Halfway Point

The cup is half full, my friends. Today I turn in my last paper of the school year and take a giant sigh of relief.

Yesterday I was getting my hairs cut and the stylist asked me what I was doing in Charleston. I explained my graduate school situation and she asked if it was really hard. I told her honestly that it’s about what I thought it would be. After sitting on my bum playing with toddlers for a year, being asked to critically read 1850s literature, Modern British poetry, or Middle English from the 14th century came as a bit of a shock. Rather than communicating in Swiss German baby talk with my colleagues, I used words I had never touched before: “diegesis,” “hermeneutic device,” “demaunde d’amour.” I still can’t find a way to use “pathos” and make it sound genuine out of my mouth. So, yes, it’s hard, but definitely manageable.

My dad frequently asks if I’m happy in school and if it’s what I want to be doing and if I want to keep going. Well, I can’t imagine a bigger flake move on my part than dropping out of graduate school halfway through. And I don’t want to. Not at all. I really love what I’m doing right now. I’ve always loved being a student and an education is something no one can take from you, so I’m beyond thrilled to keep learning. It’s the paper-writing that really kills me…

But, this summer will be a true test. As I mentioned earlier, I will be working for a magazine here in town as an intern. I will be doing some administrative stuff (fact-checking, setting up photo shoots, making some phone calls), but more importantly, I will actually be writing for the magazine. I will get to see my name in print. Whaaaa? Who let me in the door?

I’m so excited (and, in the interest of full disclosure, nervous) about taking this project on. I think it will be a great test to determine if my future lies in writing, or editing, or publishing. OR, if someone is going to have to drag me, kicking and screaming, back in to an elementary classroom. Master’s Degree in English in hand, that is.

For now, I have about a two week break and I will be filling that in with as much beach time as possible. As well as helping Illuminations get ready for press. Needless to say, I am ready for the brain break.

 

Sunday Funday

My lair.

 

 

 

Ewwwww

 

 

 

Right now, outside, it is a 100% movie-marathon day. It’s cloudy and drizzly and gray and just begging for us all to be under the cool covers, with the remote in hand, and just watching movies. Movies all day.

(You know you’ve been studying too long when you type the word cloudy as “clowdy” and think there’s something wrong with auto-correct because you KNOW it’s spelled with a “w”)

The end is near though. Just a few more days of studying and all this baloney (not really baloney, actually, it’s more like some of the foundational literature of all that’s been produced in the last 600 years) will be put away for three and a half glorious months. Until then, I’m drownin’ in books.

Dear End of School, Please come here faster. OR ELSE.  : )

 

p.s. I totally realize taking pictures and commenting on studying, basically the “meta,” is mega-counter-productive and only encouraging my procrastination. This is just to say…

Shakes-who?

Have you ever searched for an article with the key terms “Shakespeare” “Julius Caesar” and “motivation” and come up with the following sources:

• “Creating Intentional Communities to Support English Language Learners in the Classroom”
• “Forensic Aspects of Renaissance Mimesis”
• “An Allegory on the Banks of the Nile and Other Hazards of Intercultural Literary Comparison”
• or anything pertaining to Ovid, Wordsworth, Dante, Petrarch, but definitely not Shakespeare?

No? OK, well this is my life right now, and it’s making me want to hurl my computer out my second-story window and upset a table. I know it’s not earth-shattering stuff, but it’s encouraging a slow and painful nervous breakdown in my brain-head.

I’m in the middle of Paper Writing: Round 3 and let’s just say it’s not going swimmingly. I think I have a topic narrowed down, but as you can tell, the search for sources is not proving fruitful. This, combined with studying for a final (bless you, schedule, for only forcing one final on me), combing my other two papers for errors and revising them, and general SPRING FEVER, would be the cause for a conspicuous lack of recent posting. Entshuldigung for my absence, but I promise I will be back someday.

For now, I’m off for a run.

