I can write a 1200-word entry with no problem, but I cannot fill this box.
I am - of course - feeling much more normal now. I always have to get the first week of classes behind me before I convince myself that none of those pre-quarter dreams about obstacle-course classroom layouts and impossible assignments and so on will be coming true this time around. (I'd be worried except that Virginia assures me she also had those dreams.)
Some observations: the professor for Monday's class makes this annoying clicking sound before about 50% of his comments. The impression I get is that the inside of his mouth is incredibly small (he also has no observable chin), possibly as a result of inwardly-oriented fat cheeks. I have decided to sit slightly farther away from him next meeting, if possible. Meanwhile I suffer for my ignorance: I hadn't looked at the books (available at the bookstore, believe it or not) before we doled out presentation weeks, and so mine is Radical Enlightenment, which is 6x10x2, or 720 pages plus bibliography. Plus it seems to be about philosophy. Yay. On the plus side, it's due Jan. 24, so I won't have to stare at it for long. Better (?) still, the final paper for that class is a kind of essay on one of two provided questions, which we're free to answer based only on the course readings. Since I don't technically give a damn about the 17th century, I'm glad to hear it.
Wednesday was the dreaded 570, which got a lot less dreaded pretty quickly. True, it's a huge class (17 people!) and there was plenty of first-day silence to go around... But our four-page proposals aren't due until Feb. 2 (instead of Jan. 19) (which gave me the power I needed finally to contact the relevant bibliographers down at the library. I am behind, in other words, but there is still hope). And in person the professor doesn't have as much of the annoying prissy quality that so irked me in his e-mails. He's a very soft-spoken guy, new to professordom, and for those of you in the know I'll point out that he has verrrrry long thin fingers. The point is that he may in fact not be an ass, which would be a huge relief: professors' opinions are important to me, and it's really exhausting to dislike them. Now I just need to find a m-fing topic and get on with my life.
I will mention here that Andreanna sat next to me and of course the topic turned to last quarter's African class. She got a B+! What the hell? Her draft blew my draft - all our drafts - right out of the water, and her own advisor gives her a B+? In graduate-speak that's a gentleman's C or something. She was even more affronted to hear I got an A, and rightly so. It struck me as unjustified even before I heard her grade, but now I'm just flabbergasted. The only thing I can figure is that Glassman just shook his head over mine like, 'Piece-of-shit Europeanists can't handle the truth' and then patted my head with a pretty little A. Weird. On the plus side (I described the semi-historical fiction I read with "The names are made up, but the problems are real") she came up with a "Square One"/MathNet reference. I don't think you can overestimate that program's impact on American kids of a certain degree of nerdiness.
Thursday was China. Gay hotness was looking pretty sleepy, but he more or less reanimated once class got going. There are three of us in there (plus professor), including a 3rd-year Europeanist (I think), a cross-department drama kid who is also from Hong Kong and I think a second year, and me. The structure of this particular meeting was ghetto-easy, in that the questions he was asking were answerable from the text, provided you'd read it (which I had only hours before). I will however fault him for inserting "you know" (as an "umm" substitute) as many as three times per sentence.
So I had time, as so often, to make a few extra notes. Mei (from Hong Kong) takes notes on graph paper, and yet her lines of text still are not true; she loses major altitude - up to an entire square! - towards the end. Of course I forgive her entirely, because she mixes characters into whatever she writes, so it comes out "Interpretations of [the Boxer Rebellion] during [the Cultural Revolution]". I don't feel too bad about watching her write because she generally copies English spellings and what-have-you off my notes, which makes perfect sense. I find it very hard to write down words that are being spelled to me in English, and nearly impossible in other languages. The professor has a copy of Bridget Jones's Diary on his bookshelves, next to all the historical tomes. (Mei upon surveying the shelves: "Peter, you read Chinese?" Prof. Carroll: "Well, yes; otherwise I wouldn't have much to do.") And he had a humorous way of sticking "or rebellion" after every mention of the Boxer Uprising that put me in mind of one particular MathNet episode, the marvelous "The Brothers KAramazov... or KaraMAzov". I pity the fool who missed out on that program.
Climatically the big news is of course SNOW. With the wind it's hard to estimate amounts; I'd probably put it at 4" with the understanding that drifts hit 9-12". Snowplows (and the little brush-tractors that clear sidewalks) piled up 2-5' heaps at various places, including sometimes, say, where the sidewalk hit the crosswalk. Despite a close call or two, I'm yet to fall; of course I'm also yet to throw a snowball. On a very related note, I wish you were here, dear reader. I wish you were ALL here.... bwahahahahaha.
Wednesday I met Mei on campus to get Thursday's book, and then with the 30 minutes left before 570 I took a walk out to the lakeshore. That was some cold shit (alas for my waterproof jacket, which is in the mail). I wound up standing in the lee of a transformer box and admiring how the wind shot snow along like sand. There were definite dunes/sand rivers flowing down the hill, over the sidewalk and off the rocks into the water. Meanwhile the surf was up in a gray steely way. The overall impression, had I been a Puritan somehow landing in Evanston, would be a strong desire to hightail it back to England and see if I could work something out with my oppressors. Particularly if hot tea were involved. Luckily our ancestors were grim-faced rejects who didn't know a good thing when they saw it, and here we are.
