Thursday, April 29, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
Ha, two posts in one night!
Okay, peoples. So late night JUST closed and I have about four hours of reading and at least two of test prep ahead of me, probably more, and if I don't sleep then I will be zombie-like when I take my test and that will suck. I wanted to get something from the vending machine but I'm out of cash and so I found $1 in quarters, not the $1.50 I need to get bottle of Pepsi. So I bought a bag of pretzels instead. Bad idea, because now I'm really thirsty and I'm going to waste at least 20 minutes walking to the ATM in the student center and emptying my bank account so I can have a $5 bill with which to buy some bag of shit from the vending machine so I can get four dollars back and literally turn around and deposit two singles into the soda machine, because, of course, the soda machine does not take $5 bills.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
The Sorry State of Collegiate Exploration
There's no place left to explore anyone. I've wandered all over this campus, except in the Village, but there I'm a bit afraid of drunks and of facing the scrutiny of Public Safety. Otherwise I've been in every residence hall and just about every corner of the academic complex. I examined the new Spiritual Center just a few minutes ago. That leaves only the Village and the athletic fields (for those I have to cross Route 202), and neither really inspires my explorer instinct.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
A Little Wisdom
Three Axioms:
- Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
- Nothing you plan goes according to plan.
- Life gives you unexpected breaks.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
It's 3:43 in the morning...
...and I haven't gotten anything done.
I have a paper due for my first-year seminar due on Thursday. Basically, I have to take the article my group was assigned to present and summarize it in narrative form. My first paper/presentation was a western conceptualization of a "land ethic." Then I had an article on the "color blind principle," and now it's the "Contestation and Consensus" of the morality of abortion in Japan.
To be quite honest, I could really care less about the Japanese struggle and succeeding consensus in Japan on abortion. I can, on occasion, get passionate about abortion, but the multiculturalism in this class is really starting to piss me off. To use his own jargon, I am a structuralist, and my professor is not. Another day I will explain what that means and why I think cultural plays a minimal role in shaping history.
Before I write these narratives, I usually take notes on the article with my computer. From these notes I write most of my paper, but this article is so boring and I am so lacking motivation at the end of this semester that I have done next to nothing tonight. I went to eat with some friends, came back, read the news, and texted a friend for a while. Then I read the High Point Regional Board of Education minutes. Yes, I was that desperate.
It's snowing outside, and it's coming down pretty heavy. They might cancel classes if this snow doesn't turn to rain, but Wednesday is my day off anyway. I may have to work on this paper tomorrow; I'm dozing off in the common room as we speak, so before my head smashes into the keyboard I'm going to go to bed. If this message is inconhorent, I will fix it in the morning.
I have a paper due for my first-year seminar due on Thursday. Basically, I have to take the article my group was assigned to present and summarize it in narrative form. My first paper/presentation was a western conceptualization of a "land ethic." Then I had an article on the "color blind principle," and now it's the "Contestation and Consensus" of the morality of abortion in Japan.
To be quite honest, I could really care less about the Japanese struggle and succeeding consensus in Japan on abortion. I can, on occasion, get passionate about abortion, but the multiculturalism in this class is really starting to piss me off. To use his own jargon, I am a structuralist, and my professor is not. Another day I will explain what that means and why I think cultural plays a minimal role in shaping history.
Before I write these narratives, I usually take notes on the article with my computer. From these notes I write most of my paper, but this article is so boring and I am so lacking motivation at the end of this semester that I have done next to nothing tonight. I went to eat with some friends, came back, read the news, and texted a friend for a while. Then I read the High Point Regional Board of Education minutes. Yes, I was that desperate.
It's snowing outside, and it's coming down pretty heavy. They might cancel classes if this snow doesn't turn to rain, but Wednesday is my day off anyway. I may have to work on this paper tomorrow; I'm dozing off in the common room as we speak, so before my head smashes into the keyboard I'm going to go to bed. If this message is inconhorent, I will fix it in the morning.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
What I'd give to be a poet right now...
Today, in my college world, the mandatory freshman activities are finished.
But really, I shouldn't be complaining. I'll brag instead. I've got it made. I got the ultimate meal plan (no limit on meals), the cool housing for the scholarship/honors kids, and a significant nerd/outcast population to mingle with when I so choose. So really, I'm doing pretty well after all.
Except for the fact that I have nothing to do for the next two days until I have my first class. So I'm in the library on the second floor, which, by the way, is straight out of the seventies (Orange carpeting?). Right now I think I'm the only person on the second floor. At 8:00 in the morning I think I was only the second person to have breakfast in the Pavilion (which serves two residence halls). Everyone else must be asleep.
I woke up a girl in the common room this morning. She was sleeping in chair with a blanket thrown over her because she has asthma and she's been having attacks and she doesn't want to wake her roommate up and have the roommate think she's dying. So the moral of the story is that things could always be worse (and some people have good reason to sleep in).
But still I'm sitting in the library with chairs and little tables around me that look like they got lifted from the children's section of the county library (Damn you, '70's designers, damn you!). What am I reading? The Great Financial Crisis, by John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff. It's one of the books I bought (but have not yet been assigned) for this gen ed class called "Social Issues." I read the preface, which mentioned that much of the material for the book comes from pieces in Monthly Review, which is not only the publisher of this book but also happens to be a magazine with "an independent socialist voice," in the words of the authors. Now that's cool, it's okay to be a socialist. I myself am a self-classified socialist-leaning cynical capitalist. But I'm still trying to be a step removed from unwavering belief in what this book speaks of, just in case it's a little too radical.
