Monday, November 14, 2005

難產的提案、準備得太久太煩的婚禮、沒空寫的博班申請

"最近過得如何?" 這個問題真的很難回答。在一片論文提案的焦頭爛額中,還有言談分析課無止盡的reading和聽到要翻掉的七○年代的對話錄音、語料庫那讓人每用必當機的軟体帶來的挫折感裡…我即將要完成人生中的大事之一---結婚。
我其實沒有那麼在意花束的顏色的,蛋糕嘛,不要食物中毒就好了。喜宴的話,大概我自己當天也會忙到沒辦法好好享用,所以好不好吃大概也就算了。我也不太想要管婚紗穿起來如何--直到我媽覺得我租的那件禮服有點難看,我開始覺得好像很多東西都不對勁了。也才發現我真的沒有好好在做論文。
有一天晚上我做了一個經典的夢,也許正是我這一陣子的心境:
我夢見我穿著那件我開始覺得難看的白紗,在我的房間裡面光著腳。不知從哪裡來的數百隻鴨子塞爆了我的房間。他們又吵又到處亂踏、亂排泄。我拉起裙角試圖保衛我的衣服不被弄髒,但沒有地方可以移動我的腳步,又覺得自己踩在糞便上,又噁心又驚慌失措。

第二個夢跟第一個很像。只是鴨子換成牛群,變得更臭更擠…

是怎麼樣,"王老先生有塊地",農場上的動物都來了嗎?

已經有好幾次被主任牧師還有教會不認識的姐妹禱告服事。每一次都是嘩啦嘩啦的哭。第一次主任牧師走下來為我按手時我還真嚇到了,因為早上出門前才跟上帝無助地說今天要經歷到祂的愛。之後又有幾次類似的經歷,上帝透過人對我說話。每一次都是像坐雲霄飛車--先是經歷到情緒上的低潮,然後被聖靈鼓勵、大哭,開始變得有盼望。同樣的情況可能只是幾小時的光景反複發生。

我不知道為何重要的大事都要在這三個月裡發生、甚至做出決定。也許這是我的選擇,但是真的太辛苦了。我心裡知道上帝透過牧師告訴我祂要帶領我做出決定,但是我還是很害怕,也很擔憂。

Monday, September 12, 2005

Prefrontal Cortex-where is it and why does it matter?

Prefrontal cortex is the subdivision of frontal lobes. Basically as the name tells us, they are on the front area of fronal cortex, which is around the above of our eyes. The frontal lobes include the important mortor cortex (which affects our somatic senses), and the famus "broca's area" which is thought by some linguists as "main language area".Compared to other mammals like cats, dogs, or even monkeys, we human beings have the most extended area (the biggest) of prefrontal cortex.

The part that's right above our eyes, (dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex, DLPFC) is thought to be important for "working memory," -things that can be held for a very short period of time. (dude, i feel this term takes another paper to explain the definition).

The developing and existence of this part of brain function can be seen on experiments done on infants, young children, and monkeys (whoes DLPFC are knocked out).
For example, the A-not-B experiment:
There are two wells in front of a subject (a monkey with DLPFC being removed or a cute baby). The subject watches a reward being put into one of them (say A). Then the wells are covered, a curtain might fall to block the vision and causes delay. Finally the subjects can reach to the well where they think the treat is.

Both the monkey and human baby would reach to A. Then they get the reward.
However, the next time, they would watch a reward being put in well B. This time, given the location they have already seen, they would still turn to the successful pattern of reaching to well A.

Another test they do on younger kids is to ask them to shout out "day!" when they see a card of moon and star, and "night" when they see a card of a sun. Children who were bellow 3 did a poor jobs than older kids. Even though they showed understanding of the rules.

In order to acoomplish the tasks, there must be some information being held active at hand (e.g. remembering the location of the treat, or remembering the rule of the test). But there's also another piece of information coming in/being held that are competing with the other (e.g. seeing the card change, remembering the successful, conditioned location of the treat). An adult or normal person w/o brain damage to DLPFC can inhibit one and reach to the other. DLPFC seems to be in important position in this "inhibitory" function of working memory.

