I have to re-read Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and write a Reading Journal on it by Tuesday. Its not that the reading journals are such difficult assignments... in theory. But I always go a bit over and above the call of duty and feel like I have to *cough* research them as thoroughly as possible. Which in the case of A Complicated Kindness, for instance, meant finding everything possible on Miriam Toews (which admittedly wasn't that much) and reading it. Did I incorporate everything I'd read into my RJ? Of course not. Instead I mostly rambled in a likely ambiguous and unintelligible way about my fundamentalist Christian upbringing (read ACK and you'll see the connection). But I had to do that research before I could start writing. Same with Oranges (one of my favorite books by the way, and also closely connected in subject matter with ACK) - right now I'm typing this up in Firefox and I have five other tabs open in JSTOR with various scholarly articles to do with Jeannette Winterson open.
Its very weird. In some ways I am such a lazy, procrastinatorious (C) person and in other ways I can be oddly industrious and dedicated. We have to write RJs for each of the novels we're studying in this class; six of the twelve I've already read so you'd think that would make my life easier right? Because technically I've read them already so all I have to do is write the RJs. No, no, no! I can't do that. I have to read them cover to cover all over again in case something completely obscure comes up in class and I don't get the reference.
*sigh*
I also have at least two chapters to catch up on in my ridiculously badly-written philosophy textbook, Remains of the Day to re-read, a scholarly article on Remains to re-read, a class presentation (which I'd thought wasn't until the end of November but it turns out is next week) to create, two History of Art chapters to read, and a topic and bibliography/references list to hand in in three weeks.
This is the first time I've ever tried to take three classes at once and I thought I was handling things pretty well and I still am not that worried but... I just wish I'd remembered my class presentation date a little sooner...
I guess if I were also willing to sacrifice more doing-nothing (i.e. online Scrabble, random website browsing, watching tv with Colin until 3 a.m.) and socializing time I'd be more than caught up. But that's where the whole "lazy and procrastinatorious" part comes in.
Tomorrow I'm going to be out all evening wearing a long black, red velvet lined cloak.
Before you get any funny ideas (which are perfectly alright with me, don't get me wrong), let me clarify that by saying I'll be at the Zoo.
What? That clarification didn't help?
Okay, okay - at the Zoo volunteering for UNICEF. Normally at this time of year I'd be at the Zoo every night for four to five hours, fundraising and supervising fellow high school volunteer fundraisers, but due to some changes in the Zoo's priorities we're no longer welcome there every night - we've been allocated just this one, in fact.
Which, as part of this totally unfocused post, leads me to Elliot's comment:
One of the activities I listed, helping with UNICEF's Halloween fundraiser at the Zoo, is organized by Anactoria, who puts tons more work into it than I do. So she was a little sad to hear that she missed out on this scholarship. She's got a point. But all I can say is NEXT TIME APPLY FOR IT, WOMAN!Part of being procrastinatorious and forgetful (I forgot to mention the forgetfulness earlier) means forgetting to apply for such things as scholarships. I'll be lucky if I remember (please remind me everyone) to apply for the Faculty of Education in time for the February 2008 deadline!
Plus, Elliot has a much better GPA than me (and may quite possibly just be naturally brilliant) so he's pretty much a shoe-in for the scholarships. I could make the excuse that my GPA suffers because I'm so busy being self-sacrificing and giving back to my community and the world, but you can probably guess the truth - its just because I'm lazy.
Goodnight.
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6 comments:
I've been meaning to read Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit for a long while; I actually checked it out a few months back but never read it.
Few things are more depressing than being assigned reading from a badly written textbook. My Political Econ textbook is written by the professor and, in a first, printed at a local copying center. Needless to say, it's not full of flowing prose and distinctive imagery. Not that I ever had much enthusiasm for the class, anyway . . .
"Tomorrow I'm going to be out all evening wearing a long black, red velvet lined cloak."
Funny ideas? Well, yes. I immediately thought of The Book of the New Sun, when Severian goes to the masquerade and meets the woman he is supposed to kill, and they start making out, and she asks if his cloak could cover them, and he says it can, and so forth.
"Few things are more depressing than being assigned reading from a badly written textbook."
Depressing and very frustrating! I'm almost at the point where, if I wasn't so lazy and didn't have so much other real work to be doing, I want to write a letter to these writers of this allegedly classic textbook to make some criticisms and complaints!
I find it particularly annoying that this is the third edition and they're still using all gender-biased, male terms - e.g. "Man's ability to reason makes him unique among animals." Seriously - the whole way through its "man this" and "man that." Normally this wouldn't bother me - e.g. if I were reading a dated piece of fiction. But in a modern textbook I find it really bothersome!
Grrrr!
Elliot - Oooh, I think I vaguely remember that scene! But, uh, if I recall correctly, I think they did a lot more than making out. Did he end up killing her after all...? I can't remember...
Actually, Yona - have you ever read anything by Gene Wolfe? I think (going by this oh-so-deep acquaintanceship we have here - ha!) that you might really enjoy him! :)
No, he lets her live. And yes, the reason she mentions the cloak is so they can have sex under it.
As a career advisor I feel it is my duty to inform you that most scholarships are not based on your marks. The ones given by the school are, yes. But most external scholarships are based on your extracurricular commitments, your community involvement and leadership potential. So ... hah! Excuses blasted! Get your ass in gear! The easiest way to find scholarships to apply for by the way is just by registering for studentawards.com and looking at the list they give you. Takes 5 minutes.
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