I grew up playing basketball. I played until Zoe was born, and then several things happened that made me stop. For one, I usually played after work, but that has become prime family time. For another, I blew out my knee. I finally got my knee fixed, though that didn’t do anything to remove the scheduling difficulty. So once I started exercising again, I mostly just ran.
I talked about some aspects of writing a job market writing sample here. In that post, I emphasized the ways in which a writing sample is different from a paper aimed at publication. Today, I want to talk about one of the points of correspondence between them.
Today’s discussion was led by Brian Hedden, an MIT grad student. His handout is available here, and it covers chapter 5 of the book. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s the season for students entering the job market to put the final touches on their writing sample. Hopefully by now, most of the arguments are in place. In fact, for people who write a dissertation that is a single, sustained piece of argument, rather than Read the rest of this entry »
Marie Guillot (who’s visiting MIT this year) led our discussion today. Here is the handout she made. In many ways, chapter 3 is a crucial chapter in the book, because it’s supposed to establish the following conditional. Read the rest of this entry »
Zoe likes to hear stories. We tell them whenever we need to pass the time, or just whenever we’re doing something that doesn’t engage the attention completely. For a long time, most of the stories have featured two main characters, Turtle and Frog. There are also some minor characters that Read the rest of this entry »
We had our first meeting of our reading group on Insensitive Semantics. Ephraim led our discussion of chapters 1 and 2, and he made the handout available.
Most of our time was spent on chapter 1, in which C&L set out how they see the lay of the land. The basic question that their book is a contribution to Read the rest of this entry »
I just picked up four CD’s by Jody Fisher. The guy is quite amazing–I especially like his solo guitar work. The discs are $5 a pop, and I’ve been listening to them pretty much all the time since I got them.
Zoe and I were looking at pictures last night. There’s one of us in a pool visiting our friends Amie and Pete in Miami. She remembers the pool, but she can’t quite remember where it was, so she asks me about it. I tell her “that was in Miami.” Her response: “maybe we can go again to your ami.”