Uses of my own handwriting fonts

FYI

The Verbal to Visual Classroom

I am taking another course. I have ben taking courses, webinars and stuff forever. Hell, I even literally went back to school last summer. But I have never really talked about it, except for last summer. I'm changing that. I will be talking about the classes I'm taking. Why not? I talk about the classes I'm giving, no?

Anyhoo.

I am currently registered to the Verbal to Visual Classroom, an online course by Doug Neill, of verbaltovisual.com. The course started last week with the Introduction modules and Doug should put up this week's modules any moment now. I am enjoying it.

I do not expect to learn a lot from the course about visual note taking and sketchnoting per se. I have been doing this for a while now. I do think what I will learn are tricks and structures to make my sketchnotes more legible, clearer, have better layout. I don't need help planning sketchnotes, but I do need pointers as to how to take better live sketchnotes. Those are hard for me. I am horrible with layout on the fly. I need tricks I can depend on to achieve better layout on the fly.

The other thing I hope to get from this course are techniques and workflows to make doing these visual notes more quickly, especially in the university context. I have started using visual notes as class notes for my students since last year. I have used them as discussion starters in seminars, as slides in presentations and such. However, my default mode is words. It makes writing visual notes a more difficult process than it should be. My visual class notes are good, but they could be better and they take so much time!

In the end I have two objectives for this course, depending if I'm taking live notes or class notes. And the problems are distinct, even if they stem from the same fact. I'm a words woman.

Evidently! This is a blog for goodness sake! I do words well! Easily! This is not a vlog, nor a Tumblr. I do words or I do images. It's the in between, the both together that's hard for me. I've tried to start visual journaling several times in the past, to no avail. Really, those were bad.

I'm taking this course in hope that something will click in this weird brain of mine and find a way to fuse both image and text. In the end, that is really the hard part for me. It doesn't really matter that my lines are crooked or that my writing swerves all over the place. It's that my drawing brain and my writing brain seem to be on different planes. I need to merge them. Somehow.

On and forward.

L'embarras du choix est embarrassant

Drôle de développements depuis quelques jours. J'ai rencontré deux représentants de maisons d'édition académiques, qui m'ont "pitché" chacun un livre. 

Le gars de OUP m'a demandé de penser à un manuel d'histoire du Canada atlantique et le gars de UTP a dit que leur agent d'acquisition voulait me parler au congrès de la Société historique du Canada à propos d'un volume dans une nouvelle collection thématique. J'ai des idées pour les deux. Je ne sais pas si elles sont bonnes. Je crois que mes idées sur le premier ne serait pas "vendeur" même si ce serait bienvenu d'un point de vue strictement idéologique. J'en ai parlé à un collègue qui y réfléchit et me reviendra là-dessus. Je crois que le second marcherait très bien. Vraiment très bien.

Le hic? Si j'accepte l'un ou l'autre projet, mon nouveau projet sur la SFQ et l'histoire de l'avenir du Québec devra encore être repoussé. Ce qui ne me plairait pas du tout. J'ai tellement hâte de commencer se projet!

Je ne pourrais pas prendre tous ces projets de front. Je n'en suis pas capable avec la fibro, le Chaton et le reste. Un livre à la fois.

Kingston Transit only like visible disabilities

On their website, Kingston Transit states:

Kingston Transit is committed to providing accessible service for customers with disabilities, including customers using mobility aid and assistive devices - wheelchairs, scooters, canes, walkers or crutches, and seniors. We want to make your travel experience easy and convenient and through the provision of accessible equipment and policies we are making our service safer for passengers to use our service.

"Kingston Transit strives to provide safe, accessible transit service for all passengers" they say. They are lying. They are not committed to be accessible for all customers with disabilities. Only for those with visible disabilities, i.e. those with mobility aids. If you don't have a mobility aid, you are foul ball. They don't care. The signs inside the busses state that Courtesy seating is reserved for those with mobility aids. Even if the policy officially states "1. passengers with mobility limitations. 2. passengers with disabilities and seniors." if your disability does't show, forget it, they will not help you.

In fact, the bus drivers will act aggressively against you. I cannot count the times I have been asked to leave a Courtesy seat, even when I was the only one in the bus. "Why don't you have a cane or somethin'?" I can count on one hand the number of times a driver leaned the bus to let me in, even when I had luggage. Forget about them leaning the bus on campus; it never happens. There is this one driver who will sneer every time I endeavour to climb into the bus making faces in pain. He loves it to see me try to climb in the bus. He's even raised the bus a few times right after an elderly person climbed in as I was climbing in.

I hate Kingston Transit. And they hate me.

Mon cours sur la SFQ, après une semaine (reprise)

Dimanche dernier, j’ai écrit une longue et bonne (même drôle) entrée de blogue sur mon cours actuel au département de français, mais elle a disparue. Ma session s’est fermée avant que je la publie. J’étais quelque peu déçue, mettons.

Voici donc, en gros, mes réfections.

