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Here I am at work. Bored. Again. Carol is out and the three other student workers who come in the morning have pretty much covered everything.
I've been doing pretty well since I last posted. I've been surprised (though I know I shouldn't) the amount of time comps consumes. I essentially spend all my waking moments working on it and thinking about it, taking breaks only to do the work for my other classes. I shouldn't complain, because comps is actually progressing splendidly, and my advisor is really happy with the direction of the project and with the progress I've made thus far. I just finished drafting the Out of Africa section, which explores the ways Isak Dinesen's attempts to establish her legitimacy over the land, her physical interaction with the land, and her textual production/representation of landscape function in tandem to dismantle the 3-D time-space-culture matrix signifiied by land in pre-colonial Gĩkűyű ideology. Now I'm ready to begin working on the Ngűgĩ section (for which I currently lack a concise explanatory blurb). I'm very happy with comps.
Though I enjoy French, I increasingly find the quia exercises useless and a waste of my time. At least Steph and I were paired for our oral test today, for which we composed a dialogue about hygiene and daily routines between Harold Bloom and Jacques Derrida.* It's fugging awesome. Also, although I've been finding the material covered in the readings for African environmental history stimulating, Jamie Monson needs to learn how to run her class. Discussion is as painful as pulling teeth without anaesthesia, and this is not necessarily the fault of my fellow students. Tuesday, for example, we spent the first half of the period "workshopping" our research paper ideas. Granted, few people had concrete topics...but this should have tipped Jamie off to the notion that now was not the time to waste an hour dallying on indecision. Consequently, we had only ten minutes for lecture on actual course material before we went to the library to learn how to do research, and how to "historicize" our topics. In my view, a lot of what we were told should have been covered in freshman seminars, and not in a 200-level seminar...but hey, that's just me.
Semaphore is wonderful. I love the people, and I'm really excited by the work we've been doing with Wynn Fricke and Sarah Jacobs (a Carleton alum). I'm excited for our spring break trip to ACDF in Salt Lake City. (I'm also excited to visit Robin in Portland afterward, and then possibly Lucy and Debbie in Madison too!).
Other than that, I've little else to say, other than things are getting difficult very quickly. I'm already getting worn down by going to bed every night at 1:30 and waking up at 7:00. That's not so bad, I guess, but 5.5 hours is not enough sleep to be getting five days a week.
Currently listening to: Neko Case, "Maybe Sparrow"; My Bloody Valentine, Loveless
Take care, friends.
*Says Bloom about his sleeping problems: "Je dors mal depuis dix années. Je me réveille au milieu de la nuit avec des idées fantastiques pour mes nouveaux livres génials de théorie littéraire."
I've been doing pretty well since I last posted. I've been surprised (though I know I shouldn't) the amount of time comps consumes. I essentially spend all my waking moments working on it and thinking about it, taking breaks only to do the work for my other classes. I shouldn't complain, because comps is actually progressing splendidly, and my advisor is really happy with the direction of the project and with the progress I've made thus far. I just finished drafting the Out of Africa section, which explores the ways Isak Dinesen's attempts to establish her legitimacy over the land, her physical interaction with the land, and her textual production/representation of landscape function in tandem to dismantle the 3-D time-space-culture matrix signifiied by land in pre-colonial Gĩkűyű ideology. Now I'm ready to begin working on the Ngűgĩ section (for which I currently lack a concise explanatory blurb). I'm very happy with comps.
Though I enjoy French, I increasingly find the quia exercises useless and a waste of my time. At least Steph and I were paired for our oral test today, for which we composed a dialogue about hygiene and daily routines between Harold Bloom and Jacques Derrida.* It's fugging awesome. Also, although I've been finding the material covered in the readings for African environmental history stimulating, Jamie Monson needs to learn how to run her class. Discussion is as painful as pulling teeth without anaesthesia, and this is not necessarily the fault of my fellow students. Tuesday, for example, we spent the first half of the period "workshopping" our research paper ideas. Granted, few people had concrete topics...but this should have tipped Jamie off to the notion that now was not the time to waste an hour dallying on indecision. Consequently, we had only ten minutes for lecture on actual course material before we went to the library to learn how to do research, and how to "historicize" our topics. In my view, a lot of what we were told should have been covered in freshman seminars, and not in a 200-level seminar...but hey, that's just me.
Semaphore is wonderful. I love the people, and I'm really excited by the work we've been doing with Wynn Fricke and Sarah Jacobs (a Carleton alum). I'm excited for our spring break trip to ACDF in Salt Lake City. (I'm also excited to visit Robin in Portland afterward, and then possibly Lucy and Debbie in Madison too!).
Other than that, I've little else to say, other than things are getting difficult very quickly. I'm already getting worn down by going to bed every night at 1:30 and waking up at 7:00. That's not so bad, I guess, but 5.5 hours is not enough sleep to be getting five days a week.
Currently listening to: Neko Case, "Maybe Sparrow"; My Bloody Valentine, Loveless
Take care, friends.
*Says Bloom about his sleeping problems: "Je dors mal depuis dix années. Je me réveille au milieu de la nuit avec des idées fantastiques pour mes nouveaux livres génials de théorie littéraire."
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