(no subject)
Bobby woke me up at 5:30 this morning and made me coffee so that we could stay up and "enjoy as much of the day as possible." It is now 8:00 and I'm on my second cup of coffee, wired as can be, and Bobby? Oh, he's asleep on the couch.
Things have been shitty lately. Terribly terribly shitty. Bobby and I had a much needed wake-up call. Several calls, actually. But life is finally starting to turn back around, proving once again that goodness always manages to rise up out of shit.
School has been interesting this quarter. I love my class on romantic lit. We've had two in-class essays so far. I got a B+ on the first one, which is fine, but I thought I did much better on the 2nd one. I got it back the other day...B+! The funny thing is, I sit in my other class (COMPREHENSION OF TIME!) not understanding anything. I feel so lost in that class and I feel like everyone else is so much smarter than me. Anyway, we had a big essay that I put off writing because I felt so completely overwhelmed. I finally did it the day before, still feeling as though I barely understood what I was talking about. I got the essay back...A-. WTF? And everyone around me got B's and C's. Strange. And yet, I think I have an idea why he thinks my writing is so great.
Ramblings about school and a pic. under the cut...
Since I don't understand much of what he covers in class, I've instead been spending my *time* studying his speech patterns. Academics have a certain way of speaking that makes it sound like they are smarter than the average person (and sure, they probably are) yet much of this is really just adding unnecessary flourishes. For instance, professors LOVE the phrase "if you will." They like to add "if you will" to the ends of sentences. It's their favorite thing to do. They go crazy for it.
But they mostly love making things more difficult than they need to be. Take the sentence, "Time is necessary." Now how about "The temporal finds itself inside the realm of the essential." Slightly different meanings, maybe, but basically the same idea. So this is what I've learned to do in college. In my paper, I wrote, "The cyclical order is found primarily in the natural." I almost put "in nature" but realized that "in the natural" sounded more like something my professor would say, so I sprung for "in the natural." I really think this has at least *something* to do with my good grade. My prof. recognizes my writing as similar to the way he speaks, this elicits good feelings in him, and thus he grades me higher.
I don't know. Is this boring? I find it completely fascinating. Maybe I should be majoring in linguistics or psychology. Anyway, my other class is technical writing, where you have to be as clear and concise as possible. Very much the opposite of academic writing. In the real world, you need technical writing, not academic writing (unless, of course, you plan to pursue academics). In a sense, English majors are being screwed (if you will) by being taught to write academic jargon and not plain ol' simple English. But whatever.
Anyway, as a reward for reading this far, here is a picture of one of our cats. That was the good news I meant to post about a while back. Bobby and I got two kittens. Here is Reynaldo. He was trying to comprehend time with me, but then he fell asleep.
Things have been shitty lately. Terribly terribly shitty. Bobby and I had a much needed wake-up call. Several calls, actually. But life is finally starting to turn back around, proving once again that goodness always manages to rise up out of shit.
School has been interesting this quarter. I love my class on romantic lit. We've had two in-class essays so far. I got a B+ on the first one, which is fine, but I thought I did much better on the 2nd one. I got it back the other day...B+! The funny thing is, I sit in my other class (COMPREHENSION OF TIME!) not understanding anything. I feel so lost in that class and I feel like everyone else is so much smarter than me. Anyway, we had a big essay that I put off writing because I felt so completely overwhelmed. I finally did it the day before, still feeling as though I barely understood what I was talking about. I got the essay back...A-. WTF? And everyone around me got B's and C's. Strange. And yet, I think I have an idea why he thinks my writing is so great.
Ramblings about school and a pic. under the cut...
Since I don't understand much of what he covers in class, I've instead been spending my *time* studying his speech patterns. Academics have a certain way of speaking that makes it sound like they are smarter than the average person (and sure, they probably are) yet much of this is really just adding unnecessary flourishes. For instance, professors LOVE the phrase "if you will." They like to add "if you will" to the ends of sentences. It's their favorite thing to do. They go crazy for it.
But they mostly love making things more difficult than they need to be. Take the sentence, "Time is necessary." Now how about "The temporal finds itself inside the realm of the essential." Slightly different meanings, maybe, but basically the same idea. So this is what I've learned to do in college. In my paper, I wrote, "The cyclical order is found primarily in the natural." I almost put "in nature" but realized that "in the natural" sounded more like something my professor would say, so I sprung for "in the natural." I really think this has at least *something* to do with my good grade. My prof. recognizes my writing as similar to the way he speaks, this elicits good feelings in him, and thus he grades me higher.
I don't know. Is this boring? I find it completely fascinating. Maybe I should be majoring in linguistics or psychology. Anyway, my other class is technical writing, where you have to be as clear and concise as possible. Very much the opposite of academic writing. In the real world, you need technical writing, not academic writing (unless, of course, you plan to pursue academics). In a sense, English majors are being screwed (if you will) by being taught to write academic jargon and not plain ol' simple English. But whatever.
Anyway, as a reward for reading this far, here is a picture of one of our cats. That was the good news I meant to post about a while back. Bobby and I got two kittens. Here is Reynaldo. He was trying to comprehend time with me, but then he fell asleep.