I think if I sit down and tally everything that happened this week, I might just break even. Had fun on Valentine's Day, woke up mute the next day (and every day for the rest of the week, as it happens). Found a whole bunch of awesome mixes and mashups on Soundcloud, opened a can of worms with the director of the SRAS (more on that later). Winning at grammar in class, then lost the ability to focus on anything after about 2 PM.
Yeah, I'm still sick. I dunno what's wrong, but I've basically lost my voice completely now. I can manage a pathetic little croaking noise if I try really hard. On the plus side, I'm really close to having a perfect Christian "I Gargle with Thumbtacks and Whiskey" Bale "Batman" impression down. So, you know, today hasn't been a total waste. I ended up staying home today, too. Tonight we're supposed to go over to Elizabeth's for a Quentin Tarantino-themed party (an idea hatched at the Gal-entine's party); I don't know if I'm gonna go or not; I probably shouldn't, in any case, so it's good that I don't have any possible costumes. Maybe I'll throw some rubles at my roommates and ask them to pick me up some Strepsils or something at the apteka on their way home.
I don't feel like getting dressed or going outside, or I'd just make an apteka run myself; there are about half a dozen of them within a block of this apartment. Living in the center of the city has its perks. An apteka is basically a drugstore or small pharmacy. Some of them are at least partially self-service, but a lot still have their inventory behind glass and you have to ask the druggist to get you something. And it's not just the pharmacies; I've been in a produkty or two that had their inventory behind glass as well. I've managed so far with pointing and copious use of the word "пожалуйста," which serves the function of both "please" and "you're welcome." I dunno what it is; I can speak Russian with reasonable confidence in class, but when it comes to interacting with salespeople I freeze up and practically forget how to speak English, much less Russian.
So, about the director of the SRAS. His name's Josh. There's been this whole big folderol about the journaling requirement for the culture class. The way Josh and his assistant Molly have been approaching the journal entries has made it seem like they're actually trying to get us to write articles for the SRAS, which is not only deceptive and underhanded, but also not journaling. Uh, no, sorry. That's not how this works. I pay you to be here, so you pay me to provide content for your website. I'd have less of a problem with it if they didn't already have paid internship positions to write articles like these. That's where my concerns are, mainly, that they're trying to trick us into working for them for free. I'd be okay with publishing one or two of the journal entries I consider to be my best on the website, provided I could do so after the course is finished and my credits have transferred back to Stetson, and with the stipulation that the article goes up exactly as I wrote it. Molly, the assistant, apparently thought she'd been given license to apply the Red Pen of Justice to our blog posts. I was expecting the sort of feedback that I'd get from any professor, stuff like "I think you should develop this point more," or "you need to work on your transitions between paragraphs." What I got, however, was a word document with a bunch of proposed changes that were either purely stylistic or actually ungrammatical. Excuse me, no. If the blogs were in Russian, I'd expect to receive feedback with edits for grammar, syntax and diction. But they aren't. On top of the fact that Molly's edits were completely unasked-for, they were crap. Going beyond simply removing what I considered "my voice" from the piece, the edits she suggested made the piece feel choppy and sophomoric. I told Josh I "respectfully disagreed" with them and sent him back the "revised" blog post with all of Molly's suggestions and formatting removed.
Brenda's concerns have to do mainly with privacy, although she shares my concerns about the lack of compensation, and has her own email conversation with Josh going. I've also been exchanging emails with Josh about my concerns; I admit, I could probably have been a little less curt, but I wasn't outright rude to him or anything, and he attempted to shut me down twice. First, he tried playing the incredibly-condescending "I'm older than you, so shut up" card, pointing out that he's got six years of formal education on me. That almost works on people who are still legally minors (and it still didn't work on me as a teen); however, I'm an adult, so I'd appreciate being talked to like one. The second thing he tried was pointing out that Stetson's Bear in a Hat blog was part of the inspiration for the journaling requirement in the first place. The thing about Bear in a Hat is that it is not a publicity tool for the Stetson University Russian Studies program in the same way Josh seems to want our journal entries to be a publicity tool for the SRAS. So, you know, I appreciate the shout-out (go hatters), but the argument is still invalid. No word yet on the final verdict regarding this whole issue.
If I still have to do journal entries for this class once all this is resolved, I'll probably want to talk about the tour of the Russian museum we're doing on Sunday afternoon. I'm really looking forward to that; if you all recall, I said that if I had my druthers I'd just spend all 4 months here exploring museums. The city is fascinating in its own right, of course. But I'm so excited for the museum tour. And later on Sunday evening, we may be attending a chamber orchestra performance at the Peter and Paul Cathedral, because Sergei has a friend in the show.
It's about 4:30 now; I should probably make a decision soon about whether or not I'm going to Elizabeth's tonight, as the trip is about 45 minutes all told. If I don't go, the worst-case scenario is that I get the apartment to myself for a couple hours. I don't see a problem with this.
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