Back at School

Well, the new semester has officially started. Ah well. I was getting bored of sitting at home doing nothing anyway. But to all my friends I saw (and some I didn't see) -- good luck and I MISS YOU!

(And I hope you feel like this dinosaur when you go to all your new classes.) 

Anyway. Besides re-organizing my dorm room and putting up these excellent Christmas presents/posters

(Thanks, Brother!)

I have been getting up at the ungodly hour of 8am to attend class. But this morning, there was a surprise! 

That's right! Snow! And barely half an inch of it! But still, freezing cold, slippery white stuff that for a surprising few of my friends was their first-ever real snow. Everyone was a little too optimistic about the university shutting down, but alas, it did not, and I got to go to two new classes. 

The first was Advanced Readings in French Literature, which seems very interesting and potentially fun if I'm not intimidated into muteness by the handful of native-speakers and ridiculously fluent non-native speakers that like to dominate discussion with their weird Quebecois and Senegalese accents that I cannot for the life of me understand. I also accidentally lied and said I was a sophomore instead of a freshman, so I probably set myself up for criticism when I don't actually have that extra year of studying the language under my belt. 

But we will see. 

I want to share this poem that we read in class, for those of you who might kind of sort of speak French, because I think it is charming. 

Le Bonbon 

Robert Desnos

Je je suis suis le le roi roi
des montagnes
j’ai de de beaux beaux bobos beaux beaux yeux yeux
il fait une chaleur chaleur

j’ai nez
j’ai doigt doigt doigt doigt doigt à à
chaque main main

j’ai dent dent dent dent dent dent dent
dent dent dent dent dent dent dent
dent dent dent dent dent dent dent
dent dent dent dent dent dent dent
dent dent dent dent

Tu tu me me fais fais souffrir
mais peu m’importe m’importe
la la porte porte

TRANSLATION: 

"The Candy" (Le Bonbon)

I I am am the the king king

of the mountains

I have beautiful beautiful scratches beautiful beautiful eyes eyes

It is hot hot

I have nose

I have finger finger finger finger finger on on

each hand hand

I have tooth tooth tooth tooth tooth tooth tooth 

tooth tooth tooth tooth tooth tooth tooth

tooth tooth tooth tooth tooth tooth tooth 

tooth tooth tooth tooth tooth tooth tooth 

tooth tooth tooth tooth 

You you make make me me suffer

but I do do not not care care

the the door door

The other class I had today was Honors Advanced Technical Writing, which was surprisingly fun. I know a lot of people in that class, and even though I am one of two English majors in a room full of chemists and engineers, I look forward to the rest of it. I have a feeling that I am going to be very, very good at technical writing, because it focuses so much on form, grammar, and that sneaky magic thing that gives sentences and paragraphs the smooth, stark sound associated with professionalism and academia, something that comes naturally to me most of the time.

My classes yesterday were much less interesting--Modern American Literature, for one, intimidates me. The professor's expectations are understandably high, but it is his cold scholarly manner for such a young dude that makes me wonder if he will be the one to see through my act as a good essay-writer and interpreter of literature--the act I have been playing since middle school--and see me for what I really am in English classes: someone who has absolutely no idea what she's doing.

On the other end of the spectrum, Astronomy of the Solar System is going to be a typical large-scale lecture course--but I predict it will be infinitely more interesting and easier than my waste of an archaeology class last semester. And there is a reassuringly small amount of math, according to my professor. I look forward to hopefully finally taking a science class I actually care about!

My last new class is Organizational Behavior, a management class for my minor. I have it for three hours every Monday afternoon, and oh god, I think it's going to kill me. The subject is dry and unchallenging, the professor is quiet and rambly, and the students are all Business majors, who are a special class of polished faux-rich kids who have their own language of well-rehearsed business quips and are somehow already middle-aged. I felt like I had walked into some sort of baby-CEO church when I entered that weirdly professional building, like they could tell just by looking at me that I was decidedly not a future stockbroker or business owner or financial adviser and were wondering what the crap I was doing in their center of worship and when, exactly, I was going to leave, as the Dow-something-whatever flashed across the little screen in front of them.

So. That was my first two days back at college. What have you been up to? :)