Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Studying for comps has taken over my life for the past couple weeks, and it's all going to be over tomorrow (thank God). I've studied everything from Chaucer to modern British poetry, and about ten thousand terms and names and whatever else for the ID section. I think my favorite moment so far has been when Jessica and I were studying Victorian poetry and got to Tennyson's "In Memoriam." Here's what we concluded about Tennyson himself (as quoted from a Facebook wall post):
Tennyson was 6'4" tall and had red hair, and he stooped because he was ashamed of how tall he was. His father was emotionally fragile, and didn't get the inheritance he should have because his younger brother got it instead, which violated the laws of primogeniture. When Tennyson went to Cambridge, he stayed in his room a lot and only ate when he was starved. He lived on that random island and then became Lord. In 1842, he received a £200 pension from the government for literary distinction. He was apparently a "rock star" (so says Reishman). Emily says that "he was like the Robert Pattinson of the Victorian age." Also, he "really liked Hallam" (quoted from Jessica's notes).
My reasoning for why he wrote "In Memoriam" (which is a ridiculously long elegy for his late friend Arthur Henry Hallam)?
"The second half of his bromance had just passed away, what did you expect to happen?"
Yeah. And then Jessica began singing Lady Gaga's "Bad (B)romance" in the Reishman Room in Gailor. It was kind of great.
Anyway, tomorrow I'm taking the comp, and then I'm going to celebrate, and it's going to be freaking awesome.
The picture is from a pizza box I was drawing on at dinner tonight... I can't seem to get away from Tennyson.
Also, I had my first comp nightmare the other night. I fell asleep reading Marlowe's "Hero and Leander," which is really wonderful, by the way, and dreamed that I was swimming across the Atlantic Ocean and Neptune was trying to drown me, and Dr. Macfie and her Renaissance Lit class were all standing in a boat watching, and Dr. Macfie was saying, "See, everyone, this is exactly what happened to Leander. See how Neptune is trying to get revenge on Becca for scorning his advances?" Yeah... it was a bit strange.
Soooo it's been a while. I've had Christmas break - a month at home is a long time. Here is the Sparknotes edition:
Arrived at home - yay good food - Grandparent's Anniversary Party (Mom going INSANE) - Baking frenzy - Drew's new boyfriend Adam yaaaaaay! - fight with idiot ex - SCARIEST MOVIE EVER (Paranormal Activity - I had to sleep with the lights on for days) - sitting at home - Lifetime movies - babysitting - awkward Facebook messages from another ex that I'm still not sure how to interpret - packing up - back to Sewanee!
And so there was my break. And now I'm back at Sewanee, and we had our first day of class today. My schedule is incredible - somehow I've managed to only have Tuesday/Thursday classes and therefore a FOUR-DAY WEEKEND. Yes. It's awesome.
It's nice to be back on the mountain - I'm in a much better place than I was when I left. I'm writing again, which is fabulous and wonderful and amazing - a new project tentatively titled Mothwing. And I'm reading a ton of good things for classes and for fun. I'm generally a lot happier right now, though that could go downhill quickly since I'm comping this semester - ugh. (For those of you who don't go to Sewanee or another school who does this, comping = comprehensive exams = everything you've ever learned for your major and some stuff you haven't. It sucks.)
I still haven't a clue what I'm going to do after graduation, but I figure that'll come to me at some point. I'm thinking about teaching at a private school. Maybe. Or I might be flipping burgers at McDonald's for the rest of my life. Or living in a box under the bridge, as was my original plan.
This one is kind of ramble-y. I don't have a lot to say, because I haven't done much since being back, and there wasn't much of break worth commentary unless you count all that drama, and I really don't want to rant about that on the internet. So yeah. Good times.
Also, I found this funny little picture of Shakespeare and it made me really happy.
Well, it's been a while since I've updated. Nothing truly exciting has happened in a while, though. I've mostly just been doing class things, like presentations and paper-writing. That's this weekend's activity. I've also been doing Cadence and hanging out with people. That's pretty much my life since spring break.
I'm lucky, though - I have another mini-break coming up. I get to go home on Wednesday for a long Easter weekend (primarily because I'm skipping classes on Friday, but they'll be the first two classes I've missed this whole semester, and both my professors are okay with it, so it's not a big deal). I'm really excited... I get to rest for a little while. It seems like all I've done since I've been back from break is work on presentations and the resulting papers. Of course, a lot of that has had to do with things out of my control - I should've been done with one set of work already and be just finishing up another, but because of certain events I had to do it all at once. But it doesn't really matter, I'm almost done. Then maybe I can sit down and work on the Baby Reaper story.
