merryweather post pavilion
The Long Midterm Exam Season of 2009 was officially declared concluded yesterday around 10 a.m., tho admittedly it ended a few days back. Indeed, there is an exam scheduled for a few hours from now, but I shan't be taking it; it is a partial (therefore, optional) midterm, and after hours of dedicated, pre-dawn studying yesterday, I realized that not only was I incapable of preparing myself to adequately prepared to take it at this point in time, I was also just deeply uninterested in undergoing such preparation. The fact of the matter, kids, is that I have been studying since, approximately, 9 p.m. of Monday, 19 January. After a full month of unending exams, a barrage that averaged one every week, and a preparation schedule which kept me in a full nocturnal state for well over a fortnight...I am, frankly, exhausted. Being, therefore, physically and mentally unable to even flirt with the prospect of another night of rising round midnight and annotating books or lectures until well past sunrise, I have, for the first time in my university career, forsaken the option of taking an exam in order to take it much later (June, in fact - that's the officially sanctioned exam date) - and, frankly, now sitting on my couch bathed in a patch of sunlight that's falling in from the two massive, wide-open windows here in my living room on the Avenida de la Reina Victoria, listening to a live stream of the best of 1920's and 30's music intermixed with the sound of traffic, the twittering of birds and the random words that drift upwards from the conversations of the people on the sidewalk on flight below...I am very happy with my decision. I needed to be free, and it is a good time to be free, even if that freedom has arrived a few days later than it was possible (my last formal exam having been, therefore, last Thursday) and my efforts at studying over the past few days have been the educational equivalent of Jackson's misguided assault on New Orleans (which occurred on 8 January 1815, the general being unaware of the fact that peace had been declared on Christmas Eve of the year before - in Ghent).
So, what have we taken from this long exam period?
- Animal Collective's Merryweather Post Pavillion has some really fantastic songs on it, and many of these provided the soundtrack to the past month (in particular, Brother Song, whose "OPEN UP YOUR / open up your / OPEN UP YOUR / open up your / OPEN UP YOUR / open up your / OPEN UP YOUR THROAT" was just the right sort of upbeat one needs when waking up in the middle of the night and needing to rouse strength to fight the urge to go back to bed and instead take the shower and make the coffee [that shan't be consumed] and annotate however many books / chapters / sections / pages need to be studied to fill the quota for that night.
- Despite my best efforts, I am always a day behind in studying, and I arrive to every exam having studied every section individually, but lacking the extra day that would have been ideal to go over all of them as a whole and actually understand the test material.
- I had a farm in Africa at the foot of Ngong Hills.
- The 24-hour library is different each year. The first year it was a complete bacchanal with zero supervision. Last year it was a festival of people on their laptops. This year laptops were banned, a security guard was stationed in every room whilst another patrolled the hallways, we were mostly restricted to the actual library (rather than several floors of the building, in randomly selected classrooms), and the cleaning staff showed up way earlier than expected. Despite that, some little elements are always the same: some people will always be drunk, someone will always be smoking out in the bathroom, and by sunrise the place has mainly cleared out. This year I made friends with both the cleaning ladies and the guards (after two weeks of showing up every single night, it would have been positively rude had I not). I also stayed later than ever before, one night being there fully from 11 p.m. until 10 a.m. of the following morning.
- People can be assholes. The university library will appear full until you realize that half the spots are occupied by people who have shown up, left their folders to claim a spot, and then taken off to go hang out with friends. These people will ultimately not study, but they will get some perverse sensation of study (akin to, I suppose, my sensation of being caffeinated just from making coffee) just by going through an initial motion of study via the selection of a study spot. These people (generally girls with obnoxious, upper-class accents who giggle together and fail alot of classes) should be shot; they're stopping people who actually need to get shit done from getting their shit done.
- People can be saints. There is atleast one exam this season that I had no business passing. By the grace of the professor being a fucking saint, tho, I did. Blesséd be Castañares-Burcio.
