Safely ensconced in the back half of intersession break, I finally feel able to present you with Things I Have Learned This Semester, Fall 2008 Edition:

Gender Studies
-Don't tell anyone we ate cookies and gave feedback on the last day. This will merely reinforce stereotypes about baked goods and feelings-sharing in Women's Studies courses.
-Discussions with impossible-to-reach conclusions are the best.
-Constructionism > essentialism.
-Freud was sometimes full of crap, and sometimes a genius, and is is possible to celebrate his accomplishments while at the same time critiquing his nuttier views.
-Inclusion strengthens a movement.
-The headscarf brouhaha in France is indeed ridiculous.

French Film
-It's all about time passing.
-The tallest person in a theater will inevitably sit in front of the shortest person. This happened to Subcontinent throughout our childhood, and it happens to Prof. S's wife all the time as well.
-British guys with good French accents are doubly attractive.
-DO NOT WATCH JOURNAL D'UN CURE DE CAMPAGNE IF YOU VALUE YOUR REASON.

Elaine Pagels Worship Service
-Brilliant scholar + excellent lectures = TONS of reading
-It actually is possible for a section made up of twelve students believing in twelve different religions to not descend into sitcom territory.
-(so long as no one mentions S-E-X; then things get a little fraught.)
-The author of the Gospel of John disagreed with the author of the Gospel of Thomas on nearly every point. This is why Thomas isn't in the room when Jesus appears to the disciples. This is also why it's important to remember that people wrote the Bible.
-Waving frantically at the projector will not turn it off. Or on, for that matter.

Awesome English, Fin de siècle
-Sherlock Holmes is manly, believe it or not.
-Master Awesome can down a can of Diet Coke mid-lecture in under thirty seconds.
-Representation, penetration, emasculation, colonization, examination, frustration, creation, exploitation, desire.

Other English, How to Read Fiction and Watch Movies
-F. Scott Fitzgerald liked Heart of Darkness.
-Orson Wells liked Heart of Darkness.
-The Great Gatsby is often considered alongside Citizen Kane.
-Go figure.
-I was lying all those years when I said I hated Hemingway. I need some other author to ignorantly despise. The Sun Also Rises rocks my socks.
-The Road is kind of like grad school: you go and you go and you go and you make progress but what kind of life is that?
-Mulholland Drive makes no. sense.
-The Big Sleep gets better and better and better.
-It's troubling to see Jimmy Stewart as a villain.
-Harvardians, Princetonians, and Yalies do not have great lives ahead of them, if the characters in The Sound and the Fury, The Sun Also Rises, and The Great Gatsby are any indication.
-Jason Compson needs to sit down and shut up.