an entry somewhere else

It’s been one helluva week. With that said, it’s what the Finns call ‘Little Weekend.’ That’s just sugar coating Wednesday. It also provides them with a reason to go out and have a drink. I’ll just use the term cultural relativism and say, ‘Who am I to judge?’

I gave a midterm today without telling the students they were having it. I would have put it off another day, but when I asked who would be coming tomorrow, it was a near-unanimous ‘no.’ Nearly everyone will be heading to their village or hometowns, if possible. It may be a thin class tomorrow. The midterm itself was nothing new for them. I did mix up the questions into two forms of the test. ‘Sharing’ is difficult to police here as most students help or are helped by others. The community learning mentality also leans into academic writing with frequent plagiarism. It’s also a question of understanding plagiarism as I’m unsure if there is any explicit discussion about citing sources. Luckily, I don’t have to deal with that and I’m lucky to have a sentence that is communicative.

The university will close on Friday for two weeks. I’ll head to Bali on Sunday for a needed vacation. Upon returning, I’ll have some time off before a short week of classes due to travel to Medan in North Sumatra for a colloquium on best practices of modern language teaching in Indonesia. This is including all State Islamic universities (UIN). I’ve only been to one before and it was interesting to see how the various UINs around the country tackle language learning education. My UIN is at the forefront of the wave of compulsory English and Arabic education. Now, there just has to be standards introduced to ensure that the students graduate with a certain level of Arabic or English (depending upon their major). That seems to be a crux of many programs here as they deal with the lowest tuition rates and students clamoring for more services. Aye, there’s the rub. (Hamlet, Shakespeare).