As Time Goes By...

Throughout the day I think of things or something happens and I think, “Dude, I totally need to blog that.”

But then I forget.

…

I was talking to a friend last night – yes, a friend! PRAISE GOD! …and we were talking about how it feels like we’re not doing that much (working 10 hours a week, 9 units of graduate classes) and yet it feels like we’re pushing for TIME! It’s crazy.

The thing is that it’s not just work and class. There’s chapel three times a week, small groups, meetings with people for group projects (this is a HUGE time chunk), church, and, of course, homework. They say that homework for grad. classes is supposed to take twice as long as the class. So that would be 18 hours of homework a week. So 18 + 9 + 10 + 3 for chapel = 40 hours basically for school and work. That should be normal and fine, right? A perfect load.

What’s the problem? If I was working 40 hours a week at the jobs that I’ve been a part of, not that the jobs were brainless, but that the input wasn’t even close to the amount or “scholar” (I don’t know what to say there but I think you know what I mean) of the input that I’m getting now.

In my undergrad I remember a few times where my brain physically hurt. A few times for finals and then especially my HUGE exit exam.

Here’s the thing – MY BRAIN HURTS ALL THE TIME NOW!

Don’t get me wrong. I love my classes and am seriously fascinated by the things that I’ve been reading and studying. In fact, after my Tuesday class I walked out with my partner for my ethnography and we were, uh, discussing about polygamy and, since I had other questions that the class had brought up, we went into Dr. Cashin’s office and talked to him for 45 minutes – not about homework or the project we were working on or about understanding the material for a test but to gain more insight, ask questions, to think! It was great. And although I walked away totally glad and even more interested …my brain hurt.

So, please, pray for my brain. :o)

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Since my life is basically homework-filled, I thought I would share with you some of the really, really, really cool things I get to do:

For my linguistics class we’re studying “Words and Their Parts: Lexicon and Morphology”

Here was one of the questions assigned:
2-20. Examine the following sentences of Tok Pisin (New Guinea Pidgin English) to identify the morphemes needed to translate the seven English sentences given at the end of this exercise.

So I looked at different sentences that were translated in the book, 6 in total, and I had to figure out different affixes and so forth for different parts of speech depending on their use in the sentence (i.e. subject, object, etc.)

So I translated these sentences from English into Tok Pisin.
1) These people like my speech. – dispela manmeri ol laikim toktok bilong mi.
2) I am strolling on the road. – mi wokabaut long rot.
3) I like my friend’s speech. – mi laikim dispela toktok bilong pred bilong mi.
4) I like my brother and these people. – mi laikim brata bilong mi no dispela manmeri.
5) These people on the road and my friend like his speech. – dispela manmeri long rot no prend bilong mi ol laikim toktok bilong em.
6) You (sing.) and my brother like the speech of these people. – yu no brata bilong mi yupela laikim toktok bilong dispela manmeri.
7) These people listen to my friend’s and my brother’s speech. – dispela manmeri ol harim toktok bilong prend bilong mi no bilong brata bilong mi.

NEAT, HUH?