The following sentence showed up in my journal this afternoon:
You cannot hope to transcend that which you do not know intimately.
I’m not entirely certain what I think of it, except that it may merit future pondering.
Thoughts?
Because, as we all know, I am a nothing short of a total geek, tonight
I decided to browse through my next semester’s textbooks to see what I
was in for. I started with Ling 301: Linguistic Argumentation,
because if ever the name of a class sounded like me, that one’s
it. It’s got a fairly slim piece of custom courseware, but you
can’t tell anything about a CC book by just looking at it.
They’re all identical on the outside, and contain whatever the prof is
going to make you read. A quick examination of the table of
contents can often tell you a great deal about your profs interests and
what the class is going to be about. Upon reading approximately
two paragraphs of the first article in my Ling 301 CC, I found myself
a) fascinated and b) WAY out of my depth!
This is a very good sign for me. When I know exactly what’s going
on all the time I get bored. But likewise, if something’s really
complicated and I don’t care about it either, I get bored. For a
class to keep my interest, it’s got to be both interesting and
challenging, and this one looks to be both. Plus I met the prof
when I did my interview for entrance into the Teaching ESL (TESL)
Certificate program, and I think he’d be a good lecturer.
Drastically in need of a new hairstyle (long, stringy, greased back =
BAD!), but smart and actually interested in teaching. I suspect
he’s got very high expectations as well. Based on this I surmise
that his class is going to involve a lot of work and actually having to
figure stuff out rather than just writing down the answers. This
is the sort of environment in which I absolutely thrive. I’ll no
doubt bitch about the work, but when the material is interesting &
relevent, and I respect the prof, I don’t have such a problem putting
in the work.
My Ling 360 (Linguistics & Language Teaching) prof is the same one
I had for Ling 200 (Intro Description of English Grammar) last
spring. Yes, I actually took that class voluntarily, and rather
enjoyed it, thank you very much. That mostly had to do with the
fact that the prof was highly organized & knowledgable, able to
communicate ideas clearly, patient, and also expected you to do a lot
of work. This was ok though, because if you actually did the
optional work, you would do just fine on the exams without having to
cram. That’s a trade-off I can deal with. I just get pissed
when I have to do lots of work that serves no purpose other than giving
the prof something to base the marks on. If I’m going to do
homework, I’d bloody well better actually be learning something.
I’m going into the second semester of my second year, and I’m very
excited that I’m finally getting to do upper division (300+ level)
courses. It seems like I’ve spent forever going over the same rudiments
and I’d really like to move on now. Those are the only two
UD courses I’m doing next semester, and I’m very much looking forward
to them both. The professor often makes or breaks a class, so I’m
glad to know neither of my two much-anticipated upper division classes
runs much risk of being ruined by a crappy prof.
My Engl 203 (Early Modern Lit) prof has no face yet. I know that
he’s the first male English professor I’ll have encountered at
SFU. Given the SFU English department’s predilection for
discussions of gender bias & sexuality, I’m curious to see how he
approaches his work. On account of the curriculum, there’s really
no escaping Shakespeare in that class, but I’m encouraged that the prof
chose Hamlet. That play contains a lot of very dark humour, which
is something I enjoy in an English prof, not least because I’ve got a
definite streak of it myself. Being raised by a nurse will do
that to you. And I hear the guy really gets into his
Shakespeare. I don’t care what they’re teaching, it’s good when a
prof is enthusiastic about his subject, so I guess if we’re going to do
early modern lit, we may as well really get into it. This class
was not my first choice, but Engl 207 (20th Century Lit) simply could
not be made to fit into my schedule, and I need one more 200-lvl
English class. I’m cautiously optimistic about this class.
