so since I should be doing something else, of *course* I'm going to post in my blog instead...

actually, truth be told, I've been pretty damned industrious lately.... I've re-read Heart of Darkness, made multiple pages of notes on the same, read through the transcript of Apocalypse Now! and made notes, studied Western Civ, begun to compile stuff for my Anthro presentation, and spared approximately seven seconds to think about the paper I have to write on The Awakening. (or is it 9 seconds now?)

I think I have inadvertantly started to earn the title of kiss-ass in my practical crit, purely intentionally of course. see, I do this... thing..., you know, where I get really, really excited about a text, or a paper I have to write on said text... like I get really into it, and just start to bubble over with what I can only refer to (with a sense of nausea, I might add) as extreme academic bliss It hasn't happened that many times, but it's really the key reason I'm an English major, and the key reason I want to teach Lit at the college level... because I just find it so effing thrilling to really rip a piece of literature apart and make it say something... to be quite honest, Heart of Darkness is quite possibly one of the least enjoyable texts I've read... I mean, objectively speaking, it's a good book, and I've obviously become engaged in it, and it's a good one to teach because it's so damned ambiguous that you can almost guarantee that no two people will ever read it the same way. It demands a reaction of some sort, really... but in planning for this paper, and listening to everyones ideas and their papers, and reading critical essays and basically knowing the effing thing inside and out, and now re-reading it with a purpose, I've become filled with nerdish glee... today in class when I was responding to the papers, I kept giving everyone quotes from the text I knew would help their papers... I was building their arguments for them... my professor even thanked me after class for asking insightful, helpful questions... it kind of surprised me because isn't that what we're supposed to be doing? but I don't know, it kind of makes me wonder, you know? like there are a few people in my classes who want to be college professors, and if I'm an oddity, if other people don't get as excited and involved in it as I do, then why are they in this discipline? I mean, there are tons of majors I could have chosen and prospered at... psychology, history, anthro, art... but this is where my passion lies, and it just doesn't make sense to me why someone would spend so much time and money studying something if it wasn't something they could get passionate about... hmmm... strange indeed...

not doing so good in the health department at the moment... my neck has been stiff and I went to rub it a bit this evening and noted that the parts that should be squishy are not squishy and that to the touch it resembled not so much flesh as granite... probably not a good thing... the range of motion of my head is greatly reduced from it's normal state, and if I turn my head the wrong way I get a wee bit dizzy and a wee bit nauseus... in fact, I've been having fleeting bouts of nausea (which I suppose are better than non-fleeting bouts of nasea, but still)... and in general I just feel tight and sore all over. of course, now that I think about it, I read the flyer that they gave me when I got the MMR vaccine, and it said that 1 in 4 adult women suffers from soreness of the joints and muscles as a result of the vaccine, and that it usually shows up 7-10 days after the vaccine is administered, so that could be it, even though it's now approaching 10 days. I also think it could just be general stress and fatigue, brought on by lack of sleep, stressful correspondences, and of course, finals. whatever the case I hope I can hold out against illness until at least Wednesday, by which time I should hopefully be home and able to collapse in an incoherant heap and sleep for a few weeks.

by the way... I dislike it when I find things out about my friends from other friends... especially when the latter are instructed by the former not to tell me because I'll "get mad." especially when said things jeopardize the health of the former, not to mention the goals and morals of the former. I dislike it because it disappoints me, and makes me wonder if the friend I had still exist, and if so, if I'll ever see them again. as you were.