Tuesday, December 17, 2002
 

Remember, folks, "systems are never perfect".

I think that my 19th century paper is almost ready to go. And if it's not, I'm not sure how much I care. Our adage: "A good paper is a done paper." Or, in the alternative version, "done is better than good." I'm thinking about getting it tattooed on my arm.

My mother tells me that I have a Christmas break appointment with the eye doctor, my mortal enemy. I do not like people in my face; I do not like eyedrops; I do not like him. Things get ugly. I have an uncontrollable involuntary flinch whenever he comes near my face. He's had to hold my head down with his forearm while giving me eyedrops before (that wasn't too recently). Last time I was there, my dyscalculia or whatever it is kicked in during the eyecharts, which was embarrassing. The chart (or, rather, the stuff projected onto the wall) is a mixture of numbers and letters. Last time he flashed up a random number, and, though I could see it just fine, it didn't look like anything but a weird mix of squiggles. He snapped at me (he's a grouch; makes me look cheery) and asserted that I could see that. Which I could; it just didn't look like anything recognizable.

I think the number problems have gotten worse lately, anyway. Or maybe they just persist to the point of being increasingly annoying. For instance, I bet most 22-year-olds know more than three phone numbers by heart (mine, my parents', my grandfathers'; can't ever remember my father's office and just last week had to look up the phone number I'd had for two years). That seems to be my upper limit. Page numbers are the worse, though. When I was in the English survey courses, we used Norton anthologies, which go up into the 1000s. My notes were always a complete mess; when I'd try to jot down the page number the lecturer referenced, I'd always get it wrong. I distinctly remember studying for the first exam in there and discovering that almost none of my page numbers referred to anything correct.

Ok, I'm rambling. Guess who doesn't want to work on her modernism paper. I hate this final stretch; it always kills me. And he's the most persnickety prof, so I shouldn't be slacking now (and the fact that the paper is 80-85% of the final grade should probably motivate me a bit, too),

Elvisette philosophized at 6:12 PM