27 posts tagged “school”
It's very difficult for me to write my Religion 301 paper.
I am attempting to draw a method out of the theory of pragmatism, following (of course) the argument Rorty makes: theory should not be a bed on which to lie, it should be a tool with which to shape your own and others' view of the world.
I am then going to envision how it would apply to a real-life study of religion, specifically the study I have been considering for Religion 399 -- a study of online religious communities.
Plenty of problems are going to come up, of course. At least, they're problems as far as I can see: the problem of what to do with the subject of the study (is it ethically right for me to try and convince them of my own point of view about them? But as far as pragmatism goes, radically privileging each person's understanding of right, isn't that what
I'd have to do?) and the problem of "keepin' it P.I. (public intellectual)" as Cornel West would say (mustn't I write my work so that those outside of academia can understand it?).
The paper is, at the very least, going to be an interesting intellectual exercise for me, since I typically consider myself a pragmatist. It will allow me to explore some of the philosophical underpinnings of doing academic work before I have to actually write my thesis, which is going to be very helpful. And even if that wasn't what Mike envisioned when he assigned the paper, I have a hard time bringing myself to feel too bad. I feel like Religion 301 is intended to problematize one's thinking about academic writing just before one embarks on the thesis process -- it's only right that I attempt to apply those lessons as my final paper.
But I am so very tired of writing!
Who just got herself a sweet research assistantship with Ellen (the classicist not the English prof)?
Oh that's right it's me!
So, I'm gonna be here not workin' for the man, but instead workin' for, well, I guess the woman. Uh. Anyway, I'll make enough that with odd jobs I'll cover all my bases just fine, and I'm pretty excited. Even though I know it will be a lot of xeroxing, I'm definitely looking forward to it. Time to pile a lot of music on the ol' iPod and zone out whilst learning to use copy machines better, right?
Also? The word "xerox" is really fun both to say and type. Xerox, xerox, xerox. I suspect I will find it less fun after a month of research assistanting, but oh well.
This morning I somehow woke up on the wrong side of the bed. I think it has to do with stress -- I just felt so hopeless, like I will never complete all the things I need to, no matter how hard I work. Which is, unfortunately, basically true: right now I am trading off writing this entry with studying for my Latin vocab quiz, and that means... well, anyway.
My heart hurts in that "anxiety-attack-coming-on" way and I don't know why. Maybe it's hormonal.
On the plus side, I got contacted by a couple places I've applied for summer internships at. We're setting up interviews, and I have a good deal of hope. Excellent!
...okay, I do know why I feel so anxious. I'm deathly scared of what I'm going to do after college. I need to take the GRE, for starters, because all of a sudden I'm looking at Media Studies programs. But if I go to a Media Studies program right out of college, I have to leave this niche I've carved for myself in Portland behind. I don't want to do that; I don't like change and I just got comfortable here. I'd have to take more debt load on -- but then, I'd be doing something really exciting, something that makes me thrilled to just think about it. But I'd also not be following my bliss of writing: grad school makes me think that I'm giving up that ideal. And what if Media Studies doesn't explode in the way I've imagined it will? Then I have an MA or a PhD that won't help me with anything. I'm qualified to talk about the Internet. Yaaaay.
I think I just need to swallow my fears, sign up for a GRE prep course, and do my homework. That's the simple solution to all my problems. If only it were actually that easy to calm down.
I've been thinking really hard about joining a boxing gym or dojo...
I've been doing well with exercising this semester, but I still feel like I don't have any kind of goal. One of the things I liked best about kenpo, when I was doing it, was that there was always a goal. Always another belt, or a competition, or a demonstration which I had to work towards. Always another kick that I wanted to do. Another few degrees I wanted to be able to spin around (yes, we had a running competition for who could spin around the most times in the air, jumping from a standing position). That isn't around anymore. It seems kind of silly for me to set "I want to run a mile X quickly" goals. I can't see when I will ever use that, except possibly as bragging rights -- and I'm not good enough for that anyway. (I don't want to think about running a mile in X minutes unless I'm under 7:30, and right now I'm hovering around 8:30, so.)
The main problem, of course, is money and time. Money, because any group I want to join will cost at least $110 a month, and that's if I sign a year-long contract and swallow the fact that I won't be going to a place that focuses on forms, which were always my favorite part of kenpo. Of course, that gym does offer muay thai, which I am pretty much desperate to learn.
Time, because the places Tim was looking at are at least a bus ride away, maybe a bike or run if I wanted to get into the cross training thing (and I don't own a working bike so that's another couple hundred up front, besides the other cost). And I wouldn't want to start doing martial arts again unless I was going to do Martial Arts with the goddamn capitalization: I want to feel like a real black belt again, not feel too ashamed of not having practiced in years to admit to it.
I don't know. I told Tim that I'd probably sign up after college is over, but that's a year and a half away, and I've been feeling this itch for some time. I can't afford it -- I really can't afford it. Well, I can. If I keep up my work schedule and accept the fact that I'll have almost no spending money. But then I won't have time to go to the gym that I have had to work so hard to afford.
