(no subject)
I survived the nineteenth century and its political ideologies today. I wound up finding unexpected help by whining about my difficult lot on erstwhile British advisor's facebook. He suggested I run class as a debate, and by that point I was just desperate enough to consider his advice. What I actually ended up doing was offering each of my sections a no-penalty choice between a debate or a compare-and-contrast chart on the board. Only one of my sections went for the debate (and they weren't really into it and boy do I need to work on my debate-organizing skills), but I think the gambit worked as far as reconciling the rest of them to the nuts-and-bolts boardwork. So it actually didn't completely suck.
I did, however, accidentally tell my 10:00 that if they didn't feel like handing in papers in the couple of weeks leading up to my comps (they have to write four out of twelve over the semester), that would be fine with me. That was not the way I was supposed to spin that one, dammit.
Anyway, I hardly got any sleep last night. Bizarrely, that usually helps my teaching - I think it lowers my inhibitions just enough. Unfortunately, it also means that I'm even more shattered than usual this evening. I've been poking in a non-committal fashion at doing work ever since I finished, but not much has happened yet. Given comps doom, this is bad. Napping this afternoon might have helped, except that I didn't nap because it took me three hours to summon the energy to actually come home.
Still, I've managed a little bit of La Bretagne Féodale, and a little bit of Natalie Zemon Davis Society and Culture in Early Modern France. Have I mentioned that Natalie Zemon Davis is a genius and a goddess among historians and also that she was prof G's graduate advisor, and is therefore my scholarly great-aunt? She is, in any case, all of the above.
Ooh, and while I'm at the academic glee, I should mention that I'm also working on Kristen Neuschel, Word of Honor: Interpreting Noble Culture in Sixteenth-Century France. And it has the best preface ever. She starts her preface with the Duc de Condé and the Duc de Guise getting into bed together smack in the middle of the Wars of Religion, while one was the prisoner of the other.
I know the whole point of the was to emphasize how different noble culture was at the time from anything that makes sense to us now. And that makes my instant donning of my slash goggles completely inappropriate.
But so satisfying.
Now, to completely change tacks (because I'm tired and rambly), one of the reasons I'm tired is because I had a rather creepy and probably anxiety-induced dream overnight - I dreamed I fell down some stairs at a conference or something like it. For a while I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me, except that I was lying in a heap on the floor and knew I couldn't get up. Whoever I was with couldn't tell either, or thought there was nothing wrong. I think what I ended up deciding was that I'd broken my nose, when it started bleeding all over the place. Then I woke up and realized it was a dream, but it was definitely made creepier by the fact that I hadn't realized I was asleep until I woke up.
On the whole, I think I preferred the one where I arrived to campus only to have advisor R inform me that I was taking my comps that day.
I did, however, accidentally tell my 10:00 that if they didn't feel like handing in papers in the couple of weeks leading up to my comps (they have to write four out of twelve over the semester), that would be fine with me. That was not the way I was supposed to spin that one, dammit.
Anyway, I hardly got any sleep last night. Bizarrely, that usually helps my teaching - I think it lowers my inhibitions just enough. Unfortunately, it also means that I'm even more shattered than usual this evening. I've been poking in a non-committal fashion at doing work ever since I finished, but not much has happened yet. Given comps doom, this is bad. Napping this afternoon might have helped, except that I didn't nap because it took me three hours to summon the energy to actually come home.
Still, I've managed a little bit of La Bretagne Féodale, and a little bit of Natalie Zemon Davis Society and Culture in Early Modern France. Have I mentioned that Natalie Zemon Davis is a genius and a goddess among historians and also that she was prof G's graduate advisor, and is therefore my scholarly great-aunt? She is, in any case, all of the above.
Ooh, and while I'm at the academic glee, I should mention that I'm also working on Kristen Neuschel, Word of Honor: Interpreting Noble Culture in Sixteenth-Century France. And it has the best preface ever. She starts her preface with the Duc de Condé and the Duc de Guise getting into bed together smack in the middle of the Wars of Religion, while one was the prisoner of the other.
I know the whole point of the was to emphasize how different noble culture was at the time from anything that makes sense to us now. And that makes my instant donning of my slash goggles completely inappropriate.
But so satisfying.
Now, to completely change tacks (because I'm tired and rambly), one of the reasons I'm tired is because I had a rather creepy and probably anxiety-induced dream overnight - I dreamed I fell down some stairs at a conference or something like it. For a while I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me, except that I was lying in a heap on the floor and knew I couldn't get up. Whoever I was with couldn't tell either, or thought there was nothing wrong. I think what I ended up deciding was that I'd broken my nose, when it started bleeding all over the place. Then I woke up and realized it was a dream, but it was definitely made creepier by the fact that I hadn't realized I was asleep until I woke up.
On the whole, I think I preferred the one where I arrived to campus only to have advisor R inform me that I was taking my comps that day.