(no subject)

[felis_ultharus]

Academia

Well, today's the day -- the nastier of my two exams. I've prepared about as well as I can, and my brain is brimming over with dates and facts.

Now I just have to hope to get lucky with the questions, which we don't know in advance -- there's a certain random factor here that really makes me feel like my academic career is being bet on a poker game. These are the only exams at the Master's level, and I forgot what it's like to be at the caprice of an exam-drafter.

Of course, with most exams, you've been in class, know the professor, and only have a few books to cover. I have about 40 or 50 authors to cover, only about 15 of which I'll need on the test. I've only read about 30 or so -- hopefully I've chosen well.

They say no one fails the comprehensives, but I know a guy who did.

On the other hand, I had the first class of my final course on Wednesday. Looks like it's going to be a vacation. There's almost no reading, no in-class presentation, and the final essay is a mere 10 pages -- that may as well be a grocery list, or an essay in haiku.

News of the Weird

The more I learn about reality television, the happier I am that I don't have a TV. Survivor has gone racially segregated? Pitting race against race? Normally I don't care enough about TV to be offended by anything on it, but Social Darwinism in prime time is really creepy.

Meanwhile, the Catholic Church is clearly worried about competition in the "mindnumbingly stupid" department from ultra-conservative North American Protestants who fill those Illiterate-Parents-Against-Harry-Potter type groups. Garbiele Amorth -- the Vatican's Chief Exorcist (!) -- has declared that "Behind Harry Potter hides the signature of the king of the darkness, the devil."

Amorth founded the International Association of Exorcists, and says that The Exorcist is his favourite film. Someone should really write Father Amorth into some very bad HP slash fanfic, translate it into Latin, and send it to him.

Comments

[yumemisama.livejournal.com]

I have never, ever had an exam that lethal. I hope never to have one. There are fortunately relatively few names and dates you need to know for sociology and media theory -- the bulk of the actual subject work consists of thinking about things and writing down your properly-supported opinions. Research papers require about a thousand footnotes, but exams aren't that specific. They really can't be.

I've only ever taken one English lit course, and it was Shakespeare. The professor appears to be just a skosh over three hundred, has a very dry and opinionated sense of humor, and decided I was smart about halfway through the first lecture. I could have argued pretty much anything in that class and as long as I spelled it correctly, it was worth an A-. I distinctly recall writing five pages, for the exam he gave over As You Like It, on how the Duke asked Isabella to marry him because she was such a spectacularly good sport over what he did to her brother.

Good luck, and godspeed.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Isabelle? For some reason I don't remember her. My brain must be more full than I thought, since I only read that play a couple of weeks ago :/

But yeah, this will be the most brutal exam of my life, I think. Even the second comprehensive can't be that bad.

(I like the word "godspeed" -- until I knew that "to speed" meant "to make something successful," I thought that "godspeed" meant "let you be as fast as God" -- presumably no speed limit.)

[yumemisama.livejournal.com]

I cheerily admit that I could be remembering her name entirely wrong! I don't take Shakespeare courses because I am in love with Shakespeare, I take Shakespeare courses because they're all upper-division classes and I get along very well with Dr. Reser. ^_^ I do confess to loving The Tempest, but mostly because I covet Prospero's books.

Most English instructors and English majors drive me batty. My aesthetic tastes are quite different from the traditional spread of English reading assignments and a lot of them, especially the younger ones, can't fathom how to deal with someone who is not nuts about Hemingway. (Hate him. I read "Hills Like White Elephants" once and the grad student teaching my class asked how I liked it. I told her that figuring it out took 20 minutes out of my life and I wanted them back.) The exceptions, like you and xataro, are the ones that also have interests outside your literature specialties and don't look down your noses at me for thinking that video games are a medium deserving of study. I won't deal with 90% of the anthropology department here anymore for similar reasons -- I am tired of having the same argument over whether internet communities "count" because they generally lack geographical proximity.

I believe it was Eddie Izzard who once decided that "godspeed" was oh, about 45mph. ^_^

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

The only Hemingway I know was "A Clean Well-lighted Place" -- a very short story. I liked that, but I understand that most of his stuff isn't similar.

I'm frustrated with the snobbery in my program. No matter what the critical approach, those people think they're either a) the last guardians of civilization, or b) the only ones who understand that civilization has to be dismantled.

[yumemisama.livejournal.com]

"Hills Like White Elephants" was horribly frustrating. Apparently it is about a man and a woman have a beer or two at a train station in Spain while he's trying to convince her that if she has an abortion, everything will be all right. I say apparently because if it weren't for the "discussion questions" right after the story in the 'lit collection'-style book it was in, I never would have worked this out. All the guy kept saying to her, "They'll just let a little air in," which makes no sense to me at all. By the end of the story I was going, "Let the air into what? Her skull? PLEASE PLEASE tell me he's getting her a lobotomy, so that this thing will END already!"

I like things that are open-ended and subject to speculation and all that, but anything starts to get stupid if you take it too far.

[maidenofirisa.livejournal.com]

Good luck for your exam! Let us know how it went.

I'm really glad I don't watch tv. Every time I think they've made the worst reality show possible they come up with something else.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

As for reality TV, I know. montrealais says that TV in North america is on its way out -- it can't compete with better media, like the Internet. I think that's true, and that reality TV is a sign of its desperate floundering.

[yumemisama.livejournal.com]

I sincerely hope that the really good TV shows switch to being released in serial format over the 'net or on DVD. Video-on-demand is a fabulous thing, and box sets of good stuff are some of the few media I will actually pay full retail for.

Plus serials are just awesome. I only wish I could find the rest of Flash Gordon. ^_^

[foi-nefaste.livejournal.com]

Good luck!

Also, you'll do fantastically well. I have faith in you.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Thank you ^_^

[jenjoou.livejournal.com]

I stopped watching tv shortly after the reality show craze. They're really scary but scarier is the thought of how popular they are. Something like American Idol I can live with but The Swan, Temptation Island.... it's just downhill from there.

Good luck on your exam!

[yumemisama.livejournal.com]

ShoutcastTV. www.veneficus.net runs nothing but A) bad movies, and B) bad movies made much, much better because they have been tampered with by the Mystery Science Theater 3000 people. Requires Winamp.

I technically own a TV -- it's a tuner card that runs through the PC. I find I mostly use it for the PS2, and watching things involving murder on CourtTV/Discovery Health/the Law & Order channel-- err, I mean, TNT. I have never seen a whole episode of a reality TV show. Thank God.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Thank you ^_^

I think that if any TV exec suggested a show called "Who wants to fuck a millionaire in order to be included in his will?", his employers' only objection would be the word "fuck" in the title.