Hah! Done at last! Nothing remains but to print out the papers at the computer lab tomorrow morning & hand them over to their respective professors.
I'm going to bed, but really, it's too fantastic of a moment not to celebrate!
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
daydreaming of the weekend
As I continue to wrestle with the Jane Austen paper (three more paragraphs, I think, and then a good editing pass in the lab between classes tonight), I am relieving tension by daydreaming in spare moments about what I'm going to do with this, my first 100% paper-free weekend since the September trip to London.
There are, of course, some obvious necessities; I need to catch up on all the reading I should be doing right now, as well as accomplish the reading for the following week. I should, perhaps, do some laundry, as my kiss and a promise loads every Friday are not really making a substantial dent in the pile -- and as my husband & I are leaving for Orycon in Portland on Friday week, it would behoove me to have created a lot of clean clothing before then.
But that's all the necesities, and daydreaming about those is rather counter-productive. The real question is: what shall I do to enjoy myself? I am considering a wide variety of options; for instance, I could bake cookies (peanut butter, perhaps, or buttermilk, or chocolate chip, or something unexpected out of the nifty reprint of a 1960s Betty Crocker cookbook my mother-in-law bought me a few years back). Or take a trip to dim sum with friends on Saturday morning -- certainly luxurious, but perhaps not as satisfying to my lingering creative itch. Or I could finally get down to business with my baby blanket and weave in the ends so that it can be put through a washing machine and blocked if necessary and photographed for Ravelry and then finally handed off to the baby of choice before he graduates to toddling.
Or all three! The glory of daydreaming is that it doesn't have to take into account the limitations of time and energy, the need to run to the grocery for buttermilk, the fact of my husband being out very late Friday night (with the possible resultant difficulties in arranging dim sum the next morning), nor the time committment we already have on Sunday evening.
I am very fond of daydreaming, but alas, duty calls -- I must drive to campus and attend classes and finish up this paper in the spaces between.
There are, of course, some obvious necessities; I need to catch up on all the reading I should be doing right now, as well as accomplish the reading for the following week. I should, perhaps, do some laundry, as my kiss and a promise loads every Friday are not really making a substantial dent in the pile -- and as my husband & I are leaving for Orycon in Portland on Friday week, it would behoove me to have created a lot of clean clothing before then.
But that's all the necesities, and daydreaming about those is rather counter-productive. The real question is: what shall I do to enjoy myself? I am considering a wide variety of options; for instance, I could bake cookies (peanut butter, perhaps, or buttermilk, or chocolate chip, or something unexpected out of the nifty reprint of a 1960s Betty Crocker cookbook my mother-in-law bought me a few years back). Or take a trip to dim sum with friends on Saturday morning -- certainly luxurious, but perhaps not as satisfying to my lingering creative itch. Or I could finally get down to business with my baby blanket and weave in the ends so that it can be put through a washing machine and blocked if necessary and photographed for Ravelry and then finally handed off to the baby of choice before he graduates to toddling.
Or all three! The glory of daydreaming is that it doesn't have to take into account the limitations of time and energy, the need to run to the grocery for buttermilk, the fact of my husband being out very late Friday night (with the possible resultant difficulties in arranging dim sum the next morning), nor the time committment we already have on Sunday evening.
I am very fond of daydreaming, but alas, duty calls -- I must drive to campus and attend classes and finish up this paper in the spaces between.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
the other half of the paper-writing picture
When describing in my last post how papers fill up the vast majority of my time, I concentrated on my writing process to the exclusion of the vital other half of the formula: reading the assigned texts in the first place! Which I do, always; I'm not the sort of person who could write a paper about something from online summaries or a quick skim of the opening and closing chapters. (Whether or not I read the texts I don't have to write upon is a different story entirely, of course, depending greatly on whether or not they seem interesting. Usually they do, since I'm picky about my classes.)
So what have I read recently? Mansfield Park for my Austen class, which class is to my joy going in chronological order. It's one of the two Austen novels I hadn't read any of before (the other being Emma, which I'm slogging through now), and I was absolutely delighted with it. Fanny and Edmund, Mary and Henry, the terrible Maria and even worse Mrs. Norris... I should really like to see a crisp, clear movie of it, without all the political implications spelled out for modern audiences. Just people in old-fashioned clothes speaking meaningfully to one another, letting the beautiful weight of the story propel itself forward. I wonder if the 1983 BBC version is at all satisfying? It looks like my local library has a DVD re-release of it...
For my women in 20th century literature class I just read Virginia Woolf's Orlando, which was also a delight and a treasure -- so much so that I'm planning to write my long paper on it, although I'm a little afraid that I'll end up sick of the book in the process. But how can one end up sick of "a melon, a pineapple, an olive tree, an emerald, and a fox in the snow all in the space of three seconds"? I think the real danger is that I'll dive into the beauty of the language and never remember to come up for air. As it turns out, the professor for my Austen class is teaching Woolf next semester, and I'm going to take it, unless his reaction to this midterm I'm even now working on demonstrates him to have unbearable grading twitches.