Plans for today include - stunningly - reading a book. If that gets old, I've got some articles. And if those articles don't inspire, I believe I have some brownie mix about.
Some observations: the professor for Monday's class makes this annoying clicking sound before about 50% of his comments. The impression I get is that the inside of his mouth is incredibly small (he also has no observable chin), possibly as a result of inwardly-oriented fat cheeks. I have decided to sit slightly farther away from him next meeting, if possible. Meanwhile I suffer for my ignorance: I hadn't looked at the books (available at the bookstore, believe it or not) before we doled out presentation weeks, and so mine is Radical Enlightenment, which is 6x10x2, or 720 pages plus bibliography. Plus it seems to be about philosophy. Yay. On the plus side, it's due Jan. 24, so I won't have to stare at it for long. Better (?) still, the final paper for that class is a kind of essay on one of two provided questions, which we're free to answer based only on the course readings. Since I don't technically give a damn about the 17th century, I'm glad to hear it.
Wednesday was the dreaded 570, which got a lot less dreaded pretty quickly. True, it's a huge class (17 people!) and there was plenty of first-day silence to go around... But our four-page proposals aren't due until Feb. 2 (instead of Jan. 19) (which gave me the power I needed finally to contact the relevant bibliographers down at the library. I am behind, in other words, but there is still hope). And in person the professor doesn't have as much of the annoying prissy quality that so irked me in his e-mails. He's a very soft-spoken guy, new to professordom, and for those of you in the know I'll point out that he has verrrrry long thin fingers. The point is that he may in fact not be an ass, which would be a huge relief: professors' opinions are important to me, and it's really exhausting to dislike them. Now I just need to find a m-fing topic and get on with my life.
I will mention here that Andreanna sat next to me and of course the topic turned to last quarter's African class. She got a B+! What the hell? Her draft blew my draft - all our drafts - right out of the water, and her own advisor gives her a B+? In graduate-speak that's a gentleman's C or something. She was even more affronted to hear I got an A, and rightly so. It struck me as unjustified even before I heard her grade, but now I'm just flabbergasted. The only thing I can figure is that Glassman just shook his head over mine like, 'Piece-of-shit Europeanists can't handle the truth' and then patted my head with a pretty little A. Weird. On the plus side (I described the semi-historical fiction I read with "The names are made up, but the problems are real") she came up with a "Square One"/MathNet reference. I don't think you can overestimate that program's impact on American kids of a certain degree of nerdiness.
Thursday was China. Gay hotness was looking pretty sleepy, but he more or less reanimated once class got going. There are three of us in there (plus professor), including a 3rd-year Europeanist (I think), a cross-department drama kid who is also from Hong Kong and I think a second year, and me. The structure of this particular meeting was ghetto-easy, in that the questions he was asking were answerable from the text, provided you'd read it (which I had only hours before). I will however fault him for inserting "you know" (as an "umm" substitute) as many as three times per sentence.
So I had time, as so often, to make a few extra notes. Mei (from Hong Kong) takes notes on graph paper, and yet her lines of text still are not true; she loses major altitude - up to an entire square! - towards the end. Of course I forgive her entirely, because she mixes characters into whatever she writes, so it comes out "Interpretations of [the Boxer Rebellion] during [the Cultural Revolution]". I don't feel too bad about watching her write because she generally copies English spellings and what-have-you off my notes, which makes perfect sense. I find it very hard to write down words that are being spelled to me in English, and nearly impossible in other languages. The professor has a copy of Bridget Jones's Diary on his bookshelves, next to all the historical tomes. (Mei upon surveying the shelves: "Peter, you read Chinese?" Prof. Carroll: "Well, yes; otherwise I wouldn't have much to do.") And he had a humorous way of sticking "or rebellion" after every mention of the Boxer Uprising that put me in mind of one particular MathNet episode, the marvelous "The Brothers KAramazov... or KaraMAzov". I pity the fool who missed out on that program.
Climatically the big news is of course SNOW. With the wind it's hard to estimate amounts; I'd probably put it at 4" with the understanding that drifts hit 9-12". Snowplows (and the little brush-tractors that clear sidewalks) piled up 2-5' heaps at various places, including sometimes, say, where the sidewalk hit the crosswalk. Despite a close call or two, I'm yet to fall; of course I'm also yet to throw a snowball. On a very related note, I wish you were here, dear reader. I wish you were ALL here.... bwahahahahaha.
Wednesday I met Mei on campus to get Thursday's book, and then with the 30 minutes left before 570 I took a walk out to the lakeshore. That was some cold shit (alas for my waterproof jacket, which is in the mail). I wound up standing in the lee of a transformer box and admiring how the wind shot snow along like sand. There were definite dunes/sand rivers flowing down the hill, over the sidewalk and off the rocks into the water. Meanwhile the surf was up in a gray steely way. The overall impression, had I been a Puritan somehow landing in Evanston, would be a strong desire to hightail it back to England and see if I could work something out with my oppressors. Particularly if hot tea were involved. Luckily our ancestors were grim-faced rejects who didn't know a good thing when they saw it, and here we are.
Plans for today include - stunningly - reading a book. If that gets old, I've got some articles. And if those articles don't inspire, I believe I have some brownie mix about.