...because this is the only way I can remain interested in writing it and/or keep doing so.
Let me explain.
As you know, I have a 5-to-8-page analytical paper I have to write for my Grad Studies in Fiction lit course. We've read four books in there thus far -- Moll Flanders, Evelina, Persuasion, and Madame Bovary. All of them, as you can see, are "classic" novels. And, as you probably guessed through my writings here in recent weeks, I also hated all of them, and have no literary interest whatsoever in any of them. However, I was presented with a dilemma -- I must write a paper on one of them for the first of two papers in this class, both of which are worth a large number of points. Because of this, I have to pick the one I understood the most and/or hated the least. This just happened to be Madame Bovary.
Don't get me wrong; I still hate Madame Bovary. I love the writing style, but I hate the novel and I hate the same old boring, tired, Victorian-era story it tells, even if the title character kills herself near the end (spoiler alert). As you know if you read my post here when I was live-blogging the reading of it, for a book labeled "the most scandalous novel of all time," it left me quite disappointed and bored for the most part. While it may have been shocking or graphic in the 1860s after its original publication, it's certainly not in 2011.
It is a book, though, that I read in the span of one day -- from early afternoon until the nighttime hours -- and thus know the ins and outs of, however they may bore me, so it became over the course of the past week, the ideal candidate to write about. After trying to figure out a topic or angle, I looked at the syllabus again to see exactly what the paper's requirements were. He wants a paper that involves close analysis of one of the novels in some way, as long as it responds to "the class focus on narrative. Sources are not required."
So, basically, it's a formalist, or new critic's paper. Okay. I can do that. Me and the text. And it has to involve narrative in some way. Well, the novel has a very strong focus on narrative, as its omniscient narrator basically lets us into (or otherwise leaps into) the head of every character and paints the entire pictu....hey, there's a topic! Omniscient narration and how it functions!
With that settled as my topic, I drafted out a five-body paper plan. I tend to be good at this; I can't write a paper without some sort of plan or template to follow, otherwise its organization will be all over the place and the paper's overall quality will suffer. I need to know where I'm going from the start, what I'm going to do within the paper, and how I'm going to wrap everything up. This is usually the hardest part of writing a paper for any class. The plan for this paper took over an hour, and I did it while I was installing/reinstalling/upgrading my OS on my computer Saturday night.
I did not, however, start writing the paper until last night, Sunday night. Here, folks, is how the process went:
10:40PM Sunday:
Created Works Cited page for the paper, listing both the eBook version and the print version of Madame Bovary I used for the class. Found that there's no set way to cite an eBook version without a listed translator or publisher. Winged it, listed it as a web source, cited the website and provided a link.
11PM:
Added an Annotated Bibliography after the Works Cited page, even though it's not required or requested, to explain the citation problems of the PDF eBook I used for the class and will cite in the paper, in hopes that my professor will see it as "good enough."
11:40PM:
Created the paper itself, including proper layout and title: "Unsatisfactory Lives Discovered: The Revelations of Omniscient Narration in Madame Bovary." Begin writing introduction.
12AM Monday:
Almost completely change introduction from what I've written in my original paper plan. Continue writing it.
12:40AM:
Discover mind is fuzzy and it's hard to concentrate, more than likely due to the amount of work I've been doing all day. First time I debate going to bed for the night.
12:45AM:
Saying "screw it," I crack open a Mountain Dew Game Fuel and unwrap a new pack of cigarettes. It's on.
1:25AM:
I finish the introduction. It fills the full first page and bleeds two lines onto the second. Technically, I'm 20% done with the paper if I decide to write the bare minimum of five pages only.
1:31AM:
I realize that I have no discernible thesis statement and have no clue what exactly I'm going to write for one.
1:56AM:
Mountain Dew emptied, on cigarette number three, I have written three different thesis statements and scrapped them all. I have not had this much trouble starting or writing a paper in a very, very long time.
2:01AM:
I finish my thesis statement. It is somewhat vague and specific at the same time. I delete a few sections of a few lines from the intro to make said lines flow better, and tack them onto the thesis.
2:05AM:
I completely finish the intro and thesis statement after multiple small revisions. I am 1/4 of the way down page 2, but rapidly running out of steam for the night. I consider giving up for the night and going to bed a second time. Deciding against it, I begin drinking coffee and start on body section one, which discusses the character of Emma (Madame Bovary herself) and how she benefits from the omniscient narration of the novel, as well as briefly mentions her husband Charles as the novel starts in first person with his narration.
2:13AM:
I realize I left the link to the Mountain Dew Wikipedia page open (the one I linked to above) and become sidetracked by reading it for a few minutes. Everything else on the internet is so fucking interesting when there's work to be done. Debate a third time on whether or not I should just go to bed, and decide this time that I probably should.
2:14AM:
I save my work and log off the computer for bed, intending to finish when I wake up.
2:14PM:
Exactly twelve hours later (I couldn't have planned that better, actually), and after a full night of sleep, half a pot of coffee, and several cigarettes, I am cold and irritable, and open up my paper again to begin work on it -- with the intent of finishing said paper this afternoon. I'm becoming increasingly more frustrated that words aren't coming to me as easily as they do normally when I'm writing a paper. I send an email to Suri about it, as the woman remains my one and only true confidante (and I know she's having similar problems).
2:34PM:
Halfway down page 2, I'm getting into body section one pretty deeply. Words start coming a little easier. I relax a bit.
2:38PM:
It occurs to me that based on the paper I'm writing, I will more than likely have to change the title, thesis statement, and introduction around a bit more once I'm finished.
2:41PM:
Page 3 is breached, still on body section 1. Technically, I'm more than halfway done with the bare-minimum requirements for the paper, and begin to realize that it may take me the full 8 pages to make my points.
3:08PM:
Sadie meows at my door to be let in to sleep on my feet. I am three lines into page 4, and am finally wrapping up body section 1. It sounds good. Better than I expected it to sound.
3:11PM:
Sadie wants to be my lap kitty for a while. I take a break and hold her for a few minutes. She purrs hard. I read a story about someone writing an "official" sequel to Pride and Prejudice and post it to Suri's Facebook wall, as I know it will at least mildly interest her.
3:16PM:
I open my Works Cited page file again, and edit out the PDF edition of the book, as well as delete the (not required) annotated bibliography I included. The parts of the novel I'm paraphrasing/quoting/citing are coming directly from the 1965 Paul de Man translation of Madame Bovary, and though said translation is awful, it at least gives me a frame of reference and a clear way to cite things. It also simplifies the paper greatly.
3:22PM:
I wrap up body section 1 and move on to body section 2.
3:27PM:
I go back and add/edit a bit of the end of body section 1 to make it flow better into body section 2. My confidence in my writing abilities is slowly returning, and I'm beginning to see the whole picture a bit clearer and how I'm going to accomplish the writing of the rest of this paper.
3:34PM:
Sadie lays on my feet. I'm getting hungry. I take a break long enough to make a bologna sandwich and eat it -- using, in the process, the last slice of cheese I have in the house -- and I am reminded that I still have to go grocery shopping either tonight or tomorrow. Fuck. I'm cold. I look at the thermostat, and find that it is 64 degrees in the house, and 68 in my room.
3:45PM:
I begin work in earnest on body section 2.
4:05PM:
I'm lost. I'm at the bottom of page 4, about 1/3 of the way through body section 2, and I'm lost. I light a cigarette and run my hands through my hair, trying to figure out a) how I can make this paper go where I want it to go, and b) how I can do that without horribly overshooting the number of pages required and thus making more work for myself. I'm tired, worn down, and burnt-out, and realize that I've been working on this paper for almost two hours now. I stand up and stretch, pace around the room.
4:11PM:
I resume work on body section 2. I realize that this will be the longest section of the paper, but I have to get through it -- I know where body section 3 and the conclusion will go already. Getting through section 2 is the hardest part.
4:13PM:
Sadie, who left my room when I took a break to eat, is now meowing to get back in. I tell her to go away, through the door, as having her constantly meowing at me distracts me.
4:25PM:
I have once more hit my stride and am now halfway down page 5, moving at a good clip.
4:30PM:
I get to use the tongue-twister of a phrase "a moral dilemma for Emma, a dilemma..." in a sentence. It sounds awesome when read aloud over and over.
4:39PM:
Page 6 breached. Only halfway through body section 2. The paper will easily be ten pages long, I'm sure -- there's no way to avoid it.
4:58PM:
I finish the most difficult part of body section 2, and take a break. I put on a pair of pajama pants to retrieve the mail and the garbage cans from the driveway. It is cold. Very cold, and windy. The Weather Channel says it's 56 outside, but I somehow doubt it's that warm. I also see that the low temperature on Wednesday morning is supposed to drop below freezing, to 30. I hope, aloud to myself, that the Monte Carlo has a good heater and/or defroster, as I've never had to use it.
5:06PM:
I continue with the rest of body section 2.
5:14PM:
Bottom of page 6. Again moving along at a good clip.
5:25PM:
1/3 of the way down page 7, beginning to wrap up body section 2.
5:34PM:
Body section 2 finished, I realize that body section 3 will need to be a bit longer than I originally intended it to be. I am halfway down page 7, with expectations to take the paper to around page 9 before the conclusion. That's at least a page longer than the original assignment called for. I'm hoping that it means I'll get a better grade on it, especially if my professor sees it as well-written.
5:41PM:
I begin work on body section 3, the final section of the paper which will lead up to Emma's demise (again, spoiler alert) and the purpose of omniscient narration in the novel after that point.
6PM:
I have breached page 8 and am currently entering the final throes of the paper. Pun intended, as the final section of the paper is all about how the omniscient narration made Emma's death not only predictable, but inevitable -- and the different way that narration functions after her death.
6:11PM:
Halfway down page 8. Oh yeah, folks, it's sounding good. Really good.
6:26PM:
I have been writing this paper for over four hours now, almost nonstop. I am at the bottom of page 8, therefore fulfilling not only the minimum requirement of an analytical paper for the class, but reaching the maximum estimated length with ease. I probably have at least half to 3/4 of a page to go on body section 3 before the conclusion, which means the paper should top out around a flat nine pages.
6:36PM:
Finally beginning to wrap everything up and draw everything back together, halfway down page 9. Feeling victorious, like I just slayed a dragon.
6:57PM:
At the top of page 10, I begin my conclusion.
7:02PM:
Draft of conclusion finished. I basically copy it word-for-word from my original paper plan. I compare it to the introduction to make sure they don't sound too alike, and begin necessary edits.
7:03PM:
I change the title to "Discovered Lies and Intentions: The Revelations Provided By Omniscient Narration in Madame Bovary."
7:06PM:
Massive edits of the introduction begin taking place, to better the flow into the rest of the paper.
7:10PM:
Conclusion fleshed out a little more in order to make it all-encompassing.
7:17PM:
I go to pee, Pete follows me back into my room and jumps on my lap. I am currently typing this with a massive black butthole of a cat attempting to sleep against my stomach and chest as I work.
7:20PM:
Final typing and additions of the paper finished, I begin my readthrough/proofreading/editing session of it before I call myself finished, all with a purring, nuzzling cat on me.
7:42PM:
Paper is completely finished, saved, and closed. Altogether it was nearly 11 pages, and took me around nine-hours-ish total. Not bad.
Now I think I'll have a beer.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Sunday, October 16, 2011
While My Free Time Gently Weeps, Part II
This weekend thus far has been filled with computer headaches -- which, even though I'm sure most of you don't care about, I'm going to tell you about anyway.
On Thursday, Ubuntu 11.10 was released. Those of you who know me well know that I have used Ubuntu -- a free, open-source Linux operating system -- on all of my computers since 2006, and haven't looked back. I started with 6.06 "Dapper Drake," and I updated with every new release all the way through 11.04 (my current OS, but we'll get to that in a minute). So, when 11.10 was approaching release, I did some quick research, found some workarounds to the new GUI that they were planning (so that I could keep the desktop environment I was used to) and updated on schedule. I went through the repositories, downloaded the old desktop environment, installed it, and was ready to move forward.
Except they changed too much. Way too much. Ubuntu 11.10 seems to be the Linux equivalent of Windows Vista -- bloated, slow, too many features removed, too many useless ones added, etc. I couldn't find my files. There was no trash icon. It didn't like my mp3 player when I hooked it up to charge/refill, and the upgrade had removed compatibility with a LOT of the programs I ran on a regular basis, as well as codecs, plugins, and game-related things. I tried to live with it; I figured that I could find workarounds or otherwise get used to it, but after a few hours, it was too much. I hated it, and I had to pull the plug.
I wiped the HD and installed the newest version of Debian instead. Debian, if you didn't know, is the operating system Ubuntu was originally based off of. It also offers a much simpler interface and is much more like the old-school Linux I was used to. I liked it. I knew where all of my files were, it was compatible with all of my peripherals (such as my mp3 player, camera, and flash drives) and the GUI was what I was used to in the old days when I first started using Linux on my computers.
Except.
Debian does not include any proprietary software, or at least it doesn't include software branded as such. This makes seamless compatibility -- at least when it comes to internet stuff -- damn near impossible. Because it does not come with and does not easily support Flash, Firefox, Google Chrome, Skype, or anything else online-based that I use on a regular basis, I was stuck. On one hand I had a very stable, secure operating system. On the other, I was forced to use Iceweasel (Debian's version of Firefox with a different name, perpetually stuck on version 3.6 with no way to upgrade) and with no Flash support for embedded videos, had no access to Skype because it's not offered on Debian, and couldn't even access software updates or the software package manager, I couldn't do it. I refuse to be able to do less on an almost brand-new computer than I can do on my seven-year-old laptop at work. After about eighteen hours of using it, I wiped Debian from my HD too.
Now I had a choice. On one hand, I could re-install Ubuntu from the 10.04 LTS (the long-term-stable release) disc I'd thoughtfully burned as a backup and work my way back up to 11.04 to be back where I started, or I could try something completely new and end up spending more time trying to figure out an operating system that wasn't mainstream enough to get the amount of support or documentation that Ubuntu has and may support even less of my programs and peripherals.
Keep in mind during all of this that I'm a graduate student with a veritable shitload of work to do on any given weekend, and don't have the time (or patience) for all of this bullshit. All I wanted was to upgrade my operating system with a few clicks and move onward with my life. And I really liked Ubuntu 11.04. For me, and for what I do, it was the perfect operating system. It couldn't get any better for my daily tasks.
So, with the bitter taste of wasted time and regret in my mouth, I installed Ubuntu 10.04, then upgraded to 10.10, then upgraded again back to 11.04. Each upgrade took me about three hours, during which I took care of tasks around the house like cleaning, laundry, washing the sheets and making the bed, making homemade applesauce (six chopped apples, 1/3c sugar, 1/2c water, blender on liquify), and began reading The Holder of the World, the next novel being covered in my Asian/Middle Eastern lit class.
When I was done, upgrading, finally, I had the same operating system I'd started with on Friday night -- though I had been able to upgrade to the 64-bit version to complement my computer's hardware. The only real differences I've noticed are that the the display is smoother and prettier, and in the upgrade I somehow lost the font of Times New Roman from the word processor/office suite I use (LibreOffice). As that can be easily replaced, I'm once more rather satisfied with my computer, but have learned a very time-consuming, important lesson about upgrades: as long as I have Ubuntu on this computer, I'm never going to upgrade its OS ever again.
There have been other things going on aside from computer issues, of course; Thursday night, we had our midterm exam in the Asian/Middle Eastern lit class I'm taking as my "special topics" course. I've had courses with this professor before, so I know how he likes to conduct his midterm and final exams, and I've mentioned it here before as well -- pick a question from each novel, write an essay on it as your answer, upload the file to his flash drive when you're done, and be on your way. Not incredibly difficult, especially as he allows us to use our books and any notes written in those books. If one plans for such an exam and has read the books/taken notes during the lectures, one should be fine.
The problem this time around? Up until this point we've always been allowed to use the entire class period for the exam (7:05 to 9;45), to better construct our essays for said exam. This time around -- for reasons inexplicable -- the exam time was limited to 90 minutes flat, despite the fact that we didn't have anything else planned for the remaining class time and we could go when we were done. The previous exams I've taken in his classes had three questions, and you only had to write on two of them. This one had six questions, and you had to write on three of them -- one from each novel. So, not only was it more difficult, but we had a time constraint for no given reason as well.
