To That Guy in My Environment Class

I really wanted to call you a douchenugget tonight, but I contented myself with just thinking it REALLY HARD.

Boasty

In real life, the only people I feel safe bragging to are my parents. It seems unfair to do it in front of my less-apt brother, my classmates, my friends, most of whom are not in college, or my boyfriend, who has recently begun to revise his hopes for a life in academia.

So I send out to the vast void of cyberspace:
First, my Modernism professor, one of the most intelligent and respected individuals in the department, told me that it was the best essay of mine he's read in the three courses I've taken with him.
Then he said it's possibly the best undergraduate essay he's read in 28 years of teaching.

I want to write down all these different instances of praise I've gotten, cut them out, and stick them in a notebook as reminders. Because even still, I catch myself thinking, "It's too hard to focus through all this doubt."

Bright Side of Recession

Gasoline here has been at $1.95 for the past week. I hear oil prices dropped again, so it should be lower tomorrow. When you live in South Dakota and have a 20-minute commute, this is beautiful.

I bought a pretty new coat and a pretty new scarf and pretty new mittens. The mittens unfold to reveal fingerless gloves underneath for iPod touch purposes. I got a pretty new iPod touch for $180 a couple of months ago. I also have pretty new boots that immediately necessitated not-so-pretty foam insert things so my feet won't die. They work wonderfully for snow, but stilettos are not so great for ice.

Sorry for writing like a vegetable--it's that whole six classes thing. I'm doing well in all of them, but I speak in tongues quite often now when I'm not curled into a fetal position in the corner of the student union. I've reached that point where I've stopped caring and devote all my spare time to Facebook and StumbleUpon rather than doing homework.

That said, though, I got a seriously great two-page critique from my sparing-with-praise creative writing prof for the nonfiction essay I turned in last week. I have to turn in fiction this week, which is not treating me well.

Tomorrow I'm pretty excited about getting to explain to my Modernism professor that the problem with Hemingway is that he consistently depicts all women as superficial harpies hellbent on emasculating their mates and men as self-pitying jerks totally incapable of maintaining meaningful relationships and unable to interact even casually without alcohol. It's ridiculous; I'm 120 pages into The Sun Also Rises and the alcoholic beverage count has to be around fifty. I think I'll go back and count like the time I underlined all the italicized words in The Catcher in the Rye. I forget how many there were, but I'll let you know if I find my copy and can actually bring myself to open it.

I would recommend Mrs Dalloway, though. I was very skeptical, having dragged myself through To the Lighthouse two years ago, and I was surprised to a) like it, and b) find it quite powerful. I'm hoping my Mod prof asks me to reconcile my Hemingway attitudes to my enthusiasm for Woolf, which will be something like "Virgina Woolf depicts people as essentially good but deeply flawed, but Hemingway is violently negative and clearly considers humanity inherently bad with fleeting moments of decency."

When I am overwhelmed, I think out all the pseudo-intellectual things I will say in my classes to appear competent. But hooray for cheap gas and new stuff!

Lessons in Shopping

The word of the day is "swindle." As in, "Allison got swindled by a fast-talking Israeli and will forever after stay at least twenty feet away from mall kiosks."

My First Presidential Election

I would just like to observe that every Democratic candidate whose hand I have shaken has become the President of the United States.

I call it the Allison Bump.

Post-Halloween

I know you guys probably sometimes think I don't exist due to my penchant for briefly getting the nerve to post a photograph and then taking it down two days later, but here is proof (at least for the forty-eight hours I can bear having my picture on this website):



That's me. Angels want to wear my red shoes. A belated happy Halloween.

Just Kill Me Now

I HAVE FIVE PAPERS AND A PRESENTATION DUE THIS WEEK.

I HAVE HAD NO FEWER THAN THREE EXAMS/PAPERS/PRESENTATIONS EVERY WEEK FOR THE PAST MONTH.

I AM TYPING IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE I AM GOING TO DIE.

the end.