And Ling 221 (Intro Phonology) is completely up in the air. The
website says prof: tbd, which means they haven’t found anybody
yet. If my experienes with Intro Ling and Intro Syntax are any
indication, it’ll wind up being a sessional instructor who needs the
work and doesn’t really know what the rest of the department thinks is
important, so you’ll wind up being taught kind of a hodgepodge, which
will tend to reflect whatever they’re working on at the moment. I
actually don’t mind this as much as you would think. In Intro
Ling my prof was a Newfie lady who resembled nothing so much as a stout
teapot, who specialized in signed languages. Learned all sorts of
bits and pieces. And then for Intro Syntax my prof was a young
oriental lady who made us analyze the Jabberwocky and told us random
linguistic facts about Klingon. I shit you not. Both
classes were jokes in terms of difficulty, but were quite interesting
nonetheless. If I get the same sort of thing for 221, I’ll be
happy.
I admit, I am constantly observing and assessing my professors, from
well before classes start to the very last time I see them. I
look for patterns and tendencies, signs of personality, interests,
character. All of these affect my attitude toward a class, and
how I approach assignments & studying. If I think the prof is
a jackass, I have a really hard time caring about what s/he’s got to
say. If my communications classes taught me nothing else, they at
least hammered home the importance of considering both the information,
and the medium through which it is transferred.
Tonight I stayed home. I was also ill, although that’s not the
reason why I stayed home. Grieving at Christmas makes people
think you’re weird, but it’s where I end up every year. I’m tired
of pretending to be happy and a part of it all at other people’s
celebrations.
I, who very seldom turn on the television, did so this evening, and
watched It’s a Wonderful Life, which made me cry, even while I found
myself questioning its message, and then the life and times of a
canadian prima ballerina who’s pushing fifty but still dancing.
Both of which were ultimately about sacrifice, I think. Both were
about doing what you absolutely know to be right, no matter how you
knew this or what it was going to cost you.
It’s also interesting
to try and figure out who the advertisers think their audience is for
particular programs. And if you ever want to scare yourself, mute
the commercials, and then watch them carefully, and try to figure out
what they’re telling you.
And now I think I need to go to bed.
Sweet dreams.
For the past… oh… month & a half or so, I’ve been mostly
running on willpower. I made it through exams, and then Mom came
to visit and I kept going at a high pace on next to no sleep and now I
finally get to just lie around. And my body, finally released
from the slave-driver’s whip, has collapsed in a heap and gotten really
sick. I suddenly have a doozy of a head & chest cold, and
won’t be going anywhere any time soon. Luckily I have plenty of
books and tea and was planing to mostly just curl up on the couch
anyways, but that doesn’t make up for the fact that I’m spending my
first days off in forever with a nose rubbed raw from blowing it and a
nasty dry cough. Ugh. My head feels like a volleyball
that’s being balanced on top of a pencil. Our big lazy cat sure
likes having me laid up though. She’s the sort that will jump up
and sit on whatever it is you’re trying to read, demand to be cuddled,
and is then very offended when you move her.
Anyways, I’m here, I’m alive, I’m sick and nothing exciting is happening at the moment.
I think I’m going to go have another cup of tea.
Today I went on an excursion to the junior-fiction section of the
library. This is one of my favourite things to do when I have
days off. I limited myself to five books, cause it’s a 15 minute
walk to get there and I’d like to spare my back. But I can go
back as often as I like, and the walk’s nice. It also forces me
to be selective. I prefer to only take one book of any one author
at a time. Having a contrast in styles is nice.
I came home with:
Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff & James Norman Hall
It’s really quite remarkable that I haven’t read this one
already. It’s supposed to be really good, and I went through a
phase in about grade 5 or 6 when I read every story I could get my
hands on about being a sailor. (incidentally, if you like this
sort of thing, check out the True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, by
Avi. That was the book that set the whole thing off.)
The Outlaws of Sherwood by Robin McKinley
This lady, who I believe also writes as Robin Hobb, but I may be mixing
trivia, does re-tellings of old stories. The kind that Disney
likes to tell. Witches and spells and brave heros and that sort
of thing. Her version of Beauty & the Beast is absolutely
exquisite. I can’t wait to see what she does with Robin Hood.
Shizuko’s Daughter by Kyoko Mori
I don’t know anything about this author except what’s printed on the
back flap, but I like the look of her from the picture.
Apparently this is her first novel. I often come home with things
for reasons that I don’t know at the time but will find out
later. Most of the art on my walls was like that, and this book
appealed to me in the same way. I’m curious what it’s going to be
like.