My complaint (which echoed the sentiments of several classmates I know well) was, in essence, what the fuck's the hurry? In the British Modernism class I took with this professor last spring, even with only two essay questions to answer on the exams, there were many students who took until the very last minute of the full class, right up until 9:45, to carefully craft their answers. For the final exam, I was in there typing up my essay until around 9:15-9:20ish myself. This time, while one or two of us finished before the 90-minute mark, my remaining classmates were feverishly typing out their answers to their last question when time was up. What's supremely ironic is that a majority of those classmates had him last semester for the British Modernism class as well, just like I did, and found the time limit not only frustrating but hindering to our thought processes, as it was always something lingering in the back of our minds.
Yes, I realize that 90 minutes = 30 minutes per essay, but I challenge you to write a compelling, comprehensible five-body essay on a given theme of any dense novel in thirty minutes. Let me tell you, it's not exactly easy, even for us English majors and creative writers.
"I just hope he grades leniently," one of my friends said. "By the end I was really struggling and rushing through everything."
"All of us were," I replied.
Yes, I can understand a time limit if we're going to have a lesson or anything else afterwards. But we weren't. It just really threw me off my game. I'm confident I did moderately well, of course, but I'm convinced I could have gotten a perfect score had I been given the full time period of the class session. I'm pretty sure many of my fellow students would echo my sentiment. So, yes, maybe he will grade leniently, maybe he won't. I'm not too concerned about it either way, to be honest -- this semester, I've decided to forgo the quest for perfect grades and focus on the quest of simply getting everything done and turned in on time.
After looking at my lesson plans for Unit 3 for my own students, it appears that this is almost exactly what I'll be forced to do -- as there's a TON of work that I'll be doing just for them throughout the month of November and the first week of December. I've made up my lesson plans in advance and covered everything I need to cover, but with this weekend's fall break, the Thanksgiving break, workshops, conferences with me, and two big paper assignments all over the course of a month, everything important is crammed in all together very tightly, and I had to rewrite/revise my timeline and lesson plans several times last night, taking almost two hours to complete it. We lose almost three weeks of instruction days during the last half of the semester due to fall break, library day, a full week of conferences during class time, Thanksgiving week, and workshop week.
Fall semesters are always like this not just for my students, but for my own classes as well, and it can't be helped -- everything is rushed through November and crescendos around the first week of December, when everything comes due in all classes, before finals week. I'd rather have classes/finals run through Christmas Eve (because, obviously, it's not like I have a social life or anything to do) than cram it all into one month and not only end up shortchanging my students on time to do things, but shortchanging myself on the tasks I must complete as well. As I've mentioned many, many times before, fall semesters suck, folks. They suck more than you can possibly imagine. And they suck more when you're taking two lit courses at once.
There is still a lot I have to do on the remaining three days of my long weekend -- tonight I will be writing a paper on narrative and the omniscient narration in Madame Bovary, for lack of anything else to write about in a paper for my Grad Studies in Fiction class, and tomorrow/Tuesday I will be reading not only the rest of The Holder of the World for the Asian/Middle Eastern Lit course but getting started at least on Crime and Punishment for the fiction course...as well as finishing up that paper if I don't finish it tonight. Those are my three main tasks I must take care of, and I'm trying to give each of them a day(ish) to complete. They'll overlap, I'm sure.
At least I'm not alone with a weekend vacation full of work; Suri told me she's doing nothing but work this weekend as well, and she's just as burned out as I've been (if not more). It's more stressful for her, as her longtime boyfriend has children and she is functionally a stepmother-like figure to them when he has them for the weekend. To make the situation a little better for her, I've offered her some of my applesauce when we both return to campus, as I'm nothing if not a good friend.
As for me, I will unfortunately have to leave the house and do at least some shopping over the course of the next few days, plus get gas in the car. I'm out of nearly everything in the house due to my refusal to get groceries until I absolutely have to, and the car will need gas again before I return to campus on Wednesday morning. Luckily, I did just get paid on Friday, so I should be relatively okay budget-wise to get some stuff I need. Of course, I still have to shop cheaply so that I can keep an eye on the expenses of rent and bills. I do feel lucky, however, that I'm not as bad off budget-wise as some of my friends have been -- friends who have told me that they have a whopping $33, or conversely, $17 in their bank account between paychecks. My financial situation isn't that bad yet, but damn, if it ever gets that awful I really won't be able to survive. My car uses about $30 of gas every week on its own, for example, and I still have to find a way to budget to pay the $300 in car insurance I'll owe all at once at the end of December, because that expense is coming up faster than you realize.
Anyway. Off to work now. Here's hoping I can get the vast majority of it, if not all of it, done by Tuesday night. As I've said many times before, I may not have a social life of any sort to speak of, but I get shit done.
On Thursday, Ubuntu 11.10 was released. Those of you who know me well know that I have used Ubuntu -- a free, open-source Linux operating system -- on all of my computers since 2006, and haven't looked back. I started with 6.06 "Dapper Drake," and I updated with every new release all the way through 11.04 (my current OS, but we'll get to that in a minute). So, when 11.10 was approaching release, I did some quick research, found some workarounds to the new GUI that they were planning (so that I could keep the desktop environment I was used to) and updated on schedule. I went through the repositories, downloaded the old desktop environment, installed it, and was ready to move forward.
Except they changed too much. Way too much. Ubuntu 11.10 seems to be the Linux equivalent of Windows Vista -- bloated, slow, too many features removed, too many useless ones added, etc. I couldn't find my files. There was no trash icon. It didn't like my mp3 player when I hooked it up to charge/refill, and the upgrade had removed compatibility with a LOT of the programs I ran on a regular basis, as well as codecs, plugins, and game-related things. I tried to live with it; I figured that I could find workarounds or otherwise get used to it, but after a few hours, it was too much. I hated it, and I had to pull the plug.
I wiped the HD and installed the newest version of Debian instead. Debian, if you didn't know, is the operating system Ubuntu was originally based off of. It also offers a much simpler interface and is much more like the old-school Linux I was used to. I liked it. I knew where all of my files were, it was compatible with all of my peripherals (such as my mp3 player, camera, and flash drives) and the GUI was what I was used to in the old days when I first started using Linux on my computers.
Except.
Debian does not include any proprietary software, or at least it doesn't include software branded as such. This makes seamless compatibility -- at least when it comes to internet stuff -- damn near impossible. Because it does not come with and does not easily support Flash, Firefox, Google Chrome, Skype, or anything else online-based that I use on a regular basis, I was stuck. On one hand I had a very stable, secure operating system. On the other, I was forced to use Iceweasel (Debian's version of Firefox with a different name, perpetually stuck on version 3.6 with no way to upgrade) and with no Flash support for embedded videos, had no access to Skype because it's not offered on Debian, and couldn't even access software updates or the software package manager, I couldn't do it. I refuse to be able to do less on an almost brand-new computer than I can do on my seven-year-old laptop at work. After about eighteen hours of using it, I wiped Debian from my HD too.
Now I had a choice. On one hand, I could re-install Ubuntu from the 10.04 LTS (the long-term-stable release) disc I'd thoughtfully burned as a backup and work my way back up to 11.04 to be back where I started, or I could try something completely new and end up spending more time trying to figure out an operating system that wasn't mainstream enough to get the amount of support or documentation that Ubuntu has and may support even less of my programs and peripherals.
Keep in mind during all of this that I'm a graduate student with a veritable shitload of work to do on any given weekend, and don't have the time (or patience) for all of this bullshit. All I wanted was to upgrade my operating system with a few clicks and move onward with my life. And I really liked Ubuntu 11.04. For me, and for what I do, it was the perfect operating system. It couldn't get any better for my daily tasks.
So, with the bitter taste of wasted time and regret in my mouth, I installed Ubuntu 10.04, then upgraded to 10.10, then upgraded again back to 11.04. Each upgrade took me about three hours, during which I took care of tasks around the house like cleaning, laundry, washing the sheets and making the bed, making homemade applesauce (six chopped apples, 1/3c sugar, 1/2c water, blender on liquify), and began reading The Holder of the World, the next novel being covered in my Asian/Middle Eastern lit class.
When I was done, upgrading, finally, I had the same operating system I'd started with on Friday night -- though I had been able to upgrade to the 64-bit version to complement my computer's hardware. The only real differences I've noticed are that the the display is smoother and prettier, and in the upgrade I somehow lost the font of Times New Roman from the word processor/office suite I use (LibreOffice). As that can be easily replaced, I'm once more rather satisfied with my computer, but have learned a very time-consuming, important lesson about upgrades: as long as I have Ubuntu on this computer, I'm never going to upgrade its OS ever again.
There have been other things going on aside from computer issues, of course; Thursday night, we had our midterm exam in the Asian/Middle Eastern lit class I'm taking as my "special topics" course. I've had courses with this professor before, so I know how he likes to conduct his midterm and final exams, and I've mentioned it here before as well -- pick a question from each novel, write an essay on it as your answer, upload the file to his flash drive when you're done, and be on your way. Not incredibly difficult, especially as he allows us to use our books and any notes written in those books. If one plans for such an exam and has read the books/taken notes during the lectures, one should be fine.
The problem this time around? Up until this point we've always been allowed to use the entire class period for the exam (7:05 to 9;45), to better construct our essays for said exam. This time around -- for reasons inexplicable -- the exam time was limited to 90 minutes flat, despite the fact that we didn't have anything else planned for the remaining class time and we could go when we were done. The previous exams I've taken in his classes had three questions, and you only had to write on two of them. This one had six questions, and you had to write on three of them -- one from each novel. So, not only was it more difficult, but we had a time constraint for no given reason as well.
My complaint (which echoed the sentiments of several classmates I know well) was, in essence, what the fuck's the hurry? In the British Modernism class I took with this professor last spring, even with only two essay questions to answer on the exams, there were many students who took until the very last minute of the full class, right up until 9:45, to carefully craft their answers. For the final exam, I was in there typing up my essay until around 9:15-9:20ish myself. This time, while one or two of us finished before the 90-minute mark, my remaining classmates were feverishly typing out their answers to their last question when time was up. What's supremely ironic is that a majority of those classmates had him last semester for the British Modernism class as well, just like I did, and found the time limit not only frustrating but hindering to our thought processes, as it was always something lingering in the back of our minds.
Yes, I realize that 90 minutes = 30 minutes per essay, but I challenge you to write a compelling, comprehensible five-body essay on a given theme of any dense novel in thirty minutes. Let me tell you, it's not exactly easy, even for us English majors and creative writers.
"I just hope he grades leniently," one of my friends said. "By the end I was really struggling and rushing through everything."
"All of us were," I replied.
Yes, I can understand a time limit if we're going to have a lesson or anything else afterwards. But we weren't. It just really threw me off my game. I'm confident I did moderately well, of course, but I'm convinced I could have gotten a perfect score had I been given the full time period of the class session. I'm pretty sure many of my fellow students would echo my sentiment. So, yes, maybe he will grade leniently, maybe he won't. I'm not too concerned about it either way, to be honest -- this semester, I've decided to forgo the quest for perfect grades and focus on the quest of simply getting everything done and turned in on time.
After looking at my lesson plans for Unit 3 for my own students, it appears that this is almost exactly what I'll be forced to do -- as there's a TON of work that I'll be doing just for them throughout the month of November and the first week of December. I've made up my lesson plans in advance and covered everything I need to cover, but with this weekend's fall break, the Thanksgiving break, workshops, conferences with me, and two big paper assignments all over the course of a month, everything important is crammed in all together very tightly, and I had to rewrite/revise my timeline and lesson plans several times last night, taking almost two hours to complete it. We lose almost three weeks of instruction days during the last half of the semester due to fall break, library day, a full week of conferences during class time, Thanksgiving week, and workshop week.
Fall semesters are always like this not just for my students, but for my own classes as well, and it can't be helped -- everything is rushed through November and crescendos around the first week of December, when everything comes due in all classes, before finals week. I'd rather have classes/finals run through Christmas Eve (because, obviously, it's not like I have a social life or anything to do) than cram it all into one month and not only end up shortchanging my students on time to do things, but shortchanging myself on the tasks I must complete as well. As I've mentioned many, many times before, fall semesters suck, folks. They suck more than you can possibly imagine. And they suck more when you're taking two lit courses at once.
There is still a lot I have to do on the remaining three days of my long weekend -- tonight I will be writing a paper on narrative and the omniscient narration in Madame Bovary, for lack of anything else to write about in a paper for my Grad Studies in Fiction class, and tomorrow/Tuesday I will be reading not only the rest of The Holder of the World for the Asian/Middle Eastern Lit course but getting started at least on Crime and Punishment for the fiction course...as well as finishing up that paper if I don't finish it tonight. Those are my three main tasks I must take care of, and I'm trying to give each of them a day(ish) to complete. They'll overlap, I'm sure.
At least I'm not alone with a weekend vacation full of work; Suri told me she's doing nothing but work this weekend as well, and she's just as burned out as I've been (if not more). It's more stressful for her, as her longtime boyfriend has children and she is functionally a stepmother-like figure to them when he has them for the weekend. To make the situation a little better for her, I've offered her some of my applesauce when we both return to campus, as I'm nothing if not a good friend.
As for me, I will unfortunately have to leave the house and do at least some shopping over the course of the next few days, plus get gas in the car. I'm out of nearly everything in the house due to my refusal to get groceries until I absolutely have to, and the car will need gas again before I return to campus on Wednesday morning. Luckily, I did just get paid on Friday, so I should be relatively okay budget-wise to get some stuff I need. Of course, I still have to shop cheaply so that I can keep an eye on the expenses of rent and bills. I do feel lucky, however, that I'm not as bad off budget-wise as some of my friends have been -- friends who have told me that they have a whopping $33, or conversely, $17 in their bank account between paychecks. My financial situation isn't that bad yet, but damn, if it ever gets that awful I really won't be able to survive. My car uses about $30 of gas every week on its own, for example, and I still have to find a way to budget to pay the $300 in car insurance I'll owe all at once at the end of December, because that expense is coming up faster than you realize.
Anyway. Off to work now. Here's hoping I can get the vast majority of it, if not all of it, done by Tuesday night. As I've said many times before, I may not have a social life of any sort to speak of, but I get shit done.
Friday, October 14, 2011
While My Free Time Gently Weeps
Fall semester: day forty
"Fall Break" is finally upon us, and with that comes a deceptively short list of work to do over my long(er) weekend. While I only have about six or seven things on that list that need to be done, two of them are full novels I have to read, and one of them is a full paper I have to write. I've mentioned these things before, so it's not like you or I should be surprised at this point. On the plus side, I don't have any planning to do for the classes I teach next week, and I don't have any grading to do. Aside from the occasional quiz here and there, I won't have any grading to do until after November 1st, when I collect my students' next papers -- though, admittedly, next weekend I will have a large number of workshop essays to read through. My organizational skills for the classes I teach could be a little better, to be honest. I'll have to tweak things a bit for the spring semester.
By the way, and I may have mentioned it here before (I can't remember), I'll still be teaching the same sections of Science/Engineering 102 next semester in the spring, on the same days, with the same times (Tuesday/Thursday mornings, 9:30 and 11). I am one of the few instructors who already has class listings on the schedule for the spring, more than likely because this is a specialized course I teach and I'm currently the only one who teaches the 102 version of it. The only problem is that I'll be teaching on the complete opposite side of campus from my office, which will necessitate a ten-minute-or-more walk to the building in the bitter, bitter cold of the first two months of the spring semester.
At least I'll have my leather jacket. Good thing I'm growing out my beard again, too.
The last few days, more than anything else, have been a total and complete blur. Sleep deprivation does that to a person. The cool temperatures in the morning (mid-40s) when I go to class, and the downright cold temperatures at night (supposed to drop into the mid-30s for the first time next week during the night and flirt with the freezing mark -- frost, baby) don't help much either, as most of the time when I'm coming/going it's either dark, cold, or both. When sleep-deprived, I get cold a lot faster and stay cold longer. It's like some sort of bodily reflex -- when I'm tired and it's even remotely chilly, I'll get chills and my teeth will chatter. I'm not looking forward to the cold, as you might have imagined -- I've had two months of nice, low electric bills, and really don't want to have to turn on the furnace any earlier than I have to, and see them spike again (since this house is all-electric, including the furnace).
