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[personal profile] elsajeni
So far I've had one class this semester: English 3304, Chaucer, which turns out to be English 3304, Mildly Crazy Lady Teaches Canterbury Tales. I quite like it.

Tomorrow I have Abstract Algebra and How To Write Crappy Poetry! I look forward to both, although mostly to How To Poet, not least because I had a terrible dream last night where I went to the math class on the first day of the semester and somehow everyone else had been there for TWO MONTHS and there was an exam and it was horrible and now I'm afraid it's going to come true somehow. (The "somehow I have accidentally missed a month of class" anxiety plotline is one of my specialties. The other is "THIS CAR HAS NO BRAKES". I like that one better, because I'm less convinced that someday it will actually happen to me.) And then I have American Literature to 1865.

Why do classes always split American history at 1865, anyway? As we continue accumulating post-1865 years, we're going to have to reevaluate this. I mean, already when I took the two American history classes at UH there was a really striking difference in speed and depth of coverage -- we really took our sweet time getting to 1865. We routinely spent full weeks on decades in which, frankly, nothing happened. Then the post-1865 class was like "AND THEN RECONSTRUCTION AND THEN THIS AND THEN THAT AND THEN SOME MORE STUFF AND THEN THE VIETNAM WAR AND OH SHIT WE'RE OUT OF SEMESTER".

IN NON-SCHOOL NEWS: I spent most of my winter break with Zack in Portland, which was pretty great. We went to two hockey games (the Portland Winterhawks, who are ages 16-20, except for one who I'm pretty sure is 13, tops), the zoo, a museum, toured a submarine (the submarine had appeared in an episode of "Hawaii Five-O" and also in a single brief scene in The Hunt for Red October! it was a celebrity submarine!), and went to an aquarium where THEY LET ME FEED SEALS. FOR ONLY A DOLLAR. ACTUAL SEALS. OMG.

(no subject)

Date: 2009-01-21 03:25 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] quincunx.livejournal.com
The American Lit split is like antebellum versus non-antebellum (postbellum?) literature, right? I think you're right in that this probably made more sense around 1950 than it does now.

(no subject)

Date: 2009-01-21 04:59 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] elsajeni.livejournal.com
Yeah, that's exactly it. The lit class is on Thursday, and I look forward to seeing the syllabus -- I just did a search for "pre-civil war american fiction", and what it turned up was basically 8000 listings each of The Scarlet Letter, Moby-Dick, and Uncle Tom's Cabin. Since I've already read The Scarlet Letter twice for school, I feel fairly well-prepared.

(no subject)

Date: 2009-01-21 10:47 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] thromulator.livejournal.com
Well, I've been having the "accidentally missed a month of class" dreams for two solid months now. Part of my fear is valid, however, because Tulane, in its infinite wisdom, doesn't tell you when your mini-courses (one-hour classes that only meet for part of the semester) start. Well, okay, it does, just not on the website you use to REGISTER FOR CLASSES.

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Liz

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