The Ropemaker by Peter Dickinson
Another author I’ve never heard of. But the story sounds really
good, and the bit in the blurb about how he, “one of Britain’s greatest
storytellers, explores the nature of magic itself in this challenging
and enthralling fantasy” sounds like this one’s going to be right up my
alley. I’m hoping for something reminiscent of Lloyd Alexander.
The Gravedigger’s Cottage by Chris Lynch
This is a story about a teenage kid coping with loss. There are
lots of stories out there like this, some excellent, some absolutely
god-awful. So far this one promises to be more towards the
excellent end of the spectrum. I’m just 20 pages in and I’ve
already laughed out loud, and come very close to crying.
I think this is going to be a fun pile of books. Hehe.
That’s a statement you don’t hear every day. I’m more than
a little odd, but I’m ok with that.
—————————
Last night I found the exactly library science program I want to do. It’s at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois.
I’m not crazy about the idea of spending two years in Illinois,
but there’s stuff worth learning everywhere, and they offer exactly the
program I want.
There are a lot of different directions you can go with a masters of
library science, and my problem with a lot of programs is that they
have very specific requirements for choosing a stream and sticking with
it. That’s not a good thing for me, cause my interests in
information are all over the place. I really want to work with
the kids who hang out in libraries, cause they could generally use some
support (I know, I was one). But I’m also very interested in the
history of books and printing, which I’ve discovered gets all tangled
up with philosophy & theories of communication, and the political & economic
effects of it all. The wonderful thing about the MLS program at
the University of Illinois is that they offer courses in all of those
areas and many more, and the whole program only has 4 required courses.
After that they say, ok, now go earn the rest of your 40 credits
in whatever combination you think will be most useful for you. It
sounds like a situation in which I would be quite successful. And
at the end I think I’d be able to get a job I like for the rest of my
life, and be able to switch it up when I feel it’s necessary.
I’m so much happier when I have clearly definied goals.
If you’ve got an astrological bent to you at all, you’re probably
already aware of the big pile-up we’ve got going on in Sagittarius
right now (right after a similar situation in Scorpio during
November). If you’re not, here’s a good article on the subject.
Anyway’s Elsa’s written a bit about how to function in the midst of all this, which can be found in her advice column
and I think you should all go check it out, cause I can’t recommend her
enough. She’s the lady who got me into astrology in the first
place, by way of storytelling, and my own conviction that you ought to
know something about a topic if you wish to argue about it, all of
which is more than a little sagittarian itself. She gets
interesting questions & gives really good advice, and you can kind
of just absorb knowledge while being entertained, because she has a
knack for giving explanations that make sense and are easy to
remember. And she’s got reams of good stories.
In other news, exams are finally finally over. I’m still in that
kind of shell-shocked state that happens immediately afterwards, but I
have today to unwind, which is going to involve lots of reading,
cleaning, and possibly a trip to the library. And maybe IHOP (which I spelled as iHop on the first try), if
the drunks who crashed at my house (I like them, they’re nice, but the
mean level of drunkenness was pretty high last night) ever wake up
and get moving, cause that’s usually the direction they stumble upon
reaching semi-consciousness. If that happens I’ll be joining them, cause it’s fun to
sit around eating strawberries & waffles while listening to stories
of the drunken idiocies that happened last night, in which people do
stupid things and then somehow manage to escape unscathed.
Speaking of a pile-up in Sadge! Oh, and it was Pat’s birthday the
night before last (ie: this whole thing’s transiting her sun), so of
course she’s getting a serious extra dose of everything going on, but she seems to be handling it fairly well.
Hrm. Apparently my mind’s only got one track these days. Go
figure. Meh. I’ve got three weeks now in which I can devote
my energy to whatever the hell I want, and I already have so much reading to do! I’m looking forward to it immensely.
“when one educates a jackass, the jackass doesn’t change into a nobler animal, one simply hears multisyllabic braying”
-HeoCwaeth
Found that quote buried deep in the comments at this blog —-> http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/
I’m too tired to post anything coherant at this point, but I just had to share that with you, as it sent me into an odd combination of gigglefits and “yes, exactly, I couldn’t have said it better myself!”
