Thoughts while writing essays.
4 weeks till deadline: So, I have four weeks to write 3,000 words. Four weeks! Remember that time I wrote 30 pages on John Donne on a Sunday? I got a 95 on that. I'll be totally fine. Just gotta email the professor with some ideas and I'll go from there.
3.5 weeks till deadline: Damn, my ideas are too broad. Ok I guess I'll just go with his suggestion or whatever. The origins of religious language... Sure. I can do that.
3 weeks: 3 weeks to write 3,000 words? Cake!
2 weeks: Ok, well I guess I should do some research. The Book of Job, what was that about again? It's funny how it's the same pronunciation as Gob in Arrested Development. That one episode where he--oh yeah, my time would be better spent rewatching it.
1.5 weeks: Oh shit, oh shit I don't know what I'm doing. What does any of this mean? I don't understand the words I'm writing!
1 week: Do I have time to change topics completely? I hate this. I hate ALL of this.
5 days: Is this graduate level writing? I feel like it could have been written with Crayons.
2 days: Don't panic. They couldn't really fail you, right? I mean nobody fails an essay... Fuuuu....
Deadline: Let's forget I ever turned anything in and don't ever bring up this topic to me again.
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Sunday, November 24, 2013
quand je rentre chez moi et je repense à mon essai...
Oh man, guys. I'm in week 9 of term one. And... I can't wait for this thing to be over. 270 more days...
Thursday, November 21, 2013
je l'aime, je ne l'aime plus, et je me deteste du coup.
If being a graduate student means experiencing a spiral of hating then loving then hating then redoing everything you're working on, followed by haunting dreams of inadequacy and self-doubt, then I guess you could say I'm pretty good at being a graduate student. Yeah.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
je viens... d'où?
So, here we are in week six of my master's program, already wondering how soon I'll be able to discern the light at the end of the tunnel. The thing is, while I enjoy one of my modules immensely, the other one can suck it as far as I'm concerned. This makes it decidedly difficult to get motivated for spending several hours in the library reading political pamphlets and various discourses that just don't interest me. Plus, there's the fact of being alone pretty much... All the time.
And with all the hours I've spent either in the library or my bedroom staring wide-eyed at my kindle, I'm not sure how much of my objective I'm actually going to end up accomplishing. That ultimately being, to live in the UK. I think that walking through the same park on my way to one of two buildings that I frequent shouldn't really count as "living" in a place, nor does occasionally going to the co-op to stock up on my favorite gummy treats. When does the socializing part come in? In a program like this with a weep-inducing reading list, it's not really conducive to making friends or living socially and to be honest I'm finding it quite a lonely process. Besides the people I chat with on a weekly basis on the seminars or various lectures, you are forced to work alone the majority of the time.
And as far as "living" here goes (if we can call it that), on the rare occasion that I'm chatting with someone new, I'm finding the question "where are you from" more and more tricky to answer. Where am I from?
When I was in France, I could say that I was from the U.S., but had been living in Toulouse for X number of years. So, it was implicit that I had spent my life in the U.S. but my life was now in France. Telling people here I'm from Arizona doesn't feel like the whole truth; it inevitably leads to questions like "how do you like being so far away from home?" or "do you miss the US?" or "where did you do your undergraduate degree?" -- the answers to those questions don't necessary concern themselves with my life in AZ. Is this something that happens to everyone as they grow up? When does your hometown stop being your hometown?
Let's finish on a high note and look at a nice picture of a rainbow I took the other day. I've never known a place where you had to have both sunglasses and a umbrella... At the same time...
And with all the hours I've spent either in the library or my bedroom staring wide-eyed at my kindle, I'm not sure how much of my objective I'm actually going to end up accomplishing. That ultimately being, to live in the UK. I think that walking through the same park on my way to one of two buildings that I frequent shouldn't really count as "living" in a place, nor does occasionally going to the co-op to stock up on my favorite gummy treats. When does the socializing part come in? In a program like this with a weep-inducing reading list, it's not really conducive to making friends or living socially and to be honest I'm finding it quite a lonely process. Besides the people I chat with on a weekly basis on the seminars or various lectures, you are forced to work alone the majority of the time.
And as far as "living" here goes (if we can call it that), on the rare occasion that I'm chatting with someone new, I'm finding the question "where are you from" more and more tricky to answer. Where am I from?
When I was in France, I could say that I was from the U.S., but had been living in Toulouse for X number of years. So, it was implicit that I had spent my life in the U.S. but my life was now in France. Telling people here I'm from Arizona doesn't feel like the whole truth; it inevitably leads to questions like "how do you like being so far away from home?" or "do you miss the US?" or "where did you do your undergraduate degree?" -- the answers to those questions don't necessary concern themselves with my life in AZ. Is this something that happens to everyone as they grow up? When does your hometown stop being your hometown?
Let's finish on a high note and look at a nice picture of a rainbow I took the other day. I've never known a place where you had to have both sunglasses and a umbrella... At the same time...
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