I'm not quite half-done with it, which Kevin says is a good thing - I have close to eighty pages at the moment, and finished, it probably needs to be between 250 and 300 pages or so. I feel like I'm going to have to rework most of the second half of the plot, though... I skimmed over those index cards the other day, and I'm not sure they really work anymore. But we'll see. I have a general end in sight, which makes me a little more comfortable with the story. I just need to get to the end, haha. My goal is to have the bulk of the text completed by the end of the summer so that next semester can be devoted to revisions and maybe beginning a new one. I have some fun ideas I've been messing around with when I have a couple minutes of free time.
Anyway, I have to go write a paper on Chaucer's The Merchant's Tale, and how Pluto and Proserpine = January and May = Joseph and Mary, and how the mythical and Biblical influences affect the story.
That's what my fortune cookie said today at lunch. I'm thinking it's talking about Shake Day, which is tomorrow. We definitely have strange customs for Shake Day. Rush was this past week - formal house and return house visits. Six hours of doing our skit was... interesting. I really want to write a better skit than the one we have.
Other than Rush, the first couple weeks of classes were interesting. I'm only taking twelve hours this semester - on my first day of classes I discovered that the fairy tales class I'd been so excited about was being taught in German this semester. Sitting through an hour-long class taught in a language one doesn't understand is a really interesting experience. I highly recommend it.
So now I'm taking Shakespeare, Chaucer, and my independent study. I should be working on my story right now... but I'm supposed to go into town with Laura at two, so I don't know. Maybe.
I'm in kind of a blah mood today, can you tell?
I have two due Monday and Tuesday - one on Browning's "My Last Duchess" and one on Borderline Personality Disorder. I'm going to finish the Browning paper today before lunch - I'm set on doing that. The Borderline paper could probably wait until tomorrow. With that and the stories, I feel like I'm drowning in paper.
Had a meeting with Kevin this past week to talk about "Gnomes." He liked it, but he pointed out some things I'd done that I shouldn't have or that I should've done but didn't. It's going to be a pretty long story when I'm done revising it - maybe thirty or thirty-five pages, double-spaced. I'm also supposed to be working on the Baby Reaper story, to finish it. Or at least get close. He says he expects about fifty pages of writing by the end of the semester (on both stories combined). Well, I've already got that, so now it's just a matter of finishing and polishing. I'll have more time to do that after these papers, and maybe I can even squeeze out some time during Thanksgiving Break.
I am so looking forward to Thanksgiving... It feels like forever since I've been home, and I miss everybody so much. My grandfather's 70th birthday is next week, but I'm going to miss the party since I don't get to go home till the Tuesday after that. Sad :(
I went and saw Threepenny Opera last night. It was a pretty good show - the set was amazing, the costumes were cool. Acting and singing was good. I was a little disappointed at the ending - it was a little too Gilbert and Sullivan for the type of show it was attached to. Also, Sam, who played Crookfinger Jake, was creepy. The cast interacted with the audience a lot, and at one point he came and stood right in front of me, stole my program, and stared at me for like five minutes. The best part was, he never broke character, never smiled. He started laughing a bit when he had to sing, but I was impressed, and amused.
Well, I'm done with breakfast, so now I must start writing.
I received my gown last Tuesday and became a member of the Order of the Gownsmen! So exciting. The ceremony was very long, and Jeremie kept laughing at stuff like the "bum-bum-bums" the choir did... which I must admit, was really funny, just in the very unexpectedness of it all.
Other than that I don't have much to report. I am REALLY busy - had a psychology exam, need to write two papers and read a book... and I need to write. I'm dying to, but I don't have the time. I mean, I do, a little, and I write when I can, but I need a full day of hiding out in the library, sneaking candy bars in for nourishment, writing full out for hours and hours. I feel all tense and stuff because I haven't done that in forever. It's like a muscle twinge that won't go away, or the clichéd itch that you just can't scratch.
Maybe I can squeeze in some time over fall break to chill out and just write. That'd be nice. I'm just always so busy when I go home... I feel like I haven't had a real break since August.
So I just got off the phone with Rob (he's 21 today!! yaaaay!!) and he reminded me that I haven't posted anything in a while. Therefore, I dedicate this particular blog post entry thingy to him. Woo!
My baby reaper story is going pretty well. I've named him Mortimer, thanks to Nelson, though I think I'm going to call him Timmy. (Morty just sounds like an old Jewish guy to me.) I've got about nine pages, double spaced, so far, and I hope to get maybe twice that by the end of today. I have to turn it in on Friday, so I need more pages, lol. I've decided my other story with the weird family stuff isn't ready for that yet. Or I'm not ready for that yet, anyway.
I just spilled a little tomato soup on my trackpad. Crap.
Anyway, I don't have much more to write about today. Richardson cut our reading down to only 50 pages for Thursday, which makes me super-happy - I'm already at 40, and I thought I was gonna have to read the whole rest of the book. (Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce - a good book, so far.)
I probably had better go do homework.
