Big things: Graduation!

This past month has been incredibly busy for us!

As I mentioned in my last post, I wrote A LOT for a few days and then I graduated. My mom came up from California to attend my graduation. (I love spending time with her!) J and his parents came for the ceremony, too. I was such a grump that day, because I was so sleep deprived from [nearly-]all-nighters as I finished my finals.


Commencement was [mostly] GREAT!

Our professors and people all wore their robes and hoods. I thought it was SO cool. I wanted one! Actually, I wanted more than one. I thought it sounded like a great challenge to collect all of the different hoods in all of the different colors. Wouldn't that be the most amazing collection?*

Our student speaker was awesome. It was this lady who had returned to school and was finally finishing her degree after years of being a mom and doing other things. It was actually a really good speech, too. I was moved to tears a couple times.

Ambassador Huntsman gave our commencement address. I liked him a lot. His speech also made me teary. I don't remember all of what he said, but there were a couple parts that stood out to me:

The first was, he was talking about how they had taken his adopted daughter back to China to see the place where she had been abandoned as an infant. Huntsman talked about how while he was there he thought of the birth mother and how much she must have loved their daughter, because she left the baby somewhere that she would be found. When he talked about it, his comments took me by surprise. (How could he think that someone who [literally!] abandoned her own baby could love the girl as much as Ambassador Huntsman and his wife love her?) But as I thought about it, I decided it was really neat. [I don't know much about any of this, but] I think a lot of girl babies are aborted (or killed after they're born) in China because of policies there. So actually, for the mother to leave her somewhere that she could be found probably was an act of love. The other thing I liked about it was, I think some adopted kids have to deal with the feeling that their biological parents didn't love them or want them.* I think sometimes that's true and sometimes times it's not. (And often it doesn't actually matter, because the kid has adoptive parents that really, really wanted them.) I thought it was pretty neat that Huntsman's daughter will grow up hearing a story of how much her birth mother must have loved her.

A big portion of Ambassador Huntsman's address was a list of F's that we needed to get in order to have a good life. They were:
1. Find yourself. - Your unique pathway in life. "Life is a journey, not the destination."
2. Find a cause. - And speak out! Take action, and never let it be said that you were an anonymous blogger.
3. Face failure. - Failure only hurts if you were unable to turn it into a learning experience and make you stronger.
4. Find someone to love. - There are people all around us who need it. There are people who need friends / hope.
5. Find meaning. - (1) Always have goals. (2) Create an intellectual framework or personal philosophy to value the world and people around you. (3) Remember experience is most valuable training grounds; learn from experiences.

[If you want to read the whole thing, it looks like Huntsman's address is online here.]

After commencement finished, my college (Humanities) had convocation in the same building. I switched seats, and sat with some friends from one of my classes.

Convocation was about the most boring thing I've ever attended in my life. It was like, every time they needed to introduce someone it just never ended. The introductions were about as long (or longer!) than actual speeches. It went like this: "Mary is graduating with a ___ degree from the ____ department. Her thesis was about collecting seashells. After graduating, Mary plans to collect seashells from X Beach, from Y Beach, and Z Beach, between the hours of 8:17 am and 4:09 pm. Mary also likes to braid her hair, garden--but not with sea shells! Ha, Ha! [they love cheesy jokes]--and she likes to eat ice cream. When Mary was two, Mary used to always sing "The Itsy Bitsy Spider," and her first words were... [... ] ...On a typical day, Mary wakes up early, but she usually presses snooze twice..." It seriously just went on and on. And then they would do it again for someone else. And someone else. And someone else, etc.

Our college's main student speaker was terrible! She spent like 10 minutes having people from different honor societies stand up. There were probably like 40 or 50 on her list. Don't most people know those are fake? There are only a few honor societies that are actually prestigious. Most of them are like, you get a letter that says: "CONGRATULATIONS AND WELCOME TO OUR SPECIAL CLUB PLEASE SEND US $80 TO ACCEPT."*** Doesn't everyone get those letters? So I was pretty embarrassed for our little speaker.

But all of that finally finished, and they called our names, and I got my special diploma cover!

And then, my guests put up with my terrible attitude, and we went out to lunch together, and had a great time. Then I went home and slept.


I'm still waiting to receive my diploma, but my transcript shows that my requirements are all met (and my grades were good for this last semester) so I should be in good shape. They told us it takes a couple months.

