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.

Classes are over, and now all that is left for me to do is write papers, take exams, and pack up, shamelessly using my relatives for moving and storage whilst my parents gallivant north of the Levant.
Tomorrow we venture forth into lawnparties, where we will hopefully get to hear Fountains of Wayne sing "Stacy's Mom," which, with a few words changed, has been our room's song all year long. In the meantime, though, I am working on papers and nursing my Kentucky Derby upset. There go two dollars of hard-earned (by my parents, at least) cash down the drain. Oh well. At least Mom won. :)

Things I Have Learned This Semester:

Creative Writing Edition
-When you pick a point of view, don't presume to understand how anyone else is saying what they're saying. For example: a story told from Joe's point of view, even in the third person, should not contain lines like, "Margaret sighed longingly." Joe doesn't know whether she's sighing longingly or with exasperation.
-Tension is good. Sexual tension is even better.
-I write sexual tension well.
-I write old people well.
-I write with tenderness for my subjects.
-I write ordinary people well.
-If you can't pull of metaphors, don't. A little bit goes a long way anyway, so don't drown your story in purple prose. Also, you should only sound like Jane Austen when writing a Jane Austen pastiche.
-Pasta is sexy.
(continuation from last semester)-NEVER, NEVER, EVER read graphic material emanating from your professor (be it a novel, and interview, or what have you) and then expect to go to class the next day blush-free. Yeesh. You'd think I'd have learned.

Rome Class Edition
-There are three holes.
-Augustus was more of the Rome model than the I, Claudius model.
-Most emperors were weirdos.
-Customs are, in fact, more relative than we can imagine.
-"Purpose" with a Venezuelan accent becomes "porpoise."
-If Lucan were transplanted to the modern day, he would doubtless be an emo teenager.
-We did not invent sex. (to be honest, I knew this one already, but it bears reinforcing)
-All bad guys in toga movies speak with English accents.
-Tony Curtis just wanted a bath.

Writing Seminar Edition
-Motive, thesis, analysis, conclusion.
-I'm good at workshopping.
-Silence=Death.
-Thoreau, Gandhi, Sharp, and MLK had it right. You can't just sit around.
-In theory, D.C. is the best place to get arrested.
-Oreos with peanut butter are excellent.

Freshman "I AM the Humanities" Seminar Edition
-...
-(I can't even begin to list the things I learned in this class for real)
-How to speak of myself.
-Sometimes, you can tell from first glance how awesome a professor is.
-Sometimes, you're wrong to think that the boy sitting next to you is crush material. (or are you?)
-Seven-person classes ARE the best.
-The English Department basement does not, in fact, have traces of radon.
-St. Augustine wins the Catholic guilt award.
-Fernando Pessoa was brilliant.
-Dante needed to stop thinking and just talk to her!
-An author can write about a cause they care passionately about and still manage to hold it at a distance.
-Wordsworth was incredibly prolific and suffered from constipation. His buddy Coleridge, on the other hand, had chronic diarrhea and could barely squeeze out a line.
-The History Boys can mean different things at different times.
-I am so glad I came here.


I'll leave you with this:

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland   "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
The West
Boston
North Central
The Inland North
Philadelphia
The South
The Northeast
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz