On Geekery and College Majors

Right, I know now why I'm an English major. Well, I've always had an inkling that I might be an English major, but various reasons came to mind in the past - I like writing, I like reading, I like words. But my former choir director said something the other day that kind of made me think about it. He told me that one thing he liked about me is that I'm fascinated with a lot of things. (I was being a bit of a nerd and telling him about my honors essay on Pueblo mythology and death practices in Blood Meridian, and how I couldn't put in a cool detail about a supernova in 1054 AD, recorded only by Chinese scholars and Anasazi artists).

Anyway, that got me thinking about my major. I haven't officially declared yet, but I'm going to declare in English for the reason my choir teacher described. I'm interested in ALL THE THINGS, and lit courses study a lot of things. This semester was Cormac McCarthy, last semester was early Brit Lit (think Beowulf), next semester is King Arthur. I'm typing this on my new iPhone in Barnes and Noble; in front of me is a book on Pope Celestine V, who reigned in the 13th century for a mere 15 weeks before quitting. He was the only Pope to quit for almost 800 years, until the resignation that opened the way for Pope Francis.

Everything is really interesting for me - Popes AND prehistoric cultures AND GSM rights AND DnD AND writing scifi AND knitting geeky items and socks for cats - so it's sort of difficult to pick just one major. I think there are two important things about college: one is to learn how to make your way in the world; the other is to learn all the cool stuff you can. 

What I Learned This Semester

Five Academic Lessons:

1. A supernova occurred during the summer of 1054 AD, which was visible for 23 days, just over the horizon. The only known records of it are Chinese records, Mimbres pottery, and Anasazi cave paintings.
2. "Peace on Earth and Good Will to Men" is not an accurate translation of the Bible. It could read "peace on earth to men of good will." Interesting, yes? 
3. Math Modeling is basically differential equations for stupid people (or, alternatively, people who get intimidated by things like 'calculus' and 'differential equations').
4. Study your economics.
5. Cormac McCarthy is really dark. You should read him. I suggest Blood Meridian, The Sunset Limited, and The Road.

Six Life Lessons:

1. Don't get involved with new romantic partners without officially calling it off with your old romantic partners. It'll save you a lot of stress.
2. Talk about breakups with your current romantic partner before you actually break up with them. The things that could be an issue for you in the relationship could be talked out in that conversation.
3. Study during the afternoons so you can goof off in the evenings. If you goof off in the afternoons and study in the evenings, it will probably screw with your sleep cycle, as evidenced by my roommate, who spent a total of two nights in our room between Thanksgiving and Finals because she crashed with friends in a study room.
4. Talk things out with your roommate. If they're being an ass, bring it up with them. If they're consistently doing stuff with their romantic partner in your room and you're not okay with that, bring it up with them. If they keep doing it, ask to be moved.
5. Don't assume that everything is your fault. Your lack of turning in an assignment is definitely your fault. If you don't see your friends around campus, it might be because you study better alone or because you do most of your studying in the local coffee shop.
6. Don't overdose on coffee. In other words, caffeine after 3:00 is not a good idea if you have an 8:00 exam.

End of Finals

hello!

My apologies for not posting in... three weeks?  I should get on that.

My excuse is that in the last week, I've spent more time in the local coffee shop in a caffeine-induced stupor, trying to remember how to decline Classical Greek nouns and writing an essay about the Anasazi artifacts and Puebloan mythology in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. (that was the biggest stressor, because, despite my being an English major and everything... writing 10-15 pages on comparisons is difficult. Even though the topic was really cool).  Anyway, that's what I've been doing.  My last exam was this morning, so I'm packing to go home to real sleep, and hoping that I can get a lot of writing and knitting done over break.

I'm excited.

On the train home (or maybe even tonight, I don't know), I'll do a Semester Recap post.

Day 26: failure?

