Discovery: I'm not fond of writing first thing in the morning. Due to my crazy schedule, and my tendency to put things off to the last day but not the last minute, I realized that I will be writing today's post on Thursday mornings, rather than at night as per usual. Unfortunately, a number of things that have happened lately have really driven it home that I'm kind of a night person. Mornings usually take me a little bit to get going, and I don't tend to have strong opinions until I run into something that requires them.
Which is not to say that I haven't had opinions this week, not at all. The first day of school, as per usual, was horrible weather: 14 degrees (plus whatever the windchill was) compared to the 50 it had been the week before, and is again today. Russian class was slightly intimidating, but all the extra work I'd done over break translating news articles and such really paid off. Dance class was fun, especially as I'd gotten new "dance sneakers," so my feet didn't hurt. All-in-all, it was a pretty decent day, with only one exception.
As I've mentioned before, I am not fond of literature classes. However, I do my best to give any new experience the benefit of the doubt, so I showed up to class with as positive an attitude as possible, given the weather. I lucked out and found that the jerk who'd inspired this post was not in the class, and began to think it might be decent. In fact, none of the people I'd come to dislike were in the class, and when the prof walked in, she looked pretty down-to-earth and intelligent, and my hopes began to rise.
Unfortunately, they were just as quickly dashed. I noticed on Monday that the syllabus included art and architecture, and the prof decided to start us out with those instead of lit. And sadly, it turns out that she's one of those people who want you to be just as enthused about her area of expertise as she is... something that I just cannot accommodate given the topic. Moreover, she is a breathy, flaky speaker, rarely finishing off one sentence or thought before jumping to the next one, and hoping to draw people in with such questions as, "what do you see in this picture?!" or, "what does this landscape speak to you?!"
Even worse, in my opinion, the prof is a chronic mispronouncer. To a language nut like me, this is incredibly distracting and infuriating. Even worse, she does it in two languages- russian and english- both of which she speaks fluently. I'm not sure which is her native language (though I suspect it's russian) but you would think that one of them she could get right, right? Wrong. I swear, it felt like I had a nervous tic throughout the entire class, because I would twitch every time she mispronounced something ("look at this deCORative arch over the entryway." Twitch...)
I had decided that morning that I would not bring my knitting to the first day of class, in the hopes that I wouldn't need it. By 15 minutes into the lecture, I was seriously kicking myself for that decision. The only way I made it through last semester's lit class was by focussing on the knitting, and I got something like four or five scarves done (as well as learning a couple new stitches) by December. It looks like that may have to happen again here, and I'm hoping the prof doesn't mind me doing so. If she does, you might be getting some very cranky sketches of ingenious ways of sneaking out of classes.
Which is not to say that I haven't had opinions this week, not at all. The first day of school, as per usual, was horrible weather: 14 degrees (plus whatever the windchill was) compared to the 50 it had been the week before, and is again today. Russian class was slightly intimidating, but all the extra work I'd done over break translating news articles and such really paid off. Dance class was fun, especially as I'd gotten new "dance sneakers," so my feet didn't hurt. All-in-all, it was a pretty decent day, with only one exception.
As I've mentioned before, I am not fond of literature classes. However, I do my best to give any new experience the benefit of the doubt, so I showed up to class with as positive an attitude as possible, given the weather. I lucked out and found that the jerk who'd inspired this post was not in the class, and began to think it might be decent. In fact, none of the people I'd come to dislike were in the class, and when the prof walked in, she looked pretty down-to-earth and intelligent, and my hopes began to rise.
Unfortunately, they were just as quickly dashed. I noticed on Monday that the syllabus included art and architecture, and the prof decided to start us out with those instead of lit. And sadly, it turns out that she's one of those people who want you to be just as enthused about her area of expertise as she is... something that I just cannot accommodate given the topic. Moreover, she is a breathy, flaky speaker, rarely finishing off one sentence or thought before jumping to the next one, and hoping to draw people in with such questions as, "what do you see in this picture?!" or, "what does this landscape speak to you?!"
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| It says someone liked how the road looked... |
Even worse, in my opinion, the prof is a chronic mispronouncer. To a language nut like me, this is incredibly distracting and infuriating. Even worse, she does it in two languages- russian and english- both of which she speaks fluently. I'm not sure which is her native language (though I suspect it's russian) but you would think that one of them she could get right, right? Wrong. I swear, it felt like I had a nervous tic throughout the entire class, because I would twitch every time she mispronounced something ("look at this deCORative arch over the entryway." Twitch...)
I had decided that morning that I would not bring my knitting to the first day of class, in the hopes that I wouldn't need it. By 15 minutes into the lecture, I was seriously kicking myself for that decision. The only way I made it through last semester's lit class was by focussing on the knitting, and I got something like four or five scarves done (as well as learning a couple new stitches) by December. It looks like that may have to happen again here, and I'm hoping the prof doesn't mind me doing so. If she does, you might be getting some very cranky sketches of ingenious ways of sneaking out of classes.
I think it represents my willingness to leave class. Anyhow, here's hoping it gets better- I'll be stopping off at the store to pick up more yarn before class, that should help somewhat at least. Cheers!
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