I'm just trying to finish the introduction. I'm on page 18 and it ends at page 23. At first I picked up the book and started reading and said to myself, "Hey, this is pretty accessible prose. Should be an easy read." Oh, but to be sorely mistaken!
Flowing in these pages is economic doomsday rhetoric of stagnation and financialization, brewing with funky terms like monopoly capital that leave me totally clueless. Many names float around. John Maynard Keynes is apparently in some ways like Isiah, father (well, not literally...) of a race of economists as numerous as the stars. Or at least enough to fill up a conference room. And it seems like everyone referenced here was deeply influenced not only by Keynes but by Marx and/or a bunch of other people I've never heard of. A little more background on the other people would be nice, especially for faux intellectuals like me.
I've probably been exaggerating. I don't know if a political manifesto masquerading as a book on economics--which would a biased and deceitful book, and that's what I'm really afraid of--would easily become college course material. I hope not. But in any case, it's pretty dark and pretty dense material. I'm looking out the wall-to ceiling windows across from me, and occurs to me, what I would give to be a poet right now.
I'd look out the window instead and write some idyllic sonnet about the trees or nature. Or an epic poem about Andrew, the man who's friends with everyone. Maybe some haiku about orange carpeting and stolen furniture from the children's section.
I can't rhyme, or write imaginatively, or with imagery, or even with much creativity. For God's sake, I can barely understand poetry when I read it. But maybe then, if I were a poet right now, I wouldn't have to be intellectually concerned and fully engaged with stagnating production and out-of-control financialization.
Because to me, a historian has to understand everything, because everything contributes to history. Especially those detached forces that have a decisive impact on the daily lives of people and a direct control over the welfare of the state--namely, those forces described by economics.
Of course, you might not be much of a great poet in these times if all you knew were leaves of grass and cherry blossoms. So then maybe it isn't so easy being a poet after all.
- No more icebreakers.
- No more ceremonies.
- No more workshops on rape, insanity, and the prolific substance abuse that will soon be commencing on campus.
But really, I shouldn't be complaining. I'll brag instead. I've got it made. I got the ultimate meal plan (no limit on meals), the cool housing for the scholarship/honors kids, and a significant nerd/outcast population to mingle with when I so choose. So really, I'm doing pretty well after all.
Except for the fact that I have nothing to do for the next two days until I have my first class. So I'm in the library on the second floor, which, by the way, is straight out of the seventies (Orange carpeting?). Right now I think I'm the only person on the second floor. At 8:00 in the morning I think I was only the second person to have breakfast in the Pavilion (which serves two residence halls). Everyone else must be asleep.
I woke up a girl in the common room this morning. She was sleeping in chair with a blanket thrown over her because she has asthma and she's been having attacks and she doesn't want to wake her roommate up and have the roommate think she's dying. So the moral of the story is that things could always be worse (and some people have good reason to sleep in).
But still I'm sitting in the library with chairs and little tables around me that look like they got lifted from the children's section of the county library (Damn you, '70's designers, damn you!). What am I reading? The Great Financial Crisis, by John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff. It's one of the books I bought (but have not yet been assigned) for this gen ed class called "Social Issues." I read the preface, which mentioned that much of the material for the book comes from pieces in Monthly Review, which is not only the publisher of this book but also happens to be a magazine with "an independent socialist voice," in the words of the authors. Now that's cool, it's okay to be a socialist. I myself am a self-classified socialist-leaning cynical capitalist. But I'm still trying to be a step removed from unwavering belief in what this book speaks of, just in case it's a little too radical.
I'm just trying to finish the introduction. I'm on page 18 and it ends at page 23. At first I picked up the book and started reading and said to myself, "Hey, this is pretty accessible prose. Should be an easy read." Oh, but to be sorely mistaken!
Flowing in these pages is economic doomsday rhetoric of stagnation and financialization, brewing with funky terms like monopoly capital that leave me totally clueless. Many names float around. John Maynard Keynes is apparently in some ways like Isiah, father (well, not literally...) of a race of economists as numerous as the stars. Or at least enough to fill up a conference room. And it seems like everyone referenced here was deeply influenced not only by Keynes but by Marx and/or a bunch of other people I've never heard of. A little more background on the other people would be nice, especially for faux intellectuals like me.
I've probably been exaggerating. I don't know if a political manifesto masquerading as a book on economics--which would a biased and deceitful book, and that's what I'm really afraid of--would easily become college course material. I hope not. But in any case, it's pretty dark and pretty dense material. I'm looking out the wall-to ceiling windows across from me, and occurs to me, what I would give to be a poet right now.
I'd look out the window instead and write some idyllic sonnet about the trees or nature. Or an epic poem about Andrew, the man who's friends with everyone. Maybe some haiku about orange carpeting and stolen furniture from the children's section.
I can't rhyme, or write imaginatively, or with imagery, or even with much creativity. For God's sake, I can barely understand poetry when I read it. But maybe then, if I were a poet right now, I wouldn't have to be intellectually concerned and fully engaged with stagnating production and out-of-control financialization.
Because to me, a historian has to understand everything, because everything contributes to history. Especially those detached forces that have a decisive impact on the daily lives of people and a direct control over the welfare of the state--namely, those forces described by economics.
Of course, you might not be much of a great poet in these times if all you knew were leaves of grass and cherry blossoms. So then maybe it isn't so easy being a poet after all.
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