I'm so glad to be done****!



* Can you imagine? It would be impossible! Nobody could ever possibly get all of the possible advanced degrees from every university. But it would be such a pretty collection! And if anyone could do it, it would mean they were really something. I decided the only way to do that would be to do something really incredible so that many universities awarded me honorary degrees. But that would still probably only be in one field...
** According to movies and TV shows.
*** It's like when people are all excited that they were invited to be in the Who's Who book. Or when people think they win a poetry contest and their poem is really something because it's going in an anthology that costs only $100. At first it seems cool, but then you realize everyone "wins" and the only real winners are the companies because they're collecting money for nothing.
**** [-ish]

Back to School!

Someday I'll have time to write a real blog post. I hope.

Classes started last week. I am taking:

Victorian literature - with one of my favorite professors. It seems pretty good so far. Lots of reading.

Literary History (the earliest one, though, so pre-1660, I think) - Pretty boring so far. It's with the professor that is probably the most popular in the department. I was really looking forward to taking this class with him, but a week into the class I haven't figured out why he has such a great reputation. He seems to know his stuff.

Advanced Seminar (which is on Kafka) - The professor's name is Anne Jamison, and I had heard great things about her, too. She looks so much like Anne (Roger's wife), that every class I try to decide whether they look enough alike to be closely related or not.

She's great! She said the bookstore on campus operates on some kind of ponzi scheme, and that they're not a real bookstore anyway, they're a sweatshirt and teddy bear store, so she ordered our books through a local bookshop in Salt Lake somewhere. And gave us the ISBNs for our books so that we can order them online if we prefer. And, so that we're not using WebCT (which is very regulated and sucks), she set up a LiveJournal group for our class. So we have discussions there.

International Tourism - Meets my international requirement (which my AA did not, since I didn't get it in UT). I am taking it online. It sounded SUPER when I read the syllabus, but so far I am totally disappointed--it is so much about fixing poverty and sustainability.

Thanks, I'm not really interested in that. I am heartless, and I don't want one world community. I don't think everyone's opinions are valid, and I don't think we should make economic decisions based on spiritual and emotional values. Our text actually suggested that. (I do think sex trafficking is wrong, so at least when we get to that chapter I'll be on the same page as everyone else.)

So far, we've had to watch little videos where they show the world spinning from space and have us listen to quotes about how there are no boundaries and because we all evolved together since the Big Bang, we need to love each other. And not increase global warming. We have readings and lectures, and movies, and discussions, and quizzes, and projects, and it just seems like an awful lot of work. I hope the tone of the class changes a little! Half of the last lesson was actually about knowing ourselves so that we can be aware of how we act other places. It seemed more interesting and more practical, so we'll see.

I still have my Folklore class, which I started last semester. I am transcribing my interview that I did with J's dad, and I'll be preparing the manuscript for publication. So. That will be fun.

On Friday I finally got the results for my Italian test. I needed a 120/190 to demonstrate "advanced proficiency" and buy credits instead of taking another Italian class for the language requirement. I got a 172/190! So I'll be buying that class instead of taking it.

This semester I am trying to take TRAX instead of driving up. (It's already been pretty exciting; TRAX always is, right?) The idea is that this way I will avoid buying a parking permit and lots of gas, and also have extra time to study (/work on whatever!) during my commutes. My classes are all on Tues/Thurs, so it's working out pretty well so far. The disadvantages are: less Glenn, and less Dr. Laura. I can live with that, I guess.

Something Fun To Do

I just discovered something amusing.

I am reading Bless Me Ultima, which is about the most boring book I've ever read. I remember being pretty bored when I read the beginning of it in high school, too.

The group leading our class discussion asked how we would have felt reading it when we were younger, and I told them I didn't like it and couldn't relate to it, and that even though I took Spanish in high school, the frequent Spanish words made it hard for me to connect with the story.

Well, it was true, and I remember none of the rest of my class liked it either, but this class cares more about diversity than I do. They think it just excellent. And relating to something that we can't relate to teaches us even more than reading about white people. It teaches us that we have things in common with other cultures. Because all cultures have myths and we all care about culture prejudice and self-discovery. And wandering through a boy's dreams and stuff is deep and inspiring to them.

I am insensitive, I guess. But there are more interesting ways of bridging the cultural gap, I think.