I also highly recommend the blog in question, and thank my Mass Media prof for mentioning it during lecture at some point. The margins of all my lecture notes from that class are full of mad scribblings of names I’ve got to look up as soon as I have the necessary simultaneous combination of free time and functioning brain cells.
Today must be devoted to studying economics. I’d much rather spend the day gnawing off my own leg, but the exam’s tomorrow and I can’t avoid it any longer. If I buckle down and get through these seven chapters I need to review, I know I’ll be fine. I just don’t want to do it.
The obvious question here is: why didn’t I start sooner? I don’t have a good answer for that. Part of it is that historically I have always been able to leave studying to the last minute and come out with a perfectly acceptable mark, so why bother starting sooner? At least this way I’ll get it all over with in one chunk.
And then after tomorrow I’m burning the textbook and all of my notes for that class. I’ll be glad I went through it, because the class did contain a lot of useful information, but I’ll be damned if I ever take another class on the subject because it was just not fun, and was generally downright depressing. And frustrating. And the prof was both an arrogant prick and a highly engaging teacher, which is an odd and uncomfortable combination, cause you feel you ought to hate him, but find yourself laughing at his dumb jokes anyways.
And yes, even this post was a last-ditch effort at procrastination. Go me.
Tonight I finally threw out all the letters from the ex who shall not be named, and then took out the garbage & threw it in the dumpster. Man that felt good. Especially having re-read them with the benefit of hindsight and realizing just how incredibly full of shit he really was. The grieving process on that one has taken a really long time, but I can finally honestly say that he no longer has any role to play in my life (except of course as a learning experience).
*happy*
The ladies at the gym must think I’m just an early bird, or that my schedule’s so wonky it’s the only time I’ve got free, or something. I doubt any of them realize that when I show up right when they open at 7am, it means I haven’t slept yet, got tired of staring at the wall and said “screw it, I’m going to the gym.”
That said, I’m now at the end of week one of being someone who “goes to the gym” and have already experienced noticable improvements in terms of the ever-present knots in my back. Flexibility has also improved somewhat. This is what’s supposed to happen, so I’m encouraged. I don’t quite understand the women who hurry through the workout, or skip the stretches at the end. Or the ones who only hold each stretch for like five seconds and then switch. What exactly was the point of that? For me, getting to the gym is the hard part, but once I’m there I’m inclined to take full advantage of the fact. And personally I really like the idea of increased flexibility, and understand that the way you get that is to work out regularly and take the time to stretch afterwards (while you’re still all nicely warmed up). It also really cuts down on soreness.
Much to my surprise, I’m actually really enjoying my gym time. It allows me to let my mind of its leash and just go wandering about wherever it likes while the part of my brain that looks after muscle movements gets down to work. Nice change from always having to keep my higher intelligence focused on the task at hand. And the feeling of mild soreness after a workout is just delicious. Brings me back down to earth, reminds me that I too have a body, and it’s amazing what that body can actually do when I put some effort into it. After four months of this I don’t think I’ll be so worried if Fire Management decides I need to do a fitness test before they’ll put me out in the field. I’m never going to be an athlete (which is fine by me), but I’ll at least be able to hold my own.
And lest we think it’s all peaches and cream…
Two words that should never be used together: gym fashion. What. the. fuck. You’re going to go get whatever you’re wearing all sweaty with a bunch of women who have absolutely no reason to care what you look like while you do it. Why oh why oh why do some women feel it is necessary to buy flashy, expensive track-suit sets and prance around in them whenever given the opportunity? But I’ve never really gotten the hang of fashion in general, so maybe it makes sense to most people and I just missed the boat, but that’s fine with me. So look, lady, I do not care how much you paid for your outfit. I really don’t. So quit strutting and get your ass into the circuit with the rest of us. And if you look down your nose at my comfy old grey sweats one more time I swear I am going to punch you in the face.
