Friday, August 17, 2007
It's Friday and already the first week of term is over.
Seminars for the level 4000 modules have been ok so far, but who knows what I'll say about them as the term progresses and the mountain of work grows higher. Already I can sense it piling up as I sit here typing away at the computer. Guilt complex.
Anyway, it's late and I'm not going to be able to study at this time, so I might as well write a little about some things that happened today.
I wasted a perfect opportunity this morning out of sheer unecessary nervousness. Totally blew my chance and chances like this don't come by easily. PY says I ought to rehearse in my head how to act and yeah, it's embarrassing but I might as well admit that I have rehearsed it in my imagination before. But everything I wanted to say dissolved into air and all I could do was smile and say, "Yeah." and feel so ridiculously blissful, only to realise as I was floating back to earth that as a result of nervous indecision and jumbled-up sequences of logical reasoning, I had given up a golden opportunity and was walking towards the Library when I had intended to go to the canteen to grab a sandwich. And needless to say I ended up eating a carcinogenic burnt sandwich from the vending machine in Perk Point while mentally bashing myself on the head.
Then I bumped into my ex-tutor (from Tragedy) in the evening and he gave me lots of pointers on how to do my HT. Well, I certainly hope I can "like Derrida, find a loophole and make a critical intervention" that will wow the entire literary and theoretical establishment. And that's just like YH, talking about Derrida and critical interventions once we meet, haha. It seems like a lot of people fear him, and some are positively hostile towards him, but I guess I do like him genuinely. And I do find it strange and rather stupid that I can be perfectly natural with someone as 'exalted' as YH and say all the things I want to say, but inexplicably succumb to aphasia when talking to one of the kindest and most accessible people I've ever known. The human mind is unfathomable indeed.
After parting from YH, I went to attend the FASS Prize Presentation Awards Ceremony at LT8. Lest you think it's some grand affair, let me tell you that the ceremony actually lacks a lot of ceremony. Everyone's unrehearsed and the Dean keeps standing in the wrong place and walking off the 'stage' (if you can call that platform in LT8 a stage) before he's supposed to and the emcee has to call out, "Dean, come back!", and it wasn't any different this year. But Dr Straughan is really a marvellous emcee and her friendly humour and easy-going manner made the event seem light-hearted and informal rather than simply poorly-organized.
And I found out that a high percentage, considering the small size of our department, of award winners and Dean's List recipients were actually Lit majors. Coincidentally, the guy and girl sitting next to me were Lit students and Romona was there too (to receive a book prize for Sociology). According to Dr Y, a very large number of Lit students graduate with First Class Hons too every year. So Lit students are actually quite an intelligent and hardworking bunch of people (please excuse the little self-aggrandizement) but unfortunately we don't get much credit for it. The other profs were gushing away at award winners from their departments but no one mentioned anything about the Lit department. It's sad that no one wants to publicly acknowledge the value of the very special kind of education we receive in the department.
kaoru said at 9:06 AM
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