So to feel better about it all, I Googled "I hate Bless Me Ultima" and read things other people had written. I am not the only one who thinks this book is boring.

AND THEN! I had a brilliant idea. I started reading the ONE STAR reviews on Amazon, right here in class. Okay, I agree that there are some nice things about this book, but reading bad reviews made me feel much better about not just loving every page.

Here are some of my favorite parts:

Slow, slow, slow, December 18, 2008

By	Dr. John Laughlin (Glenn Dale, MD) - See all my reviews

This is a rather long work tha plods along like a melting glacier about the story of a youg boy, his family and his attachment to a healer known as Ultima. You expect the book to pick up steam on the next page only to contiue in this slow, endless march through blandness and bordom. How it won awards is beyond me.
John, author of Reading Thomas Merton



WORST BOOK EVER WRITTEN,

June 30, 1999

By A Customer
I'd have given this book negative five stars if it were an option. This novel has a mind-numbingly boring storyline, with almost zero plot, characters you couldn't care less about, unrealistic scenes, cheap symbolism and dumb 'plot twists'. Why anyone would want to read about a stupid little boy who follows an old con artist around 'curing' people with 'curses' that are probably nothing more than the flu is beyond me. I found it difficult to care about Tony's family and their problems. I felt that it was a quasi-noble effort to represent a struggle between good and evil, considering that no one in the story was pure good or pure evil.

Let me wake up from my deep sleep,

December 10, 2001

By	Mackey (VeGa$) - See all my reviews

"Bless Me Ultima" was a story that always put [m]e to sleep. If I needed a nap, this story never let me down. It took me hours to read just a few pages. I would sit down to read the book and then after a few minutes my eyes would get heavy and dry and the story never helped me wake up. I would rather sit around looking at the ceiling and counting how many holes there are in it. Or maybe even see how many fibers I could count in the carpet. Any of those things were more interesting than "Bless Me Ultima".
...
Another annoying thing about the book was the frequent use of Spanish throughout the dialogue. I don't speak Spanish so this put a real hamper on my pleasure of reading the book (if any at all). The Spanish always ruined the mood of the events happening. It made you stop and think, "What is this person trying to say."

I was waiting the whole book for it to get interesting, but it never did. There started to be a little bit of action towards the end of the story, but then it stopped with the end of the book.

Another thing I didn't enjoy was the frequent use of symbolism. I am not a fan of symbolism. I wish that writers could just tell it as it is without having to show it as something else.

The only reason why I gave this book one star was because that was the least that I could give it. If I had a chance to, I would rather give it no stars. I guess you could say that that one star was for giving me long nights of great sleep.

Thanks everyone for hearing me out.
-MACKEY

badnews, March 8, 2002

By	STEVE (Walla Walla, WA USA) - See all my reviews

there is no adjective in the english language to describe the horrors of reading this "book". PLEASE, don't fall victim to reading this atrocity.

****

Weren't those great?!

I should probably finish this post and start paying attention to class again...

School

Well, my classes started this week, and things are okay so far.

I'm taking four classes.

1. English 2700: Diversity in American Literature
2. English 5920: Intellectual Movements
3. English 3703: Intro to Lit History 3 (which is the modernism part)
4. English 5880: Children's Lit

I feel like I'm taking the same class four times. And when I talk about my classes, I want to say "in my English class", but then I realize that all of my classes are English classes.

Yesterday I was hating my life, wondering why I'm majoring in English, but today I feel really optimistic about this semester. Here's why: I have excellent professors this semester.

Here are the interesting things about each of the classes, so far:

1. Diversity in American Literature. I'm taking this one because it satisfies the university's diversity requirement AND part of my English major requirement. It's a lower level English class, though. So it feels like high school English. Where the professor defines words like "simile" instead of just words like "post-structuralism".

I'm not wild about the professor for this class (yet, anyway), but everything seems pretty simple, so I think that as long as I do the reading it should be a breeze. And the reading seems pretty simple, too. The professor for this class dresses really artsy. The first day she came in wearing a bright purple coat, a lime green sweater top, a goldenrod scarf, black pants, and red boots. And a beret.

2. Intellectual movements. This is a very-upper-division class, and the idea behind it is that the professor picks something that like, changed literary history and we study it intensely. And to celebrate the 150th anniversary of On The Origin of Species, we're studying Darwin and evolution! Greaaaat. I'm very secure in my religious beliefs, and I don't mind discussing evolution, but I wasn't too thrilled about a whole semester of it. EXCEPT! So far it's my favorite class! The professor is hilarious. She's really sarcastic.

