working

Where have I been, you ask?

I've been working hard and with a fair amount of focus and direction. Hope I can keep that up. Some days I don’t even want to go to bed because I’m so involved in what I’m doing. I have a lot of reading this term and it’s all interesting.

The ancient lady prof continues to ramble and dodder her way around ancient Greece, but all my other classes are good. And even in that class I've decided to write my paper on Boudicca, so I’m doing some interesting reading on that too.

This week for my climate change class we have to do a group presentation. Why do profs even bother tormenting students with this type of thing? Lordy, lordy, I’ve ended up in a group with two other girls that are maybe the least informed pair I've ever met. One is a phys ed major so she has some excuse, but the other is a geog minor who appears to know not the smallest thing about geography, but who states airily that she loves it and is going to go on to do a masters in it. Our project is about the prairies.

Her: What do you have in Alberta? You have, like, mountains, right?

Me: What exactly do they teach you about geography in school?

I know, snippy. But I’d had more than enough of her by that point.

Really they just wanted to talk about how hard their lives were and how many classes they are taking and how hard they work. I left.

feminism ruins everything, part II: well pardon me

Oh, oh, I have been informed that Semonides' poem "On Women" is just a joke. Oh don't worry, I wasn't informed of this directly to my face - it was just emphasized in passing in the 'last class review' portion of the class. Just jokes. You know I didn't get that because I'm one of those humourless feminists. Of course, slotting women into types by the most stereotyped bad characteristics of various animals is all in such lighthearted jest that normal people can't help but laugh along.

Another bulletin from the ancient world: Sappho liked women.

an over-long entry

This is about the beginning of the end and how feminism ruins everything.

So it's the end of the first week of my last term. I find it hard to believe that I have gotten to this place. I have probably said before that it feels so strange when such a long term goal becomes an extremely short term goal. I don't feel as lost about it as I did because I have plans and alternative plans and alternative, alternative plans - so that's all right, O Best Beloved.

I think the term will be better than last - at least in terms of work load. I spent a good chunk of this afternoon though trying frantically (and fruitlessly) to find a class to transfer into because I already have a prof that I want to punch right in the face - which is never a good sign only a week into the term.

I am taking a class on Women in the Ancient World - a class a friend of mine took some years back and said was one of her favorites. The prof is ancient, doddering, and impossibly sweet. I was quite willing to settle back and enjoy this class, but I spent today staring down at my page and grinding my teeth in rage.

(Oh, dear, I can tell this is going to be hard to explain.)

First, on Wednesday, she mildly irritated me by talking about how Penelope in the Odyssey was such a powerful, positive image of women in ancient Greece because of how "utterly faithful" she was waiting for Odysseus for 20 years and deceiving all the suitors who wanted to marry her. Now, I'm not disputing the strong, interesting image of Penelope, but the whole holding up the "utterly faithful" thing as some ideal was a bit much for my stomach. Could we not, at least, entertain some thought that this was written by a man in a man's world and that of course they're going to think that a woman who preserves a man's estate for 20 years while he's off warring and whoring around with various goddesses and immortals is a womanly ideal? Could we not, at least, consider the idea that maybe Penelope liked being a widow and responsible for vast estates and that she didn't remarry because it didn't suit her? No, apparently we couldn't.

Then, today, she had to bring up that poem by Semonides "On Women" wherein he catalogs women as various animals. I'm not even going to dignify it by a link. My myth prof covered that poem with suitable flippancy and brevity, but this prof seemed to feel the need to read most of it aloud and make comments about 'don't we all know women that could fit into these categories' and 'I've always thought it would be fun if someone did the same thing for men.' No, no, NO, it wouldn't be fun. Haven't we all gotten over this yet? Do we have to answer woman-hating with a tit-for-tat-we-can-be-just-as-stereotyping-as-you-nyah-nyah-nyah? Why the f are we even still dignifying old misogynists with airtime? That poem should have been indecently buried two millenia ago not dragged out to be analysed as some sort of be-all and end-all of how the ancient Greeks viewed women. I was thinking that it is as if two thousand years from now one of the few things that remains of current civilization is some pieces of gangsta rap that are analysed endlessly as a window into how the ancients treated women.

Ugh.

And also - I hope she has only being doing this because it's the first week - but at the beginning of the lecture she backs up about three-quarters of the way into the last one and repeats it - almost verbatim. But, I think, like art, I will just have to suck it up, because I couldn't find anything on the right days and times to transfer into. I can only hope it gets better. At least, it shouldn't be taxing work-wise.

In better news, I feel quite positively about all my other classes. My native studies class, I think, is going to be a bit of a rabble-rouser. I was listening to people today and thinking that it's a bit how I imagine classes being in the 1960s - discussion, and controversy, and anger. To this point my classes have all been so sedate with dutiful writing of notes and taking of tests. The only thing similar was in modern Latin American history last year when she described the suppression of university students - lock-outs, and round-ups, and protests - and tried (in vain) to get people to imagine university where radical change was occurring. People dutifully took notes about what an interesting time that was in the past.