My counselling class, bless its practical little heart, has no required reading, so next we turn to Shakespeare, in which I have recently read "Measure for Measure" and am about (tomorrow) to read "Othello." While I'm sure the latter has some merits I have not discovered through reading ample criticism of it, I doubt it can compare to the utter strangeness of the former, in which after many manipulations on the part of various characters everyone's punished for their flaws by... being forced into marriage. I see why those who like to categorise things call it a problem play; I found it pretty fascinating.
Finally we come to Literature and Psychology, in which the last few texts have been movies, so there hasn't been any reading for me to do. (We shall leave aside, for the moment, whether or not I actually watched said movies.) The lack of books is about to change, however, with a Henry James short story and a Ralph Ellision essay both on the table for this Thursday. Unfortunately, what with the two papers due Thursday morning, I'm not going to have a chance to start on these until Thursday afternoon. I anticipate some hours of quick reading over Chinese food (mmm, eggplant and brown rice) in the student union.
Other books on the horizon (aside from the aforementioned Austen) include The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter, Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga, plays by Terence McNally and Caryl Churchill, a piece by Gertrude Stein that I may just pretend isn't on the agenda, and Shakespeare's "The Tempest". Not to mention two ten page papers, two five page papers, and the final counselling project -- all of which will be wrapped up by 19 December or so, and then I can settle into lovely holiday baking, knitting, cooking, cleaning, reading (if my brain permits) and game-playing while building up my stamina for the next set of classes. I'm very seriously thinking of taking a class on Wordsworth and Keats during the winter session; an entire 3-hour class in 12 4-hour days is awfully frightening, but I've heard good things about the professor, and it would mean that I only have to take 12 hours during my final semester, which seems a blessing.
Austen paper is progressing nicely! Time for bed, so I can get in a few more hours before I go to campus tomorrow for my counselling extravaganza.
So what have I read recently? Mansfield Park for my Austen class, which class is to my joy going in chronological order. It's one of the two Austen novels I hadn't read any of before (the other being Emma, which I'm slogging through now), and I was absolutely delighted with it. Fanny and Edmund, Mary and Henry, the terrible Maria and even worse Mrs. Norris... I should really like to see a crisp, clear movie of it, without all the political implications spelled out for modern audiences. Just people in old-fashioned clothes speaking meaningfully to one another, letting the beautiful weight of the story propel itself forward. I wonder if the 1983 BBC version is at all satisfying? It looks like my local library has a DVD re-release of it...
For my women in 20th century literature class I just read Virginia Woolf's Orlando, which was also a delight and a treasure -- so much so that I'm planning to write my long paper on it, although I'm a little afraid that I'll end up sick of the book in the process. But how can one end up sick of "a melon, a pineapple, an olive tree, an emerald, and a fox in the snow all in the space of three seconds"? I think the real danger is that I'll dive into the beauty of the language and never remember to come up for air. As it turns out, the professor for my Austen class is teaching Woolf next semester, and I'm going to take it, unless his reaction to this midterm I'm even now working on demonstrates him to have unbearable grading twitches.
My counselling class, bless its practical little heart, has no required reading, so next we turn to Shakespeare, in which I have recently read "Measure for Measure" and am about (tomorrow) to read "Othello." While I'm sure the latter has some merits I have not discovered through reading ample criticism of it, I doubt it can compare to the utter strangeness of the former, in which after many manipulations on the part of various characters everyone's punished for their flaws by... being forced into marriage. I see why those who like to categorise things call it a problem play; I found it pretty fascinating.
Finally we come to Literature and Psychology, in which the last few texts have been movies, so there hasn't been any reading for me to do. (We shall leave aside, for the moment, whether or not I actually watched said movies.) The lack of books is about to change, however, with a Henry James short story and a Ralph Ellision essay both on the table for this Thursday. Unfortunately, what with the two papers due Thursday morning, I'm not going to have a chance to start on these until Thursday afternoon. I anticipate some hours of quick reading over Chinese food (mmm, eggplant and brown rice) in the student union.
Other books on the horizon (aside from the aforementioned Austen) include The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter, Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga, plays by Terence McNally and Caryl Churchill, a piece by Gertrude Stein that I may just pretend isn't on the agenda, and Shakespeare's "The Tempest". Not to mention two ten page papers, two five page papers, and the final counselling project -- all of which will be wrapped up by 19 December or so, and then I can settle into lovely holiday baking, knitting, cooking, cleaning, reading (if my brain permits) and game-playing while building up my stamina for the next set of classes. I'm very seriously thinking of taking a class on Wordsworth and Keats during the winter session; an entire 3-hour class in 12 4-hour days is awfully frightening, but I've heard good things about the professor, and it would mean that I only have to take 12 hours during my final semester, which seems a blessing.