We were talking about evolution (of course), and Lamarck, and how species all just want to progress. She told us that he was all into inheritance of acquired characteristics. Like, the giraffe reached a little bit to get higher leaves, and the next generation, and the next generation, and gradually the neck got longer and longer. She said, "as anyone who has had a nose job and then looked at their children knows, this does not work." She also told us about a guy, August Wiseman? who "hacked off the tails of about 2000 mice and did not produce any tailless mice."

And then later, "The giraffe wants a longer neck, the African people want to become British. There's no question about it. It's obvious." (Like from the perspective of the British, back when people were first starting to talk about evolution.)

Or another time we were talking about the problems with the new idea of evolution, and one problem is that if you're not in the upper class, you may wonder why not, wonder why your ancestors didn't do whatever they were supposed to to evolve. And the prof whined like a kid who wanted candy and her mom wouldn't buy it, "Moooooooom, why aren't you letting me eevvooooolve?"

Or, we were going over the syllabus, and we're reading Heart of Darkness (which we're also reading in one of my other classes), and then we're reading Tarzan of the Apes, "which is Heart of Darkness, but happy!"

The people in the class seem good, too. Before the class started, one of the guys was talking to the girl behind me. "Break seemed really short, didn't it?" he asked her, and they talked a bit about it. And he explained, "You see, I don't count the days that were snowing as part of my break. So break was like three days. Weekends don't count towards break either." And I could not agree with that more. And later she was talking talking more about Tarzan, and she said "There are like a million of them! Tarzan Goes to Mars, Tarzan Meets the President, and by the end of the series Tarzan is like a Jack Bauer. We're just going to read the first one, from 1914."

So. That class is really entertaining.

[Also, when I first started this blog post, I went downstairs in the library to clock out, and I ran into this Prof! I said hello, and we talked about the big Darwin displays that they put up in the library yesterday (which I had told her about). She had found one and was going to go check out (ha!) the other one. And as we quit chatting, she said "Emily, right?" Yes!]

3. Intro to Lit History 3. I think I will hate the content of this class the most. Because the prof already said we're doing poetry this week, and the rest of the readings sound gross too. BUT, he has personality, and the structure of the class is: we come in and chat about what we read. Which I can handle.

It was funny, when he first started class he said, "I'm not going to ask you why you're here. My first class here, there were 60 people! Modernism was my first class and I said the University of Utah is the Best Place Ever! All these people are interested in modernism! That's great! So I had them each write a little paragraph about why you're here. All of the answers were 'It's at 10 o'clock. It's required. I made a huge mistake, if I only would have studied math instead, I would have been alright." So he understood that we didn't really care about modernism.

And then he had us go around the class and name our favorite and least favorite works from the 20th century. And people all had favorites like Ulysses. Gross.

Oh, one funny thing that he talked about was using the dictionary.

"Look up words that you don't know, and that you do know." He talked about people using words wrong, and he said that words are our tools. "If you go into a chemistry lab, you don't just pour stuff out of bottles, and say 'I don't know what that was.'"

4. Children's Lit. Um, this is going to be okay. I somehow got the one Children's Lit teacher that thinks kids read adult books and adults read kid books, so we shouldn't limit our study to books for children. Too bad! She is also very interested in the Holocaust. And group projects. (I hate group projects. Because they usually just mean Emily projects. And I want to do my own work, not work for 5 people, thanks.)

Also, I'm a little afraid of this professor, because in her syllabus she tells us that we should use professional language when we e-mail her. She specifically says not to address her with "Hey". And that is definitely something I would do, because I wouldn't write, "Dear Professor," or "Hello Professor". (My coworker said I can just start it with "Professor," and that will work. If I remember!)

But in the end, she said she hates grades. So she wants to give us all good grades, and she will, but we have to give the class our very best. We need to attend classes, do a great job on our presentations, and a great job on our papers, and then we'll be fine. And if we don't then she'll adjust things...but she doesn't want to have to do that. No tests. No midterm. No final. And that's a pretty sweet grading policy.

So things should be okay. I have a few other things to write about, but I'll save them for later.

School Stories 11 - Misc

Just a few random things from the past few days, that I thought were worth sharing.