On the plus side, as mentioned before, I have no more monetary obligations until the end of the month when the rent and cable bills come due again. With today's and my next paycheck on the 28th, I'll be able to roughly break even when it comes to the month's expenses, which can only be a good thing. It doesn't leave me much, but it leaves me enough to survive and sustain myself and the cats on. Part of being a single, poor graduate student, I suppose. I also don't have to go out and do any more shopping this weekend, for anything, though I will need to put gas in the car before I return to campus next week.
The car is doing remarkably well, as far as I can tell. The thermostat is still a little wonky at times, but it's kept the vast majority of its coolant in its tank this past ten days or so without dumping a lot or burning it off. I am almost completely sure now that's the reason I've been having those problems with the coolant. Last night on the drive home, it wasn't even running as roughly or loudly as I've been used to, which is also a plus. I mean, it runs loudly anyhow because, technically speaking, the Monte Carlo Z34 is a "sports car," and it has that classic Chevrolet rumble in its engine that gives muscle car aficionados erections, but it's been driving well and I can't complain about it, really. Not everyone can have a new or otherwise great car to drive. Mine's simply average/good, and I'm okay with that. It crossed the 218,000 mile mark on its odometer yesterday, so obviously it's got something good going for it.
I'm not sure if I mentioned it here before, but in other news, I took my book offline sometime last week so that I can make the edits/changes needed in it to ready the print version. Once the print version is completed, I may re-release a completely reformatted version of the book back onto Amazon's Kindle store, but that's going to take some time -- more time than I have right now, to be honest. Doing a massive overhaul of over 500 pages is a daunting task, so I don't expect the print version or any revised eBook version to be available before Christmas at the earliest -- and that's if I somehow fall ass-backwards into an unforeseen cache of free time. For those of you who bought the original version of the eBook (all, like, twelve of you), congratulations -- you got the "special edition" version of it.
As for the poetry book, it's still on schedule, and should be ready for its release on November 5. I've still got a lot of work to do on it, of course, some of which I'll be trying to accomplish this weekend between bouts of reading and other writing that needs to be taken care of. I will also not release it until I'm sure it's pure, perfect, and ready to be purchased and read. That also means, more than likely, that I'll have to get a "preview copy" of the print version for myself before I can announce its official release, in order to make sure everything in it gets a smooth, properly-formatted transfer to the printed page.
There are other "time sinks" I'm dealing with as well that aren't related to school or my writing; there are always things to clean and/or otherwise take care of around the house. I mentioned before that I have neglected the vacuuming for far too long, which is true. If I'm feeling particularly energetic at some point over the fall break, I may get around to doing that, as well as taking care of the laundry and doing some of the other stuff that I've put off doing around the house, such as putting the weatherstripping around the doors and windows, and cleaning off the back deck. There's always something else to do, that's for sure. At least I have a little bit of free time to write here today, and some time to sleep at night now. I can't tell you folks how nice it felt to sleep for nearly 11 hours last night and get up around noon today. I can't do that enough, and it's really destroying my energy and motivation to get anything of true value or importance accomplished.
Still, I must press onward, making myself better in some little way or another every day. Whatever works, I suppose -- onward and upward.
"Fall Break" is finally upon us, and with that comes a deceptively short list of work to do over my long(er) weekend. While I only have about six or seven things on that list that need to be done, two of them are full novels I have to read, and one of them is a full paper I have to write. I've mentioned these things before, so it's not like you or I should be surprised at this point. On the plus side, I don't have any planning to do for the classes I teach next week, and I don't have any grading to do. Aside from the occasional quiz here and there, I won't have any grading to do until after November 1st, when I collect my students' next papers -- though, admittedly, next weekend I will have a large number of workshop essays to read through. My organizational skills for the classes I teach could be a little better, to be honest. I'll have to tweak things a bit for the spring semester.
By the way, and I may have mentioned it here before (I can't remember), I'll still be teaching the same sections of Science/Engineering 102 next semester in the spring, on the same days, with the same times (Tuesday/Thursday mornings, 9:30 and 11). I am one of the few instructors who already has class listings on the schedule for the spring, more than likely because this is a specialized course I teach and I'm currently the only one who teaches the 102 version of it. The only problem is that I'll be teaching on the complete opposite side of campus from my office, which will necessitate a ten-minute-or-more walk to the building in the bitter, bitter cold of the first two months of the spring semester.
At least I'll have my leather jacket. Good thing I'm growing out my beard again, too.
The last few days, more than anything else, have been a total and complete blur. Sleep deprivation does that to a person. The cool temperatures in the morning (mid-40s) when I go to class, and the downright cold temperatures at night (supposed to drop into the mid-30s for the first time next week during the night and flirt with the freezing mark -- frost, baby) don't help much either, as most of the time when I'm coming/going it's either dark, cold, or both. When sleep-deprived, I get cold a lot faster and stay cold longer. It's like some sort of bodily reflex -- when I'm tired and it's even remotely chilly, I'll get chills and my teeth will chatter. I'm not looking forward to the cold, as you might have imagined -- I've had two months of nice, low electric bills, and really don't want to have to turn on the furnace any earlier than I have to, and see them spike again (since this house is all-electric, including the furnace).
On the plus side, as mentioned before, I have no more monetary obligations until the end of the month when the rent and cable bills come due again. With today's and my next paycheck on the 28th, I'll be able to roughly break even when it comes to the month's expenses, which can only be a good thing. It doesn't leave me much, but it leaves me enough to survive and sustain myself and the cats on. Part of being a single, poor graduate student, I suppose. I also don't have to go out and do any more shopping this weekend, for anything, though I will need to put gas in the car before I return to campus next week.
The car is doing remarkably well, as far as I can tell. The thermostat is still a little wonky at times, but it's kept the vast majority of its coolant in its tank this past ten days or so without dumping a lot or burning it off. I am almost completely sure now that's the reason I've been having those problems with the coolant. Last night on the drive home, it wasn't even running as roughly or loudly as I've been used to, which is also a plus. I mean, it runs loudly anyhow because, technically speaking, the Monte Carlo Z34 is a "sports car," and it has that classic Chevrolet rumble in its engine that gives muscle car aficionados erections, but it's been driving well and I can't complain about it, really. Not everyone can have a new or otherwise great car to drive. Mine's simply average/good, and I'm okay with that. It crossed the 218,000 mile mark on its odometer yesterday, so obviously it's got something good going for it.
I'm not sure if I mentioned it here before, but in other news, I took my book offline sometime last week so that I can make the edits/changes needed in it to ready the print version. Once the print version is completed, I may re-release a completely reformatted version of the book back onto Amazon's Kindle store, but that's going to take some time -- more time than I have right now, to be honest. Doing a massive overhaul of over 500 pages is a daunting task, so I don't expect the print version or any revised eBook version to be available before Christmas at the earliest -- and that's if I somehow fall ass-backwards into an unforeseen cache of free time. For those of you who bought the original version of the eBook (all, like, twelve of you), congratulations -- you got the "special edition" version of it.
As for the poetry book, it's still on schedule, and should be ready for its release on November 5. I've still got a lot of work to do on it, of course, some of which I'll be trying to accomplish this weekend between bouts of reading and other writing that needs to be taken care of. I will also not release it until I'm sure it's pure, perfect, and ready to be purchased and read. That also means, more than likely, that I'll have to get a "preview copy" of the print version for myself before I can announce its official release, in order to make sure everything in it gets a smooth, properly-formatted transfer to the printed page.
There are other "time sinks" I'm dealing with as well that aren't related to school or my writing; there are always things to clean and/or otherwise take care of around the house. I mentioned before that I have neglected the vacuuming for far too long, which is true. If I'm feeling particularly energetic at some point over the fall break, I may get around to doing that, as well as taking care of the laundry and doing some of the other stuff that I've put off doing around the house, such as putting the weatherstripping around the doors and windows, and cleaning off the back deck. There's always something else to do, that's for sure. At least I have a little bit of free time to write here today, and some time to sleep at night now. I can't tell you folks how nice it felt to sleep for nearly 11 hours last night and get up around noon today. I can't do that enough, and it's really destroying my energy and motivation to get anything of true value or importance accomplished.
Still, I must press onward, making myself better in some little way or another every day. Whatever works, I suppose -- onward and upward.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Wednesdays and Thursdays Suck
Fall semester: day thirty-nine
Wednesdays and Thursdays for me suck, but then again you probably already knew that. Today, at the very least, I must remain awake for another sixteen hours straight -- it's 6:16AM now, and I'll be awake until at least 10:16PM tonight, if not much later -- and during all of those hours I will be up, active, moving, doing things. I will be teaching, having the weekly meeting with my boss, spending my weekly hour in the Writing Center, doing my office hours, having another meeting with the editor of the school journal, and then I get to end my day with a long-form midterm exam full of essay questions.
On the plus side, I don't have to stop at Walmart or anywhere else on the way home tonight -- I am so exhausted from this midterm week that most of the time I'm near-delirious, running on the fumes and dirty energy that the caffeine from several pots of coffee a day and the nicotine from my cigarettes provides me. My entire body aches, especially my legs/thighs -- where, somehow over the course of the past two or three days, I've strained/sprained almost all my muscles from my lower abs to my knees (don't ask me how; I haven't a clue) and am now achy and sore all the time that I'm awake and mobile.
Yes, I know, I'm sure there's some sort of this is what happens when you get old statement that could be made here, of course. Whine-whine-bitch-bitch. I know.
The car seems to be running well, as far as I can tell. She's running a little more rough than usual sometimes, but I think that may be attributed to the fact that I've done a little more in-city driving instead of interstate driving over the course of the past two weeks or so, and therefore I just notice it more. As for the thermostat, it's not kicked out any extra coolant from the radiator's overflow valve in several days (that I've noticed, anyhow), though I'll make sure to check the levels once I get to school this morning and it's light enough to do so. As I'm sure I've said before, as long as the land-boat can get me to school and back three days a week, it can fall apart until I get the money to get it worked on.
Tomorrow, finally, we get paid for the first time this month. This is a good thing, as that money (and more) will be going into yet another cable bill and yet another rent check in about ten-to-twelve days or so. It really is a paycheck-to-paycheck situation right now and will be probably through the holidays, unless my parents send me money between now and then. I still have to build up my bank account some more. Thankfully, aside from a package or two to send, I don't have anyone I need to purchase gifts for during the holiday season, because I wouldn't be able to afford said gifts anyhow.
I didn't even shower this morning. Too time-consuming, plus hot water will make me want to go back to sleep. I hit the snooze bar three times on the alarm clock, and that never happens. Yeah folks, I'm that exhausted. But, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and that light is called fall break, which I am able to start this evening once I am done with my midterm exam (which should not only take that long, but should be relatively easy as I've studied for it). There's still that long list of stuff I have to do this weekend, but first I have to get through today. More coffee is required.
Wednesdays and Thursdays for me suck, but then again you probably already knew that. Today, at the very least, I must remain awake for another sixteen hours straight -- it's 6:16AM now, and I'll be awake until at least 10:16PM tonight, if not much later -- and during all of those hours I will be up, active, moving, doing things. I will be teaching, having the weekly meeting with my boss, spending my weekly hour in the Writing Center, doing my office hours, having another meeting with the editor of the school journal, and then I get to end my day with a long-form midterm exam full of essay questions.
On the plus side, I don't have to stop at Walmart or anywhere else on the way home tonight -- I am so exhausted from this midterm week that most of the time I'm near-delirious, running on the fumes and dirty energy that the caffeine from several pots of coffee a day and the nicotine from my cigarettes provides me. My entire body aches, especially my legs/thighs -- where, somehow over the course of the past two or three days, I've strained/sprained almost all my muscles from my lower abs to my knees (don't ask me how; I haven't a clue) and am now achy and sore all the time that I'm awake and mobile.
Yes, I know, I'm sure there's some sort of this is what happens when you get old statement that could be made here, of course. Whine-whine-bitch-bitch. I know.
The car seems to be running well, as far as I can tell. She's running a little more rough than usual sometimes, but I think that may be attributed to the fact that I've done a little more in-city driving instead of interstate driving over the course of the past two weeks or so, and therefore I just notice it more. As for the thermostat, it's not kicked out any extra coolant from the radiator's overflow valve in several days (that I've noticed, anyhow), though I'll make sure to check the levels once I get to school this morning and it's light enough to do so. As I'm sure I've said before, as long as the land-boat can get me to school and back three days a week, it can fall apart until I get the money to get it worked on.
Tomorrow, finally, we get paid for the first time this month. This is a good thing, as that money (and more) will be going into yet another cable bill and yet another rent check in about ten-to-twelve days or so. It really is a paycheck-to-paycheck situation right now and will be probably through the holidays, unless my parents send me money between now and then. I still have to build up my bank account some more. Thankfully, aside from a package or two to send, I don't have anyone I need to purchase gifts for during the holiday season, because I wouldn't be able to afford said gifts anyhow.
I didn't even shower this morning. Too time-consuming, plus hot water will make me want to go back to sleep. I hit the snooze bar three times on the alarm clock, and that never happens. Yeah folks, I'm that exhausted. But, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and that light is called fall break, which I am able to start this evening once I am done with my midterm exam (which should not only take that long, but should be relatively easy as I've studied for it). There's still that long list of stuff I have to do this weekend, but first I have to get through today. More coffee is required.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Takin' Names
Fall semester: day thirty-seven (in a row?)
Tonight, over the course of about six-and-a-half hours -- from around 2PM to 9PMish, taking breaks every once in a while -- I wrote my paper on Midnight's Children for my Asian/Middle Eastern lit course, the "special topics" course of my graduate education. It was supposed to be from 7-10 pages long. I topped mine out at about 9.75, and added the Works Cited page, which made it a full 10.
Again, for those of you who have not read Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, I recommend you do so if you are so inclined. It's a fantastic novel. Good vs. Evil, heroes and villains with superpowers, Indian X-Men, bloody wars, the book has it all. It's a great first leap into magical realism.
This is another reason why I'm in graduate school, folks -- because I can bang out papers like that not only on a weekday, but in less than seven hours. And people said I'd never amount to anything.
It is 1AM. I slept until noon today, though I didn't realize it because the wall clock in the spare room where I keep the air mattress had stopped in the night. I went to bed last night shortly after midnight, making it not only an early night for me but somehow giving me nearly twelve hours of sleep in the process -- something I've not been able to achieve in months. I do not know how or why I slept that long, as that one night of sleep is roughly equivalent to what I get during any normal work week. I average about four hours of sleep per night on Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday, sometimes considerably less. Tonight, I would imagine, I'll get roughly three before I must get back up and go to school in the morning to teach my classes.
But. That one paper is done, and it was the longest of the papers I need to write around this time of the year. There will be others, of course; that one I just mentioned I will be revising/expanding another 8-10 pages or so for my final paper in that course, and I still have two decent-sized papers and four response papers to write in my Graduate Studies in Fiction class, the first one of those being due a week from tomorrow. I'm nowhere near out of the woods yet, but at least I've bought myself a few days worth of well-deserved and much-needed breathing space.
During one of my breaks this evening while writing the paper, I donned my wifeblesser (thank you, Ned Flanders)and pajama pants to go put gas in the car. I felt decidedly and proudly white trash as I did so, a new feeling for me. Generally speaking, I never leave the house without a real shirt on, and most definitely never leave the house in sweatpants of any sort, let alone flannel pajama pants. Tonight, though, it felt almost freeing to do so. Besides, I knew it would be a five-minute trip, and I'd neglected to put gas in the car on the way home from class last week. I'm either too tired or I always forget, and as I don't generally leave the house on the weekend unless I absolutely have to, it was either go out to get gas this evening or do it at 6:30AM on the way in to school -- something I certainly did not want to deal with again.
I got an email from my dad this afternoon, who had read the blog and thought about the problems the car has with holding coolant, and suggested that the thermostat may be the problem -- as if it's going wonky, it'll throw coolant out the overflow valve (or, I would assume, suck all of it into the engine where it would burn off, as well). It would also explain why sometimes it'll keep coolant for a long time and then other times it will run it dry -- sometimes it's working fine and other times it's not. I never thought of this before, and he's right -- it makes a lot of sense. After all, it's an old car. Replacement thermostats and their seals for my Monte Carlo are between $5 and $15 or so for the most part on Amazon -- it basically looks like a little metal plug with a gasket and coil attached to it, so if that's the problem it's not a big deal, and I can get the part and get it fixed easily. If it's the computer thing that controls the thermostat, however, well...who knows. I'll carry the radiator stop-leak in my car just in case it starts gushing or something, but again, I still have to drive the damned car on a daily basis, thermostat problems or otherwise. On the plus side, even on tonight's short trip, it purred like a kitten and ran quite well -- but then again, it always likes to have a full tank of gas. A tank of gas that cost me $30.