- People can just be inexplicable and amusing. Firstly, we have dear Lourdes Viñuesa, professor of Public Opinion. At the exam she announced that tho she wished to put the grades up online, there had been complaints last year that this was too public. In response to those concerns, she instead opted for what she apparently considered to be a more private method: posting the grades, with snarky comments, on printed sheets with full names inside a locked, glass-encased bulletin board outside of class (to be exhibited there until the end of the year, when the cleaning staff clears them out). So much for discretion.
- Meanwhile, my Goya professor-lady, who was notable as a professor only insofar as her consistent neglect to attend class throughout the entirety of the semester, managed to forget to put up my grade on the board of grades, thus leaving me utterly confused as to whether I had passed or failed for several weeks. I would have written her an e-mail, but as they told me in her department's office, "Oh, she's old - she doesn't have a computer, much less e-mail." I left her a note in her mailbox, begging for some sort of communication. Three weeks later, it's in - Notable, which is really quite great for an art exam in which I did not know a single one of the paintings.
- I'm not kidding on that note - I really didn't know any of the paintings on the test. By which I mean, not only did I not know the titles, I also just completely did not recognize them - which is hard when we're talking about Goya and every single one of his paintings is at the Prado, so I have to have atleast seen them at some point. Apparently not. I was left, therefore, to trusty ingenuity (common sense) and the general culture that has gotten me through so many exams (and other such situations requiring bullshittery). The painting shown features Christ and a cross? "Christ, Crucified." The technique looks sloppy. "Evidently from Goya's later period, post 1820, given the obvious romantic elements suggested by the loose brushmarks and emotional colouring." You can't make this shit up. (Until you do.)
- Also amusing: several professors are apparently in love with me.
- Generally awesome: I passed every exam (or, atleast, all that I've found out about - there's still one pending, but the professor already told us that she's a slow reader, so to not expect the grades at any point before mid-April), a couple with distinction. This is lovely.
- If I feel I have to do something but don't want to do it, rather than doing something else I wil simply not do anything at all. This is a horrible thing, as it's basically the human equivalent of a pinball machine going into 'tilt'. I simply cannot process - I am unwilling to do one thing, but feel too guilty to do anything else. Result: I lie on the couch all day and visit The New York Times' webpage some 14,000 times.
- In between exams I watched a few movies, evicted a flatmate, got into a nearly-physical fight with a middle-aged Mexican, cooked some interesting stuff, went to a few good exhibitions, took some walks, got into some arguments, arranged to make a whirlwind visit to the States in a few weeks, did some laundry and drew some things. I also started running again, which made me happy, and I attended a fun pillow-fight. Oh yeah, and I some point I wrote a really long rant about hipsters.
- The Spanish Civil War is the coolest thing ever. Ever. As is my Spanish Civil War professor. As was, even, his test, which was given in levels, which one had to choose before recieving the questions: Level A = lowest level, questions based solely on Paul Preston's The Spanish Civil War, top possible grade of 'Aprobado'; Level B = middle level, questions based solely on Julio Aróstegui´s ¿Por qué el 18 de julio...y después?, top possible grade of 'Notable'; Level C = top level, questions based on class lectures, Julio Aróstegui´s ¿Por qué el 18 de julio...y después? + knowledge inferred from any books mentioned in class (to be consulted on one's own discretion), top possible grade of 'Sobresaliente'. For some reason, I just think that's super-cool - you know what you're getting from the beginning, I guess? Or rather, you're being direct about your preparation from the start.
- Listening to the same exact playlist every night can be exhausting. Especially if it's largely Gershwin symphonies and some mild Debussy mixed with Mozart´s Requiem. There are also only so many times that one can listed to Vivaldi´s Four Seasons before one´s ears begin to bleed.
- I really hated Slumdog Millionaire. Nick and Norah´s Infinite Playlist was expectably shit. Milk was alright. Surprisingly, I rather enjoyed Benjamin Button. I think the fact that World War I was featured and that Tilda Swinton was in it kind of inevitably biased me majorly in favor of it, tho.
- I actually don´t really like any of the bands listed on the graphic that opens this entry (by which I mean Anthony and Johnsons, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy or Morrissey). I do agree with the asterisk on the bottom. And I think the colours are pretty.
All for now; time for lunch and a stiff afternoon drink followed by a siesta.
Long live the post-Long Midterm Exam Season of 2009 period.