 

Mixed Salad

Thanks to an overly aggressive, short, squat snot monster, I have been feeling a little out of sorts. Something attacked my head and has been holding on for dear life for the past week. I’m pretty sure it’s allergies, or it might be a vicious cold, but whatever it is, it’s made me lose my voice and left me sounding like I’ve been eating rocks for the past five months. It’s attractive.

Thus, the blogospheric absence.

Some neat things have happened, though. Last week, despite my charming voice dripping right through my nose, I scored a super saweet internship for the summer. Woot! I will be working with a local food magazine in an editorial position. Yeah, I’ll let you digest that for a second, as I still can’t believe my Aladdin-like fortune. SO pumped to get to try my hand at writing for the magazine, as well as learn some components behind administration and daily workings of a magazine. Psyched!

I celebrated St. Patrick’s Day at a double 30th birthday party, where crawfish and cocktails were on the menu. I haven’t participated in good ol’ fashion day drinking in a while, so this was truly a gem of an afternoon. The crawfish were finger-lickin’ delicious and the company was excellent as well.

I’ve been doing a lot of prep work for final paper writing. This is without-a-doubt the most thrilling part of my life. It involves scouring the bookshelves for interesting books to beef up my paper, and if you are lucky enough, you can be really sick while you’re doing it and annoy the pants off of everyone in the vicinity as you sniffle your way through the aisles, pawing all the books with your germy hands.

I went to the beach on Friday! I was about 80% through an assignment and my bum just would not sit on my desk chair anymore. So I packed up my dusty beach bag and headed to the beach for an hour and a half. It was amazing. I can just feel long summer afternoons at the beach right around the corner.

And, just because I love you, I’ll share this video with you. This is 100% Adam’s share, and I found it in my inbox this morning. Please give it a watch. It will blow your mind. I mean, once you get past minute 1, it’s game over. Let’s try to coordinate a flash mob to this effect. Our locations will be severely limited, as it has to be done in the dark, but I’m thinking movie theaters, parks at night, those restaurants that are blacked out so you can learn what it feels like to be visually impaired…

 

 

 

Time

I don’t particularly like taking quotes out of context, especially those from Shakespeare because they seem to be so often misused, but I stumbled upon this one during my Shakespeare class last week and I would be remiss not to share it with you. It comes from the play, Troilus and Cressida, and this simile about time has to be one of most unique ones I’ve heard.

I think it’s kind of perfect, actually.

 

For Time is like a fashionable host,

That slightly shakes his parting guest by th’ hand

And, with his arms outstretched as he would fly,

Grasps in the comer. Welcome ever smiles,

And Farewell goes out sighing.  (3.3. 159-163)

 

It’s amazing, yet sometimes troubling, to think of the fluidity of time, the way we hardly recognize that it is moving along, or more aptly, passing us on to another event.

Incredible that Shakespeare can so easily address everyone’s fear of oblivion and that a concern 400 years ago is still frighteningly relevant today.

Oh, time, you mischievous creature.

 

Olé!

Yo soy una genius.

 

One part of the degree requirements for my graduate program is to prove competency in a foreign language. One might say, “Yo, girl, why do you need to know a foreign language for an English program? That is loco.” I know, it is. But it’s all a part of that whole liberal arts thing that is so hot right now. And for the record, it’s not only my program that has this stipulation. It’s pretty much standard across the board for English Master’s programs. Well maybe not for online programs, but let’s not even get into those…

 

You can fulfill this requirement in one of three ways: show that you took at least two years of a foreign language in undergraduate and earned a B or higher, take the Old English course, which is essentially a foreign language, and pass it with a B or higher, or take a translation test in a language of your choice and pass it with an understanding of the general idea.