It's actually a good news for us being human. That means we are not just reponsive to any stimulus, or old patterns. We can integrate the new information with the old data, and then make the best solution. Otherwise we would never have new ways of dealing things, like some brain damage patients, who kept pressing the same button or stick onto one way of sorting cards, despite the inspector told them the rule had changed.

Regarding the latency of 3 year old children in the "day-night" test (given that they know the rule correctly)--It's more of the cognitive difficulty. What about learning a language? Normal adults are assumed to have normal cognition. But sometimes I found that, although I know the grammar (maybe not perfectly, but pretty well), the setence just won't come out right. There might be some coordination problem, since motor cortex, especialy for the tongue, and mouth is close to this area. But what's the relationship of working memory, DLPFC, and language acquisition? We can’t be all brain-damaged for learning a language (or are we?)

重新振作2

上次覺得要重新振作,好好整頓乾涸的blog已經是半年前的事了。雖然我很有預感這次大概會流於跟上次一樣的結局…呵。

Saturday, May 21, 2005

Evolution of Language

"人類語言到底是怎麼開始的??"
這問題橫跨了生物、人類、考古、社會、心理、語言、民族學等等學科的範疇。這也是我在這裡的研究所處理的問題之一。身為基督徒,我相信上帝創造人類的獨特性。人不是猴子變來的,但是光是去思考為何我們能生為人H. Sapiens,就算從一個接受進化論基礎的角度來看,也是夠複雜的了。如果現在的人類是進化來的,那從什麼時候開始,人除了肢体表情動作以外,開始使用語言? 又是怎麼樣的因素使黑猩猩們到現在還是黑猩猩(註:人和黑猩猩有98%基因相似)? 像Kanzi之類在實驗室長大的黑猩猩(Bonobo),如果真的承認他們有使用抽象符號思考溝通的能力,這對人類語言(也是種抽象符號)又有什麼啟示?

times when students couldn't understand...

Part A
This lessen was about using present and past participles such as “boring” and “bored” as adjectives to describe feeling and things. Before the teaching, both Christine and my mentor teacher, Martha had anticipated that students would have problem with the “-ing” form taking a human subject (e.g. “The guy is interesting”).
I started the lessen by showing students pictures of different activities, and then asked them to describe the activity and the feelings of people in the pictures. With this part, I only wanted them to use those –ed/-ing type of adjectives, so I posted 7 pairs of –ed/-ing adjectives (which I had already written on index cards) on the board, and told them to pick an appropriate one from the list.
Students started giving me sentence such as “The roller coaster ride is exciting”, “The woman is interested in the cosmetics”, etc. Then I asked them, “what rules can you see from these sentences?” and I built up the grammar rules from their answers. It’s clear for them to see that activities take “-ing” form, and humans take “-ed” form. But then while I was building the grammar rule on the board, I realized, “oh, crap, students don’t have this grammar knowledge at all, therefore they won’t be able to give me a sentence like ‘the kids are annoying’. How can I introduce the “-ing” form for human subjects?”
So I went back to the pictures, and introduced the sentence with human subjects in “-ing” form. The next 15 minutes I let them play a game deciding which form they should use. More questions came up, and I saw question marks floating on their heads. They got confused with the present progressive and passive voice, which also have the form of present/past participles. Time went by quickly, and I couldn’t even finish the game that I prepared.

Part B
After doing troubleshooting with Christine, I prepared the whole lessen again the next week. We figured out the confusions they had with this grammar point. I came back with beautifully typed up power point. I thought through the steps to bring them back to the grammar points, and to re-clarify the difference between the adjective and verb forms. During the exercise, some students stuck at deciding the sentence “His supervisor is an amazing/amazed boss”. I explained the question by asking them, “are we talking about his supervisor’s feeling or our opinion?” But some of them just hadn’t got the point. In the end Martha jumped in to help me explain the whole concept again. I didn’t even remember how it ended that way…I really appreciate her tho. She always let me try my best, and when I couldn’t handle it, she would come to my rescue. Because we spent too much time dealing with students’ questions, I had to modify my lessen, so that we could move on to next activity that Martha already scheduled.
After my teaching, Martha gave me feedback and told me that she thought my grammar points were extremely clear to her. “They just need more practice to get it,” she told me. I guess I was kinda disappointed after the teaching. When Martha asked me if I wanted to give them more exercise on the same lessen, I told her I wanted to try something else (anything but grammar…=p). Don’t worry, I am totally over it now. After Friday’s class sharing with people my unsuccessful experience and listening to people’s teaching stories, I feel I can start again now. It’s such a great thing to be a student teacher because we are allowed to make mistakes and to not be perfect.


