spend the money already!

Seriously.  Sometimes I just want to shout out "you're a graduate-student-wanna-be-professor! spend the money and buy the book already.  you will probably want to use it to teach with yourself!  hello!!!???"

OK. Seems I've shouted that out.  I think I feel better now.

The Summer of Reading Has Begun!

Well, my summer of reading has at last begun.  Granted, I've only read two short stories by Katherine Mansfield, but I've read them, and they're on my list of things to read, so progress has been made.

First of all, I read "The Wind Blows".  It's very modern (read:  I'll need to read it again to truly understand what happens!) but it's not horrible.  The problem here is that I can't exactly say what it's about.  It seems to be about a woman who is remembering going to piano lessons to escape a mother that she hates, but she is remembering as she is on a boat with her brother, looking on another brother and sister walking along the same path that she once walked along with her brother.  The best part of the story is the atmosphere.  The wind and the sea are constant forces, almost like characters.  I think that's the part that I liked the most.  I have to narrow down exactly which short stories  will make it to my final list and this is a contender for the moment.

The other story I read is called "The Fly".  It's a little bit crazy.  It's about an old man going to visit his boss, and the old man remarks that his daughters went to Belgium and saw the grave of his son, as well as his boss' son, who had died in the war.  The boss practically comes apart thinking about this, since it was his only son, and he'd built his business for his son to inherit, and now that he's gone he feels like all that work has been for nothing.  Well, as he's mourning, he spies a fly that has fallen into an inkwell.  He dips his pen into the ink and puts the fly onto the blotting paper.  The fly bounces back and seems to survive, but the boss drops another drop of ink on the fly, waiting to see if he'll bounce back again.  It does, but slower this time.  It's clear that the boss admires the fly's struggle to survive, but he still drops a third drop on the fly.  The fly recovers once more, but it takes longer, and it doesn't seem to be a full recovery.  He finally drops one more drop of ink on the fly, and this kills it.  Of course, this fly is a metaphor for the soldiers who lost their lives in battle.  They could only recover from so many wounds before succumbing at last to death, especially when the party inflicting the wounds has no mercy.  It's characterized as a fascination with seeing just how much they can take before they can no longer fight for life, like it's just a big game.  After the fly dies, the boss tries to remember what he'd been thinking about before he began playing with the fly, but he can't of course.  This story was more intelligible, but somehow it just didn't feel like it was as beautifully written as "The Wind Blows."  Not a strong contender for the final list.

What Should I Do Now?

So I turned in my seminar paper this afternoon with about 40 minutes to spare.  It took forever to print out, and then once that was done, and it was stapled and I was all ready to drive to campus to hand it off to my professor, I happened to notice that the title was still [add lame title here] - my special placeholder for when I have no idea what my paper is going to be called.  So of course I sat there for a minute, my brain completely exhausted, trying to come up with a title.  Know what I finally settled on?  "Space and Time in E. M. Forster's 'The Other Side of the Hedge'".  Yes, I know.  Super original, right?  Well, what did you expect?  I was operating on only 5 hours of sleep.  And while when I was undergrad I totally prided myself on being able to function on at least 5 hours of sleep, I can no longer say this is true in my old age.  Brain function is definitely impaired after about 10 hours or so.  Anyway, it was my final seminar paper and I'm glad it's done.  It wasn't perfect, nor was it everything that I wanted it to be, but I don't think I'm embarrassed to turn it in.  It wasn't my best work but I also think it was far from being my worst paper ever.

And after turning it in, I bought myself a pizza and then took a three hour nap.  Then I watched this past Monday's episode of House.  OMG!  I'm so obsessed with House.  Yes.  Still obsessed.  Cannot wait for next week's episode.  Though I'm sad that it will be the season finale.  What will I do without new episodes for a whole summer? 

Oddly, now I have no idea what to do with myself.  I'm pretty firm in my resolution to not do anything school related tonight.  That can totally wait until tomorrow when I finally get started on my reading list.  But I find myself wanting to read, but I just don't have any desire to read.  Strange, I know.  I just feel like I've been reading for the last 72 hours and would like to not right now.  

A Bit of Synchronicity

I just looked up at the clock on my desk.  It's 5.55 on 5/5.  Cool!

What is totally uncool is that I am still writing my space and place paper.  The good news--I have about 14 bad pages.  Bad pages can turn into good pages, right?

Space and Place Daze

Here I am.  Sitting in the library working on my space and place paper.  The very last seminar paper I'll ever have to write.  To be truthful, I've gotten some good work done today.  I currently have 4 1/4 handwritten pages (yes, I'm still archaic and write all my papers by hand before typing them into Word!  Don't hate a system that works!) and that is an improvement over the 0 pages I had written when I woke up this morning.  Granted, these pages are really rough, and I'm about to have a very harsh transition to the next part of the paper, but still, I'm at least finally writing and going somewhere, which is better than the nowhere that I was occupying yesterday.

SIDEBAR: It's amazing how hot my new travel mug keeps my coffee!  Where has this cup been all my life?