 

Well, it has been about 9 years since I last took a foreign language I felt comfortable with (German doesn’t count because I never really learned to speak it that well–seriously, learning High German in Zurich is like trying to learn Portuguese in Spain) and I wasn’t sure that I could pass a Spanish translation test, so option 3 didn’t look that good. Obvi, the first option was out since nine years ago I was in high school and no one could shoo me near the foreign language department at undergrad. I was so over español.  So that left me with option number 2: Old English. To say I was not interested in taking this class would be a gross understatement. Gag! Postmodernism is my thing, baby. The last thing I want to do is cruise back a thousand years and start hacking out syllables that don’t make no sense. And in the summer! Yes, the course is slated to be during summer school.

 

So, early in this semester when I started my Chaucer class (which is in Middle English, a super snazzy transition between Old and Modern English) I started getting a little sweaty under the arms thinking about taking Old English this summer. A little muchacha with a sombrero started speaking in my head, “You should take the translation test, señorita.” And with those first Spanglish whispers I knew I needed to make this test a reality.

 

Cut to me hyperventilating looking at all the material I needed to try to reteach myself. Um, there’s a lot to learn in Spanish and it had been nearly a decade since I had studied it. For two weeks straight I woke up every morning, made a coffee date with my Spanish dictionary (sexy, right?), and hit the translating hard. I found a tutor through Craigslist and met with him over coffee for some extra practice. I was studying like cuh-razy.

 

And then I took the test.

 

And what do you know, I kicked that bad boy’s butt! I crushed it! I went all TOTAL-DOMINATION! Please excuse the slight exaggerating. But, for realsies, I passed it. On the first try. And I feel awesome. That means no summer school, no Old English, no more funny Spanglish as I run around my apartment saying things like, “Yum! This manzana es muy tasty!”

 

But, the best part is, I get to start a new book. I bought The Marriage Plot the same day I bought my Spanish dictionary and told myself that I couldn’t start reading it until I passed my test. Who has two thumbs and rewards herself with literature?  >this girl<

 

 

Love, Sex, and Money

Prostitutes.

 

I can’t think of a better day to talk about them then today, Tuesday.

 

This semester I am in a class about memoirs and stories about race written in the graphic novel form. To save space (and not sound like a jackass trying to church it up), I’ll just say the course is a study on big comic books. It. Is. Awesome. In graduate school and reading comic books? Neat!

 

Of the three books we have read, all of them deal extensively with sex (surprise!) in some shape: a lesbian coming out to her parents and then dealing with her father’s suicide only months later, a young teenagers recollection of his first love, a man’s experience giving up the “evil institution of marriage” and only having sex with prostitutes. RECORD SCRATCH!! What was that?!

 

Yes, this week we are reading the graphic memoir, Paying For It by Chester Brown. And to be frank, it was one of the most interesting books I have read in a millennium. A man thinks that monogamous relationships are awful because they are inherently possessive and always lead to resentment. He argues that people were not meant to romantically love only one person; it’s not in our nature. After three unsuccessful relationships, he swears off girlfriends and signs up for whores (his word’s, absolutely not mine). Paying For It recounts several years of his sojourns with prostitutes. Each chapter features a different woman or experience. And let’s just say, Brown is not shy about laying it all out there. I’m pretty sure half the book is him lying naked in bed with a woman, just talking. The nudity is not the most interesting part I referred to earlier, however. It’s his firm, nearly staunch belief that this is the way to go. He has hopes that only a few generations from now, we will all be paying for sex and it will be normal and the thing to do. He would like prostitution to be decriminalized, but not regulated. He believes that prostitutes should not pay taxes on what they earn, should not be forced to go to the doctor, should be allowed to run their business without the shame and stigma that is so firmly planted now.

 

I just can’t get on board with this proposition (so to speak). Brown includes a lengthy appendix to back up his argument and (attempt) to fight the protestations that his idea is sure to garner. That is to say, he didn’t go into this book without being prepared to defend himself. But, for all his claims that women feel empowered by this line of work, that sex is sacred and therefore should be commercialized so that everyone can enjoy it, and that prostitution does not sexually objectify women, I cannot agree with him.

