Friday, April 29, 2005

recovery room

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t pretty proud of myself.  Very proud of myself.  I feel like I’ve done the impossible… Well, not the impossible.  The improbable (as Captain Jack Sparrow has educated me on what can and what can not be done). 

Alright, whatever: I turned in three essays today (three!!), and I didn’t know if I was going to make it.  But I did.  And it feels good.

This is fast becoming ridiculous, so let me explain (just a little)...  Since this week was Academic Advising week, all students had Tuesday and Wednesday off so that we could meet with our advisors and get everything settled for registration.  And when we weren’t doing that, we could work on papers… so this Friday is a popular due date across the board.

Anyway, I had two essays due for American Lit.  No, that’s not as evil as it sounds.  Only one was assigned to the class.  The other I did for honors credit, and I wasn’t creative enough to come up with a different deadline for that one, so I turned it in the same day.  Good planning on my part… 

The first was an analytical paper—we got to pick a text from our book and argue for why it should be included in the syllabus.  Fun, because I got to dig into the material and think about more than just “Well, because I like it.” 

The second paper got to be a creative assignment.  So I found a series of Thoreau‘s journal entries included in our books, and I weaved them together to create a kind of story/mesh about Thoreau, and told it from another character’s point of view.  That was a bit more fun, actually, because I liked the characters and had fun imagining what Thoreau would say back to them. 

The third essay was a manifesto for my poetry writing class.  Very tricky, but invaluable.  After a semester of sorting through theories on poetry, reading other poems, and then writing my own, it was good to figure out what I think is essential in a poem.  What makes a poem work?  What doesn’t work?  And again, I had to go beyond, “Well, because I don’t like it!”

And all the beliefs that have been lying just under the surface for me started coming out on paper, and I had to kind of corral them into what I hope will make some kind of sense.  It was a good thing to figure out for me, and as I keep writing poetry, I know I’ll need to revise it from time to time.

So!  I was only up until 12:30 last night/this morning, which is a normal time for finishing one paper for me… to finish three by then felt great.  (More than great.)

Felt a little less certain about each of them when I handed them in today, but they’re done, so we’ll see. 

One last thing, totally unrelated.  Just in case you think I’m getting arrogant…  I just finished washing dishes, and I promise you that I have cheese stuck in my fingers.  This redefines bizarre.  Not my fingernails, not between my fingers, but imbedded in the little grooves that make up my fingerprint.  Super hot water… cheese melts… cooler water… cheese hardens???  (Maybe I should call my biology friends.  We could design a new lab for this…)  Really, really strange.  I keep picking at it, but I think it’s starting to creep out the girl next to me in the computer lab.  And it’s not like I can lean over and say “It’s okay.  Just cheese.”

You know?? —jl

Posted by Jenn Langefeld on 04/29 at 08:47 PM
(0) Trackbacks • Permalink

<< Back to main