Posts tagged writing
Don’t you know.
This has quite possibly been the best week of the entire year.
Things have happened that I didn’t think would ever happen. Which is funny because it started off so bad, I jokingly thought that it could only get better from there, and it did.
Things I didn’t know in first year:
-How to tell the difference between the lecture material and when my profs went off on a personal harangue.
-Supplementary readings mean “do not waste your time with this because it won’t be on the midterm or the final.”
-Recommended readings mean “do this or you will fail the midterm or the final.”
-It is possible to get drunk in the middle of the day in the middle of the week and no one will judge you for it. No one on campus, anyway.
-Ridiculous charges on ATMs are society’s way of telling you to make your financial arrangements in advance.
-Contrary to popular belief, pizza and coffee is a perfectly acceptable diet.
-It is acceptable to live off of this, only if you negate it by visiting the gym once a week.
-We have a rock-climbing wall on campus.
-Profs save the important bits for Fridays and days before long weekends.
-A planner will save your life.
-Workshops: dorky but useful.
-If you happen to see a person in more than one of your classes, it would be efficient and beneficial to you to become friends with that person. Chances are, if you’re taking the same classes, you probably have something in common, and hey, if you’re socially awkward, that’s only one awkward moment for three classes worth of friends.
-Essays are like ninjas. They just creep up on you and fuck you up out of nowhere.
-Unfortunately, not all hard work pays off. Alternately, sometimes a half-assed effort yields great results.
-That being said, don’t pick your courses, pick your profs.
-And finally, you can argue about the Wu-Tang Clan with your prof for fifteen minutes and it will still be academically acceptable.
A stray thought…
What is with human beings and our obsession with nomenclature? Why do we need categories for everything, why are we so afraid when something doesn’t fit a category? Why must we name everything? Does it help us to understand something more? What’s in a name, anyway? And what’s in a category? And why do we think we can confine fluid concepts with rigid barriers? And how rigid are those barriers anyway? I mean, they’re only as rigid as we make them to be, since they’re all social constructions anyway. Like time. I mean, time exists. Sort of, in the sense that the earth rotates every day, and then orbits around the sun, and the ever-changing position of the earth in relation to the sun is called “time” and that’s how it exists sort of. Other than that, it’s mostly just the earth being at different positions in relation to the sun. And we call these different positions “time” because that makes “sense” and it helps us function in society by delegating rules and constraints (i.e. you get up at this time, you go to work at that time, etc. etc.) and then we make apparatuses for it (sundials, clocks, watches, etc.) and then that solidifies the concept of time, because we are a species that demands physical evidence to legitimize a notion into a fact. So we have all these clocks telling us what time it is, and we have all these calendars telling us what day it is and what year it is when it’s really just some numbers that we assigned a value to in order to feel like we have some sort of order. Because it is one of our most primal instincts to look for patterns and similarities in order to form groups and concepts. It’s how we banded together as a species, how we assigned gender, how we determined good from bad, and the familiar from the strange. It’s how we decided that there was an “us” and there was a “them.” I’ve been told countless times by many profs that “race is a social construction used by one group of people to oppress another.” Scratch out the last bit, and put something a bit more benevolent in there. Maybe that holds true for many things; may it be social classes, borders, tribes, gender, age. Ask yourself, is this real because it is tangible, based on empirical evidence, and is devoid of any possible interpretation I should impose on it, or is it a social construction, and it can disappear with the blink of an eye, should I choose to deny its legitimacy?
Still alive.
I’m here, but barely.
The Arts Faculty at my school figured out that the English Department was being too liberal (pun intended?) with their curriculum, so it got a big kick in the ass, and now my essays have to be 33% longer, my participation needs to be mandatory, and my book lists grew by about five or six books. I have been at school and work every day for the past week for roughly 12 hours at a time. I received a bit of grace this morning (sleeping in an extra hour because I didn’t have to tutor), but other than that, it’s been school from 8 to 4, then work from 5 to 9 or 10.
The good news is that I’ve been totally productive this past week, finishing and mailing out my scholarship essay, completing all my readings, and working more than I should (i.e. getting paid more than I should.)
Friday was supposed to be “my” day, where I could sleep in and go to class for two hours, and then come back home and hopefully still be able to go back to bed, but because I didn’t tutor today, I have to on Friday morning, and part of me is feeling guilty about not going to the gym since the semester started, so there goes my afternoon. And then I’d have to do all my readings for next week, etc. etc.
I feel like I’m whining.
To be honest, I haven’t felt this good in a long time, if ever. I think I’ve found a good balance among school, work, and everything else. The only downside is that theoretically, my schedule is pretty tight, but even so, I’ve still been able to hang out with my friends. Hell, I might even be able to slide down to UW to meet Mel for lunch next week. I don’t know how this is going to work out when midterms/finals come around, though. I’ve already applied for a position as an exam proctor this semester, and I’m not even quite sure if I’ll be available to proctor (I was thinking about the money, ok?)
I should sleep :\
A somewhat great start to the year.
Apart from having another book thrust upon me (Henry James’ Daisy Miller), and having three English classes consecutively within a three and a half hour span, today was probably the start of a great (but busy) semester.
Also, I discovered that as a third year student, my essays are now required to be at least 800 words longer.
After I was done, I booked it to downtown Kitchener for a blood drive, and I just got home. Just thinking about that reading list makes me cringe. And I still have to do my scholarship essay :S
Oh! And my birthday is coming up on Saturday, so that’s something I have to factor in as well. At least I’m not working at all this week, so I have some time to get a head start on my readings, and I get to do my ESL tutoring on a regular basis starting on Wednesday.