I have everything I need for tomorrow's big dinner with the girls.  Can't give away the full menu or too many details (since some of you are readers of this blog!) but suffice it to say, it will be fabulous and I cannot wait.  I might starve myself all day just so that I can eat, eat, eat tomorrow night.  Though I have no idea what I was thinking when I chose this date weeks ago.  There is a definite conflict as there will be a brand new episode of House on (in which House and Cuddy will finally get together and stop teasing us), but alas, that's why Steve Jobs created iTunes and TV downloads, right?  It's probably a good thing.  I'll download the episode on Tuesday and that'll be my reward for finishing my paper.

And by the way, once I get done with this paper, I'm totally catching up on Lost.  Since I seem to live my life by the carrot and stick approach, Lost will be my reward for keeping up with all the reading I have to do this summer.  On next week's list of books to read:  Howards End (which I have already started, yeah!), A Room with a View (also by Forster) and several short stories by Katherine Mansfield.  Yeah, I've basically figured out that to just be done with the fiction on my first list by the end of June, I need to read three books a week.  Yeah.  Perhaps now my meaning is crystal clear when I say I'll be reading all summer long.

But now I'm distracted.  Time to get back to work.

Insomnia

I have been trying to fall asleep for the last two hours to no avail.  So now I am trying a tried and true remedy for insomnia that I hope won't fail me.  A cup of tea with a few drops of valerian root.  I figured that while I drink my tea I might as well blog, because perhaps what's keeping me awake is that there are about a million things racing through my mind.

Like the fact that I have to prepare teach in the first summer session which is only 10 days away!  I've decided to do something different with the "theme" of the class this time around.  I'm going to have my students read about space and place and the readings will be more challenging than what I've used in the past but I'm hoping that will be a good thing.  Plus, I have chosen only four main readings for the summer session and am planning to have them do more assignments with each particular reading rather than having them work with a particular source only once before moving on to the next source.  I hope the students will like it.  I'm focusing on home, mobility (where the world is home), the city, and the wilderness.  We'll see what happens.  

SIDEBAR:  My tea is still too hot to drink!

Speaking of space and place, I have to start working on my seminar paper tomorrow.  It's due next Wednesday and I would absolutely love to have a complete draft by the time I go to bed on Monday night which means I have to be serious about writing over the weekend.  The good thing is that I have done all the reading and research I need to do (or rather, that I'm planning to do) so I'm really at the point where I'm ready to write.  I just need to sit down and write.  

I turned in my seminar paper for my Victorian class this morning.  Whew.  So glad that that's done and out of the way.  I wrote about the role of violence in The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling.  I can't really articulate just how happy I am to be done with that paper because it represents the very last paper that I have to write on a particular topic to fit into the theme of a class.  My space/place paper is much more interesting to me because it's on literature that I might be able to use in my dissertation and it's using space/place theory which I will also use in my diss so it's a win-win all around.  I think that's why I'm just so ready to start working on it and seeing how it turns out.  I also think that if it turns out well, this will be the paper that I continue to work on and revise over the summer and then try to submit it for publication near the end of the year.  

I continue to edit the drafts of my exam lists.  I think I've made good head way on my historical time period list.  I've whittled the primary texts down to 53 (I don't even know how many were on there before but I know it was more than that) and I've begun to select specific poems and replace the "selected poems" place holder.  The goal is to be able to have a revised draft of that list and my postcolonial theory list by the end of next week.  But now that May 1st has arrived I'll be starting to read and let me just say what a daunting task that is shaping up to be.  I just blew another $100 at Amazon on books, and I'm still not even close to being done buying what I want to have on my shelf by the time I start writing my exams.  I don't want to have to worry about the library not having a book that I need or it being checked out by someone else or recalled.  The first book on my list to read is Howards End by E.M. Forster and then I think I'll follow that with A Room with a View, also by Forster, so look for book reviews coming soon!

And lastly, I see June on the horizon, and that makes me recall last June when I wrote a +50,000 word "book" in 30 days.  November just isn't a good time for me to participate in NaNoWriMo so I chose June instead last year and I'm thinking I'm going to try to write another "book" this year.  There.  I've put the idea out there so now anyone who reads this has carte blanche to bug me about whether or not I achieved my goal.  Also, anyone reading this is invited to join me in my crazy month of writing.  It's fun and rewarding and I highly recommend it.  You never know.  You could be the next Stephenie Meyer.  he-he-he-he....  

Tuesday's Rant

Apparently, I am ready to do anything other than finish my Victorian seminar paper.  Including blogging.  I mean, does anyone else find it suspicious that I have blogged twice in the last week but I hadn't blogged twice in the last 3 months?  But, I do have to admit that there's finally enough pressure for me to actually get myself in gear and focus on the paper.  And I think I know where I'm taking it.  Albeit, I am in for a lot more revision than I initially intended, but, well, what else is new?

My rant is in regard to teaching.  It's hard to be a TA for a class where you have some teaching responsibilities, and some grading responsibilities, and some administrative responsibilities, but no final decision on anything.  Over the last five months I have learned that I very much like to be the sole authority in the classroom--what I mean is, I like having the final decision.  I dislike having to ask for permission.  I can't wait until I have my own class again in the summer.  Which is actually in less than three weeks, so I really ought to get started on planning my readings and assignments.  Of course, that will just have to wait until I finish both of my seminar papers.  Oddly, that brings me back to needing to work on my Victorian paper.  Right now in fact!