(originally posted on C218 discussion board)

My first teaching experience at Culver City Adult

This Thursday I taught my first lessen at Culver City Adult School. Although it’s not my first time teaching in front of a class, I still got nervous even the night before. Since students usually are not very on time, Martha led a small information gap activity for the first 40 minutes, so that I could start my lessen when everyone’s there.

The exercise was about “past perfect and simple past”, which was adopted from their textbook. The point is to let students get a feeling of figuring out what happened first in two given past events. In order to emphasize my point, I drew a timeline on the board, telling them about a story of an Indian guy coming to America, being separated from his wife in India, to look for jobs. (I found some random picture of an Indian couple online…just to make my story more believable… =p). On the way of telling the story, I stick the strips of different events on his timeline. After that, I started pulling two random events from his time line, and asked them to make sentence using “Before/After/Because…”

I guess my intro story got their attention. They all looked up at me, waiting to see what I was gonna do next, which made me even more nervous. I was glad that I got my verb phrases all written on the flash cards, which saved a lot of time. . I could just pull them out to make combinations (e.g. moved to Houston, quit his job…etc.). My handwriting was so messy, my hand was shaking, and it felt like forever for me to finish writing a sentence. I also thought ahead all the possible combinations that I wanted to give them, since I am not a person who can talk or make up sentences on my feet. However, I still looked very busy on the stage, coz the magnet kept falling from the white board, and I had to adjust them back while I was talking…

I made a mistake showing them the past form of “quit”. I asked them the three forms of “quit”, then one student gave me “quited”. The first thought told me it’s wrong, but I got confused while I was writing “quit, quited, quit”. When I realized, I crossed down the “ed” and told them, “see, this is treaky, remember not to put ed here.”


I didn’t know using overhead as an aid takes skills until Martha reminded me. When I was using them, I totally forgot to look back and see if the slides lined up from students’ perspective. I guess most of the time they were tilting their heads to read my slides. (I hoped their necks were alright the next day). Also, I should have let the slides stay longer before I moved onto next lines. Martha suggested me that I go to the back of the classroom to check my own writing on the board (when students are doing their exercises), so that I could see from their perspective and check my own spelling mistakes on the board.

It seemed that my time pacing was alright. I got full 45 minutes and I finished all the planned activities in time. After I finished the lessen, couple of them came up to me and said, “good job!” One student told me that she could tell I was nervous at the beginning. “But you felt more comfortable in the end,” she said. I didn’t expect to have students encouraging me for my first teaching. But it felt good! Now from my retrospect, I did have a good time in my first lessen.

(Ori. posted on 218 Practicum discussion board)

Saturday, March 05, 2005

每日一推

今天所要推的主題是"笑話"
不知道現在的高中生是否還是在背那本迪克生片語。這幾年下來我發現那本書除了一些phrasal verb 像pick up, take off有點用之外,其他還真是無用的東西。不過就算這樣的片語動詞如果不放在使用情境中看真正的語意是什麼,也是搞不清楚人家在講什麼。像是pick up除了撿起來之外,也可以是去接回某人,或是像pick-up line("吊馬子/帥哥"的開場語)。

有一陣子我會注意別人所用的俚語,有些時候從談話的內容可以大致猜到俚語的意思。不過後來發現,除非是私底下或是家人間的談話,在學校裡用俚語的程度並不是很高。大家對老師講話也是客客氣氣的 (不過這也要看俚語的"俚"有多俚。有的俚語可能滿俗的,而且是區域性用語,用的時候絕對要看場合)。ESL學生有的時候跟同年紀的朋友在一起學會了這些用法,但是沒學到使用的場合,就會發生那種跟教授講話fucking來fucking去的尷尬場面。

最近我發現一塊值得探討,卻很少ESL學生注意的領域--笑話。

A: Knock, knock.
B: Who's there?
A: Radio.
B: Radio who?
A: Ready or not, here I come.