One thing I never want to stop doing is helping people. I really don’t think anything makes me happier. I hope when I get a full-time job, I can still give something back to others. Oh, and I’d like to start writing again, too. That’s probably too much to do this semester, though. Another volunteer asked me if I wrote since I’m an English major, and I sort of mumbled that I don’t anymore because I don’t have time or energy to write creatively, which made me feel really bad, because I love writing.
I think tonight’s the night to finish reading Huck Finn and to have a very long, deep sleep. Because after tonight, there won’t be any sleep, not ever.
Long day.
I met my English conversation partner today. It took two buses and one hour (and fifteen minutes of getting lost in downtown Kitchener) to find her, but she’s pretty awesome, so I’ll continue doing the program until she feels comfortable enough speaking English. Also: hassling an aesthetician for $50 she owed me, ending up paying another $50 to her instead of getting a refund, and finally getting the money back in cash. Slightly sketchy, but at least I got my money back. Oh, and then I worked until 11 p.m.
School starts on Monday, and I can’t wait. For some reason, I always find myself at Laurier, one way or another, no matter where I go. I always end up taking a bus back to Laurier, instead of some alternate route to get home.
Apart from all that, I also met this guy, which made my day:
I have a thing for encountering cats, I guess. Crazy cat lady blood runs in my veins.
So I might be an ESL tutor.
The idea is tempting, but I don’t know if I can balance it all. I would love to teach someone how to speak English, the capacity to speak two different languages fluently will never cease to amaze me. However, I only speak one language fluently, which makes me wonder if I’ll even qualify to become a tutor. It takes something like six months to match up with someone as well, so it may not even happen. I have to call tomorrow to formally apply. Still, the way my schedule works out for the fall alone makes me cringe (might have to work MWF mornings). However, if I could teach it next summer, that would be awesome, since I don’t see myself doing anything else.
Anyway, today’s my “lazy day;” I was supposed to go to the gym, but I ended up staying in and reading instead. I think I’ll do my laundry, so at least I’ll have done something productive.
(Also: school in two weeks! Eek!)
Has anyone ever really seen The Godfather Pt. 3 in its entirety?
Obviously, a majority of people have sat through all of part one, memorized all the lines, named their kids Michael and Fredo, based their business instincts off of it. Part two wasn’t as good, but it was still good, what with Robert De Niro as Vito Corleone, etc. It’s still quotable:
“I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart.”
Then Part 3 came along. Ehhh. I don’t even think I finished that one. I remember watching the beginning and thinking, “Ok, Michael Corleone is getting old, he’s probably as wise as his father, it’s probably going to be him in the same position as his father in the first film.” Then I stopped watching it because the only place you can find the Godfather Pt. 3 is when there’s a “mafia movie marathon” over a long weekend and they decide to end it off with the Godfather trilogy. And even then, it’s toned down and chopped up. And then he dies. I knew it had to come to an end, but dying like that is inevitable.
Tony Montana dying in Scarface wasn’t really expected, so putting in his death as part of the movie was probably a good idea. Waiting until the third film, when Michael Corleone is old and probably going to die anyway, probably wasn’t. We could have all ended off this trilogy happily thinking Michael Corleone wasn’t going to go down like this.
But no. Nobody wants to see a downer like that, so nobody bothered. Also, it was the 90s and I think people were more interested in seeing Goodfellas, or whatever other mafia movies popped up because of The Godfather (part 1), that weren’t directly linked to The Godfather Part one.
Can’t sleep.
It’s only 1 a.m., but I was feeling really sleepy since about 6 p.m., and now that I’m home and ready for bed, I can’t sleep.
For the past few days, I’ve been compulsively checking my grades to see if my final exam grade is added in, which is stupid because exams aren’t even over, and I’m sure my prof has a million other things to grade and more exams to look over.
Anyway, with the fall term being less than a month away, here are my courses:
-American Literature to 1900
-British Novels in the 19th c.
-Literature and Social Change
-Postmodernism
-Religion and Pop Culture.
I’m also signed up for Religion and Sexuality in the winter, at Matt’s behest. I thought that it would be a nice complementary course to Religion and Pop Culture, and I’m actually ahead of where I need to be in terms of my major, so I have to start looking for electives. Plus, I miss having a class with him.
Also, I’m almost done reading Divisadero, which will be the topic of my next post on my book blog. Part of me can’t wait to write up on it, but part of me also wishes it won’t have to come to an end. Hopefully I can keep updating the blog when school starts back (although the only novels I can see myself blogging about are the ones I have to read for class. Really, though, three novels on average per course, with four English courses. That’s twelve novels in three months!).
Anyways, I’m hoping to write up on Divisadero maybe tomorrow, then The Kite Runner, and hopefully I can re-read Sula and write up on that before school starts.
Ok, I’m falling asleep now. Smells like wildflowers in here.
Nobody cares, dude.
Seeing as how my brain will explode from studying the effects of WW2, here are some things you may or may not know about me:
- I have over 9 hours of classical music on my laptop, although it’s technically not all “classical”: it’s a combination of romantic, baroque, and opera/ballet suites. Over two hours of this is composed of Bach (Johann, not Carl.)
- I once owed the library over $100 in fines because I’m horrible with deadlines.
- Which prompted me to start buying my books instead, and in the past four years, I’ve accumulated over 100 books into my own library.
- The only jewelry I wear consistently is a gold ring from my uncle and a few silly bandz from Matt.
- I have an affinity for low-budget/black and white/silent films.
- Also, I have never seen a Disney princess movie.
- I constantly have stupid dreams where my hair is falling out, or my teeth are crumbling.
- It’s 2:19 a.m.
Ok, I’m done.