So I'm currently about 16000 words behind on NaNoWriMo.  I'm writing this on the train back home, but basically what this means is that I'm going to have to write maybe 3500 - 4000 words a day in order to finish on time; considering that my mother and honors professor have made the joint decision to schedule ALL OF THE THINGS during break, this is not particularly feasible.  I'm still going to write every day if I can, but right now I'm just going to write. I'm not going to work on word count, I'm just going to go.

Hopefully I'll still be able to get through with a lot of words.

Farewell for now.

Day 23: I haven't posted all week because reasons

Current Page: 112
Target Page: Let's just not
Place in story: shit, shit, more shit, and then a giant ball of poop.

Yeah.  That's basically what Spencer has gotten herself into now.  Every idea she has, the Empire foils it (SHUT UP ABOUT THE CLICHE NAME FOR THE EVIL PEOPLE).  Anyway, this has been a really slow week in terms of writing, so right now I'm just trying to write.  Not necessarily, like, the 10 daily necessary pages, but words.  I just hit 30,000 today - I'm at about 30,250 right now.  I'm probably not going to hit 50,000, but I'm going to work on it.  I'm going to at least try to get close.

Anyway, in other news, this week has been rather stressful.  On Monday, my roommate and I got called in to Res Life because we apparently had bedbugs.  On Tuesday, we got treated for bedbugs; this treatment not only messed up our personal organizational systems (the bedbug guys had to move stuff to treat everything - including the inside of my trunk, apparently, where I keep the Confidential Things of Confidentiality), but it resulted in a few things going missing - most irritatingly, one of the dolls (in a set of two) that my host mom in Turkey gave me on my last night staying with them.

I missed classes yesterday to go to the Ring Ceremony/ Ball at my boyfriend's school (he goes to military school, so yes, my dress was super fancy; it was required for it to be floor-length and white).  That was a lot of fun (except for the heels and the half-tripping over my dress for most of the night), because the band was actually really good and played decent music.

We woke up at around 7 this morning in order to head out by 8:00 or so; I needed to get back by 12 to attend a choir concert (this counts as the final, basically; College policy is that if you miss the final, you fail the course, so it's better to show up and get a 0 than to not show up at all).  My parents came to that, which was really nice.  When we went out to coffee afterwards, we saw one of the alumni of my fraternity, Alpha Phi Omega.  (that's another thing that's been on my plate this week: This is The Week That Shall Not Be Spoken Of But Which Involves Lots Of Gifts That Everyone Makes.)  I didn't know him terribly well, but that was not an excuse not to get excited and hug.

Right, I have to do some more service now - candlelight vigil from midnight to 3 AM.  Farewell!

Day 16: when in doubt, switch universes

Current Page: 84
Target Page: GAH!
Place in Story: Well, while I try and buy myself some time to figure out how to get Spencer out of the craphole I've dug her into, I'm revisiting Myrtle for the first time in a while.  I spent a week ignoring her, but I'm pretty sure she's actually useful now in padding my word count.  So, Myrtle is at a sorority party now (one she got dragged along to because she hadn't been out of the house in weeks because NOVELING!); she just got sat on by a drunk freshman who thinks that Myrtle is trans* because the freshman sat on Myrtle's pen while Myrtle was sneakily trying to write.

With regards to Spencer, I'm sure you're wondering what craphole she's gotten into.  Well, her navigation and communications systems are both down (she had an idea that didn't work; instead of successfully leading the enemy ship away from the base planet of the rebellion, the King's Stiletto was brought onto the enemy flagship and sabotaged); also, the base planet of the rebellion - the only definitively friendly planet in the only definitively friendly system within a range where navigation is simple - has been overtaken by beings of a malicious nature.  She found this out when getting the coordinates to the base planet (she was calling the commander of the rebellion on their backup communicator, which is kind old), and then the bad guy took over.

I have no idea what to do about this.  Suggestions?

On that note, I'm going to continue to write this awkward encounter in Myrtle's world, to the sounds of drunken frolicking outside.  (Since today was the game against our rivals, there's even more drunken frolicking than normal, even though we lost).