有一次上第二語言習得的時候,老師用這個笑話(其實也不算笑話,比較像是文字遊戲)測試我們
老師:Knock, knock.
高中以後才來美國念書的外國學生:…(呆呆的望著老師)
Native speaker: Who's there?

因為這是小孩子必有的經驗之一,"Who's there"是標準的反應。但是即便語言溝通無礙,不在這裡長大的學生便少了這個經驗與反應。

我到現在都還記得幼稚園時後的押韻歌:
"炒蘿蔔炒蘿蔔切切切,
包餃子包餃子捏捏捏。
壞孩子壞孩子打一打,
好孩子好孩子摸一摸。"

"小姐小姐別生氣,明天帶妳去看戲。看什麼戲,看妳爸爸流鼻涕。涕,剃,剃光頭,頭,投,投大海,海,海,海龍王,王,王,王八蛋。蛋,盪,盪秋千,千,牽孩子。你是我的乖孫子,天天幫我洗襪子。"

忘記是誰提出來的,不過有人說過,孩子在邊玩邊念這些押韻歌的時候,也正在為他們的語言能力和學習做預演。語言溝通能力就是在這種狀況下越磨越光。而且孩子很容易被聲音,押韻吸引覺得有趣,他們也喜歡玩這樣的文字遊戲,學習去操弄文字和聲音。

Saturday, February 26, 2005

跟流浪的人們一起吃午餐

因為昨天晚上的查經我們才剛教了"好撒馬利亞人的故事",正是為了今天的行動作預備。我本來以為只是像以前一樣發放午餐,後來Bo宣布說計畫改變,每個人帶10元到westwood街上找一位流浪者一起去吃午餐。大概是沒有事先知會大家,很多人週六都排了計畫,結果就只有我們五個女生出現一起行動。
Westwood其實還是有homeless的。常常走在街上有時迎面一陣惡臭,一個流浪漢走了過來。今天天氣特別好,路上居然充滿各式被主人拉出來逛街的名犬,可是卻找不到homeless可以跟我們一起吃午餐。我其實有點怕,到底要怎麼樣開口呢? 經過一處停車場後的騎樓,我跟Hellen發現一位女士拉著一條破毯子,坐在角落休息。Hellen馬上迎上去自我介紹,邀請她跟我們一起吃飯。也許是太唐突了,她很客氣的說謝謝不用了。我們才意識到也許在街上討生活的人,特別是女性,大概對於我們這種突然的邀請會有所防衛。我們決定先啦咧一陣再提出邀請。離開了停車場,我們轉往大街。在週六的中午,陽光暖暖的曬在身上,非常的舒服。有一位大叔坐在人行道的椅子上,靠在他的家當上打盹兒。我們決定不打擾他,繼續往前走。有另一位大叔也坐在涼椅上,斜靠在他的背包旁。我們不太確定他是否是homeless,但是以westwood這樣的區來看,環顧週圍不是穿著入時的學生就是一身休閒的雅皮,這位先生是流浪漢的機率還滿大的。我們還先坐在隔壁的涼椅上打量,決定是否要走上前去。後來我們鼓起勇氣上前問候他向他自我介紹,Hellen很大方的表示我們兩個人正要去吃飯,想要邀請他當我們的guest一起吃。沒想到這位先生很爽快的立刻站起身來說"好啊"。於是我們一起到了一間比薩屋。

坐下來之後,我真的不知道該說些什麼。因為這位先生說他是作家(他叫Scott),於是我問他寫些什麼作品。他說他寫詩,他也念過大學,主修生物。工作了一陣子,有過車子,喜歡跑步。但是我們不敢問他到底現在怎麼樣。一邊吃飯,他問我從哪來的。我說我來自台灣。他說"喔,我記得你們的棒球隊很厲害,打敗我們美國的棒球隊拿到冠軍。"我心想,這該不會是紅葉少棒的時代吧。Scott吃得很客氣,我們得一直叫他多吃點。離開的時候,他提到他的腳受傷了,現在只能散步不能慢跑了。Hellen問他我們可不可以為他禱告,求神醫治他的腳。他有點不太習慣的樣子,但還是答應了。於是我們兩個輪流為他禱告。走出餐廰的時候,我們向他道別。Hellen說,"也許我們下次可以再一起吃午餐呢!" 我心裡想著,這真是奇怪的經歷。不知道他的感受如何。