I also paid the remaining bills today during one of my other short breaks while writing the paper. With that and the gas in the car taken care of, I now have no new expenses that should pop up before I get paid again on Friday, and aside from food, only rent and the cable bill that will pop up before the end of the month. This means I can slowly, slowly start building up my bank account again. My parents offered to send me money, and I told them I'd gladly take it, but also told them that they need to realize I won't be able to pay it back. Believe me, I will very gladly take any money they send me and put it to good use feeding myself and the cats.
There's a lot I got accomplished this weekend for sure, but next weekend it will be more, and worse. I must start reading Crime and Punishment for class next week, which is probably the thickest and longest book I will read this semester. I don't know how big the Dover Thrift Edition paper copy is, but I downloaded a PDF of it, and the PDF is over 800 pages. We're covering it over the course of two weeks of class, but with a paper due in that class as well as other stuff I must take care of for my other classes -- including reading yet another book which I'm sure will be thick as well -- Crime and Punishment may be the only novel in my lit courses this semester that I not only won't finish, but probably won't even get halfway through. Who knows, you be the judge -- what was the last 800-page novel you finished, regardless of how much of a "classic" it was supposed to be, or how "good" you were told it was?
Regardless, the paper I have to write for that class is supposed to be something like a 4-6 page analytical essay that does not require sources (at least not according to the syllabus, anyhow). I wanted this paper to be an expansion of my "Moll Flanders is an insufferable bitch, and here's why" response paper I wrote earlier in the semester, but I'm not sure that's going to be possible -- my professor basically told me he'd allow me to do that if I wanted to, but it would end up requiring several sources and a complete overhaul of that first paper. I'm not sure I have time for that, and the novels in that class have left me so disinterested after reading them (ahem, Madame Bovary, Evelina, Persuasion...) that I'm not even sure of any angles I can possibly take on paper topics for any of them. Couple that with a lack of sleep and an abundance of other stuff I need to do, and it looks like I may end up needing to bite the bullet, throw some ideas together from scratch, and write a paper next weekend that I have absolutely no interest in when it comes to the subject matter involved.
Hm, sounds shockingly similar to my undergrad years. I couldn't tell you how many good, but disconnected papers I wrote about Chaucer, lesser-known (read: more boring) Shakespearean plays, or T.S. Eliot I wrote during those years. Inspired, well-written, thought-provoking papers with absolutely no interest in the subject matter behind them. When it comes to writing, I am a student of the now, the era of the Chucks (both Klosterman and Palahniuk), the era of the T.C. Boyles and David Sedarises who occupy what I classify as ultra-modern good writing. Four novels in a row about 17th, 18th, and 19th-century women who start poor and unhappy and end up rich, married, and happy (or, in Madame Bovary's case, dead of suicide due to woe-is-me impulses) don't interest me one fucking bit. I can't connect or relate to any of it. I suppose that's the rub when it comes to graduate-level literature classes, though. Oh, how I wish they'd let me plot out a graduate-level ultra-modern lit course:
Reading list:
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
Tonight, over the course of about six-and-a-half hours -- from around 2PM to 9PMish, taking breaks every once in a while -- I wrote my paper on Midnight's Children for my Asian/Middle Eastern lit course, the "special topics" course of my graduate education. It was supposed to be from 7-10 pages long. I topped mine out at about 9.75, and added the Works Cited page, which made it a full 10.
Again, for those of you who have not read Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, I recommend you do so if you are so inclined. It's a fantastic novel. Good vs. Evil, heroes and villains with superpowers, Indian X-Men, bloody wars, the book has it all. It's a great first leap into magical realism.
This is another reason why I'm in graduate school, folks -- because I can bang out papers like that not only on a weekday, but in less than seven hours. And people said I'd never amount to anything.
It is 1AM. I slept until noon today, though I didn't realize it because the wall clock in the spare room where I keep the air mattress had stopped in the night. I went to bed last night shortly after midnight, making it not only an early night for me but somehow giving me nearly twelve hours of sleep in the process -- something I've not been able to achieve in months. I do not know how or why I slept that long, as that one night of sleep is roughly equivalent to what I get during any normal work week. I average about four hours of sleep per night on Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday, sometimes considerably less. Tonight, I would imagine, I'll get roughly three before I must get back up and go to school in the morning to teach my classes.
But. That one paper is done, and it was the longest of the papers I need to write around this time of the year. There will be others, of course; that one I just mentioned I will be revising/expanding another 8-10 pages or so for my final paper in that course, and I still have two decent-sized papers and four response papers to write in my Graduate Studies in Fiction class, the first one of those being due a week from tomorrow. I'm nowhere near out of the woods yet, but at least I've bought myself a few days worth of well-deserved and much-needed breathing space.
During one of my breaks this evening while writing the paper, I donned my wifeblesser (thank you, Ned Flanders)and pajama pants to go put gas in the car. I felt decidedly and proudly white trash as I did so, a new feeling for me. Generally speaking, I never leave the house without a real shirt on, and most definitely never leave the house in sweatpants of any sort, let alone flannel pajama pants. Tonight, though, it felt almost freeing to do so. Besides, I knew it would be a five-minute trip, and I'd neglected to put gas in the car on the way home from class last week. I'm either too tired or I always forget, and as I don't generally leave the house on the weekend unless I absolutely have to, it was either go out to get gas this evening or do it at 6:30AM on the way in to school -- something I certainly did not want to deal with again.
I got an email from my dad this afternoon, who had read the blog and thought about the problems the car has with holding coolant, and suggested that the thermostat may be the problem -- as if it's going wonky, it'll throw coolant out the overflow valve (or, I would assume, suck all of it into the engine where it would burn off, as well). It would also explain why sometimes it'll keep coolant for a long time and then other times it will run it dry -- sometimes it's working fine and other times it's not. I never thought of this before, and he's right -- it makes a lot of sense. After all, it's an old car. Replacement thermostats and their seals for my Monte Carlo are between $5 and $15 or so for the most part on Amazon -- it basically looks like a little metal plug with a gasket and coil attached to it, so if that's the problem it's not a big deal, and I can get the part and get it fixed easily. If it's the computer thing that controls the thermostat, however, well...who knows. I'll carry the radiator stop-leak in my car just in case it starts gushing or something, but again, I still have to drive the damned car on a daily basis, thermostat problems or otherwise. On the plus side, even on tonight's short trip, it purred like a kitten and ran quite well -- but then again, it always likes to have a full tank of gas. A tank of gas that cost me $30.
I also paid the remaining bills today during one of my other short breaks while writing the paper. With that and the gas in the car taken care of, I now have no new expenses that should pop up before I get paid again on Friday, and aside from food, only rent and the cable bill that will pop up before the end of the month. This means I can slowly, slowly start building up my bank account again. My parents offered to send me money, and I told them I'd gladly take it, but also told them that they need to realize I won't be able to pay it back. Believe me, I will very gladly take any money they send me and put it to good use feeding myself and the cats.
There's a lot I got accomplished this weekend for sure, but next weekend it will be more, and worse. I must start reading Crime and Punishment for class next week, which is probably the thickest and longest book I will read this semester. I don't know how big the Dover Thrift Edition paper copy is, but I downloaded a PDF of it, and the PDF is over 800 pages. We're covering it over the course of two weeks of class, but with a paper due in that class as well as other stuff I must take care of for my other classes -- including reading yet another book which I'm sure will be thick as well -- Crime and Punishment may be the only novel in my lit courses this semester that I not only won't finish, but probably won't even get halfway through. Who knows, you be the judge -- what was the last 800-page novel you finished, regardless of how much of a "classic" it was supposed to be, or how "good" you were told it was?
Regardless, the paper I have to write for that class is supposed to be something like a 4-6 page analytical essay that does not require sources (at least not according to the syllabus, anyhow). I wanted this paper to be an expansion of my "Moll Flanders is an insufferable bitch, and here's why" response paper I wrote earlier in the semester, but I'm not sure that's going to be possible -- my professor basically told me he'd allow me to do that if I wanted to, but it would end up requiring several sources and a complete overhaul of that first paper. I'm not sure I have time for that, and the novels in that class have left me so disinterested after reading them (ahem, Madame Bovary, Evelina, Persuasion...) that I'm not even sure of any angles I can possibly take on paper topics for any of them. Couple that with a lack of sleep and an abundance of other stuff I need to do, and it looks like I may end up needing to bite the bullet, throw some ideas together from scratch, and write a paper next weekend that I have absolutely no interest in when it comes to the subject matter involved.
Hm, sounds shockingly similar to my undergrad years. I couldn't tell you how many good, but disconnected papers I wrote about Chaucer, lesser-known (read: more boring) Shakespearean plays, or T.S. Eliot I wrote during those years. Inspired, well-written, thought-provoking papers with absolutely no interest in the subject matter behind them. When it comes to writing, I am a student of the now, the era of the Chucks (both Klosterman and Palahniuk), the era of the T.C. Boyles and David Sedarises who occupy what I classify as ultra-modern good writing. Four novels in a row about 17th, 18th, and 19th-century women who start poor and unhappy and end up rich, married, and happy (or, in Madame Bovary's case, dead of suicide due to woe-is-me impulses) don't interest me one fucking bit. I can't connect or relate to any of it. I suppose that's the rub when it comes to graduate-level literature classes, though. Oh, how I wish they'd let me plot out a graduate-level ultra-modern lit course:
Reading list:
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto by Chuck Klosterman
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
Ah yes, the life of a poor graduate student; isn't it glamorous, folks?
In other news, I keep neglecting to mention "Fall Break." I've brought it up here in passing, I'm sure, but it's next weekend. Fall Break is something the university does every year to make up for the two days of Thanksgiving week that classes are in session -- instead of giving students the whole Thanksgiving week off (side note: I'm taking it off anyway), they give them Wed/Thurs/Fri off that week and make up the other two days in the middle of October around midterms, calling it "Fall Break." Up until this point, it was always on a Thursday and Friday, but for us in the English Department that didn't help much, as we always have Fridays off, so one of our esteemed English professors who is on the decision board for these sorts of things brought up and passed the motion that from this point forward, Fall Break will be held on Monday/Tuesday -- ensuring that the English Department, at least, has a five-day weekend of Friday-Saturday-Sunday-Monday-Tuesday. This doesn't affect me much, of course, as I always have Monday off anyhow, and all I do on Tuesday is teach and then hop in the car to come back home. My "Fall Break" this year simply means I'll save a day's worth of gas and miles on the car, and five hours of my time (7AM to noon-ish) that I would normally be on campus next Tuesday. On the plus side, I will get to sleep in.
On that note, it's after 3AM. I get up at 5 in order to drink coffee and get ready for the day. I'm tired, sure, but don't know that I'll get to sleep again. If not, oh well -- I can do that when I get home from teaching around 12:30 or so.
Stories by T.C. Boyle
Still Life with Woodpecker and Skinny Legs and All, both by Tom Robbins
By the way, those are all links to Amazon if you want to know more about the books. The Best American series releases a ton of different books in genres (poetry, essays, science writing, etc) every year, and every one of them is well worth a look.
Anyway.
This weekend, as mentioned before, I finished grading my students' papers, and was able to calculate their midterm grades. The vast majority of them are doing exceedingly well in my class, though a few in each section are struggling -- this is to be expected in any composition course, even a Science/Engineering one. I posted the midterm grades yesterday afternoon when I woke up, and by now most of the students have probably seen them. I've already had one student drop this semester due to not turning in the first paper, and after midterms (and my lecture in the morning) there will probably be at least a few more. In any comp class, the semester is easiest before the midterm week -- after that, everything ramps up. Papers and assignments come due more frequently and are worth more points, quizzes get harder, absences begin piling up, etc. I already have several students who I know will either drop the course soon or who will fail for absences. I love teaching my students, but I am fair; they have to abide by my rules on the syllabus just as much as I have to abide by them, as well as any department regulations I have to follow as well.
What else did I do this weekend? I didn't vacuum, even though I need to. The house is a mess. Probably won't be able to do it until the end of the month, though, not with the workload I have. I did, however, clean out the freezer and toss out anything old and/or anything I'd never eat (like fish that the former girlfriend left behind), and at the bottom of the pile I found an entire pan of frozen rigatoni, cooked, covered in foil, and frozen many, many many months ago. I tossed it in the oven at 425 for three hours, and now I have meals for the rest of the week.
Not to be outdone, I also made a huge pot of experimental chicken noodle soup, this time with macaroni instead of egg noodles, more chicken (using the last of the chicken I had), a bag each of frozen peas, corn, and onions, half a frozen brick of spinach, four cubes of chicken bouillon, an envelope of noodle soup mix, and a can of mixed vegetables from the pantry. And it's fantastic. This may be the way I make soup from this point forward, as about $5 worth of ingredients (minus the chicken, of course) made a pot of soup large enough to feed me probably twenty times. After this week, whatever's left of it will be put in a big Ziploc bag in the freezer.
I've tried to cut back sharply on my food budget, purchasing only the essentials for daily life. Half the time now this doesn't even include sandwich materials, as lunch meat and cheese are expensive (not to mention I barely eat them anymore anyhow). I've noticed I'm spending more money on food for me and the cats than probably anything else outside my rent and bills, including gasoline. For a single guy, that's just unacceptable. Ideally, outside of daily-requirement things like cigarettes, coffee, and vitamins, I shouldn't be shopping for food on a weekly basis, and I've been trying desperately to cut the the amount of cash I spend on food in half. I need to not only to save money, but because I am on a rather strict budget, and because there are still big purchases (like a good vacuum and lawnmower) I have to save up for eventually. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, of course; I will receive the other half of my loan money in the beginning of January, I do get paid continuously every two weeks between now and the end of May, and I'm bound to receive some money from some relatives for Christmas/my birthday -- but for the next two months things are going to be pretty tight, and I need to invent some ways to keep myself fed.
Because of that, I'm going to invest in those big multi-meal dishes like pastas and soups, and chili. Oooh, chili. I haven't made my own chili in almost seven years, since before the former girlfriend and I got together. It will be exciting to make again. If I do these things, I can at least feed myself inventively and cheaply, stay full and warm, and not have to eat like a rabbit (remember, carrots, celery, etc). I really need to hit up the discount grocery store up here in Newton again soon to stock up on canned goods and sauces for 39 cents each.
Still Life with Woodpecker and Skinny Legs and All, both by Tom Robbins
Assholes Finish First by Tucker Max (because, come on, we all need a little more Tucker Max in our lives)
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2011
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2011
Anyway.
This weekend, as mentioned before, I finished grading my students' papers, and was able to calculate their midterm grades. The vast majority of them are doing exceedingly well in my class, though a few in each section are struggling -- this is to be expected in any composition course, even a Science/Engineering one. I posted the midterm grades yesterday afternoon when I woke up, and by now most of the students have probably seen them. I've already had one student drop this semester due to not turning in the first paper, and after midterms (and my lecture in the morning) there will probably be at least a few more. In any comp class, the semester is easiest before the midterm week -- after that, everything ramps up. Papers and assignments come due more frequently and are worth more points, quizzes get harder, absences begin piling up, etc. I already have several students who I know will either drop the course soon or who will fail for absences. I love teaching my students, but I am fair; they have to abide by my rules on the syllabus just as much as I have to abide by them, as well as any department regulations I have to follow as well.
What else did I do this weekend? I didn't vacuum, even though I need to. The house is a mess. Probably won't be able to do it until the end of the month, though, not with the workload I have. I did, however, clean out the freezer and toss out anything old and/or anything I'd never eat (like fish that the former girlfriend left behind), and at the bottom of the pile I found an entire pan of frozen rigatoni, cooked, covered in foil, and frozen many, many many months ago. I tossed it in the oven at 425 for three hours, and now I have meals for the rest of the week.