• Mes étudiants** sont beaucoup, beaucoup moins francophones ce que mon avait indiqué. Certains refusent même de parler dans le cours, et ne s’adressent à moi qu’en anglais dans mon bureau. Après le premier cours d’introduction, j’ai rajusté le tir et dorénavant je parle leeeeenteeeeemeennnnt. Je croyais aussi pouvoir ne pas utiliser de diapos, mais je crois que je n’aurai pas le choix: sinon il me faudrait écrire les noms au tableau,
• Les étudiants** sont intéressés, je pense, mais ils ne sont pas très démonstratifs. Leur apathie en classe est probablement la conséquence de leur moins bonne connaissance du Français. Il y a deux ou trois étudiantes dont l’intérêt m’est certain, à voir leurs expressions faciales, mais il y en a d’autres qui passent le cours avec une face de biche prise dans la lumière de phares.
• J’aurais dû inclure une séance sur la définition des différents genres que l’on étudie. J’ai présenté les concepts du cours et ses limites pendant la deuxième séance, mais je n’ai pas pris la peine de définir les différents genres. Plutôt que de dire ce qu’est la science fiction, j’ai choisi d’expliquer ce que j’incluais dans l’expression « littérature de l’imaginaire » afin de faire comprendre aux étudiants** que la différence entre la littérature et les genres est fallacieuse, tendancieuse, en plus d’être classiste, sexiste et souvent raciste. J’avais pris pour acquis que des étudiants en littérature auraient au moins une bonne idée ce qu’est que la science-fiction et de la fantasy (au moins en raison des films et de la télé), et sauraient ce qu’est le fantastique et le gothique étant donné que toute étude de la littérature de 19e siècle doit nécessairement comprendre ces genres. Mon erreur. Je verrai dans les prochaines semaines.

** Mes étudiants sont des étudiantes. J’ai 26 jeunes filles en fleurs et deux garçons. Je crois que cela est aussi un facteur dans leur ignorance des genres, parce qu’un nombre effarant de filles disent ne pas aimer la SF et les autres, même quand elles en ont lu des tonnes. Ouf!

Listes des nouvelles et des auteurs sur lesquels mes étudiants travailleront

J'en suis particulièrement fière. Les lectures hebdomadaires sont différentes, mais ce sera pour une autre entrée qui, espérons, ne disparaîtra pas.

En remplacement de l'entrée sur mon cours de SFQ qui est disparue

Quelques images du cours.

Et vous?

So ready to move on

I wish I could be content with my job, because it's a great gig on face value. I am employed by a world-renown university, in a reputable department. I am paid extremely well. Really. It's indecent. But I feel intense discontent.

I have been unhappy since the beginning. For the last 13 years, I have had to deal with colleagues successfully dictating what I should be teaching, then telling students not to take my courses, implying to my face that I am not good enough for the department, then writing to the department to try to prevent my rightful promotion. Why? Because I am French-speaking, because I work on Francophones, because I am a historical anthropologist and not a social historian, because I don't have a penis. Only in the last three years have I finally been able to dictate my teaching load and in fact teach in my domains of specialty (including in the French department in French), though I have just discovered that one colleagues has resumed his telling students to stay away from me. I don't have inconvertible proof unfortunately, which is why I have not slapped him with a union grief, but still, ugh!

I have written about all this before, but the sentiment remains. I am so completely ready to move on. Either to a new department within my university (but the options are minuscule) or without. There is a slight possibility on the horizon that might materialize around 2017, but that is still pretty far away and contingent on that university's budget and government support.

Most importantly, my husband does not want to leave his job, he is extremely happy where he is. If the new position does come about for me, he would have to leave his current employment, because we would be leaving Ontario. This is causing him significant anxiety. My wish to leave my job causes him anxiety, so I do not mention it much. I am not willing to leave him either, so I have not been as gung ho in my search for another position as a result.

Then I listen to my son talking and all I want is to move back to Québec to make sure he doesn't turn into a Canadian nationalist willing to fully Anglicize. But all he has as models are the kids in his French Public school who are already embracing assimilation and two parents who work in English. Hell, this entry is in English! There are limits to what can be done here. He has expressed the opinion that if we were to leave Ontario, he would consider moving to Québec City, because his grand parents live there. And my bother-in-law who builds houses, because building stuff is cool. However, my still-very-hypothetical job prospect would be in Montreal, so much negotiation and comforting would be needed to make him accept the move.

This all means that two out of three members of my household don't want to move. So I am stuck in my nearly joyless job. My courses are at least satisfying. Quite so. I am teaching my specialties and I know what I'm doing. I am a good teacher. I am very good researcher, but I have had to put much of that on the back burner since my son's arrival. I am on sabbatical in 2015-16, so I'll be finishing all the manuscripts finally. I'm ready to move on to a new project too, so this does not help with everything else stated above. I can find some satisfaction in the everyday performance of my teaching duties. Unfortunately, this is not enough.

Will I be applying to the position in Montréal if it materializes. You can bet on it. I want this badly. But it will bring great difficulties in my personal life that will have to be sorted and will not be easy to solve. My son will adjust no matter what. My husband's happiness will take a lot more work.

In short, blargh.