‧‧‧

眼看著我的blog已經要荒蕪,我決定要好好整頓一番。
其實也沒有什麼人真的在看我的blog, 所以就算亂寫些芭藥文記述生活給自己看也不錯…

Wednesday, January 05, 2005

威斯康辛農場記行

地理

威斯康辛是屬於美國中西部,但位置其實比較偏美國國土的東北方,五大湖中的密西根湖便和此州接鄰。我對威斯康辛的認識在還沒有去lisa家之前,儘限於威斯康辛州立大學麥迪遜校區,我知道它是個不錯的學校。但我也不知道是否是因為”麥迪遜”這三個字讓我對這個學校印象比較深刻,而這三個字又來自於”麥迪遜之橋”這部電影,由此可知我對這地所知多有限了。
我們從洛杉磯機場出發,坐了四個小時的飛機到達芝加哥,然後再開車三個小時跨越伊利諾州邊境來到Watertown這個小城。坐慣了國際線,真的很不習慣國內線什麼食物也沒有,只有一片夾心餅乾和一小杯飲料的服務品質。看個八九○年代的老電視影集重播還要人掏錢買耳機。
威斯康辛跟台灣的地形來比,算是夠平夠寛闊了。我一直跟lisa爭辯說地是平的,儘管威州的人叫這做“起伏的丘陵地形”(rolling hills)。一路開下去,我們可以越過好幾個山頭,但是因為起伏很小,所以不太感覺得到。

台灣與威斯康辛

lisa出發前在台灣準備了一本相片集,裡面裝了她在台灣公寓的照片、台北街景(捷運、摩托車)、朋友之類的生活照好向家人說明她在台灣的生活。我發現這是一個很貼心且聰明的舉動。因為對她的家人而言,亞洲、台灣是個很遙遠的想像。在台灣的我們想像美國的生活,也許可以從好萊塢電影、HBO影集裡稍微捕捉到一點,但仍然只是一小部分,甚至是有偏誤的。就像有人會覺得美國人一定都天天吃牛排和麥當勞,或是過著“Sex and the city“裡的生活。Lisa常常在介紹她的照片前都要問一遍,”你知道我去的是台灣,不是泰國,對不對?“
我聽著Lisa一遍又一遍地展示她的照片,解說照片裡的景像,覺得這個世界真是有趣,在這個一兩千人的全白人的小城裡,Lisa跑到台灣,也把台灣的一部分帶回來。我也從她的眼中看到她向家人所介紹的台灣。“食物很不一樣,但是很好吃。”“地很小,所以房子都是公寓,擠在一起。”“台北捷運很方便,買東西也很方便,走出門幾分鐘就買到了,物價也比較便宜。”“如果你被請吃飯,把面前的東西都嚐一嚐,並且吃完主人堆給你的食物,就不會失禮了。”
海嘨發生的時候,Lisa的奶奶聽到廣播有點擔心。不過我們得向她的家人解釋說,台灣離印尼和泰國很遠,所以不會被影響到。Lisa搬出世界地圖,我們才發現台灣跟墨西哥還有古巴哈瓦那的緯度很近,都有北回歸線通過,這樣解釋總算比較讓人容易了解台灣的位置。

