Reading Log: Fill & Download for Free

The term “bug,” referring to an error or a glitch, goes back a very long time.Thomas Edison used the term as far back as 1878, and it was probably in common use before then:'Bugs' -- as such little faults and difficulties are called -- show themselves and months of intense watching, study and labor are requisite before commercial success or failure is certainly reached.Perhaps the most famous early application of the word “bug” to a computer issue was Rear Admiral Grace Hopper’s famous log book entry, which reads “First actual case of bug being found.” It also included the actual moth that was found stuck in a relay, taped in there for good measure:(Image source: Wikipedia.)

Yes, it absolutely is as real as anything else in this universe - do not let the incompetence of amateurs lead you astray. That is on the one hand.On the other hand, just like anything else in this universe, this or that feature of any language, not necessarily Russian, can be contrived, bent, exaggerated, mocked, travestied, artificially blown out of proportion, derided or made cruel fun of. By doing so, however, there is nothing to be gained academically or otherwise.If you do not know how to fly a Boeing-777, it does not mean that flying Boeing-777 is somehow not right or bad. If you do not know how to whip out a Paganini caprice on a violin, it does not mean that peppering out a Paganini caprice on a violin is somehow not right or bad. If you do not know how to compute certain integrals, it does not mean that computing certain integrals is somehow not right or bad.All of the above means one thing only: you do not know how to correctly fly a Boeing-777, you do not know how to correctly render a Paganini caprice on a violin or you do not know how to compute a certain integral. But, with effort and proper guidance, you can learn.So if you really want to know the quiet truth about the cursive writing in Russian then there is no mystery behind it - only the pedagogical objective.Between September 1-st 1976 and May 25-th 1986, Monday through Saturday, six days a week, like millions of other kids of the time, rain, lots of snow or sunshine, I attended the specialized school number 15 in Moscow, USSR, located at 17, 1-st Kozhoohovskiy Proezd, metro station Avtozavodskaya:My school has the red balloon right over it in the image above.While the red-brick 5-story building, erected in 1956, still stands, the school has been renumbered to 1272 in 1987 or thereabouts, after I graduated.Our school’s curriculum was designed in such a way that a number of soft subjects such as Biology, Geography and Literature were partially taught in English, which we studied starting from the first grade onward.The school number 15 was considered to be privileged in the sense that all of its faculty were top notch, highly recommended, professionals hand-picked by our talented, smart and shrewd school principal Meleshenkovskaya Evdokiya Semenovna:You had to pass a light-weight examination to be admitted - late in August of 1976 I was verbally interrogated by Ms. Meleshenkovskaya in her cabinet on basic arithmetic, academic aptitude and language skills, with my mother anxiously waiting behind the door. As you can tell, I stood my ground and passed my first verbal exam at 7 years of age - my grandma was an economics professor at one of the institutes in Moscow; she was a part-time inventor and problem-solver and she mentored me from the early age.In addition to standard exams on all the other subjects taught, we had the mid-terms and finals on the subject of the English Language with an absolute zero tolerance for failures. If you flunked just one English Language exam then you were dismissed from the school, regardless of the social standing of your parents. Read more about this system in this Quora answer. The attrition rate of my school was: 13 kids in 10 years.As such, all the written exams were done by us strictly in cursive - Literature (compositions and essays), Russian Language (dictations), English Language (compositions, essays, dictations), Biology, Geography, History, Mathematics, Physics and Astronomy.All the teachers across all the subjects wrote text only in cursive with chalk on the blackboard at all times.If and when you were called to the chalkboard, the standard practice of the time, to carry out some written exercise in front of the entire class, regardless of the subject, you were expected to show your rendition of the matter in cursive also.Some documental evidence.Back in the day we had these rather thin books called Dnevnik or Дневник in Russian. A reasonable approximation of the Russian dnevnik in English may be a singular masculine for a daily log book.The purpose of such a dnevnik was twofold:to keep track of the academic schedule, projects and homework assignments andto communicate your academic progress back to your parent(s) via the grades and special messagesI still have two dnevniks that survived the move - one from the second and one from the third grade.The front of my second-grade dnevnik was filled out by my mother in cursive:In English the above image reads, more or less literally: the daily log book of the student of the class 2B of the school number 15 of the city of Moscow by the name of Andronov Roman, the academic year of 1977-1978.The spelling of my last and first names is subject to the concept absent from English - declension.The inside of