Yesterday in English, we had to bring an item so that everyone could think critically about it. For example, the guy who likes beer brought a beer bottle, and we thought critically: why are beer bottles shaped the way they are? Why is the label the way that it is? Is the beer different because it's imported? Why is the beer different because it's imported? Etc, etc. Some people forgot to bring items for us to analyze. Other people "brought" things like their cellphone or a pen. (I took a fortune cookie. What does that say about society?) My favorite item though...

"I brought in a ceramic mushroom." (Rannndom.) "I used to work in a ceramic mushroom factory." (Whaaaat....?) The class laughed. "Old ladies go nuts for these things." Awesome.

And then for my other class, we had to read "just a few poems" ( = over 50 pages). My favorite parts from that were:

- From the description of Tennyson,
"Tall, ruggedly handsome, and with a faraway look in his eyes that was actually due to myopia, Tennyson fit everyone's idea of how a poet should look."

(p. 1231, The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Volume 2B, The Victorian Age.)

I just really love the part about how he had a faraway look in his eyes, and that made him look like a poet, but that it was actually because he couldn't see. And that they wrote about it in the anthology. Good job.

- "Swans can live as many as 50 years."
(from a footnote for Tithonus, p.1246)

Huh. Who knew?

And then, this morning in my US Government class, the professor posted this:

Test
Short Answer

A liberal is a guy who believes in school busing, but he does not believe there should be prayers in school.
A conservative believes in school prayer but no school busing.
A moderate believes children should pray on the bus on the way to school.

Based on class discussions, it seems like there are far, far more liberals in my class than conservatives. (Even though I'm at a Utah university.) It makes me want to start a College Republicans club (there's College Democrats one) and join the NRA. No problem. It was just like this in California.

I'm also thinking of starting a Knitting Club, since it doesn't seem like there is one. There is a nine page listing of clubs, and there are no College Republicans OR Knitting clubs. Next week is our big thing where all of the clubs set up booths and try to get you to join, so I suspect I'll have more to say after that.

In other news, I finally have a house in Salt Lake. And I think I'm getting sick. And I read Twilight. (Which I thought I would read never in a million years, but actually ended up liking. Go figure.) My favorite thing about Twilight (aside from Edward, of course) was all of the foreshadowing. Awesome. Annnd, I'm actually at the library right now because I had to pick up the second one. Which my school library has ONE copy of, and it was in. Which is probably because all of the other University of Utah students are reading real books. Whatever.

School Stories 10 - English - Tell Me Something Interesting About Yourself

Well, I just know I'm going to have tons of stories about school this term; I always do. I will probably also have a bunch of stories about my little house that I'm moving into, but more about that later.

My Intro to Critical Theory class kind of makes my brain hurt. I initially thought I was going to hate it, actually, and towards the end of the class I decided I think it will be okay. I guess we'll see. The professor seems really interested in things like "What is race?" "What is gender?" "Why do we have race?" "Is there race?" "Why do we have gender?" "Is there gender?" He says our class is about asking questions that people don't usually ask. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I like to ask questions, but.... I like gender roles. I like being able to label things. If I say that I want Italian food, it's easy, and communicative, and maybe there are some Italians that eat Chinese food, but people are going to know that I mean pasta. And that isn't a bad thing!

Anyway, at the end of class we went around the room and we were supposed to say our name, where we were from (almost everyone was from SLC. Like 1/7 of us were from other places.), our major (it's a required upper division class for English majors, sooooo I think everyone but like one girl said that they were majoring in English. They had different other stuff with it, though...), and something about ourselves that made us unique or whatever. The professor said that sometimes partway through the semester he sometimes finds out that someone is suuuper into water polo, or that they own their own business, or whatever, and he's always just like "why didn't I know that?" so he wanted us to say that stuff.

It was kind of interesting though, because if you had to just choose one thing about you, that people would remember about you, what one thing would you tell? I think for some people it's easier, because their whole life is permeated by soccer or something, but for everyone else it's an interesting question. People had a wide variety of answers, and I collected them to share here.

1. Speaks English as a first language and Spanish as a second language. Thinks in both languages. When he is tired, things come out in Spanish, which confuses other people.


2. LIKES BEER. A LOT. Likes brewing it, drinking it, anything with it.


3. Plays water polo.


4. Favorite thing to do is coach cheer.


5. Likes to write. [Seriously? You couldn't come up with anything better than that?! It's an English class. 2/3 of us like to write. AND, not only that, nobody asked what she likes to write. Poetry? Short stories? Who knows.]