食物

因為Lisa的家庭好幾代以前是從德國來的移民,雖經過五六代了,因為早年還住在德國城的關係,還有很多德國的文化被保存下來。Lisa的奶奶常常說她小時候上幼稚園前還不會說英文,只會說德語。不過現在已經完全不太會講德文了。(她的狀況還跟我的台語真像)。有很大的一部分文化似乎保留在飲食傳統上。她的家裡還是吃著德國風味的食物或是具有德國名字的菜肴。有些菜色只有她的家庭會吃,一般美國家庭是不會有的。因為幾年前去過德國,所以在她家吃到紫色包心菜做成的酸酸甜甜的菜時,真的頗有德國風味。當地因為天冷的緣故,冬天便長不出青菜,所以在沒有冰箱的時代,便將包心菜等青菜餣起來,叫做sour kraut,也是德國菜的一種。他們怕我覺得這種菜很奇怪,沒想到我一吃,味道居然讓我想起牛肉面裡的酸菜,感覺還頗親切。Lisa的兩個祖母都非常會做甜點,每餐都有甜點。我最喜歡的是Shaum Torte,在德語中Shaum意思是泡沫,一種是像泡棉般質感的蛋糕,中間有水果夾心,外加一層厚厚的白奶油。
不知道是聖誕節的關係還是因為每家飲食習慣不同的緣故,我在短短假期中攝取的糖分大概是我好幾個星期的分量。每天的早餐通常是甜品,如鬆餅加楓糖漿、或蛋糕。中餐這裡的人不叫lunch,叫dinner,因為農忙的關係,分量比較大。晚餐不叫dinner,叫supper,約在下午四點的時候吃,因為Lisa的父母五點要上工擠牛奶。中間家人聚會的時候免不了吃吃喝喝,吃點應景餅乾,汽水糖果。
聖誕節那天的中午,我跟lisa決定要煮一桌道地的中國菜給她的家人嚐嚐。我們很快決定了菜單,便出發到超市尋找材料。幸運地我們居然找到了豆腐、茄子、白菜、蒜蓉辣椒醬、麻油和白米。於是我們做了麻婆豆腐、魚香茄子、青椒肉椒、炒白菜、番茄炒蛋等五道菜,只花了五十分鐘火速上桌,擺滿了餐桌,讓Lisa的媽媽大為驚異。Lisa也順便介紹中國菜的習慣是一道一道分開擺在桌上吃,並且通常不會將不同種類的綠色蔬菜放在一起炒。(美國化的中國食物只要是stir-fry vegi通常都是什麼青菜蘿蔔都給它丟進去炒,然後加很重的醬油蓋住所有的怪道)。那天中午連lisa的奶奶都一起來吃飯。每個人都吃得很開心,奶奶說,如果那邊的食物都像這樣,那她也可以住在台灣了。Lisa的妹妹有點倔強,硬是不肯試這一桌奇怪的菜色,讓Lisa下不了台。她只盛了碗白飯淋上醬油和炸麵條,就這麼賭氣吃完了一餐。我自己倒是覺得沒什麼大不了,因為這些食物對只習慣某些口味的人來說,真的是很奇怪,又是辣椒又是蔥蒜的。

擠牛奶

Lisa的父母和他們遠從德國移民來的祖先都是務農的人家。我真的很佩服美國的農業,雖然辛苦,但是比起亞州勞力密集還不足糊口的景況來說真是好得多了。幾百公頃的地全部種植玉米、大豆、麥草等給牛吃的作物。因為人力少,大量的機械取代人力。各式大小拖曳機被使用來收割、打禾草。
Lisa家的幾十頭牛都按著字母取了名字。T字部的有一隻叫“台灣”,很不幸地不久前死了,空空欄舍只剩下它的”Taiwan”掛牌,怪冷清的。其他還有“台中”、“台南”。有一隻叫“北京”,還活得不錯。所有的乳牛都是母的,每天要擠兩次奶,分別隔十二小時,一次清晨五點,一次下午五點。中間要餵個三四次。把牛趕進牛舍裡吃草料之前要先把走道清乾淨。我們拿著鈀子來回在走道上把糞便鏟到溝渠裡去,然後再把牛舍的欄裡一一舖上乾草。Lisa的媽媽一開柵門,牛隻們哞哞地衝進來一個一個就自己的欄舍裡站好。有的新來的牛兒搞不清楚狀況,跑錯欄舍,就會被Lisa的媽媽一邊大喊,一邊拍打趕到該進的牛欄裡。牛兒一站定位,就得把鍊條栓在欄上。我一走進,整排的牛突然停止吃草,一齊抬起頭來看我,好像在打量著我這個陌生人到底想幹麻。我本來想幫忙栓牛,沒想到牛兒那警戒的眼神讓我一探頭探腦的走進,他們馬上扯著鍊條走到相反的角落,讓我拉不到鍊條。
擠牛奶是項謙卑的工作。你必須跪著並探頭向牛的下腹部靠近。牛舍的味道好像全世界都差不多。我想起小時候去隔壁姑婆家看水牛時聞到的味道。還有我四歲時印象深刻的踩到牛糞的經驗。我那時學到的教訓是洗鞋子要把鞋脫下來洗才有用,偷偷地把腳連鞋一起浸到水盆裡想去除臭味是行不通的,反而結果更糟。其實我很討厭踩到大便。(不過有誰喜歡踩到大便的?),我的經驗值是平均一年踩到一次,只要那麼一次,一年都平安無事了。所以我今年應該沒事了。在牛舍裡的安置是中間一條走道,兩旁有牛,頭向外、尾向走道站立。只要聽到一側有“嘩!”或是轟然的水柱聲,我便會不自主想跳向反方向。沒想到另一側也是同樣的情景,讓我不知道該逃向哪方,只好在走道中線上小心前進。因此農場上的生活是需要拋棄某些標準的。身上沾滿泥巴乾草大便是平凡不過的事。