Not to be outdone, I also made a huge pot of experimental chicken noodle soup, this time with macaroni instead of egg noodles, more chicken (using the last of the chicken I had), a bag each of frozen peas, corn, and onions, half a frozen brick of spinach, four cubes of chicken bouillon, an envelope of noodle soup mix, and a can of mixed vegetables from the pantry. And it's fantastic. This may be the way I make soup from this point forward, as about $5 worth of ingredients (minus the chicken, of course) made a pot of soup large enough to feed me probably twenty times. After this week, whatever's left of it will be put in a big Ziploc bag in the freezer.
I've tried to cut back sharply on my food budget, purchasing only the essentials for daily life. Half the time now this doesn't even include sandwich materials, as lunch meat and cheese are expensive (not to mention I barely eat them anymore anyhow). I've noticed I'm spending more money on food for me and the cats than probably anything else outside my rent and bills, including gasoline. For a single guy, that's just unacceptable. Ideally, outside of daily-requirement things like cigarettes, coffee, and vitamins, I shouldn't be shopping for food on a weekly basis, and I've been trying desperately to cut the the amount of cash I spend on food in half. I need to not only to save money, but because I am on a rather strict budget, and because there are still big purchases (like a good vacuum and lawnmower) I have to save up for eventually. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, of course; I will receive the other half of my loan money in the beginning of January, I do get paid continuously every two weeks between now and the end of May, and I'm bound to receive some money from some relatives for Christmas/my birthday -- but for the next two months things are going to be pretty tight, and I need to invent some ways to keep myself fed.
Because of that, I'm going to invest in those big multi-meal dishes like pastas and soups, and chili. Oooh, chili. I haven't made my own chili in almost seven years, since before the former girlfriend and I got together. It will be exciting to make again. If I do these things, I can at least feed myself inventively and cheaply, stay full and warm, and not have to eat like a rabbit (remember, carrots, celery, etc). I really need to hit up the discount grocery store up here in Newton again soon to stock up on canned goods and sauces for 39 cents each.
Ah yes, the life of a poor graduate student; isn't it glamorous, folks?
In other news, I keep neglecting to mention "Fall Break." I've brought it up here in passing, I'm sure, but it's next weekend. Fall Break is something the university does every year to make up for the two days of Thanksgiving week that classes are in session -- instead of giving students the whole Thanksgiving week off (side note: I'm taking it off anyway), they give them Wed/Thurs/Fri off that week and make up the other two days in the middle of October around midterms, calling it "Fall Break." Up until this point, it was always on a Thursday and Friday, but for us in the English Department that didn't help much, as we always have Fridays off, so one of our esteemed English professors who is on the decision board for these sorts of things brought up and passed the motion that from this point forward, Fall Break will be held on Monday/Tuesday -- ensuring that the English Department, at least, has a five-day weekend of Friday-Saturday-Sunday-Monday-Tuesday. This doesn't affect me much, of course, as I always have Monday off anyhow, and all I do on Tuesday is teach and then hop in the car to come back home. My "Fall Break" this year simply means I'll save a day's worth of gas and miles on the car, and five hours of my time (7AM to noon-ish) that I would normally be on campus next Tuesday. On the plus side, I will get to sleep in.
On that note, it's after 3AM. I get up at 5 in order to drink coffee and get ready for the day. I'm tired, sure, but don't know that I'll get to sleep again. If not, oh well -- I can do that when I get home from teaching around 12:30 or so.
Monday, October 10, 2011
Writers and Writing
Fall semester: day thirty-six
I have a lot of other work to do today, but I would first like to write a bit on something that's been bugging me lately, and bugging me quite a bit -- writers and writing, writers and reading, reading and writers' mindsets, etc.
In case it wasn't pretty evident to you at this point, I am a writer. I've written one book and I'm working on a second and perhaps even a third. I'm not the best writer out there, obviously, but I manage to at least be proud of some of my work, despite what people may think or say about it. I've written in all genres -- right now I'm primarily a poet, but I've also written a lot of nonfiction and fiction as well, including a full screenplay (which, I'm guessing, nobody will ever see on the screen). Despite my insular lifestyle of living alone and rarely leaving the house, I have a wide variety of interests and hobbies -- when time permits, of course -- and I tend to see myself as a well-rounded, mostly-well-adjusted individual with normal social skills, logic, and intelligence.
The problem? It doesn't lie with me, in case you were wondering. It's in what I see a lot of writers doing -- they're too insular. What do I mean by this? Let me explain.
Just because writing is what you do, and what you're good at, doesn't mean it has to be your life.
In saying this, I've realized that most writers are very awkward people, or tend to keep to themselves quite a bit. If not, almost any conversation they'll have will eventually come back to writing, or a book/poem they've just read and enjoyed, or something they've "been working on" that is frustrating the hell out of them. Writing, whether they're doing it themselves or reading others' works, is centered in their lives. Everything they do revolves around it, and it is, for practical purposes, all they know.
I'm saying that this is akin to "bringing your work home with you" after a long day at the office, metaphorically speaking. You know the people I'm referring to, I'm sure -- those folks who work miserable 9-5 office jobs wearing white-collar shirts and ties, and then come home and spend two hours bitching at their wives/husbands about how miserable they are -- or, conversely, can't just stop working, always needing to take care of more paperwork or office work even from the home computer or briefcase. Their jobs are all they have going for them, and they take said jobs way too seriously. This isn't limited to the office, of course -- I've seen it in all sorts of jobs (particularly when I was working in the grocery business).
There has to be a distinct separation of what you do and what you are, folks, otherwise you limit yourself in what you can become or what you are capable of. I write. It's what I do. But being a writer is a very, very small sliver of what I am. I am in an MFA program at a decently-sized, state-run university, but I don't let that define me. That is my job, my business, part of what I do. And aside from what work I must do as a part of that program, when I leave campus every day, it remains there. I don't come home every night and look for other ways to continue my creative writing, or look for writing-related things or readings that will purposely continue my work -- no, I've got other things to do, and I have other, separate interests. I don't look for the newest book of fiction or poetry to immerse myself in; for one, I do enough reading for my actual classes, and for two, if I ever read any poetry I'm not forced to, it's usually by accident.
What I'm saying is that I have a need for separation. Again, what I do must be different from what I am for sanity's sake; I must have separate interests and activities to take care of that are completely different from what I do day-in, day-out, and I think a lot more people could benefit from this sort of mindset. Writing in particular is one of those things I've always believed that you can either do or you can't, and total immersion or constant instruction in it does little more than beat a dead horse after a while. There is a saturation point, and after one reaches that point one is never going to get any better -- just become more insular, and frankly, boring. I often wonder how boring the lives of some of my friends/colleagues both inside and outside the department must be if all they ever do is focus on their work or things relating to it, because that's all that interests them.
Also of note: I'm not talking a need for separation as in "hey, to get our minds off things, let's go out and get really drunk on the weekend!" I'm talking a need for separation as in "hey, I need to get my mind off things, so I'm going to take up the hobby of knitting." Or fishing. Or drawing. Or cooking/baking. Stand-up comedy. Listening to podcasts (with subject matter far removed from work, of course). Participating in the arts community by attending plays. Getting into a new kind of music that nobody else you know listens to. You know, hobbies and interests. Anything completely separate from work, from writing, or from school. So few people I know do these things. I know for some of them it's a lack of time involved, but for many it's because they've become so insular that they've become unable to look outside their little box, and therefore run the risk of becoming boring people, especially those folks who are single and unattached.
You may ask how even I have the time for hobbies and interests. I make the time for it. I make the time for it because otherwise I would go absolutely batshit insane. I can't have a laser focus on one thing, one drive, one speed on what I do, in school or work, and have nothing else. I have many outside interests that have absolutely nothing to do with my writing -- for example, I am a nerd, and everything that entails weighs heavily on my interests; I love comic books, old-school video games, and a ton of internet-related stuff. I also make a lot of tie-dye clothing, love football and hockey, have a huge slate of podcasts I download on a daily basis to listen to in order to put my mind in a different place, and (when I have the money, at least) I go bargain-shopping. Also keep in mind that I am very busy, very single and isolated, and even though I don't spend every waking moment on my work, my writing does improve slowly, week-by-week, month-by-month. If anything, it's that ability to have other interests and disconnect that lets me reinvigorate myself and inspires me to give my all when it does come to my academic or professional pursuits.
Some people, of course, don't need that disconnect, as it would only hinder them. I realize this and agree with it; some people's brains are just wired differently, and that's certainly understandable. I'm not saying everyone needs to listen to me and do what I say, mostly because that's never worked well in the past (despite how much easier it would make my daily life if it did). I'm just saying, really folks, if you don't want to be defined by what you do instead of what you are, don't allow yourselves to fall into that definition. Be yourselves. Create yourselves, culture yourselves in ways other than the ones you're used to. Get out of your rut. Expand.
Anyway. Just some thoughts and observations. Not directed at anyone in particular, of course.
I have a lot of other work to do today, but I would first like to write a bit on something that's been bugging me lately, and bugging me quite a bit -- writers and writing, writers and reading, reading and writers' mindsets, etc.
In case it wasn't pretty evident to you at this point, I am a writer. I've written one book and I'm working on a second and perhaps even a third. I'm not the best writer out there, obviously, but I manage to at least be proud of some of my work, despite what people may think or say about it. I've written in all genres -- right now I'm primarily a poet, but I've also written a lot of nonfiction and fiction as well, including a full screenplay (which, I'm guessing, nobody will ever see on the screen). Despite my insular lifestyle of living alone and rarely leaving the house, I have a wide variety of interests and hobbies -- when time permits, of course -- and I tend to see myself as a well-rounded, mostly-well-adjusted individual with normal social skills, logic, and intelligence.
The problem? It doesn't lie with me, in case you were wondering. It's in what I see a lot of writers doing -- they're too insular. What do I mean by this? Let me explain.
Just because writing is what you do, and what you're good at, doesn't mean it has to be your life.
In saying this, I've realized that most writers are very awkward people, or tend to keep to themselves quite a bit. If not, almost any conversation they'll have will eventually come back to writing, or a book/poem they've just read and enjoyed, or something they've "been working on" that is frustrating the hell out of them. Writing, whether they're doing it themselves or reading others' works, is centered in their lives. Everything they do revolves around it, and it is, for practical purposes, all they know.
I'm saying that this is akin to "bringing your work home with you" after a long day at the office, metaphorically speaking. You know the people I'm referring to, I'm sure -- those folks who work miserable 9-5 office jobs wearing white-collar shirts and ties, and then come home and spend two hours bitching at their wives/husbands about how miserable they are -- or, conversely, can't just stop working, always needing to take care of more paperwork or office work even from the home computer or briefcase. Their jobs are all they have going for them, and they take said jobs way too seriously. This isn't limited to the office, of course -- I've seen it in all sorts of jobs (particularly when I was working in the grocery business).
There has to be a distinct separation of what you do and what you are, folks, otherwise you limit yourself in what you can become or what you are capable of. I write. It's what I do. But being a writer is a very, very small sliver of what I am. I am in an MFA program at a decently-sized, state-run university, but I don't let that define me. That is my job, my business, part of what I do. And aside from what work I must do as a part of that program, when I leave campus every day, it remains there. I don't come home every night and look for other ways to continue my creative writing, or look for writing-related things or readings that will purposely continue my work -- no, I've got other things to do, and I have other, separate interests. I don't look for the newest book of fiction or poetry to immerse myself in; for one, I do enough reading for my actual classes, and for two, if I ever read any poetry I'm not forced to, it's usually by accident.
What I'm saying is that I have a need for separation. Again, what I do must be different from what I am for sanity's sake; I must have separate interests and activities to take care of that are completely different from what I do day-in, day-out, and I think a lot more people could benefit from this sort of mindset. Writing in particular is one of those things I've always believed that you can either do or you can't, and total immersion or constant instruction in it does little more than beat a dead horse after a while. There is a saturation point, and after one reaches that point one is never going to get any better -- just become more insular, and frankly, boring. I often wonder how boring the lives of some of my friends/colleagues both inside and outside the department must be if all they ever do is focus on their work or things relating to it, because that's all that interests them.
Also of note: I'm not talking a need for separation as in "hey, to get our minds off things, let's go out and get really drunk on the weekend!" I'm talking a need for separation as in "hey, I need to get my mind off things, so I'm going to take up the hobby of knitting." Or fishing. Or drawing. Or cooking/baking. Stand-up comedy. Listening to podcasts (with subject matter far removed from work, of course). Participating in the arts community by attending plays. Getting into a new kind of music that nobody else you know listens to. You know, hobbies and interests. Anything completely separate from work, from writing, or from school. So few people I know do these things. I know for some of them it's a lack of time involved, but for many it's because they've become so insular that they've become unable to look outside their little box, and therefore run the risk of becoming boring people, especially those folks who are single and unattached.
You may ask how even I have the time for hobbies and interests. I make the time for it. I make the time for it because otherwise I would go absolutely batshit insane. I can't have a laser focus on one thing, one drive, one speed on what I do, in school or work, and have nothing else. I have many outside interests that have absolutely nothing to do with my writing -- for example, I am a nerd, and everything that entails weighs heavily on my interests; I love comic books, old-school video games, and a ton of internet-related stuff. I also make a lot of tie-dye clothing, love football and hockey, have a huge slate of podcasts I download on a daily basis to listen to in order to put my mind in a different place, and (when I have the money, at least) I go bargain-shopping. Also keep in mind that I am very busy, very single and isolated, and even though I don't spend every waking moment on my work, my writing does improve slowly, week-by-week, month-by-month. If anything, it's that ability to have other interests and disconnect that lets me reinvigorate myself and inspires me to give my all when it does come to my academic or professional pursuits.
Some people, of course, don't need that disconnect, as it would only hinder them. I realize this and agree with it; some people's brains are just wired differently, and that's certainly understandable. I'm not saying everyone needs to listen to me and do what I say, mostly because that's never worked well in the past (despite how much easier it would make my daily life if it did). I'm just saying, really folks, if you don't want to be defined by what you do instead of what you are, don't allow yourselves to fall into that definition. Be yourselves. Create yourselves, culture yourselves in ways other than the ones you're used to. Get out of your rut. Expand.
Anyway. Just some thoughts and observations. Not directed at anyone in particular, of course.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
A Rant; or, Conversely, Calm Thyselves
This needs to be said, once and for all, to all who have asked/inquired on these situations -- because, frankly, all of it's getting on my nerves and I want to make everything very clear:
No, for the last time, I am not moving back to West Virginia just because I'm poor and recently single. Ever. Let me make that abundantly clear: EVER. If I have the choice, I will never live in that godforsaken state ever again. This is NOT a slam against any of my friends or family who currently live there, such as my parents, or anyone who has lived there their entire lives. I lived there for the first 24 years of my life -- I dealt with every snowstorm, dealt with a job market absolutely bereft of employment for anyone with a liberal arts degree (or, barring that, any job where I could make more than $6k a year -- yes, $6k), and cringed my way through every conversation I had with every lower-class, slack-jawed denizen of that miserable black hole of a state. I have no desire to return there for anything more than a very short visit, and only then of my own accord.
Also, just because I am poor, somewhat depressed, and pissed off at the world doesn't mean I'm going to quit school, disappear, and/or off myself, so calm the fuck down. I am in the MFA program at Flat State University because I want and choose to be in it, not because I feel that I have to be in it. I also intend to finish it and move on with my life, wherever said life takes me afterwards. I live here in Newton instead of Wichita because I choose to do so. I own a speedy, but old and somewhat decrepit car because I cannot afford a better one. All of these choices, for better or worse, have been my own, and no one else's -- and I will stick by these decisions no matter the consequences.
Yes, I have a social life here in Kansas. Yes, I have friends here in Kansas, as well as in many other states, who are there for me when I need them. This is not going to change. They keep me sane, they keep me grounded, and for those of you who worry about me, take solace in the fact that none of them will ever let anything bad happen to me that they can possibly avoid with their interaction or help.
Yes, my financial situation sucks, but I will deal with it. I am racking up more debt every year, but at least it's not high-interest credit card debt -- just student loans. I do not possess a credit card.
No, I do not "miss" the former girlfriend. She left me, I dealt with it, and both of us moved on. I am perfectly happy being single/living single, despite the isolation and/or loneliness that may bring with it at times. As I've said before: I love my car and I love my cats -- all else is questionable. Would it be nice to be in a relationship again? Eventually, yes. Am I "actively searching" for one? No.