Austen paper is progressing nicely! Time for bed, so I can get in a few more hours before I go to campus tomorrow for my counselling extravaganza.
last two papers of the month!
As the subject line suggests, I'm working on my last two papers for this month -- well, the last two due this month, but still, that's something! I'm not counting my final counselling project (even though it's due 11/28), because it doesn't have to have a thesis.
Why, then, am I posting here? Because, gentle reader, my earlier theory (from the days of the Lamentable Midterm) has proven to be true; when I am attempting to compose my thoughts to write about my personal life, suddenly the logic necessary to compare Jane Austen novels comes easily to my fingertips and I find myself writing paragraphs of academic prose without a hitch, while here I struggle for half an hour to find the proper description for how I'm writing over there. I'd rather have a writing muse that didn't require these bait-and-switch techniques to get going on the necessary work, but for the moment I am going to take what I can get.
While not bewailing the difficulty of enticing my muse to apply herself, things here have been quite pleasant. I had a lovely birthday, a few weeks back, with chocolate mousse and other wonderful things to eat, and just this past weekend I went for tapas with some friends and consumed (amongst many other things still delicious but not quite as memorable):
Aside from that brief excursion into the realm of gastronomy, life has really been 95% composed of papers -- the writing of them, the waiting to receive grades, and the constant low-level anxiety of knowing that more papers are imminent. I do manage moments -- even entire days -- of non-paper related activities, usually after having just turned one in, but they're constrained by my post-writing exhaustion and the haunting knowledge that I really ought to get to work on the next one.
Does this make me sound miserable? Am I miserable? I don't think so, really. When the writing is going well (as it still is in the other window, knock on wood) I enjoy it immensely. I love learning, real learning, the sudden realisation that I know something that I didn't know before, the chance to take my own ideas and check them against the texts and then put them through the slow process of detailed development and revision until I have an argument that stands up to examination. What I'm finding so painful is the need to do it constantly; I am such a slow writer, and I need so much time to accrete my ideas, and with so many deadlines in rapid succession I'm not always happy with the work I'm turning in. But deadlines must be met, so the papers are turned in even if I know that I could have done more, and only time will tell how they've been received.
Wonderful smells are coming from the other end of the apartment, so I will break here to go have dinner, and doubtless return afterwards to confuse my muse once again so that I can finish the Austen paper tonight.
Why, then, am I posting here? Because, gentle reader, my earlier theory (from the days of the Lamentable Midterm) has proven to be true; when I am attempting to compose my thoughts to write about my personal life, suddenly the logic necessary to compare Jane Austen novels comes easily to my fingertips and I find myself writing paragraphs of academic prose without a hitch, while here I struggle for half an hour to find the proper description for how I'm writing over there. I'd rather have a writing muse that didn't require these bait-and-switch techniques to get going on the necessary work, but for the moment I am going to take what I can get.
While not bewailing the difficulty of enticing my muse to apply herself, things here have been quite pleasant. I had a lovely birthday, a few weeks back, with chocolate mousse and other wonderful things to eat, and just this past weekend I went for tapas with some friends and consumed (amongst many other things still delicious but not quite as memorable):
- vast quantities of devilled dates, which are dates stuffed with mild chorizo, then wrapped in bacon -- sweet and savory all in one bite
- vinegared smelt filets, clean in flavour and pleasantly chewy
- little pieces of octopus, covered in paprika and eaten on top of slices of boiled potato
- tiny meat balls in a sweet, slightly thick sauce of saffron and onions and perhaps sherry
- meltingly soft scallop sashimi in a squid ink vinegarette
- tiny half-bites of crab mixed with something velvety and then breaded and fried; I had been going to call them crab cakes, but that conjures up entirely the wrong impression, although I do love traditional crab cakes as well.
Aside from that brief excursion into the realm of gastronomy, life has really been 95% composed of papers -- the writing of them, the waiting to receive grades, and the constant low-level anxiety of knowing that more papers are imminent. I do manage moments -- even entire days -- of non-paper related activities, usually after having just turned one in, but they're constrained by my post-writing exhaustion and the haunting knowledge that I really ought to get to work on the next one.
Does this make me sound miserable? Am I miserable? I don't think so, really. When the writing is going well (as it still is in the other window, knock on wood) I enjoy it immensely. I love learning, real learning, the sudden realisation that I know something that I didn't know before, the chance to take my own ideas and check them against the texts and then put them through the slow process of detailed development and revision until I have an argument that stands up to examination. What I'm finding so painful is the need to do it constantly; I am such a slow writer, and I need so much time to accrete my ideas, and with so many deadlines in rapid succession I'm not always happy with the work I'm turning in. But deadlines must be met, so the papers are turned in even if I know that I could have done more, and only time will tell how they've been received.
Wonderful smells are coming from the other end of the apartment, so I will break here to go have dinner, and doubtless return afterwards to confuse my muse once again so that I can finish the Austen paper tonight.
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