Pulled an A- in my class. Too bad it counts for nothing whatsoever. Ah, the joys of non-degree candidate status.
I've felt nothing but relief at the thought of going home every night and not thinking I should study. The relief is doubled when I realize I don't have to go to class the next day. Totally the opposite of how I felt when I started taking the class, which was utter relief that I could get some intellectual stimulus into my day and not have to be at work the full 40 hours a week.
I should be content to be a working stiff for another few months, at the very least; hopefully the next time something like this overtakes me, I'll just bite the bullet and get an advanced degree. But that takes so much planning--money planning and the GRE, for starters. And I don't actually want to *do* anything with any degree I might acquire.
This is a helluva fix to be in, let me tell you. Yes, yes--suffering is wanting what you can't have and having what you don't want, but it's also not knowing what you want and possibly also wanting things that will bring you other things that you don't want.
In reality, the writing of stories and the research that goes into that *should* be enough to keep me intellectually stimulated; what I mostly feel is a lack of guidance in pursuing these things. I like going to lecture. I like prompts and prodding. I do not like to be lectured, prompted or prodded about *writing*, so the solution here is not "on-line workshop!"
Furthermore, the 3 hours a week that I was able to be away from my job and thinking about other things were extremely refreshing. And I have to think, if that's all it really takes to make me feel at peace with the world, I've got to find some way to implement this in real life. Some way to work a 90% appointment instead of a 100% appointment. Of course, if I weren't a wage slave--if I were an actual librarian--I would only have to work 37 hours a week. Likewise, if I worked practically anywhere else in the university, I would have half an hour knocked off my work day. What's with the library, anyway?
I suppose I could ask the boss about flex time--take half-hour lunches and leave three hours early on Wednesdays--very French--in theory to go write. But I wouldn't write. I'm a schmuck that way. I'd go sleep or run errands or something stupid--and even if I did write, it wouldn't be the right thing to do. I have enough time to write (by some definitions of "enough"); what I don't have is that break in the day at work where I throw things into high mental gear and get excited about something.
Oh, well.
I'll figure it out.
My instructor told me both in writing and in person about the excellentness of my paper. Just when I thought I'd given up completely on the dream of academic glory in my future... blast.
I studied last night for my exam, so no writing. I wasn't exactly gung-ho about said exam--I had a sense of resignation to mediocrity. But I studied nonetheless, and did useful things like learning the date of the post-plague Peasant Rebellion in England, and actually looked at my essay outlines more than once. So, when I sat down to the test, I was somewhat heartened. But turning it in and getting my excellent paper back at the same time really gave me a lift. An A is almost as good as getting published. Too damn bad that A's are easier to get.
If I could just finish the last chapter in a number of books--no few of which are for school--I'd not only increase my book count but probably also do really well on my upcoming exam. I will finish three books by Monday. I will because I have to, and if I don't read them by Monday, I probably never will.
One, I'll finish off by tomorrow. Just a chapter shy at the moment, and I will finish it off doubtless while I write this pesky paper.
Paper. Pesky, pesky paper.
Uhm, anyway, that little diatribe aside, I must tell you how much I long to write fiction again, simply because I cannot.
Stupid time wasting. Could have been writing fiction all along, you know. I should be ashamed.
Don't worry, I am.
What were the biggest lies you were told in school? What were the biggest omissions from the curricula you were taught? And what were the biggest mistakes your teachers made? I was thinking of these questions primarily academically -- the Noble Savage instead of If You Don't Bother Him, He Won't Bother You -- but academic or social or both are welcome.
What wasn't ommitted from the curricula?
If I had just known that geometry and algebra were the same side of the coin... if someone had said, "You can solve the same problem with an equation or a proof," I would have finally understood proofs, and would have spent fewer nights crying over my geomtry textbook.
If I had understood that the reason I sometimes liked Social Studies and sometimes didn't was because "Social Studies" is a ridiculous title covering everything from anthropology to civics to economics to folklore to history to sociology... well, I would have figured out a lot sooner that anthropology was my Thing. And, as someone who eventually became a social scientist, at least at the BA level, it would have been handy to know what it was I was actually interested in, all those years.
As for lies, well, I suppose simiplifying the causes of the Civil War, or any war, are going to happen when you try to explain it to kids. But still. I realized these lies early on. From a white teacher, I learned that the Civil War began because of states' rights. From a black teacher, I learned that the Civil War began because of slavery. Hm...
I resent the lies about Native Americans. I resent that no one ever fully explained what European germs did to native populations, or that's why the concept of manifest destiny could come about. Europeans took over an entire continent with relative ease because smallpox and such had already more than decimated it. If the germ warfare had been reversed, things would have been very different. I'm not naive enough to think better; in fact, I'm pretty sure it just would have been bloodier.
The lie that nothing happened in the last 20 years... I don't blame anyone for that. Most history textbooks stop about 20 years out because people don't know how to evaluate the last 50 years, even, certainly not to digest for a school textbook.
There are more, but those are what stand out in just five minutes worth of thought.