For one, I don't have the time or energy to devote to romantic pursuits, and for two -- let's be honest here -- who would want me? I'm not exactly a prize catch; I'm overweight, it takes me forever to grow a respectable beard, I have no money, smoke like a chimney, and have no discernible fashion sense or cultural taste. Frankly, folks, I'm a mess. Most women out there -- especially the one or two I currently know who I am particularly attracted to -- are waaaaay too good for me, and I know this as well as they do.
That's not low self-esteem talking, because if you know me at all, you know I think very highly of myself. That's me being brutally honest.
Finally, I must state once more that no, things are not as nearly as bad as I make them sound here in the blog. Yes, life sucks. It sucks for most people, most of the time. You should know at this point that the purpose of this blog is for me to work out what's inside my head, and sometimes my mind goes to dark places. It is a form of therapy -- some people see psychiatrists; I write. I'm a writer. It's what I do. No, I'm not so poor that I can't survive on my own, at least not yet, and unless something unavoidable and/or catastrophic happens, I'm smart enough to avoid such a fate. As I told my own parents, who have expressed their concern as of late, I am almost thirty years old now -- I can figure out and deal with my problems by myself, in my own way, without inconveniencing anyone else. If I need help of any sort -- monetary or otherwise -- from anyone, I am neither too proud nor too stupid to ask for it. But right now, I don't.
So, seriously, relax. I'll be fine. I appreciate your concern, really I do. And I realize the blog has been, as my dad put it, sounding "grim" as of late. This is me working through my demons, folks; I've told you about that before. Even if I were incredibly depressed, which I'm not, you may take more solace in the fact that I don't even own a gun.
Well, okay, I do own a gun. But it's an air pistol that shoots BBs/pellets. I keep it in my closet for self-defense purposes only, as it looks exactly like a 9MM and I purchased it because of that fact. I'd have to shoot an evil intruder in the eyes if I wanted to do any lasting damage.
Still. That's not the point.
My point is that I'm fine. Stop worrying about me. All of you. Jesus, you folks are jumpy. I have a job, I have a car, there's food in the house, and a roof over my head -- and I also possess other bonuses like hot water, electricity, and clothes on my back. That's all I've ever asked for out of life, and I've got it. Right now it's all I need. There's an ebb and flow to everything, folks -- sometimes life is pretty good, other times it sucks. Right now it's leaning more towards the "sucks" side, but soon enough it will work its way back over to the "pretty good" side. Regardless, I write about it here and pull no punches one way or the other.
No, for the last time, I am not moving back to West Virginia just because I'm poor and recently single. Ever. Let me make that abundantly clear: EVER. If I have the choice, I will never live in that godforsaken state ever again. This is NOT a slam against any of my friends or family who currently live there, such as my parents, or anyone who has lived there their entire lives. I lived there for the first 24 years of my life -- I dealt with every snowstorm, dealt with a job market absolutely bereft of employment for anyone with a liberal arts degree (or, barring that, any job where I could make more than $6k a year -- yes, $6k), and cringed my way through every conversation I had with every lower-class, slack-jawed denizen of that miserable black hole of a state. I have no desire to return there for anything more than a very short visit, and only then of my own accord.
Also, just because I am poor, somewhat depressed, and pissed off at the world doesn't mean I'm going to quit school, disappear, and/or off myself, so calm the fuck down. I am in the MFA program at Flat State University because I want and choose to be in it, not because I feel that I have to be in it. I also intend to finish it and move on with my life, wherever said life takes me afterwards. I live here in Newton instead of Wichita because I choose to do so. I own a speedy, but old and somewhat decrepit car because I cannot afford a better one. All of these choices, for better or worse, have been my own, and no one else's -- and I will stick by these decisions no matter the consequences.
Yes, I have a social life here in Kansas. Yes, I have friends here in Kansas, as well as in many other states, who are there for me when I need them. This is not going to change. They keep me sane, they keep me grounded, and for those of you who worry about me, take solace in the fact that none of them will ever let anything bad happen to me that they can possibly avoid with their interaction or help.
Yes, my financial situation sucks, but I will deal with it. I am racking up more debt every year, but at least it's not high-interest credit card debt -- just student loans. I do not possess a credit card.
No, I do not "miss" the former girlfriend. She left me, I dealt with it, and both of us moved on. I am perfectly happy being single/living single, despite the isolation and/or loneliness that may bring with it at times. As I've said before: I love my car and I love my cats -- all else is questionable. Would it be nice to be in a relationship again? Eventually, yes. Am I "actively searching" for one? No.
For one, I don't have the time or energy to devote to romantic pursuits, and for two -- let's be honest here -- who would want me? I'm not exactly a prize catch; I'm overweight, it takes me forever to grow a respectable beard, I have no money, smoke like a chimney, and have no discernible fashion sense or cultural taste. Frankly, folks, I'm a mess. Most women out there -- especially the one or two I currently know who I am particularly attracted to -- are waaaaay too good for me, and I know this as well as they do.
That's not low self-esteem talking, because if you know me at all, you know I think very highly of myself. That's me being brutally honest.
Finally, I must state once more that no, things are not as nearly as bad as I make them sound here in the blog. Yes, life sucks. It sucks for most people, most of the time. You should know at this point that the purpose of this blog is for me to work out what's inside my head, and sometimes my mind goes to dark places. It is a form of therapy -- some people see psychiatrists; I write. I'm a writer. It's what I do. No, I'm not so poor that I can't survive on my own, at least not yet, and unless something unavoidable and/or catastrophic happens, I'm smart enough to avoid such a fate. As I told my own parents, who have expressed their concern as of late, I am almost thirty years old now -- I can figure out and deal with my problems by myself, in my own way, without inconveniencing anyone else. If I need help of any sort -- monetary or otherwise -- from anyone, I am neither too proud nor too stupid to ask for it. But right now, I don't.
So, seriously, relax. I'll be fine. I appreciate your concern, really I do. And I realize the blog has been, as my dad put it, sounding "grim" as of late. This is me working through my demons, folks; I've told you about that before. Even if I were incredibly depressed, which I'm not, you may take more solace in the fact that I don't even own a gun.
Well, okay, I do own a gun. But it's an air pistol that shoots BBs/pellets. I keep it in my closet for self-defense purposes only, as it looks exactly like a 9MM and I purchased it because of that fact. I'd have to shoot an evil intruder in the eyes if I wanted to do any lasting damage.
Still. That's not the point.
My point is that I'm fine. Stop worrying about me. All of you. Jesus, you folks are jumpy. I have a job, I have a car, there's food in the house, and a roof over my head -- and I also possess other bonuses like hot water, electricity, and clothes on my back. That's all I've ever asked for out of life, and I've got it. Right now it's all I need. There's an ebb and flow to everything, folks -- sometimes life is pretty good, other times it sucks. Right now it's leaning more towards the "sucks" side, but soon enough it will work its way back over to the "pretty good" side. Regardless, I write about it here and pull no punches one way or the other.
Friday, October 7, 2011
Headlong Into the Mouth of Hell, Part II
Fall semester: day thirty-five
As you know, the rest of this month is full of work and problems for me. More work than problems, of course, but problems remain.
At some point during the past week or so, the Monte Carlo began drinking coolant again at an alarming rate. Don't know when or how, but after two weeks of just-fine coolant levels, over the past ten days or so the tank basically emptied itself again. It's also dripping again from what looks like the overflow valve (as it used to do this all the time when I'd overfilled the tank), but not large amounts. This doesn't really make a lot of sense to me at the moment, obviously, since it's apparently burning through coolant again when, previously, it hadn't for a few weeks.
Regardless, I'm done with this shit. I'm putting the radiator stop-leak in it whenever I drive it next, because whether it's a hose, valve, seal, or something else, it needs to be able to hold its liquid -- I can't afford to keep refilling it every two or three weeks. Antifreeze/coolant isn't that cheap; it's about $8-10 a jug, depending on what you get, and I need to break the car of that habit until I can get it fixed/worked on/what-have-you...whenever that may be, of course. At least the stop-leak stuff says it rejuvenates/re-moisturizes gaskets and hose seals as well.
Again, despite that fact, you'd never be able to tell there's anything otherwise wrong with the car. She runs and drives normally, never overheats or smokes, etc. She performs admirably as always, despite her age and miles.
Yes, believe me, I'm realize the day that she no longer will is coming probably sooner rather than later. And I can't do anything about that fact. Really, really can't. I have no money that won't be going towards bills, rent, or food. None. Believe me, if I could afford to fix the car without becoming homeless in the process, I would.
Speaking of homes, the other problem that's going on right now is that the rent check for this month has not yet come out of my bank account, and I don't know why.
I've written here before about the rent; it is the number one highest expense I have to deal with on a monthly basis, and the same is probably true for a lot of people reading this blog. I pay $525 a month for a place much larger than I need now that I'm single and it's just me and the cats, but I really love the house I'm in and it's quiet here in Newton. I would not be able to get a place in Wichita anywhere near this nice (or this size) for the same price. Because of that, I deal with the commute, I deal with the isolation and loneliness living here brings. Perhaps it's because it's my lot in life to be perpetually lonely, but perhaps it's because I don't want to park my very old, decrepit car outside in the -20 winters or run the risk of getting stabbed or mugged every time I walk down the street. So, I deal with it.
I also hate worrying about money. I'm convinced when I die at or before age 40 (because come on, people, let's be realistic here), it's not going to be so much the drinking, smoking, and bad eating that did me in, but worrying and stress.
Usually the rent comes out of my bank account on the first of the month or very shortly thereafter. Tomorrow is the 8th. Nothing yet. I mailed it September 24 -- almost two weeks ago. How do I know this? Because I looked it up in my check register. I write down the dates that I mail things. Always have. The address is here in town; it's not like it has to go far. I also sent out all the other bills on the same day. Those checks have come out of my account. The rent has not.
At this point, there's not a whole lot I can do but wait. If it doesn't come out by Monday evening I will be making a call to the landlord to make sure that he actually got the damned check. If he didn't, it not only puts me in hot water with him, but creates a huuuuuuge pain in the ass with me, as I will have to cancel/put a stop-payment on the first check (incurring a $30 fee from my bank) and write out another one, hope that he takes it and that it smooths things over, and in general be really pissed at the postal service.
I should not have to worry about these things, any of them -- the car, the rent, what little money I have, etc. Really I shouldn't. No one should. But everyone does have to worry about these things, these things that they can't change or fix.
I also cannot take any more loans this year; that window has passed. What I have is what I have, and I'm locked into it now. This means I must face the sobering reality that when the money I have runs out, it runs out, and there's nothing I can do about that. If something really catastrophic happens, such as my car blowing up or me getting really sick and becoming unable to teach/work, it's over. As in, I will lose everything. My home, my cats, my job (more than likely), etc. Everything. There's no saving grace, nowhere to go, no safety net, and no one to bail me out. It will be over.
What happens at that point? Well, we'll see when I reach it, won't we? Because it will happen.
One of my friends, a close and dear friend, has offered me money if I need it. I won't mention said friend's name here out of privacy's sake, obviously, but this person is the only one who has offered to help me if needed -- and really, I'd probably be forced to decline that monetary help, because there is no way I'd ever be able to pay it back -- not unless I won the lottery, or unless some rich unknown relative were to die and leave me some amount of inheritance like you see in the movies. No, folks, I'm pretty much stuck.
As soul-crushingly depressing as all of that might be, I have not cried. In fact, I haven't cried since long, long before the former girlfriend broke up with me, which you may think would have been an opportunity for me to do so. Nope. I don't cry anymore. Haven't cried in months. Life has been so bad, so bad, that I think it's permanently broken me. I'm not sure I have the ability to cry anymore. I've gotten used to the fact that this world fucking sucks, and therefore when everything piles up to the point where it would emotionally demolish other people, I'm the guy who's like "Yep. I was expecting that. What? No, no, I stopped expecting anything to go right for me a long time ago. No worries." Because, really, that's what always happens.
The past three months have been nothing but failure after failure after failure for me -- professionally, socially, and emotionally all combined. I can't dwell on it, though; I can't even allow myself to think about it most of the time, because I must soldier on -- there is always something else to be done, somewhere else to be, a class to teach or attend, or something else to write or grade. I can't dwell on it or think about it because I don't have the time or energy to do so. I don't even have the time or energy, really, to be writing here tonight. There are myriad things for me to do this weekend, including getting started on at least two papers that are coming due, and studying for a midterm exam. Up until now, I've been working almost since I got up this morning, grading the rest of my students' papers and calculating their midterm grades.
And, finally, after I spent half an hour writing about it earlier, I see in my bank account now that my rent check is in the process of going through -- apparently it just takes my bank forever to do shit like that sometimes. Though that problem is no longer an issue, the other ones still remain.
The former girlfriend is apparently visiting her parents this weekend, so she should be cashing the check I wrote her a month ago for the old deposit on this place. Once she does that, my finances should be completely in order. That, coupled with the rent check I was waiting on to come out, will comprise $1250 just gone, almost all at once, that I'll never see again.
And you people wonder why I desperately worry about money, and why I drive a speedy, but falling-apart car that's fifteen years old.
Not everything is as bad as I make it sound, but it's pretty close, and as I said before, there are good things in my life -- just very few of them. At least I have some friends, at least I'm keeping up with my reading and other work in all of my classes, etc.
In the Science/Engineering Writing classes I teach, last week we entered the unit on ethics and technology -- and, to start off said unit, we covered an article in the textbook that basically says that the internet has made us live more isolated, more inside our heads than ever before, apart from the rest of society, communicating mainly in instant messages, texting, and Facebook wall posts.
I had to laugh. Yeah, I thought, try graduate school, try living 24 miles out of town, try having your girlfriend leave you after nearly seven years together, and *then* talk to me about "living isolated."
Okay, so it was one of those "need to laugh to keep from crying" situations, though it's already been established that I don't/can't cry, so it was a "laugh because this is how I've always lived for my entire adult life" situations. Because, really, I still talk to my friends much more online than I ever get the chance to in real life, especially the ones who live far away -- not just back home, but in other states/countries too. Skype can, at times, be a godsend. You know, when I actually have time to use it...which, of course, I haven't as of late.
I've found that there are a lot of pursuits I've given up in life only to come back to later. One of them, for a very, very long time, was writing for a living. Now I've published a book and am readying a second. I'm pretty sure the next pursuit I'm going to give up will be "financial stability." Either that or "female companionship." I've not yet decided.
As you know, the rest of this month is full of work and problems for me. More work than problems, of course, but problems remain.
At some point during the past week or so, the Monte Carlo began drinking coolant again at an alarming rate. Don't know when or how, but after two weeks of just-fine coolant levels, over the past ten days or so the tank basically emptied itself again. It's also dripping again from what looks like the overflow valve (as it used to do this all the time when I'd overfilled the tank), but not large amounts. This doesn't really make a lot of sense to me at the moment, obviously, since it's apparently burning through coolant again when, previously, it hadn't for a few weeks.
Regardless, I'm done with this shit. I'm putting the radiator stop-leak in it whenever I drive it next, because whether it's a hose, valve, seal, or something else, it needs to be able to hold its liquid -- I can't afford to keep refilling it every two or three weeks. Antifreeze/coolant isn't that cheap; it's about $8-10 a jug, depending on what you get, and I need to break the car of that habit until I can get it fixed/worked on/what-have-you...whenever that may be, of course. At least the stop-leak stuff says it rejuvenates/re-moisturizes gaskets and hose seals as well.
Again, despite that fact, you'd never be able to tell there's anything otherwise wrong with the car. She runs and drives normally, never overheats or smokes, etc. She performs admirably as always, despite her age and miles.
Yes, believe me, I'm realize the day that she no longer will is coming probably sooner rather than later. And I can't do anything about that fact. Really, really can't. I have no money that won't be going towards bills, rent, or food. None. Believe me, if I could afford to fix the car without becoming homeless in the process, I would.
Speaking of homes, the other problem that's going on right now is that the rent check for this month has not yet come out of my bank account, and I don't know why.
I've written here before about the rent; it is the number one highest expense I have to deal with on a monthly basis, and the same is probably true for a lot of people reading this blog. I pay $525 a month for a place much larger than I need now that I'm single and it's just me and the cats, but I really love the house I'm in and it's quiet here in Newton. I would not be able to get a place in Wichita anywhere near this nice (or this size) for the same price. Because of that, I deal with the commute, I deal with the isolation and loneliness living here brings. Perhaps it's because it's my lot in life to be perpetually lonely, but perhaps it's because I don't want to park my very old, decrepit car outside in the -20 winters or run the risk of getting stabbed or mugged every time I walk down the street. So, I deal with it.