When most people sponser the creation of a bench, the little plaque has their name on it, or an in memorium thing with somebody else’s name on it. But just to be weird, somebody sponsered three benches on Columbia Street (on the north side, between 4th & 6th), with little plaques bearing Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics. I couldn’t have told you who came up with them, but that’s what google is for. If you’re not familiar with them, they are:
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
One of those on each of the three benches, just kind of randomly there. I only discovered this because I needed somewhere to set my backpack down so I could dig around in it for my iPod the other night, and am a compulsive reader. That is, if there’s nothing else occupying my mind, I read whatever’s within reach, be it warning signs, labels, posters, or random little plaques on benches.
Now if only I could find whoever’s responsible and ask them why they felt the need to inscribe the three laws of robotics on a set of benches in New Westminster.
Today I signed up for a membership at Curves. It felt somewhat like joining a cult. Their god is the almighty Scale, who rewards hard work & dedication, and punishes apathy.
I’ve resisted joining a gym for a very long time. Call me lazy if you like (you wouldn’t be wrong), but I’ve never had a particularly hard time maintaining a reasonable weight, and I’ve got plenty of other things to worry about, so it’s just never been high on my priority list. But last night it was brought to my attention that I -need- to get some exercise on a regular basis. Not because I need to lose weight, but because the tension & stress build-up in my body is getting totally out of control. My back is a solid mess of knots, and I’m convinced that a large part of it is that I just don’t get out and MOVE very often. This needs to change.
A lot of this has to do with the ideas I’ve been pondering lately about the sacred nature of, well… nature… which includes my body. And when something’s sacred, that means you need to respect it and look after it, and looking at it from that perspective, I realize I’ve been derelict in my duties for far too long. For now I’m more or less getting away with it (back pain notwithstanding), but if I let this continue, I’m going to pay for it eventually. I’d been playing with the idea of joining a gym for a while, but last night it was just like somebody tapped me on the shoulder and told me that it was time to stop playing with the idea and get up off my ass and go do it.
Conveniently, there’s a Curves located a 10 minute walk from my apartment, and their student rate is quite reasonable. I am also much more comfortable with the idea of working out at a women-only gym. Don’t get me wrong, I like men (occasionally too much for my own good), but when there’s guys around it’s way harder to forget about what I look like. And that’s what I have to do if I’m going to work out. I want to be able to concentrate on how my body is working and what it’s doing, not on whether that guy over there is watching me, and the potential ramifications (whether good or bad) if he is. That is, sometimes it’s appreciated and sometimes it’s creepy, but it’s never easy to ignore.
I like the idea behind Curves, with their workout that’s already planned out and that works all the muscle groups without me having to think about it. I like that it’s a set amount of time per workout, so it’s easy to schedule. I recognize that if I was into serious weight-training/atheletics/etc, it wouldn’t really serve that purpose very well, but I’m not. I just want a regular schedule of exercise that’s fairly easy to make habitual.
I’m not so fond of the huge emphasis they place on losing weight as personally I think our society’s obsession with weight is an incredibly negative force. I don’t think the numbers are necessarily reflective of the state of your health, but I understand that it’s helpful to have some straightforward standard of measurement for the purposes of goal-setting and whatnot. And the enthousiasm & welcominglyness (as it were) is kind of overwhelming, accustomed as I am to my very isolated existence. I’ve never been a team player in any way shape or form, and generally prefer to just be left alone to do my own thing, but in this case it’s almost nice. I think it has to do with the fact that everybody there is working toward the same sort of goals, which allows a sense of community even though I have a hard time imagining circumstances in which I would ever interact with most of these women outside the gym. I suspect the social interaction might even be good for me too, scary as that is!
Well at least somebody bothered to give me an honest answer! Given the insanity of my life these days I’m not likely to write anything that organized any time soon anyways, but the idea will probably simmer away nonetheless, as ideas do.
I’ve read interviews where writers talk about characters who appear, rather than are consciously created, but I’d never experienced it before. I find it mildly disturbing that the first character to come knocking on my door is essentially a serial killer. Makes me wonder what else is lurking down there in my subconscious.
Reminder: never date a man who highly recommends that you read American Psycho, and has read it multiple times himself. Red flag.