I’m not really the sweatshirt-wearing type…
…but this makes me rethink my stance on shapeless fleece:
This phrase would adorn a tote bag nicely, no?
Yes, this actually happened.
Last night my research seminar class met in the Rare Books room. We were waiting for one more student. The professor was feeling poorly, so the head Librarian (her friend) offered to go look for the missing student.
That’s when this conversation ensued:
Librarian: Well, what does he look like?
Dr. H: He’s tall.
Librarian: Oh. Tall. That’s useful.
Dr. H: Well, he’s trained as an historian.
Librarian: I’ll certainly be able to pick him out then!
Librarian exists room. Returns a moment later.
Librarian: I didn’t see any historians. I did see one guy that looked like a sociologist.
Dr. H: That’s him!
Librarian: Hmm. Maybe he minored.
Librarian goes back to retrieve historical/ sociological classmate.
I can’t exactly articulate why, but I so love that this happened.
And here is the secret…
True love is coming home from class at 10:30 pm to find that your boyfriend-soon-to-be-husband has assembled your huge-ass Ikea shelves and moved them into your study so you can put all your 87,254 books on them.
Bookshelves. Bookshelves are undoubtedly the way to my heart.
Swoon.
Color me frustrated.
I just have to keep reminding myself that it is in fact okay that I am struggling with Middle English. It feels like it should be more effortless than it is, yet I keep running up against words that look more like secret code than discernible language. And I am afraid it’s just me–that *I* am the one who doesn’t get it, I’m not cut out for this, blah blah, insert litany of self-degradation here.
The up side is that I discussed this fear with some of my classmates before class started last night, and as it turns out, I am very much the opposite of alone in my newfound lack of self-confidence at grappling with the material. Apparently we are all freaking out.
And I figure at least if we are all actually idiots, at least misery has some nice company.
And at least I did earn bonus points from Dr. Medievalist for referring to the four soldiers in the York Play of the Crucifixion as Larry, Moe, Curly, and Shemp.
Not exactly sure how to feel about this…
You’re Catch-22!
by Joseph Heller
Incredibly witty and funny, you have a taste for irony in all that you
see. It seems that life has put you in perpetually untenable situations, and your sense
of humor is all that gets you through them. These experiences have also made you an
ardent pacifist, though you present your message with tongue sewn into cheek. You
could coin a phrase that replaces the word "paradox" for millions of
people.
Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.
New mantra: “I can do this and maintain sanity.”
It is fully underway, this semester thing, and I keep looking at the calendar and having mild internal panic attacks. How is it October? How are we four weeks in to classes? When am I going to find time to translate 300 lines of a medieval work that I have yet to choose?
The calendar freak out is nothing new to me, but I have managed to complicate things for myself quite splendidly. Not only am I one of those crazy people who is working full time (and not as a teacher, either, which seems to be the pattern) while doing the grad school thing full time, but I also managed to toss yet another large monkeywrench into the works by slipping in a wedding to the middle of the term.
So, yes. I’m getting married. While working full time and going to grad school. The wedding date is Nov 14, which we carefully discussed and planned, because I am a crazy person and have a 30 entry annotated bibliography due on the 12th.
I scheduled my wedding around my annotated bibliography.
Non-academics really do not understand the humor of that.
Nonetheless, getting married rightnow made sense for many different reasons, so I figured what the hell, it’s just one more thing, right?
Luckily my upstanding groom-to-be and I agree on the simple, casual, friends-and-family stance when it comes to wedding planning, and that will help. So I am churning out brilliant designs for clients, impeccable research on Mary Sidney and Isabella Whitney, and making a wedding dress, fifty cupcake toppers, and wedding programs that are traditional while being tongue-in-cheek. The work will be followed with a paycheck, the research will be followed by a great paper that will be a good chunk of my thesis, and the craftiness will be followed by a wedding involving barbecue and a bonfire.
Easy vs. Hard
And the semester is underway.
This term one of the classes I am grappling with is Medieval Lit and all the related Middle English inherent therein. I am stuffing my head full of vowel sounds that feel unnatural and archaic letters and confusing pronouns. And my prof is a self-admitted hard ass–which, I will own up to, I am enough of a nerd to be glad of. Last semester I had a prof who was Easy, capital E, and while he seems to be beloved in the department I am not sure what’s to love about someone who gives you–and everyone else–an A rather than engage with you to try to make your work better. That class was all around utterly unsatisfying, and I felt gypped.
Which is why a class in which the professor makes it clear on day one that she has high standards and that a curve does not exist, therefore you receive the grade you earn makes me happy. Are my priorities messed up here? I want to learn, to engage with ideas; I want success to be harder than showing up for class and turning in one paper. It’s graduate school, for fuck’s sake–isn’t it supposed to be a challenge?
Maybe I am really wired wrong, and I should appreciate a curve, but when it comes down to it I feel like a curve is a waste of my tuition dollars. aren’t I there to be evaluated as I am, rather than as I fall along a curve of my peers? As an adult, I feel insulted by a curve. For undergrad classes filled with non-majors I get a curve. It makes sense in that context, or at least more sense than in a graduate seminar where you are supposed to be getting prepared for a life in academia.
The moral of the story, I suppose, is that I am almost relieved to be in a class with a stickler. Because with a stickler you always know where you stand. You know what is expected. And I am really looking forward to all of it.
Some thoughts on ‘fame’.
My friend MB and I, both theatre majors and lighting designers, once had this really wonderful conversation about the nature of being successful as a lighting designer. His point was that lighting designers in theatre–even someone as revered for their work as Jules Fisher or Don Holder or Anne Millitello–are still only known to a handful of people, basically just other lighting designers. Yet there’s this strange cult of personality thing at work; interns revere these designers. They are considered The Shit, and they are What You Are Supposed To Aspire To. Assistants run themselves ragged in the service of these people. They are treated like demigods by people who recognize them.
Yet, the number of people that recognize them is actually very, very small. A few hundred people maybe, dispersed all across the country and/ or world? That is the extent of your fame. You work on these huge projects–movies like Dreamgirls, theatre like The Lion King, and music tours like Tom Waits, respectively–yet you are just a cog in the machine to the vast majority of people who see your work. People don’t think about the lighting, unless as a general rule it is bad. People don’t go home amazed at what the lighting designer did.
Tonight I was thinking about how the world of academia–and literature in particular–is really just another weird niche that I am getting myself involved in. For instance, unless you are an Early Modernist or really into New Historicism, you most likely don’t know and have never heard of Stephen Greenblatt. Yet in those fields, he is the example of the high-water mark as far as what you can do with an academic career. It’s the same apparatus at work–you are revered, but only by a small handful of people. Yet to that small group, the sun shines out of Revered Academic’s ass.
I guess the same is true of any niche, really, but I am amused at my continuing attempt to yet again shove myself into a tiny niche, this time with lots of other eager grad students jockeying for position rather than a small army of intense and overcaffeinated aspiring lighting designers wielding c-wrenches. At least the grad students seldom carry big tools that can double as weapons, unless you subscribe to that adage about the pen and the sword.