I also hate worrying about money. I'm convinced when I die at or before age 40 (because come on, people, let's be realistic here), it's not going to be so much the drinking, smoking, and bad eating that did me in, but worrying and stress.
Usually the rent comes out of my bank account on the first of the month or very shortly thereafter. Tomorrow is the 8th. Nothing yet. I mailed it September 24 -- almost two weeks ago. How do I know this? Because I looked it up in my check register. I write down the dates that I mail things. Always have. The address is here in town; it's not like it has to go far. I also sent out all the other bills on the same day. Those checks have come out of my account. The rent has not.
At this point, there's not a whole lot I can do but wait. If it doesn't come out by Monday evening I will be making a call to the landlord to make sure that he actually got the damned check. If he didn't, it not only puts me in hot water with him, but creates a huuuuuuge pain in the ass with me, as I will have to cancel/put a stop-payment on the first check (incurring a $30 fee from my bank) and write out another one, hope that he takes it and that it smooths things over, and in general be really pissed at the postal service.
I should not have to worry about these things, any of them -- the car, the rent, what little money I have, etc. Really I shouldn't. No one should. But everyone does have to worry about these things, these things that they can't change or fix.
I also cannot take any more loans this year; that window has passed. What I have is what I have, and I'm locked into it now. This means I must face the sobering reality that when the money I have runs out, it runs out, and there's nothing I can do about that. If something really catastrophic happens, such as my car blowing up or me getting really sick and becoming unable to teach/work, it's over. As in, I will lose everything. My home, my cats, my job (more than likely), etc. Everything. There's no saving grace, nowhere to go, no safety net, and no one to bail me out. It will be over.
What happens at that point? Well, we'll see when I reach it, won't we? Because it will happen.
One of my friends, a close and dear friend, has offered me money if I need it. I won't mention said friend's name here out of privacy's sake, obviously, but this person is the only one who has offered to help me if needed -- and really, I'd probably be forced to decline that monetary help, because there is no way I'd ever be able to pay it back -- not unless I won the lottery, or unless some rich unknown relative were to die and leave me some amount of inheritance like you see in the movies. No, folks, I'm pretty much stuck.
As soul-crushingly depressing as all of that might be, I have not cried. In fact, I haven't cried since long, long before the former girlfriend broke up with me, which you may think would have been an opportunity for me to do so. Nope. I don't cry anymore. Haven't cried in months. Life has been so bad, so bad, that I think it's permanently broken me. I'm not sure I have the ability to cry anymore. I've gotten used to the fact that this world fucking sucks, and therefore when everything piles up to the point where it would emotionally demolish other people, I'm the guy who's like "Yep. I was expecting that. What? No, no, I stopped expecting anything to go right for me a long time ago. No worries." Because, really, that's what always happens.
The past three months have been nothing but failure after failure after failure for me -- professionally, socially, and emotionally all combined. I can't dwell on it, though; I can't even allow myself to think about it most of the time, because I must soldier on -- there is always something else to be done, somewhere else to be, a class to teach or attend, or something else to write or grade. I can't dwell on it or think about it because I don't have the time or energy to do so. I don't even have the time or energy, really, to be writing here tonight. There are myriad things for me to do this weekend, including getting started on at least two papers that are coming due, and studying for a midterm exam. Up until now, I've been working almost since I got up this morning, grading the rest of my students' papers and calculating their midterm grades.
And, finally, after I spent half an hour writing about it earlier, I see in my bank account now that my rent check is in the process of going through -- apparently it just takes my bank forever to do shit like that sometimes. Though that problem is no longer an issue, the other ones still remain.
The former girlfriend is apparently visiting her parents this weekend, so she should be cashing the check I wrote her a month ago for the old deposit on this place. Once she does that, my finances should be completely in order. That, coupled with the rent check I was waiting on to come out, will comprise $1250 just gone, almost all at once, that I'll never see again.
And you people wonder why I desperately worry about money, and why I drive a speedy, but falling-apart car that's fifteen years old.
Not everything is as bad as I make it sound, but it's pretty close, and as I said before, there are good things in my life -- just very few of them. At least I have some friends, at least I'm keeping up with my reading and other work in all of my classes, etc.
In the Science/Engineering Writing classes I teach, last week we entered the unit on ethics and technology -- and, to start off said unit, we covered an article in the textbook that basically says that the internet has made us live more isolated, more inside our heads than ever before, apart from the rest of society, communicating mainly in instant messages, texting, and Facebook wall posts.
I had to laugh. Yeah, I thought, try graduate school, try living 24 miles out of town, try having your girlfriend leave you after nearly seven years together, and *then* talk to me about "living isolated."
Okay, so it was one of those "need to laugh to keep from crying" situations, though it's already been established that I don't/can't cry, so it was a "laugh because this is how I've always lived for my entire adult life" situations. Because, really, I still talk to my friends much more online than I ever get the chance to in real life, especially the ones who live far away -- not just back home, but in other states/countries too. Skype can, at times, be a godsend. You know, when I actually have time to use it...which, of course, I haven't as of late.
I've found that there are a lot of pursuits I've given up in life only to come back to later. One of them, for a very, very long time, was writing for a living. Now I've published a book and am readying a second. I'm pretty sure the next pursuit I'm going to give up will be "financial stability." Either that or "female companionship." I've not yet decided.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Headlong Into the Mouth of Hell, Part I
Fall semester: day thirty-two
Today marks the start of a very long month of work/school for me, and because of that it probably also marks the start of a lot less blog posts here on a regular basis. Over the course of the next three weeks or so, I have these things to do:
1. Write at least three full papers (and a few smaller ones)
2. Grade one set of student papers, return them, and collect a second set
3. Read three full novels, roughly
4. Calculate and post my students' midterm grades
5. Study for and take a "midterm exam" in my Middle Eastern/Asian Lit course
6. Attempt to get the car worked on/fixed before it gets too cold to do so
7. Prepare something new every week for my Poetry Workshop
8. Do all the readings I can for said workshop
9. Stay on a fixed budget so that I don't run myself out of money paying rent/bills
10. Figure out if anyone's doing anything for Halloween and whether I can participate
11. Ready my poetry book for publication
12. Ready a prospectus for at least one, if not two of the aforementioned papers
13. And any other odds-and-ends that come up.
I'm pretty sure Thursday the 13th is the date I'll have to take the midterm exam. That's nine days from now, which means in class on Thursday night our professor will more than likely give us the questions for study purposes. The exams in his classes aren't especially difficult (they're essay tests) but still require a fair amount of "study time," especially when it comes to knowing the source material (read: the novels covered in class). I'm not as concerned about the exam as I am the papers in that class or the papers in my Grad Studies in Fiction class. I have two papers to write in each class this semester, which means by the time December rolls around not only will I have read a combined total of about 20 books (roughly), but I will have written a combined total of around 50 pages of research papers for those two classes alone.
To put that into perspective, the poetry book I'll be publishing soon will probably only be around 50 pages total, give or take a few. It may be a little longer than that only because I'm including an author's appendix of sorts detailing the genesis of/internal meanings behind each of the poems, as I never see any poets who do that in their books.
Please note, however: this number is pretty close to the combined number of pages I wrote last fall, during my first semester of the program -- though 30 of those pages were two simple, reflective essays, and fun to write. I do have another reflective essay to write this semester, but it's for the Poetry Workshop's portfolio, and will be rather short (I think he said 750 words or so, which is about half the length of one of my normal blog posts here).
I'm not trying to sound like a whiner or anything like that; I knew what I was getting into when I entered the program, obviously, and as mentioned before -- fall semester is a nightmare for everyone. I feel bad for the new recruits, as well as people like Rae and Kay (who started in the spring), who have never had to slog through a grad student fall semester at Flat State University before. They're brutal, soul-crushing, and incredibly depressing. By the time fall semester ended last year, I was pretty close to being suicidal -- and keep in mind, back then I not only had a girlfriend but a lot more money than I have now, as well as the hopes that the holiday season would be fun and full of presents, good food, and surprises. This holiday season, all I have to look forward to is the cold, and the ability to actually get some quality sleep uninterrupted by shit I have to do or classes I have to attend and teach.
Really, this is my not-so-subtle way of telling you that until all of this shit gets done and everything calms down somewhat, I'm probably not going to have a lot of time to write here, or to do anything else that doesn't pertain to work and school. I'll try to write as much as I can, but I just don't see it happening a lot unless, for some reason, something catastrophically good or catastrophically bad happens over the course of the month of October.
On that note, as always on Tuesday mornings, I must pack up and make the slog to campus.
Today marks the start of a very long month of work/school for me, and because of that it probably also marks the start of a lot less blog posts here on a regular basis. Over the course of the next three weeks or so, I have these things to do:
1. Write at least three full papers (and a few smaller ones)
2. Grade one set of student papers, return them, and collect a second set
3. Read three full novels, roughly
4. Calculate and post my students' midterm grades
5. Study for and take a "midterm exam" in my Middle Eastern/Asian Lit course
6. Attempt to get the car worked on/fixed before it gets too cold to do so
7. Prepare something new every week for my Poetry Workshop
8. Do all the readings I can for said workshop
9. Stay on a fixed budget so that I don't run myself out of money paying rent/bills
10. Figure out if anyone's doing anything for Halloween and whether I can participate
11. Ready my poetry book for publication
12. Ready a prospectus for at least one, if not two of the aforementioned papers
13. And any other odds-and-ends that come up.
I'm pretty sure Thursday the 13th is the date I'll have to take the midterm exam. That's nine days from now, which means in class on Thursday night our professor will more than likely give us the questions for study purposes. The exams in his classes aren't especially difficult (they're essay tests) but still require a fair amount of "study time," especially when it comes to knowing the source material (read: the novels covered in class). I'm not as concerned about the exam as I am the papers in that class or the papers in my Grad Studies in Fiction class. I have two papers to write in each class this semester, which means by the time December rolls around not only will I have read a combined total of about 20 books (roughly), but I will have written a combined total of around 50 pages of research papers for those two classes alone.
To put that into perspective, the poetry book I'll be publishing soon will probably only be around 50 pages total, give or take a few. It may be a little longer than that only because I'm including an author's appendix of sorts detailing the genesis of/internal meanings behind each of the poems, as I never see any poets who do that in their books.
Please note, however: this number is pretty close to the combined number of pages I wrote last fall, during my first semester of the program -- though 30 of those pages were two simple, reflective essays, and fun to write. I do have another reflective essay to write this semester, but it's for the Poetry Workshop's portfolio, and will be rather short (I think he said 750 words or so, which is about half the length of one of my normal blog posts here).
I'm not trying to sound like a whiner or anything like that; I knew what I was getting into when I entered the program, obviously, and as mentioned before -- fall semester is a nightmare for everyone. I feel bad for the new recruits, as well as people like Rae and Kay (who started in the spring), who have never had to slog through a grad student fall semester at Flat State University before. They're brutal, soul-crushing, and incredibly depressing. By the time fall semester ended last year, I was pretty close to being suicidal -- and keep in mind, back then I not only had a girlfriend but a lot more money than I have now, as well as the hopes that the holiday season would be fun and full of presents, good food, and surprises. This holiday season, all I have to look forward to is the cold, and the ability to actually get some quality sleep uninterrupted by shit I have to do or classes I have to attend and teach.
Really, this is my not-so-subtle way of telling you that until all of this shit gets done and everything calms down somewhat, I'm probably not going to have a lot of time to write here, or to do anything else that doesn't pertain to work and school. I'll try to write as much as I can, but I just don't see it happening a lot unless, for some reason, something catastrophically good or catastrophically bad happens over the course of the month of October.
On that note, as always on Tuesday mornings, I must pack up and make the slog to campus.
Monday, October 3, 2011
Headache, Thou Art the Bane of Me
Fall semester: day thirty-one
In case you hadn't noticed by my previous post, I spent nine entire hours yesterday (for it is 12:50AM now) reading the entirety of Madame Bovary.
This was no small task. The book was 570 pages. It's probably the most I've ever read in one day.
...until you factor in that I was reading Midnight's Children last night until around 3AM as well, which probably brings my total 24-hour reading count up to somewhere around 800 pages -- as I read through roughly 300 pages of that book last night in an attempt to finish it. I failed in that, by the way; with about ten to fifteen pages of the novel remaining, I found myself falling asleep, and just went to bed. I still must finish it during the day tomorrow (today).
Not surprisingly, I have given myself a massive headache due to all of this reading. It can't really be helped; as October begins, the fall semester hits its stride and enters the throes of its full swing, a swing that doesn't complete its massive, soul-crushing arc until shortly after Thanksgiving -- when it culminates in finals week and, finally, the holiday season.
As an aside, my birthday falls during that holiday season -- December 20 -- four days after finals week ends this year and five days before Christmas. Judging from the workload I've had thus far, and anticipate to get much worse, by the time December 20 rolls around I'll not only be quite thankful to be done with school for a month, but I'll probably still be asleep. At least everyone I know will be home with their families, and won't want to throw a birthday party for me. That could only be a good thing.
As for me? I'm not planning on doing anything for my birthday or for the holidays. No money, really -- due to the fact that I had to get insurance on my car at the end of June (because that's when I purchased it), and I pay it every six months, I will be forced to renew said insurance at the end of December...which will mean that I'll have to flush $300 down the drain. I'm not looking forward to that, especially as it's yet another expense I must worry about paying, during a time when my finances will already be stretched thin.
Because of bills, rent, food, and gas for the car, my finances are almost as destitute as they were this summer, and due to that fact I have to very tightly budget myself for the next few months. I'm not sure my food or gas budgets can change from what they are already (especially not the gas, as I do need to drive the car to school and back), and the recent 30-to-35-cent drop in gas prices has helped a bit, but not enough. I'm also the guy who turns off every light in the house when it's not needed, which has started to reduce my electric bill, and I do laundry less than once a week now that I don't need to do it any more than that (living alone does, at times, have its perks), so that I save on my water bill -- at least a little, anyway.
Those two bills, ironically, are the two that arrived in the mail over the past three days or so -- so my "hey, all the bills are paid" statement I wrote here previously is no longer valid.
I'm sort of thankful I don't have a girlfriend or any other lady companion at this point -- I couldn't afford her.
This is why we can't have nice things!
Anyway.
I've been doing nothing but that aforementioned reading this weekend, or at least it seems like it. Aside from answering the volley of student emails and dealing with their SafeAssignment problems, I haven't touched any of the other work for my teaching. I still need to read a chapter in the textbook and write out my lesson plans for this week, and I of course have not touched their stack of papers to even attempt to try to grade them. Maybe if I am awake enough after I get home from teaching on Tuesday afternoon, I'll have the chance to get started on them. It is doubtful, however, that I'll be able to begin grading them in earnest until next weekend -- which is good, as I told them it would probably take two weeks before they're graded and back to them. Next Tuesday is the 11th, which is the day before midterm grades are due in as well. This is also why I read Madame Bovary in one sitting, today -- I won't have time to read anything next weekend, more than likely. My first paper in that class is due sometime around then as well, and the first paper in the Asian/Middle Eastern lit class is due on the 20th, which means that throughout the rest of October I will be doing nothing but work, as I mentioned here before. Though I am used to the solitude, loneliness, and, well, the being busy aspect of being a single male graduate student at this point, this semester's workload is the most I've ever had for school in my entire collegiate career -- including when I was an undergrad and taking 18 hours of English classes at a time and working 20-hour weeks in Microbiology at the same time.
This should tell you, or at least give you some idea, of how much shit I have to do this fall.
Still, I soldier on; in addition to my normal work, I had the brilliant idea (note the dripping sarcasm there) of trying to ready and release a book of my poetry sometime soon. I mentioned this before, of course. I have now compiled at least half of it -- before edits -- and am confident that I will be completely done with it within a month. This book, at least, will get a dual-release, both Kindle AND print editions, both at the same time. I'm pricing the Kindle edition at $5.99 (compared to $10 for my other, much longer book), though the print edition will more than likely cost much more due to the costs incurred by paper printing -- close to $20, I'd imagine. Still, it's a step in the right direction, I think -- sales of my first book have suffered terribly because there's no print edition of it yet. I can also confidently give you a release date of this book: Saturday, November 5.
Remember, remember, the fifth of November...
