Posts

Who the Heck Needs to Learn the British Accent?

Hanging out with the masses of different foreign students here in the LSE and in London, there is often a very clear trend when communicating in English. While people of every other nationality makes a concerted effort (or at least, do not mind) to pick up the standard British accent, the Americans not only makes a concerted effort to reject British English in every single way, they actually, at times, accentuate/highlight the peculiarities of American English so as to make their audience be perfectly clear that they are hearing from an American. As the Americans get together in the local pub, and start lashing out about how "weird" is the English they hear from English people in a place called England, one has to think about just exactly what makes the Americans so confident and bold (to put it positively) or so arrogant and reckless (to put it negatively) to actually criticize a language at its very historical origin. It is as if the Americans are somehow perfectly conv

Connections? Connections! Connections...

We all concede that drunk people tend not to watch what they say when they are drunk (and surely they will not remember what was said a day later), but sometimes certain drunken comments can simply destroy a good "drunkenly euphoric" moment in, literally, an instant of time. The speaker tries to bolster his own credentials by sprinkling some, what he himself conceives to be, strips of pure gold on a night of gradually built up good impression over hours of genuinely friendly conversations, only to destroy that image by, well, trying a little bit too hard. Few comments can galvanize a group of young professionals and grad students to resort to pure hatred and the most vulgar profanities being used in their minds as talks of the "future." Whoever that touches the topics of what we are going to do after graduation and/or few years of entry-level work better keep the conversation focused on the general, non-personal, humble variety...or the result is a walk straight

"Going Out" for Students: Mentally Compulsory?

Just another of the grind here in the LSE Library, on the gigantic working table with six strangers coincidentally sitting quietly, each intently focused on his or her little section of the table in front of them. Each buries his or her face in the massive pile of academic books, journals, and/or a notebook computer opened to some online journal article. Each person invariably takes out a notebook, frantically jotting down lines after lines of neat notes as they flip through pages or scroll through screens... But they all do zone off, very inconspicuously. Their eyes are still on the books, journals, computer screens, but their minds are obviously somewhere else. Their eyes no longer keep moves along with the endless mesh-mash of words and sentences. Its like staring out of the window or the wall back in the classrooms of high school, only we here at the library table, perhaps because of the six others (plus however many at the adjacent tables) watching over the each of us constan

The Ambiguous "Work"-"Life" Balance of Grad Students

People often say grad school is the scion of "flexibility," an almost sacred place where people can genuinely pursue academic interests of their fancy, at their own pace, in a sea of endless resources. It is sheer independence, on one hand reflected in the I-don't-give-a-damn-what-you-do-as-long-as-you-pay-your-fees attitude held by the school administration , and on the other hand illustrated by just how much leeway the students are given to "pursue their own studies" as long as assignments are turned in at the proper deadlines. ...Or perhaps, not even. While crazy weekend all-night dance parties seems to become more and more far-fetched for the "mature" (i.e. older and less energetic) grad students, in their place came literally any excuse to have an alcoholic gathering under any occasion . Every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday became Friday and Saturday nights, and stepping into the local pub at any moment in time no longer brings any s