Oh good Heavens! I forgot the blog again! I feel like this blog is one of those nightmares my mother always has where she leaves the baby somewhere and doesn't realize it until much later. Every semester I have such great plans to blog and have a great social life and get great grades and get enough sleep to make me a pleasant human being, and every semester, without fail, items from this list get slowly jettisoned, so that by the end of the year I'm sleeping in the library with all my books piled cosily around me. Then I wake up after finals in a cold sweat and run to see if the blog is still breathing.
But here I am after what was probably one of the best and one of the absolute worst semesters of my life. There were no in betweens this semester; everything was either absolutely positively fantastic or utterly horrible. This went on all day every day all semester long, and it was utterly bizarre. I've never experienced so many ups and downs in my life. What happened this semester you ask? Well, this semester, spring 2014, will ever live as the semester that I endured Wordsworth, the semester when I mastered Shakespeare, the semester that I beat philosophy into the dirt, and the semester that, for some inexplicable reason I took up rock climbing. Like I said, rather bizarre.
My classes this semester were almost too surreal to be believed. My Early Modern Lit. class was at 9am, and we spent the majority of the first several weeks talking about Descartes. Now there are somethings that I can handle before my third cup of coffee (yes, third, we'll get to that later), but oddly enough Descartes is just not one of them. Then there was Romantic and Victorian Lit., and it was in that class that I realized, as another one of my professors so delicately put it, "Romantic poetry just does not speak to my soul." Then there was Medieval History. What a fascinating subject that is. Did you know that at one point Oxford University actually had to ban bows and arrows in class? Yes, really. This piece of knowledge, of course, has led to many jokes, and a serious attempt to arm the freshman as the class of 2015's class gift; unfortunately that proposal was shot down, so to speak. Then there was Shakespeare's comedies. One of my favorite things about upper level English classes is that the professor's nutty academic pet peeves always come up, so this was Shakespeare through random little Shakespeare conspiracy theories; it was fantastic. So really, this was the semester where we romped through fields of my professors' strange English major knowledge, and it was great. Honestly I've never had so much fun.
Then there were the parts of the semester that were absolutely awful. The first month of the semester involved far more funerals than I would ever really like to talk about. So suffice it to say, that things were (and for some, still are) very hard. Then there was the three week period in which I wrote eight papers. This was also the semester that I discovered Our Lady of Mental Peace, and may I just say that I probably would not have made it through the last several months without this prayer.
But overall, this was definitely a teaching semester, shall we say, in which yours truly had to learn some lessons the hard way. One of the things we learned about is procrastination, frequently spelled s-o-c-i-a-l-m-e-d-i-a. Yeah, so, one of the things I had to learn this semester is that if you really want something to happen you actually have to do it. Sounds easy enough, but odd how complicated these things can be. For example, should you want to turn your taxes in on time, it is not exactly optimal to start them at noon, when the mail goes out at 2:45. We'll just say that although that particular episode ended well, some others did not, and from these painful, yet valuable, experience I have learned that one should not, perhaps, put things off.
Another thing I learned, which is, perhaps, cliche, is that one should not be afraid to be oneself. I realized that I waste a lot of time worrying about what people think of me. Do you know how counter productive it is to spend so much time worrying about making the wrong move, that you never actually make any moves? It's lame. Really really lame, and that was one of the things I had to learn; sometimes you just have to loosen up and do things without worrying about the consequences and without worrying about what other people might possibly think.
So what have I been doing while I haven't been blogging? Well, mostly, I've done a whole lot of thinking about everything. It's kind of bizarre to be back where I was four years ago, but also facing my senior year of college and real life and all that jazz. Anyway, I appreciate you all bearing with me during my long silences and (even longer) ramble-y posts!
But here I am after what was probably one of the best and one of the absolute worst semesters of my life. There were no in betweens this semester; everything was either absolutely positively fantastic or utterly horrible. This went on all day every day all semester long, and it was utterly bizarre. I've never experienced so many ups and downs in my life. What happened this semester you ask? Well, this semester, spring 2014, will ever live as the semester that I endured Wordsworth, the semester when I mastered Shakespeare, the semester that I beat philosophy into the dirt, and the semester that, for some inexplicable reason I took up rock climbing. Like I said, rather bizarre.
My classes this semester were almost too surreal to be believed. My Early Modern Lit. class was at 9am, and we spent the majority of the first several weeks talking about Descartes. Now there are somethings that I can handle before my third cup of coffee (yes, third, we'll get to that later), but oddly enough Descartes is just not one of them. Then there was Romantic and Victorian Lit., and it was in that class that I realized, as another one of my professors so delicately put it, "Romantic poetry just does not speak to my soul." Then there was Medieval History. What a fascinating subject that is. Did you know that at one point Oxford University actually had to ban bows and arrows in class? Yes, really. This piece of knowledge, of course, has led to many jokes, and a serious attempt to arm the freshman as the class of 2015's class gift; unfortunately that proposal was shot down, so to speak. Then there was Shakespeare's comedies. One of my favorite things about upper level English classes is that the professor's nutty academic pet peeves always come up, so this was Shakespeare through random little Shakespeare conspiracy theories; it was fantastic. So really, this was the semester where we romped through fields of my professors' strange English major knowledge, and it was great. Honestly I've never had so much fun.
Then there were the parts of the semester that were absolutely awful. The first month of the semester involved far more funerals than I would ever really like to talk about. So suffice it to say, that things were (and for some, still are) very hard. Then there was the three week period in which I wrote eight papers. This was also the semester that I discovered Our Lady of Mental Peace, and may I just say that I probably would not have made it through the last several months without this prayer.
But overall, this was definitely a teaching semester, shall we say, in which yours truly had to learn some lessons the hard way. One of the things we learned about is procrastination, frequently spelled s-o-c-i-a-l-m-e-d-i-a. Yeah, so, one of the things I had to learn this semester is that if you really want something to happen you actually have to do it. Sounds easy enough, but odd how complicated these things can be. For example, should you want to turn your taxes in on time, it is not exactly optimal to start them at noon, when the mail goes out at 2:45. We'll just say that although that particular episode ended well, some others did not, and from these painful, yet valuable, experience I have learned that one should not, perhaps, put things off.
Another thing I learned, which is, perhaps, cliche, is that one should not be afraid to be oneself. I realized that I waste a lot of time worrying about what people think of me. Do you know how counter productive it is to spend so much time worrying about making the wrong move, that you never actually make any moves? It's lame. Really really lame, and that was one of the things I had to learn; sometimes you just have to loosen up and do things without worrying about the consequences and without worrying about what other people might possibly think.
So what have I been doing while I haven't been blogging? Well, mostly, I've done a whole lot of thinking about everything. It's kind of bizarre to be back where I was four years ago, but also facing my senior year of college and real life and all that jazz. Anyway, I appreciate you all bearing with me during my long silences and (even longer) ramble-y posts!