Suri, thus far anyway, is the only person on the planet aside from myself who knows the book's title, and she agreed that it was awesome/brilliant/etc. I've not even told Andrea, and Andrea is like my sister.
Again, like many other things I tell Suri, I swore her to secrecy on it. I'll eventually reveal it here, myself, several days before the book goes to print. But, I assure you, all stories of its awesomeness are well-founded.
In addition to my other work this weekend, I submitted my poetry to two more journals, and withdrew my submission to Parcel, as I had not received a response since I submitted it in May, and I wanted to use two poems in said submission in my book. Of the two journals I submitted new work to, I've got a decent shot at getting into one of them, at least. Decent, not great -- mainly because I know the editor, I respect him and his work, and he (at least to some extent) respects me and mine. We'll see.
I have made a new vow to myself -- no matter how busy I get over the course of the semester, I must find time to work on the book and find time to work on new submissions. These are the two things I have going for me right now that may eventually bring me fame and fortune, and the two things which may save my ass once I graduate from Flat State University and figure out just what in the hell I'm supposed to do with my life, PhD program or otherwise.
The car seems to be running fine...for now, anyway. Tonight I took it out to get some gas in it (therefore barring the need for me to leave the house at 6:30 on Tuesday morning) and to go to the Dollar Tree for deodorant and razors, and it ran well. I had a little trouble getting 'er started at the Dollar Tree, but that's because of the spark plugs (again, something else I need to get fixed which will cost me money I don't have right now). Still, she fired up and roared as always. When I get up in the morning, I need to remember to put the new registration sticker on the license plate -- otherwise, there's the chance I could be pulled over and given a ticket.
On that note, I am off to bed. My headache is pounding, and I desperately just want to curl up and sleep away from the harsh light of my computer screen.
In case you hadn't noticed by my previous post, I spent nine entire hours yesterday (for it is 12:50AM now) reading the entirety of Madame Bovary.
This was no small task. The book was 570 pages. It's probably the most I've ever read in one day.
...until you factor in that I was reading Midnight's Children last night until around 3AM as well, which probably brings my total 24-hour reading count up to somewhere around 800 pages -- as I read through roughly 300 pages of that book last night in an attempt to finish it. I failed in that, by the way; with about ten to fifteen pages of the novel remaining, I found myself falling asleep, and just went to bed. I still must finish it during the day tomorrow (today).
Not surprisingly, I have given myself a massive headache due to all of this reading. It can't really be helped; as October begins, the fall semester hits its stride and enters the throes of its full swing, a swing that doesn't complete its massive, soul-crushing arc until shortly after Thanksgiving -- when it culminates in finals week and, finally, the holiday season.
As an aside, my birthday falls during that holiday season -- December 20 -- four days after finals week ends this year and five days before Christmas. Judging from the workload I've had thus far, and anticipate to get much worse, by the time December 20 rolls around I'll not only be quite thankful to be done with school for a month, but I'll probably still be asleep. At least everyone I know will be home with their families, and won't want to throw a birthday party for me. That could only be a good thing.
As for me? I'm not planning on doing anything for my birthday or for the holidays. No money, really -- due to the fact that I had to get insurance on my car at the end of June (because that's when I purchased it), and I pay it every six months, I will be forced to renew said insurance at the end of December...which will mean that I'll have to flush $300 down the drain. I'm not looking forward to that, especially as it's yet another expense I must worry about paying, during a time when my finances will already be stretched thin.
Because of bills, rent, food, and gas for the car, my finances are almost as destitute as they were this summer, and due to that fact I have to very tightly budget myself for the next few months. I'm not sure my food or gas budgets can change from what they are already (especially not the gas, as I do need to drive the car to school and back), and the recent 30-to-35-cent drop in gas prices has helped a bit, but not enough. I'm also the guy who turns off every light in the house when it's not needed, which has started to reduce my electric bill, and I do laundry less than once a week now that I don't need to do it any more than that (living alone does, at times, have its perks), so that I save on my water bill -- at least a little, anyway.
Those two bills, ironically, are the two that arrived in the mail over the past three days or so -- so my "hey, all the bills are paid" statement I wrote here previously is no longer valid.
I'm sort of thankful I don't have a girlfriend or any other lady companion at this point -- I couldn't afford her.
This is why we can't have nice things!
Anyway.
I've been doing nothing but that aforementioned reading this weekend, or at least it seems like it. Aside from answering the volley of student emails and dealing with their SafeAssignment problems, I haven't touched any of the other work for my teaching. I still need to read a chapter in the textbook and write out my lesson plans for this week, and I of course have not touched their stack of papers to even attempt to try to grade them. Maybe if I am awake enough after I get home from teaching on Tuesday afternoon, I'll have the chance to get started on them. It is doubtful, however, that I'll be able to begin grading them in earnest until next weekend -- which is good, as I told them it would probably take two weeks before they're graded and back to them. Next Tuesday is the 11th, which is the day before midterm grades are due in as well. This is also why I read Madame Bovary in one sitting, today -- I won't have time to read anything next weekend, more than likely. My first paper in that class is due sometime around then as well, and the first paper in the Asian/Middle Eastern lit class is due on the 20th, which means that throughout the rest of October I will be doing nothing but work, as I mentioned here before. Though I am used to the solitude, loneliness, and, well, the being busy aspect of being a single male graduate student at this point, this semester's workload is the most I've ever had for school in my entire collegiate career -- including when I was an undergrad and taking 18 hours of English classes at a time and working 20-hour weeks in Microbiology at the same time.
This should tell you, or at least give you some idea, of how much shit I have to do this fall.
Still, I soldier on; in addition to my normal work, I had the brilliant idea (note the dripping sarcasm there) of trying to ready and release a book of my poetry sometime soon. I mentioned this before, of course. I have now compiled at least half of it -- before edits -- and am confident that I will be completely done with it within a month. This book, at least, will get a dual-release, both Kindle AND print editions, both at the same time. I'm pricing the Kindle edition at $5.99 (compared to $10 for my other, much longer book), though the print edition will more than likely cost much more due to the costs incurred by paper printing -- close to $20, I'd imagine. Still, it's a step in the right direction, I think -- sales of my first book have suffered terribly because there's no print edition of it yet. I can also confidently give you a release date of this book: Saturday, November 5.
Remember, remember, the fifth of November...
Suri, thus far anyway, is the only person on the planet aside from myself who knows the book's title, and she agreed that it was awesome/brilliant/etc. I've not even told Andrea, and Andrea is like my sister.
Again, like many other things I tell Suri, I swore her to secrecy on it. I'll eventually reveal it here, myself, several days before the book goes to print. But, I assure you, all stories of its awesomeness are well-founded.
In addition to my other work this weekend, I submitted my poetry to two more journals, and withdrew my submission to Parcel, as I had not received a response since I submitted it in May, and I wanted to use two poems in said submission in my book. Of the two journals I submitted new work to, I've got a decent shot at getting into one of them, at least. Decent, not great -- mainly because I know the editor, I respect him and his work, and he (at least to some extent) respects me and mine. We'll see.
I have made a new vow to myself -- no matter how busy I get over the course of the semester, I must find time to work on the book and find time to work on new submissions. These are the two things I have going for me right now that may eventually bring me fame and fortune, and the two things which may save my ass once I graduate from Flat State University and figure out just what in the hell I'm supposed to do with my life, PhD program or otherwise.
The car seems to be running fine...for now, anyway. Tonight I took it out to get some gas in it (therefore barring the need for me to leave the house at 6:30 on Tuesday morning) and to go to the Dollar Tree for deodorant and razors, and it ran well. I had a little trouble getting 'er started at the Dollar Tree, but that's because of the spark plugs (again, something else I need to get fixed which will cost me money I don't have right now). Still, she fired up and roared as always. When I get up in the morning, I need to remember to put the new registration sticker on the license plate -- otherwise, there's the chance I could be pulled over and given a ticket.
On that note, I am off to bed. My headache is pounding, and I desperately just want to curl up and sleep away from the harsh light of my computer screen.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Live-Blogging Madame Bovary
I have decided to live-blog the reading of this novel here, as it's a long book but a (fairly) quick read. To save myself a ton of time, I am reading the freely-downloadable, public-domain PlanetPDF copy of the book (if you'd like to follow along), though I will be bringing the Norton Critical Edition version of the text to class. I will also preface this by saying I've never read the book before, and will warn you that this is a very long post, with some very colorful language -- so if you'll be offended by that, read no further.
We cool?
Okay. Below, of course, it begins...
Pages 1-56: Christ, enough with the over-explanation/over-description already. We're aware that this takes place in a room/field/house/etc. We don't need to know what color the boiling pots are (or how many of them exist), nor do we need to know every single piece of food Charles and Emma will be serving at the wedding.
Page 57: First signs that Emma may be a heartless bitch who doesn't love her husband Charles.
Page 58: N-word alert! N-word alert!
Pages 59-66: Why do we need to know *anything* about Emma's time spent in the convent? Seems useless; it's in the past. The story's in the present.
Page 68: Okay, it's settled, she's a bitch. Charles is basically described as not being good enough for her, despite the fact that he is a DOCTOR, loves her dearly, kisses her all over, takes care of her, and she wants for nothing -- she's just bored. Yeah, I already hate Emma.
Page 73: Emma says "Good heavens! Why did I marry?" What a stuck-up, unsatisfiable little shit.
Page 99: It's revealed that Emma's chastising of servant Nastasie has made her leave the house forever. Again: bitch.
Page 102: "But Charles had no ambition." ...perhaps because he's married to you, you little snot, she-who-will-not-be-satisfied.
Pages 103-109: Emma whines a lot.
Page 110: "Emma was growing difficult, capricious." ...what, just now? Ugh.
Page 113: Emma is pregnant. How Charles could deign to fuck her when she's such an ungrateful little shit is beyond me.
Start of Book II: Good lord, this book had better get going soon. Where's all the scandalousness I've heard about over the years?
Book II, Chapter One: Fucking boring. More unneeded description. Who the hell are these new people, why do we care, etc etc.
Page 130: Oh yes, Emma, because blaming Charles for your dumb fucking dog running away solves the problem.
Page 138: Emma declares reading poetry to be "tiring in the long run," and denounces the novels of naturalists. This statement is as yet the only redeeming quality I've found in her character.
Page 147: Emma is pissed off when she gives birth to a daughter instead of a son; does nothing make this woman happy?
Page 159 (end of Chapter Three): I have this distinct feeling that Leon is going to fuck Emma, isn't he?
Page 178: "But she was eaten up with desires, with rage, with hate." Best description of Emma's character thus far.
Page 178 also: Admits she's in love with Leon. Who would've seen that coming?
Page 181: More bitching/moaning about her marriage.
Page 190-191: Wow, she pushes away her own child, tells her to leave her alone, and the child ends up screaming and injured with a cut to the cheek when Emma knocks her down. This is not quite Moll-Flanders-bad-mother material, but getting there. Again, what a bitch. She also calls her own child ugly.
Page 215: So now this Boulanger guy wants to fuck her too? Ugh, this is tiresome. Someone had better start fucking someone else soon.
Pages 216-270: Rodolphe spends these pages trying to seduce Emma. Emma falls in love with him. He ends up refusing her, saying she has compromised herself. No sex takes place. WTF. I've also realized that I still can't stand Emma as a character, but for all the sex that's supposed to be happening in this book, none of it has yet occurred. Right now I want some of it to happen just so that something exciting actually happens in this damned novel.
Page 280: Wait a minute, is there sex going on? I can't tell if it's implied or not. Surely Emma and Roldophe aren't just "hanging out together" for six months, right? Ugh. Just come out and say it, book.
Page 281-302: Charles screws up a club foot surgery, the guy has to have his leg amputated by gangrene, Emma takes this as another opportunity to be a bitch by thinking that her husband is a failure -- and I sit here reading, frantically fucking hoping that something interesting will happen in the last 200 pages of this novel, because it has not yet earned the hype or reputation of being "scandalous" as it was labeled.
Page 305: Rodolphe and Emma rekindle their romance/affair. I can still not figure out whether there is actual sex taking place. This is tiresome. I'd so much rather be watching the Jets/Ravens game -- which is on in the background, but I cannot pay attention to it and the book at the same time.
Page 313: Emma calls herself Rodolphe's "concubine," and he calls her his "mistress." From this point forward, I've just decided to assume that they've been having sexual relations of some sort during this whole time. I say "assume" because the book tells you nothing.
Page 317: Okay, so she's going to run off with Rodolphe? Yeah, I still hate her character, but at least something's happening now, and I can see where she's coming from.
Page 325: Okay, it's quite heavily implied that they're having sex in the woods on this page. I'm cool with that. Book, please continue.
Pages 328-29: Rodolphe abandons/betrays her! HAH! Karma's a bitch, isn't it? Good.
Pages 352-53: By opening her home/heart to orphans and doing other charitable deeds after recovering from grief sickness, it is the first time in the entire novel that Emma has done something for someone other than herself. This does not last long.
Pages 353-370: Blah blah, let's go to the theater. Blah blah nothing important happens.
Page 371: Leon returns to the book, after three years' worth of "book time." Finally.
Around the beginning of Book III: Come on, book, you were interesting for a short while, but you've still got about 150 pages left. Please, something, anything...please let something fucking happen that will actually hold my attention for those pages.
Page 400: Wait, did Emma and Leon just have lots of sex in the back of a cab as it drove around town for hours? Dammit, book, just tell me what's going on. I hate this indirect shit.
Page 407: Emma's father-in-law, Charles' father, dies.
Page 417-420: Apparently Emma and Leon have sex for three days. Or not. Who knows, because the book never comes out and says anything.
Page 425 onward, my thoughts began to consist of Oh for fuck's sake please let this book end soon; I have suffered enough.
Pages 430-33: More sex, with a little more detail that this is exactly what's going on between Emma and Leon.
Page 438: Emma says all men are evil. Pot, meet kettle, you little harlot.
Page 443-47: Money talk. Power of attorney talk. Yawn. Do something, book.
Page 460 onward, my thoughts began to drift; half of them consist of get to the fucking point, book, while the other half say things like how can she be this much of a slut and not get pregnant again?
Page 462: Emma admits that she loves Leon. Again. As if this wasn't apparent the entire time they'd been riding the train to bootytown together.
Pages 464-69: More money talk that has really nothing to do with the story at hand. Again, do something, book.
Page 472: Leon swears he won't see Emma again. This is, of course, a lie.
Page 480: Hm. Suddenly the money-talk becomes important. Emma needs to pay 8,000 francs of bills, and has no idea where she'll get the money. Please tell me the little shit is going to become a whore, oh please? It would so serve her right.
Page 502: YES.
Page 503: Rodolphe returns to the novel, as I expected he eventually would. Emma basically says he's worthless and that he never loved her because he won't give her the money she needs, which just goes to show you what most women in this world are truly after.
Page 508: "and there is a spot on the carpet where at my knees you swore an eternity of love!" Bow-chicka-wow-wow..
Page 510ish: She said she was going to start whoring on page 502. Well...get to it, Emma. I'm waiting.
Page 513: She's trying to kill herself instead? Laaaaaame.
Page 523: Yeah, I'm sorry, that much arsenic would've killed her by now, almost immediately.
Page 530: WHY IS SHE STILL ALIVE? DIE BITCH DIE
Page 531: She dies.
Page 532 forward: Why does this book have to go on after she's dead? Mourning, mourning, blah blah. Is it over yet?
Page 551: Oh good lord, bury the bitch already!
Page 556: She's finally in the ground. This is the first page of the final chapter of the novel, finally.
Page 558: So Charles finally figures out/possibly guesses that she's been nailing other guys for, practically, their entire marriage, and dismisses the notion just as easily as it came? WTF. Seriously.
Page 566: Finally Charles finds all of Leon's letters (and Rodolphe's portrait) and realizes his wife was a big ol' ho-bag. Wow, it only took until the last five pages of the book. Again, WTF.
Page 569-70: Charles finally confronts Rodolphe, makes his peace by saying he doesn't blame him, and then Berthe (his and Emma's daughter) finds him dead. The end.
...okay. Wow. I spent the entire day reading that? And it was supposed to be scandalous? Well, yeah, to a certain degree, but still. I feel cheated. I want my nine hours back.
Machine Love
(courtesy of I Waste So Much Time)
Some would probably say this was the downfall of my last relationship. And they'd probably be right.
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