6. Works at the library and "enjoys seeing what the community values in literacy."


7. Also plays water polo.


8. Has worked with at-risk kids since she was 16, and it's her second biggest passion--next to English. [Passionate about English over touching people's lives? Ooookay.]


9. Plays table tennis competitively.


10. Her name is "Carusa" (sp?) buuuut she goes by "Cricket." [Cool.] [Tracy?]


11. Likes participating in haunted houses. [Awesome random thing.]


12. Coached two different little league teams to... district? finals? championships? I forget.


13. "The only thing I like better than a long walk or a good nap is a new friend in a new language." [He has a good hand on Russian. Can speak Ukranian okay. And in Spanish he knows how to ask where the bathroom is.]


14. Doesn't speak Spanish. [Looks very Central American, and she says people come up to her and start speaking Spanish daily.]


15. Trained formally in oil painting and drawing.


16. Two favorite things are writing and sky diving. [ = my new best friend. But she doesn't know it yet.]


17. Is a life student. Said she will die before her loans are paid off.


18. Just started a girls bike club. Critical mass! Alleycat! [The teacher was like, you're using jargon, what are you talking about?] Critical mass you can ride any kind of bike (motorcycle), and it's the last Friday of every month. People meet at Gallivan Plaza at 5:30 pm to ride as a group and "make a statement" that you don't have to drive. Alleycat is actually this time called "AlleyScat" because it's music themed. You can ride any kind of bike for that too. It's like a scavenger hunt. [Not really sure how that works, but it almost almost makes me wish I were into biking. Almost.]


19. Likes "watching teachers teach and make mistakes" [our professor was like "!!?" and he said "so I don't make them" and it was because he's becoming a teacher.]

That was probably half or two thirds of the people. Neat though, huh. People are interesting.

School Stories 3 - more English

In English we’ve just finished the poetry unit. (“We’re finished with poetry,” our professor said on Monday, and quickly added, “We’re hopefully never finished with poetry.”)

I had a couple more revealing thoughts about poetry: first, I decided poetry is kind of like a magic eye puzzle. Some people are really good at figuring them out, but to me they’re just a big mess of no particular picture which I can sometimes see lines or shapes in a little part of, but that’s about it. Second, I think a new way to write poetry would to use Babelfish and have something go from language to language and then back to English. The jarbled text would instantly be full of hidden meanings for readers to discover. I guarantee there would even be poetic devices in the poems, just by chance, so we could analyze those, too.

People in my class like to describe most of the poems the same way—the lady behind me thinks probably half of the poems are about divorce, because she’s been through two divorces. Another girl in my class describes most of the poems as “childish” or “immature”, (because she was once a child and immature? Hah.) Serious poems, funny poems, whatever, they’re all about divorce and they’re all childish. Mmmkay.

My professor has a funny way of describing things, which makes class more exciting. She was telling us a few days ago that she can’t summarize books. She said someone will say “Oh, you’re reading that book, what’s it about?” and she says she’ll either say something like “There’s this man and another man and they talk a lot” or she’ll try to tell them every page. I thought that was kind of funny.

Or she said she felt like she was “selling herself,” because she kept reminding us of her office hours and encouraging us to come by if we have questions. “I’m available to be utilized as a resource,” she rephrased.

We were talking about the crisis in traditional plot structure, and she said “Crisis is not always super dramatic. THE BUILDING’S ON FIRE!! PEOPLE ARE JUMPING OUT THE WINDOW!! It can be subtle.”

She also dresses really cute.

The End.

School Stories 1 - English!

Today my English professor retracted part of the syllabus. It was the first thing she announced in class. She said she's decided she "won't be militant about tardies" after all. And then she repeated it (still using the word 'militant', which I've always been vaguely aware of but never used) for the tardy part of the class, too, so that everyone would know. Apparently the people who scheduled summer classes didn't allow any transition time between classes. So classes finish at 11 precisely, and other classes start at 11 precisely. Oops. Several of my classmates mentioned it to her, and so we don't have our intense tardy policy anymore. I don't plan on being tardy anyway, since my bus-bus-train-train schedule gets me there like 30 minutes early, but it still seems like a glimmer of hope for this class.