擠牛奶教學

我以前不知道牛只有四個取奶的乳頭。我以為擠奶器上會有十幾個吸頭,但事實上只有四個。首先你要先蹲下來用手清除乳頭上的髒東西。然後將乳頭浸入碘酒液中消毒。一分鐘後拿報紙擦撠拭乾淨,用手先試擠幾次,(這是最困難的部分,因為牛會動來動去)然後一一套上真空擠奶器。每當我進牛舍想要蹲下來開始工作的時候,牛隻就會故意用它的身体朝我擠來,好幾次我根本是被釘在欄上,動彈不得。我一直有種怕被牛擠住臉部不能呼吸的恐懼感,只要牛隻一動我就怕得站起來呼救,我越怕,他們越故意向我搗蛋。乳牛真的很龐大,身軀一壓過來我根本沒辦法移動。Lisa只好跑過來幫我拍打牛兒讓我可以乘隙逃出來。

Monday, January 03, 2005

回顧過去展望未來

標題聽起來好像很宏觀…其實是因為整整一個學期沒有寫任何東西放到blog上,現在正好藉機做一個總結。
現在回想起來,我根本不記得我在這裡的第一學期是怎麼開始的,但是卻是有驚無險的結束了。整個學期我只記得是無止盡的忙碌,交完一個報告,另一個又來了。還好到了學期中的時候,我的助教生涯比較算上了軌道,但是其他課業上的壓力還是讓我喘不過氣來。功課並不算是很難,但是總是時間不夠,常懷著沒有好好念書的罪惡感。有一門語法學是大學部開的,我跟其他兩個系上的研究生為了補學分跑去修,結果我們三個人快到期末才猛然驚覺可能有拿C被當的危機。像這樣的課其實是需要小組討論彼此幫助學習的。我們也有彼此幫助,一起討論作業,但是不知為何卻是一起向下沈淪,三個人考試成績差距居然都在一分之間,成績一樣爛(不知道是試題的偏誤還是我們系上選人水平還真整齊)。儘管期末卯起來一搏還是有生死未卜之感。也許是常態分配所致,學期成績居然奇蹟出現,拿了一個B。也許是因為上學期一邊正在修Testing的關係,讓我為試題的設計特別敏感。但是從我跟教授討論試題的經驗看來,沒事還是不要跟老師提到出題的事情,因為一提起來,他們就會變得特別防衛,也許試題真的有偏頗的地方,但是出題者會拼命辯護試題的完美性,結果是一點溝通的餘地也沒有。不過我的經驗也有可能是因為老師是法國人的關系吧…(法國人好像都滿傲的)

下個學期的課讓我期待了好一陣子。主要是因為我要修兩門我很有興趣的課,該課老師很可能會做我的指導教授,終於在下學期第一次能上他的課。另一門課是人類語言學的課,老師的成名作是研究黑人小孩(男孩與女孩間)的言談…很不幸課已經滿了,老師很硬的說教室太小不能再收了。(但我還是想聽課,坐不下坐地上總可以了吧?) 沒有教中文的壓力,也不像第一學期修了個大學部預修的課,我想我心情應該會比較輕鬆。(只是少了個經濟來源有點可惜)

好久沒有寫長篇文章碎碎念了…感覺真好。