Well, today grew in its unfolding, from very inauspicious beginnings. My poor iPhone began the morning running sluggishly and making alarming sad hard drive noises, and I began the morning in a mighty panic that in content was about (what else) The Fellowship but in origin was more about having to lead introductory discussion sections today. I ( Read more... )

There. My comps are over and I've passed them with distinction ( Read more... )

I just sent off the first draft of my dissertation proposal. The topic and significance section, where I talk about what it's going to be all about, is completely half-baked ( Read more... )

Whoa. I just added it all up and discovered that so far, my preparation for comps has included approximately 20 000 words of writeups. For comparative purposes, my senior thesis was a very modest 12 995 words. And I'm not done ( Read more... )

And as if yesterday's stress wasn't enough added stress, now cubicle-mate and fellow TA Jessey has some kind of death flu. Which has worsened dramatically since she dragged herself in to campus today, as her boyfriend just called to tell me ( Read more... )

It's now my mom's birthday, or at least it is in this timezone. So happy birthday, Ma!

In other news, I bring you marginalia in the form of a post-it note I found stuck inside the front cover of my copy of Natalie Zemon Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France. I can't for the life of me remember the context in which I wrote it down, ( Read more... )

So, today I have made a new reading list of all the things I'm ideally (by which I mean in my dreams) going to get through in this last week before my comps, which I did this morning instead of working on my dissertation proposal ( Read more... )

I attempted to read a book for comps today that was a hard-core postcolonial analysis of the Arthurian tradition (Michelle Warren, History on the Edge: Excalibur and the Borders of Britain, 1100-1300, if you must know). I now feel very small. Meep. It's the first book I can remember having to put down without reading it, in the certainty that I ( Read more... )

I read, therefore I live. I've just finished Kristen Lee Over's Kingship, Conquest, and Patria: Literary and Cultural Identities in Medieval French and Welsh Arthurian Romance. It was actually more exciting than it sounds, although it's left me pondering the applicability of postcolonialist theory to the middle ages ( Read more... )

Me this morning: Gnuuuuuuuh, get up this morning whaaaaat? YAAAAAAWN I need a coffee chaser for my coffee. Siiiiiigh medieval French romance. Procrastinate procrastinate. I wonder if there's any food lurking around the department. Groooooan, why is my next book at the bottom of my biggest and most structually-unsound stack of books? Eep, ( Read more... )