School

[alan_p]

I'm taking it easy my first semester as a grad student, mainly because I need to focus on the new job, which will involve some travel out of town, but also because the tuition is so incredibly expensive. I'm doing a seminar on Jane Austen, which should be a lot of fun, and an Independent Study with my film professor, who's letting me pick whatever topic I want. I really wanted to do an in-depth study of Polanski, but most of his earlier films are Polish and would thus prove quite difficult to obtain. I also considered Mike Leigh, but he really doesn't have enough feature film work yet, and Carl Theodor Dreyer, who was certainly brilliant but whose work is even more obscure, not to mention much older, than Polanksi's. I thought about looking at the recent boom of astonishingly great work from Mexico and Central America (Central Station, Amores Perros, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Maria Full of Grace, The Motorcycle Diaries, etc. - oh my!). But I think I finally settled on David Lean. Good selection of work to write about, most of which is readily available. Plus, he is underappreciated in general, and under-represented in the classroom. I mean, really, am I the only one who could watch Brief Encounter, like, on an endless loop, forever? I can't be!

Anyway, those are my 2 classes for the fall semester. I'm excited about both. I just wish I could quit work and be a full-time grad student with an assistantship, which has been offered and offered to me, and offered again, by more than one professor in the department. Sadly, I have far too much debt to quit working right now, and I'd rather take classes part-time than put all my hopes into a dream of "well maybe someday I'll have everything paid off and can focus completely on school."