 

So what do I like about this book? I admire his bravery for being so candid about his experience. I respect him for his own decision, yet his reserve to not force this type of idea on everyone. In a literary sense, the book is very thoughtful and complex, although stylistically simple; it’s a very well-crafted comic book. Most of all I like how it challenged me to think on a subject in an alternative way, without being pushy or making me angry. Mostly it mad me sad, because I wish he could experience a reciprocal love that left him fulfilled and not jealous or resentful.

 

Being loved is one of the greatest feelings of all.

 

photos courtesy of en.wikipedia.org and comicsbeat.com, respectively

Magazine

Well, yesterday was another hard day at the office– 3 full hours were put in, nose to the grindstone. Rough life, I tell ya.

In truth, I feel monumentally lucky to have landed this graduate assistantship: my hours are beyond flexible; I have the greatest boss, ever, of all the times; and I get to work on a project that I feel really proud of and have come to enjoy immensely. The poetry magazine, Illuminations, is teeny-tiny, but attempting to emerge with a larger, fresher voice in the land of contemporary poetry. I have had such a great time sorting through submissions, learning about people who just want to share their craft, and being a major part of the team.

Issue 28 will hopefully be released in May, June at the latest, and if you feel so inspired you should definitely subscribe. I know poetry isn’t everyone’s favorite genre, mostly because people find it intimidating, but I believe it is completely worth investigating. The poems included in this collection are very reader-friendly and have inspired many an introspection, though nothing to hurt yourself over. For a mere $15 for two issues you will not only refill your creative reservoir, you will also get to see my name in print next to the title, Assistant Editor. Whoa! Hey-o! Big time.

So, subscribe here.

I promise, it won’t hurt.

Starting Over

Somehow I abandoned my Book It page and forgot to mention four books that I finished in the last month: Blood, Bones, and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton and all three books in the Hunger Game series by Suzanne Collins. That would bring the total of books I read for pleasure this year up to 31. I think we can all agree I had some pretty extensive time on my hands from the beginning through the middle of the year, with a severe decline of free time beginning in August. In fact, between the start of August and the start of December I think I read three books for pleasure. Sad. But completely understandable.

That got me thinking about how many books I would like to read for pleasure this year. One aspect of being a student in an English literature graduate program is that one must read quite a bit. The brain rapidly fills up with important quotes, characters, tropes, allusions, past literary references, and plot development that will be imperative to remember for a possible exam. That doesn’t leave much space for New York Times bestsellers and chick-lit.

But, if I make incorporating books that I want to read in my spare time part of my resolution, then perhaps I will make more effort to actually read them. Maybe that means eliminating ginormous tomes like Infinite Jest, which took me two and a half months to read. That’s not really fair to myself, now is it? So I read 31 books in 2011, that’s a number I feel pretty good about. I don’t want to stray too far from that, but I am trying to be realistic about my course schedule for the year: 3 literature classes next semester, one summer school class, and three classes in the fall. So I think for 2012 I will half it and attempt to read 15 books. There it is, my resolution: I will read 15 books of my own choosing in 2012.

Maybe it seems silly to choose a resolution involving reading, but for me it’s great. As I’ve seen this past semester reading for pleasure is something I can let go all too easily. And resolutions are supposed to be about discipline, right? (Or did I make that up?) So if that is the case, then this resolution is perfect for me.

This might be tough come summer time when I am learning Old English and wanting desperately to go to the beach and ride the waves or just go limp in a beach chair. But, I will read on! Same as this past year, the progress will be recorded in the Book It section. Any recommendations??

Check!

 

I did it. I made it through. I survived.

First Semester:  Sayonara.

Time to dance myself clean of all the novels, short stories, poems, articles, and research ideas of these past few months and take a much needed brain break for the next couple of weeks. The title of the song above works as a most excellent metaphor and just happens to be featuring at-large on my Jams playlist (unfortunately, that doesn’t actually exist on my ipod, but I am about to make it happen.)

Now it’s time to put a wee bit more focus on gathering Christmas gifts because somehow I missed the fact that it’s mid-December and we’re in full yuletide swing. Must get on that.