The autumn wind has blown on the fields of Miyagino
Yesterday I had tea with the lecturer I'd asked to get out of the group from. She's not at all bad looking, quite good looking in fact. She's young enough to almost make me envious of her teaching position.
Anyway, that's not the whole point. The point is rather that we had a talk about the group and why I didn't cope with it. Oddly enough, the discussion revealed both that I'm brilliant and that I have a tendency to over-react and read too much into everything! You'd usually expect one but not both. It turns out that when people ask me if I've read the book about whatever theory I'm explaining, the correct way to react would be to say either yes or no, and not to wonder which the person asking the question is questioning, my ability to read or my ability to understand.
Also, in the future, when dealing with people who have less expertise than I do, I might try and take "what do you mean" as an actual question instead of an accusation of making no sense. As she pointed out, I'm way ahead of everyone else who was in the group, so what I say might actually prove difficult to understand.
After we got that sorted out, we went into the possible themes for the essay I'll be writing instead of the group work. This discussion of us finishing each others sentences that waded from orientalism to cherry blossoms to aesthetics to constructionism to nationalism among other things kind of went somewhere in proving that I'm rather brilliant.
She also praised me for my analytical mind.
So as not to make this entry all about me, today I went to the Japanese section of the uni Art History library. It's hidden way out of sight, and you have to walk up scary stairs, through the deserted journal reading room that always looks as if all the people browsing through journals had suddenly disappeared into the void. Then open the door to a half-lit scary staircase, go up the stairs, and behind the door is the Japanese section, among other sections. The lights are always off, and the room itself is a long and narrow lenght of corridor, so the little light leaking in from the half-lit staircase makes it look like a bottomless pit.
I always want to scream after I press the light switch, because I'm scared and the lights take forever to go on. The forever here is subjective, it probably takes like a second and a half. Even after the lights finally go on one by one, very scarily, I'm pretty vary, since against logic I expect someone to be sitting there.
I'm pretty sure the place is haunted. Then again, who'd go to the trouble of haunting a place like that. Probably some Art History major, who tried to write his masters thesis about whatever it is that I've been trying to find information on, an object a character in the manga I'm translating is fingering. He probably learned, as I have, that books about japanese sculpture are about sacral statues or netsuke. He should've soothed himself with some erotic woodblock prints. Every time I go there, I devote a moment to looking them over.
Maybe that's what's so scary about going there, maybe I always expect to see the ghost of the Japanese section jacking off to some shunga.
Anyway, that's not the whole point. The point is rather that we had a talk about the group and why I didn't cope with it. Oddly enough, the discussion revealed both that I'm brilliant and that I have a tendency to over-react and read too much into everything! You'd usually expect one but not both. It turns out that when people ask me if I've read the book about whatever theory I'm explaining, the correct way to react would be to say either yes or no, and not to wonder which the person asking the question is questioning, my ability to read or my ability to understand.
Also, in the future, when dealing with people who have less expertise than I do, I might try and take "what do you mean" as an actual question instead of an accusation of making no sense. As she pointed out, I'm way ahead of everyone else who was in the group, so what I say might actually prove difficult to understand.
After we got that sorted out, we went into the possible themes for the essay I'll be writing instead of the group work. This discussion of us finishing each others sentences that waded from orientalism to cherry blossoms to aesthetics to constructionism to nationalism among other things kind of went somewhere in proving that I'm rather brilliant.
She also praised me for my analytical mind.
So as not to make this entry all about me, today I went to the Japanese section of the uni Art History library. It's hidden way out of sight, and you have to walk up scary stairs, through the deserted journal reading room that always looks as if all the people browsing through journals had suddenly disappeared into the void. Then open the door to a half-lit scary staircase, go up the stairs, and behind the door is the Japanese section, among other sections. The lights are always off, and the room itself is a long and narrow lenght of corridor, so the little light leaking in from the half-lit staircase makes it look like a bottomless pit.
I always want to scream after I press the light switch, because I'm scared and the lights take forever to go on. The forever here is subjective, it probably takes like a second and a half. Even after the lights finally go on one by one, very scarily, I'm pretty vary, since against logic I expect someone to be sitting there.
I'm pretty sure the place is haunted. Then again, who'd go to the trouble of haunting a place like that. Probably some Art History major, who tried to write his masters thesis about whatever it is that I've been trying to find information on, an object a character in the manga I'm translating is fingering. He probably learned, as I have, that books about japanese sculpture are about sacral statues or netsuke. He should've soothed himself with some erotic woodblock prints. Every time I go there, I devote a moment to looking them over.
Maybe that's what's so scary about going there, maybe I always expect to see the ghost of the Japanese section jacking off to some shunga.