the dnevnik, however, is filled out mostly by me in cursive also. For example, a typical entry for Saturday, March 11-th 1978 reads:On the second line from the top, for the subject of Матем. or Mathematics, you can see my grade, which is 5, which is a US equivalent of A. The word in the rightmost column there reads ответ or answer in English - apparently I was called to the blackboard to perform.On the second line from the bottom, for the subject of Рисов. or Drawing, you can see my grade, which is 5, which is a US equivalent of A.On the bottom line for Saturday, in the middle, you can see in cursive my grade for the elusive idea of Поведение or Behavior - in Russian it is abbreviated to удовл., which in English means satisfactory or a US equivalent of C (yes, I was hell on wheels and bad news during the recesses but I kept my grades up).Note how my teacher could have written just 3 for my grade for Behavior but, instead, she chose to show my grade in cursive.The front of my third-grade dnevnik was filled out by me in cursive:By now you should readily recognize what the above image says: I was transferred to the class 3B (one year senior), same school, same city, same name. The academic year reads 1978–1979. But I thoroughly messed up the declension of my name.Here is a typical entry from that dnevnik from Tuesday, May 22-nd 1979:You can see that for that day, on the first line, for the subject of Англ. Яз. or English Language I earned a 5 for the Gr. test or the grammar test. The signature of my English language teacher is next to the grade.Again, notice that we were filling out our daily log books in cursive, our teachers communicated with our parents by writing messages in these log books in cursive, our parents replied in cursive and so on.Fast forward to my, say, third year in college. Here is a snippet of my curriculum that shows:the subject name in the first columnthe number of lecture hours in the middle columnpass/fail result, if applicable, in the third columngrade, if applicable, in the last or rightmost columnall done in cursive:At the top of the above image, on the lines numbered 4 through 8, you can see the leftovers of my second year, which reads in English (зачёт = pass, отл is the abbreviation for отлично = excellent or an A in US):Series and Fourier Transforms, 30 hours, pass, AForeign Language, 30 hours, passPolitical Economics, 45 hours, passDifferential and Integral Equations, 60 hours, - , AMechanics and the Theory of Relativity, 60 hours, - , AThe next line reads 3-rd year 5-th semester:Computer Programming and Numerical Methods, 32 hours, AQuantum Mechanics, 80 hours, passSpecial Seminar, 32 hours, passForeign Language, 32 hours, passPhilosophy, 48 hours, passPhysics, 96 hours, - , AThe Equations of Mathematical Physics, 80 hours, - , AThe Theory of Functions of Complex Variables, 64, hours, - , AThe Field Theory, 80 hours, - , ANot only that but I showed the hours of the 45-minute lectures here for a reason - during all these lectures I was taking the real-time notes in cursive!I can still read the above cursive handwriting with no effort and I am sure that others can too.Now, I do not know which country you are from and I do not know how, why and where you are learning Russian, but back in the day the question of whether the Russian cursive is real or not did not even make any sense because writing in cursive was the norm.So why do it and why teach the kids how to do it?Back in the day it was thought that in connecting the hand-bone to the brain-bone there is a tangible positive benefit for the overall development of a child - the development of the micro-motorics, the patience and stamina, the sense of balance and aesthetics, the sense of beauty, paying attention, checking for, noticing and correcting errors, processing, memorizing, internalizing and comprehending the material and so on.We were taught how to write in cursive with the good old quill and/or fountain pens:with ink:Our notebooks had the light gray silhouette of the letters preprinted and we, first, traced over them and then we wrote the letters without any guidance or help:You had to learn how to not pick up too much ink with the quill pen or how to not move the piston of a fountain pen too deep inside the containing cylinder.And if you messed up and made an ink blot then we had this special paper called promokashka, which is a singular feminine for blotting paper.If I were asked to jot something down in Russian these days then I would mechanically do it in cursive with zero effort - such is the power of the habit.The bottom line here is this: choose the right tool for the right job and do know how to use each tool properly.

Holy Cow. Really?My kid goes to an after school program and I pay a bit extra for a tutor to help with the daily work. I check the work as soon as we get home and we go over any issues. Then she practices music.I save the important projects and the writing assignments for us to work on together. Each classroom has a blog that posts homework due dates so nothing gets lost in the backpack express. The teacher specifies what she expects to see from each assignment - she gives checklists. Usually we have advance notice and can work weekends on bigger projects. We keep a reading log and make sure that the current book is always packed in the backpack along with a healthy lunch and a water bottle. In a pinch, we’ve gotten up early to make last minute adjustments.