts of the university don’t get nearly as much guidance!

So this week I skipped a poetry reading but went to a lecture at 4 o’clock in the afternoon on Friday (which took willpower, believe me). I’m glad I went. I enjoy the Q & A part at the end of lectures (especially when there are stakes involved for the presenter, who in this case was on campus for a job interview) because you never know who’ll ask what, and it always seems like at least one person always asks an incomprehensibly complicated question. The lecturer yesterday handled the pressure masterfully!

so, i missed the first fiction reading of the semester last night, without even realizing it. truth is, i had a crummy day yesterday, though, so i probably wouldn’t have decided to go anyway. maybe my subconscious just made the decision for me!

and go to more readings

and prepare for some of them in advance so I can ask good questions

went to a lecture at Politics and Prose—glad to have went, though it’s a bit far away for me.

Another half count—went to lectures at work on Thurs., though apparently all the ones I didn’t/couldn’t attend were the really standout ones. To make up for this, I think I’m going to spend time next week watching the DVs of today’s afternoon session.