My writing class looks good and my class on climate change will be a lot, a lot of work, but also looks interesting. And this has been an over-long entry.

new year cleaning

Q. Why are piles of paper one of the hardest things to clean up ever?

a) If you knew what to do with that piece of paper, it wouldn't have been in that pile in the first place.

b) There is the constant back and forth of 'should I keep it or should I throw it away?' and the consequent 'but I might want it someday' dilemma.

c) No filing system can possibly have categories to cover every important, interesting, useful, beautiful picture, factoid, article, instructions, or future project that one human being can accumulate.

d) all of the above

jettison some dead-weight

Sometimes, for a moment, occasionally, just for a teensy tiny bit, I worry about my memory.

I got my last mark back today. It was for my economic geography class and it was an A+ which pleased and astonished me. I'd gotten an A+ on my final essay, but the rest of my marks in the class had been ordinary, so I deduced that I must have written a good final exam. I got to thinking about the exam and trying to remember what was on it.

Let's see, there were some short answer questions and an essay. I remember struggling a bit with the short answer questions, but the essay question had been given to us beforehand. What was the essay about? Don't know - the essay was an absolute blank in my mind. Then I thought how it was probably still posted on eclass and it was. But worse and worse - I still couldn't remember the essay at all even seeing what the question was. I wondered if I had actually even written the essay, but of course I must have because I'd obviously gotten a good mark.

I have only the vaguest memory of preparing that essay and almost no recollection of writing it. I don't remember one thing I said or any argument I advanced. I couldn't even guess at the examples I gave and if I had to write it again right now, I have no idea what I'd say. I only remember going way over my word count.

I know I went straight from that exam to preparing for my other 2 exams - and I do remember those, so I can only guess that my mind felt it needed to jettison some dead-weight and it felt no need to remember an exam that was in the past.

elated and dog tired

I wrote my last two exams today - 5 essays / 5 hours. I feel like I probably did pretty well. I enjoyed studying yesterday. Wow, I am tired though. Elated and dog tired.

I took a few minutes to go and look at the sculptures again since they weren't all there on Monday when I went. I was, if anything, even more disappointed in them than I'd been before. I still don't think mine is very good, but now I think it was one of the better ones. Some were just slapped together and honestly looked like something from a grade school class - glued on macaroni and all. I bet the macaroni was supposed to be ironic or something. I still resent all the time that project took, but I am glad in a way that I did take the time.

Heigh ho - just one last little thing to do for school and then I really am free for a couple of weeks.

so what?

If I thought my life was bad - and anyone reading this blog over the past few months will know I've been downright miserable and whiny - it is not as bad as the people all over the arts building this morning frantically trying to finish their projects before the 12 pm deadline. I was there at about 8:30 to drop off my sculpture and the classrooms were full and people were squatting in the hallways painting and gluing and drawing. I was a little surprised. But perhaps they are the true artists and their muse didn't move them until now.

I was going to take a picture of all the sculptures together, but, sadly, I just wasn't that impressed with them. Maybe because they were all jumbled together in a corner or, I don't know, they just seemed rather purposeless. Take an object, make it big didn't seem to really promote much creativity or something. I can understand the prof's idea - to take something ordinary, make it human-sized and then you interact with it differently, but there is still a dimension of 'so what' to it. So it's a large shoe or an eraser, so what? Maybe my problem was that most of them (all of them) weren't 'beautiful' - I love sculpture, but I don't just love it because it's big, I love it for the lines that are created for the eye. But, I long ago came to the conclusion that this prof loves 'ugly' far more than 'beauty,' so she'll probably be pleased. Ugly, doncha know is a higher art form.

Anyway, I went back and put a bunch more 'down' on my feather which improved it a bit. I took a picture of it hanging up and it had way more 'presence' as a mobile - which is how I'd envisioned it all along. The picture's a bit blurry.

Then I went and wrote what will probably be my hardest exam. I spent 12 hours yesterday studying and trying to study - i.e. sitting and staring at my books and papers because I was too tired to pick up my pen. But I think I will have done okay on that exam - not stellar, but okay. Then I got a paper back in the same economic geography class and I got an A+ on it which astounded me. I thought that paper was a) pretty boring and b) pretty well stated the obvious. But I guess sometimes it is only obvious to the person who did the research. She thought I should present it at an upcoming geog conference. I'll think about that.

I know this sounds like a humble-brag, but it kind of worries me when I hand in something that I really think is nowhere close to being great or cutting edge and it gets a really good mark. I don't know what I question more: my standards or theirs.