Wednesday, October 30, 2002
 

First, a little Ryan Adams.

Moving on. It's been one of those long weeks. Getting my 19th century project changed around took over my whole weekend; he said, with a straight face, that he wondered if I'd be able to get it all done in just one weekend. I'm certainly not sure I managed. I count 17 books that I scanned or read in parts, searching for the specifics of a theoretical model that he's basically asking me to make up. I have no objections to doing so, but let's just say the time frame wasn't helpful. I made four trips to the library, that I remember, and two or three of those were the science library, which, of course, is laid out completely differently from the main library. But man, let me tell you, they've got the glitzy carrels over there. Seriously. We're talking the Ritz-Carlton. All of them look alike, they're all spacious, all have laptop hookups, nice new cushy chairs, rounded edges on the desk, the whole deal. Anyway, I appear to be on a tangent.

So I was complaining about 19th century. After doing all this research, I had to compile it into a critical history approach-- not the critical history of a literary text, which I could do with one hand tied behind my back The research for that also goes faster than reading / skimming scientific analysis of evolutionary theory. But I semi-got my act together and ripped off the report, though it's certainly not my most stellar effort ever, I'll be the first to say.

The point: I spent my whole weekend on that.

The problem: I have other classes.

Modernism is cancelled this week because he's at a conference, though we're making the class up Monday (so that's two modernism meetings last week-- the theory reading pack for Monday is 1 1/4 inches thick-- that's one and a fourth inches of THEORY, and the literary reading is Ulysses). But that still left Southern lit, wherein we were reading Delta Wedding (and let's just say that it's no wonder that someone offered Welty a job writing pornography; the prof let us go 15 minutes early with the instructions that we should all take cold showers), part 1 of The Madwoman in the Attic (which seems increasingly dated to me, to state the obvious), Gender Trouble (yeah baby), some book I didn't read and forget the name of, and some really excellent stuff by Patricia Yaeger. If there was anything else that I'm forgetting, I didn't get it read between yesterday and today at 4:00. Of course, I was also tied up from 12:00-1:30 at an Americanist Society meeting. After that, I ate lunch in my carrel in the library (my carrel being without laptop hookups, under a buzzing flourescent light, yellowed with age, creaky, cold, etc), shedding peanut butter cracker crumbs everywhere in the process. Next time I need to remember to smuggle less crunchy-sounding food into the library with me.

Next week: the theory packet from the deepest circle, Joyce, presentation in Southern lit, and I frankly don't even know what we're reading in 19th century but I seem to recall him mentioning that he was going to add some theory to whatever the preexisting assignment was.

Grad school. Fun.

Elvisette philosophized at 8:16 PM