Also, the poems we were assigned (due today) had several that were kind of precursors to women's rights. So they're from a time where women had to do what their husbands said, and they were expected to cook and clean, etc, and expected not to think too much about things, and they were...not bitter...but ready for equal rights, if that makes sense. And it reminds me of this short story that we read in a few different years of English classes in high school.

The story that I remember is, there's this old lady. Her husband has died. I forget how. I think at war. And then pretty soon afterwards she finds out that, oh wait, someone got it all wrong, he was definitely still alive. And the old lady has a heart attack, I think, and she dies. And everyone's like "Oh, she loved him so much, she was so excited to find out that he was alive, that the shock and excitement of it all killed her. How sweet." But other parts of the story (that we know since it's told from an omniscient perspective) let us know that REALLY, the REAL reason why she died was because when she found out he had died she felt FREE. FINALLY. After years of having to be the wife. And she dreams, and hopes, and has lived for this moment. And then, in an instant, it's all gone. Because he's alive, and she still can't really be free. And grief of losing her freedom that she was so excited about, that was what really killed her. It's a really intense short story, and one that I like a lot.

I'm sure I've remembered parts of it wrong. I haven't read it in ages. But here's the thing: we also always read parts from one of the books we're supposed to be reading later. And I think that might be the story that we read from that book. So all class, I wanted to tie the two together, because the sentiment of them are the same! But on the off-chance that it actually is the same thing we're reading later, I don't want to spoil it for my whole class! That would be awful of me.

Also, I realized that there are some poems that I like. I don't entirely hate poetry. I just hate over-analyzing it, and looking for things that aren't there, and wish the author would say what they meant. BUT, poems themselves are not always bad.

Our reading assignment for Friday is a little scandalous. When we went over the syllabus, there was a whole big paragraph about how there would be no "content accommodations" and that if any of the requirements of the course "conflict with our sincerely-held core beliefs," we should consider dropping the class.

Our first poem is called "After Making Love We Hear Footsteps" and it's about how this couple has no privacy now that they have a kid, but even though the kid wants to snuggle with them it like, reminds them of their love for him, and their original love that brought him, too. And then one of the other ones is kind of graphic with female anatomy. Both are very tasteful, though. They're sweet poems, and not crude at all.

Still, though, when I read Friday's assignment and thought about the syllabus, I'm sure there are some LDS people who would find the assignment really inappropriate. There's just no way this kind of stuff would be chosen for a BYU class. In California, nobody would have thought a thing about it. It doesn't bother me. But it was another one of those things that reminded me that it isn't Provo, you know?

OBVIOUSLY, English is Different in the UK

I’ve noticed something funny about British speech that doesn’t really carry over into American English. People in the UK use the word “obviously” different than we do here.

In the United States, we use ‘obviously’ to mean “anyone can immediately tell”. For example, “Her hair is really obviously green.” It doesn’t matter if you know her or not, it’s REALLY green, and anyone can tell. Or, “obviously it’s a bad idea to run a red light.” Running a red light is dangerous, and everyone knows this. “Obviously, she made chicken for dinner.” It’s not beef tonight, it’s chicken, and I can smell it.

In the UK, people very often use ‘obviously’ to mean “It has become clear to me now.” “Obviously, I was at the hospital, and that’s why I forgot to cancel my account.” It becomes clear to me now that I forgot to cancel, because oh, right, of course, I was at the hospital. “Obviously, I entered my card for my mum, and she’s forgotten to cancel it.” “I hadn’t realized my mum forgot to cancel it, and you certainly would have had no way of knowing, but it’s become clear to me now.” “I’ve come to the end of my free time, so obviously I want to cancel.” None of these things are obvious to me at all (as someone who does not know them personally), nor do the people expect me to know. Interesting.

It’s kind of funny, because obviously, I’ve started to use ‘obviously’ when I talk to them. (See, that wouldn’t be obvious to you, the reader, at all.) And nobody ever says “That’s not obvious at all!” It’s just fine because it’s kind of like an interjection.

In the US, ‘obviously’ often confirms a common understanding between people talking, and in the UK, the understanding is not implied or expected, and ‘obviously’ is frequently a simple transition in conversation.

[Also, many, many men call me “my love” the same way many Italians call random people beautiful (“Hello, beautiful!”), and the same way that old American ladies call people “sweetie.” “My love” sounds less diminutive, though.]