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Tuesday, September 8, 2015

The Two Week Mark: Panic Attacks, Erotica, and Other Crazy Stories

School's only been in session two weeks and I've already:


  • Lost multiple fights with the bookstore and Amazon.com to get my books in on time. Barnes and Noble just flat out canceled my order, after I'd paid! (Obviously got refunded, but no wonder they are going out of business if they purport to sell books they can't actually provide).
  • Experienced my first ever real panic attack. It was fairly mild, but that first week of the semester was pretty overwhelming.
  • Read a post-modern novel described as a "dream of electrifying eroticism and inexplicable violence." It's so different being a literature student at a non-religious school.
  • Had the professor of my research and bibliography course tell us that he disagreed with the MLA style guide, and that we should follow his rules instead for citations (I'm sorry, but what?!?!)
  • Used a ruler in class to measure the exact length in millimeters of a line rule on the title page of a 1790 copy of Pamela. I'm still trying to figure out just why that measurement was so important.
  • Had a professor announce on the first day of class that truth does not exist. Once again, so interesting being at a non-religious school (although this experience was far less inflammatory than the professor in my first semester who openly mocked an Indian student for believing that Hindu mythology was true, that guy was a real jerk).
So anyway, if I'm a little MIA around here for the next while, it's only because I'm expending all my energy trying to wrap my poor, sleep-deprived brain cells around Foucault and Derrida and the like. It's going to be a doozy of a semester.

1 comment:

  1. Oh wow, sounds like it's off to a great start! Good luck!

    ReplyDelete