"Others have excuses, I have my reasons why..."
I should be reading for my four classes tommorrow, but right now, i just felt the need to write, to let the pressures of my first week back out in words.
I've spent so much money on textbooks that I am dying for my tuition check to come in. Well, not physically, but figuratively anyway.
My class schedule:
MWF:
History of the Reformation
Beginning Arabic II
Intelligence Analysis
TTh:
International Politics of the Middle East
Beginning Arabic II
Middle Eastern Literature
War and the Nation-State
I love my MWF classes, especially the Reformation, which anyone who knows me can completely understand. Plus, the more I learn in Arabic, the more fascinated and engrossed I became in the development of language... I can't WAIT to start reading "Empires of the Word," it just has to wait till I find free time... sigh.
I think I will also like IPME because it's something I really don't know a lot about, but that I'm interested in, and the professor seemed overwhelmingly competant and non-sentimental. Which means, it should be as a IR class should be: objective.
Middle Eastern lit I have to read 8 books for, but they all seem so interesting- only one author of whom I have ever even heard. The first book (which I'm currently reading) is called "In an Antique Land" by an Indian (as in India, not America) anthropologist named Amitav Ghosh. He traveled to Egypt to study records of an Indian (as in India, not America) slave who was taken to Egypt in the 1100's by some Jewish merchants, back when Egypt was still the main shipping route to the East (yes, naive americans, de Gama did not actually "discover" the East, just like Marco Polo wasn't the first to travel the Silk Road, just the first to run his mouth about it...)
Anyway, his anecdotes are fascinating, about the cultural difference between a man who grew up Hindi, in a world and culture which CENTERS upon monotheistic worship and practices. Fascinating stuff, when an anthropologist finally comes to the realization that he himself is just as much studied as studying...
I don't like my professor in War and the Nation-State (a topic which I, of all people, should really enjoy!). Maybe it's my NFness going off, but I just don't like him and I can't put my finger on why yet. I think it has to do with his arrogance, and his dismisal of other branches of learning as unimportant. But I've dealt with egotists often, so I don't understand why he personally should bother me. Maybe I was just in a bad mood...
Anyway, I need to go start in on my copious amounts of reading, so I leave you with a quote:
"You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style." Vladimir Nabokov
I've spent so much money on textbooks that I am dying for my tuition check to come in. Well, not physically, but figuratively anyway.
My class schedule:
MWF:
History of the Reformation
Beginning Arabic II
Intelligence Analysis
TTh:
International Politics of the Middle East
Beginning Arabic II
Middle Eastern Literature
War and the Nation-State
I love my MWF classes, especially the Reformation, which anyone who knows me can completely understand. Plus, the more I learn in Arabic, the more fascinated and engrossed I became in the development of language... I can't WAIT to start reading "Empires of the Word," it just has to wait till I find free time... sigh.
I think I will also like IPME because it's something I really don't know a lot about, but that I'm interested in, and the professor seemed overwhelmingly competant and non-sentimental. Which means, it should be as a IR class should be: objective.
Middle Eastern lit I have to read 8 books for, but they all seem so interesting- only one author of whom I have ever even heard. The first book (which I'm currently reading) is called "In an Antique Land" by an Indian (as in India, not America) anthropologist named Amitav Ghosh. He traveled to Egypt to study records of an Indian (as in India, not America) slave who was taken to Egypt in the 1100's by some Jewish merchants, back when Egypt was still the main shipping route to the East (yes, naive americans, de Gama did not actually "discover" the East, just like Marco Polo wasn't the first to travel the Silk Road, just the first to run his mouth about it...)
Anyway, his anecdotes are fascinating, about the cultural difference between a man who grew up Hindi, in a world and culture which CENTERS upon monotheistic worship and practices. Fascinating stuff, when an anthropologist finally comes to the realization that he himself is just as much studied as studying...
I don't like my professor in War and the Nation-State (a topic which I, of all people, should really enjoy!). Maybe it's my NFness going off, but I just don't like him and I can't put my finger on why yet. I think it has to do with his arrogance, and his dismisal of other branches of learning as unimportant. But I've dealt with egotists often, so I don't understand why he personally should bother me. Maybe I was just in a bad mood...
Anyway, I need to go start in on my copious amounts of reading, so I leave you with a quote:
"You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style." Vladimir Nabokov