Random selection

Today in Mass Comm & Society we finished choosing debate dates. No, we are not pairing up and going on debate-watching dates. (In our class of 18 we only have three guys anyway, so that wouldn't work out too well, not to mention a date to watch a debate would be an incredible time-waster for me right now.) Part of the requirements of the class include participating in two debates during the course of the semester. I'm less than thrilled about this prospect. Maybe if we had been put into teams of two or three and had some allies to help us in the process, maybe then I could try to show some excitement. But having to organize an 8-10 minute debate on one side of a communication-related grey area, then listen to another classmate present their own side of the issue and then give an impromptu 3-5 minute rebuttal to their presentation and then listen to their rebuttal doesn't sound like much fun to me. After that the whole class will jump in and critique us while offering their own opinions, adding to those that the debaters have already presented. All I can say is that I hope this semester proceeds rapidly so I can leave classes such as this behind. The one amusing part of the whole debate-topic decision process was how our professor chose to find a random order for students to select the topics they wanted to debate on. He found a Web site to help us out. He put in the number of students in the class and then the Web site randomly put those numbers in order. Then he showed us the class roster listed in alphabetical order with 1 being the person with the last name closest to the start of the alphabet and 18 being the person with the last name closest to the end of the alphabet. I was highly amused at the use of technology for a relatively simple process that a hat and numbers written on pieces of paper could have solved. Oh well, it kept us amused through the ordeal. I ended up being the 14th person to pick a debate topic and, surprisingly, nobody had picked my first choice by that time so I grabbed that. When we got to the last person she got to pick twice in a row and then we just went through the list backwards to pick our second debate topic. I was able to get another topic that wasn't too far down my list of choices so at least that worked out well for me. Anyway, that's about the most interesting thing about my day.

I did spend three hours in the library doing random things for Adv. Creative Writing. A good part of that time was spent trying to look for an article similar to the one I'd like to write this semester. It seems an article like that has not ever been written, or at least not in any of the magazines our library subscribes to. Tim was working while I was in the library and was an immense help. I told him what I was trying to find and he gave me several magazines to look through. When those didn't work out he got on the computer and looked up articles in the periodicals database. He finally found an old (1989) article in Reader's Digest that slightly resembled what I was looking for, so he produced it on microfiche and sent it to the printer for me. It was really nice of him to help me for so long. The other time waster was trying to find the "Writer's Market 2009" book that Mr. Lale showed us in class. I browsed around the reference section for a bit looking for it before finally giving up and asking at the front desk. The two workers there gave me blank and kind of shocked looks. They had no clue what I was talking about. I, having never opened the book or even held it in my hands, tried to explain what the book was all about, but they were completely sure they had never heard of such a book. They tried looking for it, and other possible word combinations, in their computer database, only coming up with some Adventist Writer's Guide book from 1981 or so. They gave the information to find that book and told me that other books like it were in that same section so I trudged upstairs, found the section, found the book, laughed cynically in my head about them thinking such a book would actually help me out in this day in age, and pulled it off the shelf. I looked around for any other book that held any similarity to Writer's Market 2009 with no luck. All the books around there were about how to write well and that type of thing. Anyway, I ended up flipping through the first 15 or so pages of the Adventist book and then just going back downstairs to find some potential publishing venues for my article online instead. It was an aggravating three hours that I could have used doing other things. Oh well, today's done and that means one less day until I graduate.

And now, to end the day on a happier note, here's one last incident that greatly amused me. I was fighting sleep while grading the last few papers of an assignment tonight. The assignment was to read sets of one or two sentence-long potential news stories and write (1) whether or not each story was suitable for the news section of a local newspaper and (2) which news value(s) the stories contained. For the suitable/not suitable for print part on one question, one student wrote: No way, José/Ms. Chamberlain/Alison "British Columbia" Quiring. Immediately I broke out into a huge grin and, after reading it again, an even bigger laugh. What a simple, but amusing, pick-me-up at the end of a rather stressful day. I put a red smiley face beneath the "British Columbia" part. He deserved it.