Day 15: halfway!

Current Page: 83
Pages written today: 7.5
Target Page: please, no.
Location in story: PLOT TWIST!  You thought the Mentor's death was the low point?  THINK AGAIN!!  EVERYTHING THAT SPENCER KNOWS AND LOVES IS ABOUT TO GO KAPUT, THANKS TO THAT CREEPY CALL THAT SHE JUST MADE!  Doesn't help that her navigation and her communicators are busted, so she can't really go anywhere accurately and she has to call on her backup communications.  Also, she has ten unconscious guards in her cargo hold.

Yes, that's where I am right now. I've gotten a lot done today, but I still need to keep up this pace if I want to make sure I can get my word count.

Day 14: tired, behind, and should be studying for Greek...

Current Page: 75

Target (at this point): 77 (two more pages... maybe? yes?)

Location in story: well...

I spent a lot of lunch texting my boyfriend about the best thing to sabotage about a ship (would it be more detrimental to the sabotagee to take out the navigation or the communications? Life support would have been a good option to hurt the crew and passenger of the King's Stiletto if it wasn't possible for them to land on a friendly planet in about two minutes - aka before the oxygen ran out). It turns out that I've planned out the backups for the ship better than I thought I did.  Either that, or theatre experience has trained me well for improv, because I may have been making it up.

Anyway, where I am right now in the story is trying to figure out where to send people now that the King's Stiletto has... barely been compromised.

I've also realized today just how much I've written about revolutions.  The only year that didn't involve a revolution was the first one, and that was almost preventing something that was... what's the opposite of revolution?  Not necessarily peace and harmony, but... since I based it on a video game, I'll just put it in those terms: BOWSER had captured the equivalent of PEACH and if the equivalent of MARIO wasn't out to save the royal family, there would have been anarchy that MARIO, LUIGI, and FRIENDS could not have controlled.

So... that's that. I have to do homework now.

Day 13: when in doubt, go meta

Current Page: top of 71
Target Page: um...
Place in Story: um...

So the title of today's post is derived from the fact that I do, technically, have three planes of existence in one novel: Myrtle's level, Jess's level, and Spencer's level. I have barely touched Myrtle's level in the last week or so, but Jess and Spencer have been sharing the stage fairly regularly.
Anyway, in order to shamelessly pad my word count, I wrote a scene with Myrtle, Jenna (her flatmate), and Elijah (her good friend), as well as a brief reference to Myrtle's and Jenna's cats (Samwise and Quark).  The scene lasted only around a page, but it mostly involved Myrtle saying how she had writer's block, and Jenna and Elijah giving her ideas.

There are so many levels of this that I could write the sequel to Inception.

In other, related news, I have recently discovered that requiems are really good writing music. My two right now are Mozart's in D minor and John Rutter's.  GO LISTEN.  NOW.

Day 12: stress?

Current Page: 67
Target Page: beyond that
Written today: nothing
What's going on: a lot of things.

Right now, the internet on my computer is being really dumb - for some reason, it won't connect to the server, so I can only access a few academic sites as well as Facebook and Twitter and, occasionally, the NaNoWriMo site.  (This is the reason that I haven't posted for the last two days.  My apologies for that.)
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to write too much over the last few days. I've been involved in a lot of things with my fraternity, and I have an essay due tonight at midnight (I'm mostly done with it, which is nice).  Additionally, homework is starting to get to me, because all my professors have realized that there are about three weeks before finals (if you count the rest of this week and the two days before Thanksgiving as one whole week), and so they've all decided that now is the time to give out ALL OF THE ASSIGNMENTS.  So I had an econ test yesterday, an honors essay tonight, a Greek test on Friday (as well as a bunch of translations), and a bunch of math quizzes before finals begin.  Needless to say, there's been a lot going on.
Hopefully I'll find the time to write today and tomorrow and catch up - I'm now running behind, even on NaNo terms, so that needs to get fixed.

Finals.  Gah.
Grades.  Gah.