I guess next year I'm just going to try doing aikido and tai chi through the college to tide me over. Tai chi makes me itchy (I want to actually punch something, not just wave my hands around in the air, for serious) and I have a feeling that aikido will too (again: I like boxing, kenpo, and weaponry, things where you basically bludgeon the shit out of whatever is coming up against you -- not things where you have to be too finessed) but it'll be better than nothing.
Any suggestions? Anyone in Portland go to a boxing gym or dojo that they can recommend?
It's curious how this semester I feel so extremely stretched, in a way that I haven't for ages. I mean: as a sophomore, I found it difficult to understand Eliade, Geertz, Rappaport. But I didn't really struggle with them. I wasn't willing to. Now, reading Gadamer and Kittler, trying to wrap my head around hermeneutics, I feel like I am finally really using my brain. I come to conference expecting to be surprised and startled by how wrong my initial interpretation was. I am not bored in class, and I am not sidetracked by the asides that have always previously been more interesting than the thrust of the text itself. I can't understand the asides at all, they're on too high of a level. I can only barely claw my way through the main thrust.
It's fantastic!
In other news, though, Kittler is either a misogynist or practicing historicism to a point where I can't separate 1800s attitudes towards women from his own. I've never read a book that's made me more angry, not even Freud (who at least has the excuse of writing a hundred years ago) or Gadamer (who wasn't openly disdainful of "the Other," as Kittler calls women, but rather didn't seem to think about the possibility of fundamental differences of experiences such as those created by our gendered world). Nope, Kittler flat-out is writing about German men, and has no interest in the experience or writings of women, much less anyone who isn't German. If I didn't have to learn discourse theory, I would seriously flip out, but I don't have the luxury to do that.
(As I was walking into the library today, James started singing Snoop Dogg lyrics at me and insisted that I do a video honey dance. This lead to the thought: I bet that in German you could make a word that was something like `hermeneutic-theory-video-discourse-honey.' It would be 100% appropriate to describe the Reed lifestyle. We're all 'bout the sex, drugs and rock n' roll -- just as soon as we've finished reading Heidegger, natch!
I'll give you three guesses, and the first two don't count. :)
That's a weight off my shoulders. Now, I still have a headache and I'm still tired from the insomnia (I was awake until 2:00 AM and woke up, naturally, at 6:30 AM -- this is with no stimulants after 5 PM) but hopefully it will subside now that I know that no matter what, I get to be a Classics major.
The oral defense wasn't too bad, either. Mostly just talking about topics I already knew about. No stress.
I wish I could live in an endless library.
When I was a kid I used to watch a TV show on Nebraska's public broadcasting system. It was essentially a rehash of the 1001 Arabian nights, except the main character was named Marian the Librarian, not Scheherazade. Every night, she had to tell a monster a bedtime story, or it would eat her up. Or something like that. I was very young.
Now, sitting at my carrel, I think that that's almost true. When I turn my head to the left, I see the leaf-strewn front lawn of my college. The grass is green even in December. The trees' branches, black against the grey sky, remind me of that trip to Japan I took long ago. Every morning, around ten o'clock, an old man who walks with two canes picks his way down the path that runs beneath my window. He has a faithful dog who sniffs out the whole lawn but always comes back. Sometimes I think that if the dog ran away from him, I'd squeeze my way out of the tiny window and go catch it for him. The old man and his dog are my friends, even though I've never introduced myself. I would want to make sure they were okay.
On my right there are books.
I sit in the stacks. If you follow the shelf that contains journals from "American Mathematical Association" to "American Mercury" down its length, you come to my desk. The periodicals are all bound in different colors. The American Mathematical Association is bright green. It's actually nearly a perfect rainbow, or a section of it at least -- red nearest my desk to yellow and brown through to green on the other end. The stacks don't go on forever, but if I squint really hard, I can pretend.
Then, there's the internet. But the internet isn't like a library. It doesn't have the smell of old books. It doesn't have the same permanence, and it doesn't have the hundreds of years of knowledge. I run into books in this library that are older than my great-grandparents, even some older than my great-great grandparents, and they're still in circulation. I used to work in the basement vault where they keep all the oldest books, even. It was the most interesting job I ever had, since my duty was to go through old letters, read them, spy some long-dead person's life, and categorize them (From X to Y, May, 1880; from X to Y, June, 1880...). I would make up stories about them sometimes.
Then there are the art books, all shapes and sizes, some bound like the others and some loose-leaf in an envelope and some accordion fold-out style. Another of my jobs was to find a place in each book for the college book plate and carefully paste them on, so that they wouldn't stick to any of the other pages. It made me a little touchy to do that, when a book was one-of-a-kind or maybe one in a hundred.
I don't want to be a librarian. When I was working in the archives, I figured that out. But I do want to live in a library. I want to be Marian the Librarian. I could even get down with the idea of having to tell a monster a new bedtime story every night. Is that so much to ask? Endless, endless corridors of books, and then when I got lonely, they'd bell out into a reading-room where I could talk with the other bibliophiles about their contents. Mattresses held off the floor with old encyclopedias to sleep on. Rooms full of the trashiest romance novels, for when one got sick of literature. Every bad Star Wars tie-in novel in existence. A room with the contents of the library of Alexandria, and a professor to help me out when I got stuck in the middle of translating them.
