(no subject)
So I have made a New Semester's Resolution to post at least once a week. So this here being Saturday, here we are.
So this is my second semester as a Real Live Grad Student, as opposed to a Poser Grad Student of Non-Degree-Seeking status, in which I pretend to be cool until the professor discovers I don't have a mailbox in the grad lounge and therefore am not a Real Grad Student. (Also it took me until now to *find* the grad lounge.) At some point soon I will have to get an Advisor. And a Thesis. Oh dear.
So this semester I have to be on campus five days a week, because the sole useful Linguistics class is Mon-Wed, my Latin class in the classics department is Mon-Wed-Fri, and my English class is Tues-Thurs. We will see how this goes with my work schedule (am spending the last of my paid vacation time this week before it expires, and next week we will have to see whether I can make it from class to work without being late for anything). Also it involves a lot of driving, and may also involve a lot of being dropped off at the light rail station. But the light rail is nifty, and I have a free student pass and an iPod, and it involves about the same amount of walking as driving to school does.
I am not sure how many things I am supposed to say about myself.
1. I got into linguistics because I wanted to learn some of Tolkien's Elvish. I am still not sure whether this could be made into something useful (degree-wise OR career-wise), but several students in the linguistics department know me as "the elvish girl." Did you guys know there are academic journals of Elvish language studies?
2. In the mornings when I wake up, my cat jumps up onto the bed and pokes at the covers until I put my knees up to make a little tent for him and he sits under there for hours. Sometimes I fall asleep again like that, and he keeps my toes warm.
3. I deal with things I don't want to deal with by ignoring them until they go away. This includes everything from emails from parents (I don't get the point of that: I live with my parents, I see them ten times a day, and if I wait for an hour they will say the same thing at the dinner table anyway) to grad school applications. Sometimes going away involves someone else doing it for me, and sometimes it involves letting the deadline pass and missing out on whatever. Obvs. this is not the best method of dealing with things.
4. On the other hand, it has led me to discover that if you put Gmail as the default email program for your Firefox, you can type "mailto:whatever" (no quotes) into the address bar, and it will take you to the Compose Mail page without ever having to acknowledge the fact that there are 23986392 unread emails waiting in the inbox, just as if you had clicked on an email link.
5. I can't think of anything interesting to say. And that's why I got out of the habit of updating this journal so easily.
6. Oh, wait! Yay Obama!
That is all. Except that it is spring here, in the seventies and sunny most of the week, and all y'all haters are jealous.
So this is my second semester as a Real Live Grad Student, as opposed to a Poser Grad Student of Non-Degree-Seeking status, in which I pretend to be cool until the professor discovers I don't have a mailbox in the grad lounge and therefore am not a Real Grad Student. (Also it took me until now to *find* the grad lounge.) At some point soon I will have to get an Advisor. And a Thesis. Oh dear.
So this semester I have to be on campus five days a week, because the sole useful Linguistics class is Mon-Wed, my Latin class in the classics department is Mon-Wed-Fri, and my English class is Tues-Thurs. We will see how this goes with my work schedule (am spending the last of my paid vacation time this week before it expires, and next week we will have to see whether I can make it from class to work without being late for anything). Also it involves a lot of driving, and may also involve a lot of being dropped off at the light rail station. But the light rail is nifty, and I have a free student pass and an iPod, and it involves about the same amount of walking as driving to school does.
- Syntax: I get the impression that only about a third of the class has any interest in this sort of highly abstract thing, and we are all just taking it to fulfill the requirement. This is not helped by the fact that the professor is young and slightly nervous, not very confidence-inspiring, and has assigned us an online textbook (not like a subscription thing, or login through the library database, but some professor's webpage-textbook that is Free to the Internets, also not exactly confidence-inspiring). So we will see how that goes.
- Medieval Latin: I couldn't tell from the course description, but it turns out that the class *does* consist entirely of translation. I have not had any formal Latin since high school *gulp* almost seven years ago, with the exception of Latin Palaeography last semester, which was limited to "is this a word?" So in this class I will pretend that it doesn't take me two hours to translate ten lines, and hope I get better as the semester goes on. Also there is a dog in this class. Some sort of service dog, with a vest, and a patch that says "don't pet me, I'm working," but I have no idea what the dog does, as his (her?) owner is certainly not blind.
- Medieval Literary Theory: There are only five people in this class, so everyone is going to notice if someone doesn't do the reading. My dad doesn't believe that this is a real class worth learning, but he is an electrical engineer so what does he know. It looks to be very interesting, and has involved me buying another Chaucer. It is a Penguin edition, so when you look at the cover picture and the price online, you say "Man, I hope they didn't take out all the naughty bits," but when you get it at the bookstore it is Penguin-sized, but doorstop-thick. With footnotes and everything. The main text for the class was $125 -- shyeah, let's go Amazon Marketplace.
I am not sure how many things I am supposed to say about myself.
1. I got into linguistics because I wanted to learn some of Tolkien's Elvish. I am still not sure whether this could be made into something useful (degree-wise OR career-wise), but several students in the linguistics department know me as "the elvish girl." Did you guys know there are academic journals of Elvish language studies?
2. In the mornings when I wake up, my cat jumps up onto the bed and pokes at the covers until I put my knees up to make a little tent for him and he sits under there for hours. Sometimes I fall asleep again like that, and he keeps my toes warm.
3. I deal with things I don't want to deal with by ignoring them until they go away. This includes everything from emails from parents (I don't get the point of that: I live with my parents, I see them ten times a day, and if I wait for an hour they will say the same thing at the dinner table anyway) to grad school applications. Sometimes going away involves someone else doing it for me, and sometimes it involves letting the deadline pass and missing out on whatever. Obvs. this is not the best method of dealing with things.
4. On the other hand, it has led me to discover that if you put Gmail as the default email program for your Firefox, you can type "mailto:whatever" (no quotes) into the address bar, and it will take you to the Compose Mail page without ever having to acknowledge the fact that there are 23986392 unread emails waiting in the inbox, just as if you had clicked on an email link.
5. I can't think of anything interesting to say. And that's why I got out of the habit of updating this journal so easily.
6. Oh, wait! Yay Obama!
That is all. Except that it is spring here, in the seventies and sunny most of the week, and all y'all haters are jealous.