Wheee! Home with food and drink and good company online, I shall try to update this Blog. Problem is, I keep getting distracted by this X-Men site. *makes face at self* BAD ME, NO COOKIE!
A - hem. Anyways...after I removed myself from the computer at school, I went roaming the library, searching for culture. I came upon it in great hordes, yet was unsatisified--and then I found a section concerning Japanese. Ooooh, 'tis spiffy. There are books on language, culture, and literature in great amounts, and yea, the Me was happy. I ended up checking out five of them, including two of these nifty little books called Nihongo Notes. They're reprintings of articles published in the Japan Times detailing little phrases and culture pieces of the language that non-native speakers get caught on. I've already picked up a good phrase or four, and I have a feeling these are going to be invaluable in making me into the Japanese snot nose I want to be. :) Browsing this section almost made me late for class, but I got there just on time...
American Literature since 1914: I have divided thoughts on this class. For one thing, there's a lot of work and reading, which is pretty much expected of any literature class. But there's an added wrinkle of having to give little oral presentations as well as Oncourse presentations. I'm kinda curious to see how this is going to work out, actually. I've already signed up for my oral presentation, which will be taking place on my birthday over "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"; thanks to Dana, this poem has a permanant place in my little English major heart, and I couldn't resist the opportunity to extoll its wonderfulness. Arigatou, Dana!
There are some nifty facets to this class. Kelly of my CW class and another woman whose-name-totally-slips-my-mind from my British Lit. class are both in it, so I have a good discussion group there. Also, there's a deaf man named David, and watching his interpretors are an interesting way to avoid normal class boredom. And before you get on my case about that, the Prof. said we could do that. She's a nice, informal lady of the South, though she's a bit off on her facts, there's an obvious love of Literature there. At least she acknowledges that she can be off, and I did offer her some corrections. (I am, after all, a Second Level Novice in the Tyrant's Fact Correcting Squad. *g*) But things look like they're going to be okay. She also has a very nifty accent--some Southern, some flat Midwest, and an occasional British tinge. It's gonna be fun listening to her lecture.
Class Notes
- Modernism is/has characteristics of...
- A sense of newness.
- The first truly internation movement
- Stylistic innovation
- self-conciousness about questions of form and structure
- International perspectives and "primitivism"
And the last class of the day, only fifteen minutes from the end of the above...
Writing Fiction: This looks to be a very cool, VERY involved class. In fact, I'm hoping Japanese and LPG don't call for a bunch of writing, because these last three classes have truly piled on those assignments. True, they're not due for awhile, but still, it makes me weary just thinking about it.
Anyways, the Prof. is a young guy who asked us to call him Terry (actually wrote his name up on the board and crossed off "Professor" and "Kirts"), and he seems to have real grip on the writing process. His whole goal is to make us write more, and he has quite a few prompts in store. I like him already, and hopefully it'll work out better internally than my CW prof, who I could never quite respect about anything. His syllabus is a true work of art--double sided pages and incorporating tables and graphics, it outlines everything he wants from us in a precise, glass clear manner. Me gusta.
After choosing to forgo looking at the syllabus until the end of class, we read two short-short stories which had won "a crate of oranges" and been named Best of the World's Short-Shorts. They actually both were good, another change from the CW class. :) Then we did a most creative exercise: we wrote the title of a short-short on the top of a page, and then he collected it, mixed it up, and passed it out. We did this three times, writing the beginning, middle, and end of completely different stories. Sharon, of my Brit. Lit class (they follow you, they do! *g*) was nervous, but I'm already settling into class writing mode. Namely, I'm Psuedo-Zen: calm on the outside, wriggly on the inside. It seems to work, though. Class let out on time after a scant review of the syllabus, and then it was off to catch the bus and enjoy my NN1.
Whew...that's it for now! I'll update again on Monday or so. Until then...jya!