Sigh...
All right, I'm done freaking out about the mistake in my qual. I guess that after being in the library for pretty much five days straight, even the smallest snafu makes it seem like the world is about to end...
On the plus side, once I decided that studying any more would make my head explode, I re-installed the Adobe creative suite on my new-ish computer and made the photo manipulation on the right. It isn't particularly complex, but I think it turned out well. It's actually three separate photos combined: a Polaroid, a self-portrait in which I looked particularly demonic, and a boring but pretty image of Multnomah Falls that I took when I went hiking up around there with Matthew this summer. It felt pretty nice to be using Photoshop again, since I used to be pretty good at it -- I'd touch up all my photos and some of my friends', all that jazz. I miss my Wacom tablet, though; it was pretty tedious doing even just this little manipulation with the trackpad.
I've finished all the papers I need to write for the end of term, and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Tomorrow morning is my Greek final, and for the first time this year, I really feel like I know the material. I'm sure it will end up kicking my ass anyway, but it's a good thing that I've been studying so much, even if it's been driving me a little crazy. Then, on Wednesday I have my qualifying exam oral defense, and on Thursday I have a Latin final. The Latin is just the Pro Caelio, not very difficult; the oral defense is, well, an oral defense. Nothing I can't handle.
The atmosphere in the library has been really wonderful this year. I think it's because this is the first year that I've really applied myself during finals week, really spent lots of time sitting at my carrel staring my work down. For those of you unfamiliar with Reed, every finals week students set up a "stim table" in the library lobby -- ginseng, tea, coffee, maté, multivitamins, ramen, PB&J, and a sound system playing "The Eye of the Tiger" every hour on the hour. Some students carry on a rather ridiculous tradition of doing lines of wasabe. Yes, you heard me: they snort lines of wasabe. It's a little surreal. Anyway, I never really appreciated the stim table before now. Not because I need their coffee or their tea, though it's pleasant to have hot water on demand in the lobby. No, it's the sense that we're all in this together. Everyone's equally tired, obsessed with their work, and in need of validation. Unhealthy? Totally. Affirming? In a strange, strange way, yes.
On another note, so this post isn't entirely self-obsessed, here's a link to an interesting translation of the Tao Te Ching. Anyone know how good it is, how much it represents what the message of the text really is? It sure sounds good and is very accessible, but that doesn't mean that it's right. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
From Hans Dieter Betz's translation of PGM VII. 664-85 in The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation. That's a papyrus scroll, found in Egypt, written in Greek, certainly from before 600 CE. the origin of how we think of magic in the modern world. These scrolls are the source of "abracadabra," of amulets, ultimately of things like Harry Potter.
SPELL FOR OBTAINING DREAM REVELATIONS: Take a linen strip, and on it you write with myrrh ink the matter, and wrap an olive branch and place it beside your head, beneath the left side of your head, and go to sleep, pure, on a rush mat on the ground, saying the spell 7 times to the lamp:
OIOSENMIGADON ORTHO BAUBO NIOERE KODERETH DOSERE SYRE SUROE SANKISTE DODEKAKISTE AKROUROBORE KODERE RINOTON KOUMETANA ROUBITHA NOUMILA PERPHEROU AROUORER AROUER (say it seven times and add the usual, whatever you wish.)"Hermes, lord of the world, who're in the heart,
O circle of Selene, spherical
and square, the founder of the words of speech,
pleader of Justice's cause, garbed in a mantle,
with golden sandals, turning airy course
beneath earth's depths, who hold the spirit's reins,
the sun's and who with lamps of gods immortal
give joy to those beneath earth's depths, to mortals
who've finished life. The Moirai's fatal thread
and Dream divine you're said to be, who send
forth oracles by day and night; you cure
pains of all mortals with your healing cares.
Hither, o blessed one, o mighty son
of the goddess who brings full mental powers,
by your own form and gracious mind. And to
an uncorrupted youth reveal a sign
and send him your true skill of prophecy.
The term "AKROUROBORE" means "ourobouros," the snake eating its own tail. "Arouer" is Egyptian for Hr-wr, "Horus the great."
I don't know if you realize how cool this is, but it is totally cool. There's a whole book of these plus about 1,500 curse tablets, written to call on the spirits of the dead/heroes/gods to work one's will on earth. They're fantastic. I love them. I am a huge nerd.
You know, little inconsistencies in scholarship really bother me.
For instance, almost everything I read about curse tablets favors the term defixiones over καταδεσμοι (and yes, I am too lazy to put the accents on that, O Greek-readers who read this. You will live) despite the fact that the latter term is actually better attested in the curse tablets themselves. There isn't even a Latin verb defixio - it's from defigo.
Anyhow, I wish that I could use καταδεσμοι in my paper, but unfortunately the seminal work in the field uses the terms I was talking about in my last entry, defixiones amatoriae and all that, and it gets pretty confusing when you're using three terms (defixiones, curse tablets, καταδεσμοι) for the same thing. So defixiones it is.
Bother.
