Queens, nuns, and prostitutes
I started school again this week, and I remembered how much I really do enjoy being a student. This would probably be a fun semester if I didn't have to write a thesis or take my stupid specialty exams that are coming up in just a few short weeks. I am currently only taking two classes; in theory, this gives me extra time to work on my thesis , but so far I haven't done much about that. At least it's barely a week into the semester so there is still plenty of time to repent. My Tuesday/Thursday class is focused on "Early Modern Women Writers". We are looking at women who wrote during the 16th and 17th centuries, both in Spain and throughout the rest of Europe. It's a lot of fun. I love the professor, and several of my favorite grad school friends are taking it with me (Today after class she did ask us to not sit by each other next time. Wah.) The Spanish department puts grad students and undergraduates together in one class for their literature ones, so this class has about 5 grads and 20 undergrads. Sometimes I'm not a big fan of the larger classes, but this should still be a fun one. Today we talked about how people used to think that women were physically uncapable of learning and why those people (like Aristotle) were total idiots. Actually, we didn't say they were idiots, we just talked about 15th century noblewomen who said that Aristotle was an idiot.
My other class is also a lot of fun, but for entirely different reasons. I'm taking a graduate level course on syntax. I really shouldn't be in there at all. The grad program has three different tracks: linguistics, literature and pedagogy. In addition to the required stuff from your own track, you have to take one course from each of the others. So I needed a linguistics course and I chose syntax. The problem is, they have a few linguistics courses that are specifically intended for non-specialists. None of them fit into my schedule this semester, and I can't take one during Spring. So I'm a literature student in a class not meant for me. The professor keeps pointing this out to me, too. But, he's a nice guy and there are only 4 of us students, so I think it will be fun. And I've had several classes on linguistics-type things before, so I think I'll be all right. I love having a class with only 4 students, and I like the other 3 girls a lot too (yep, this semester I don't have to hang around with any of the guys in the program). And, I really do like linguistics; I've thought about specializing in it instead of literature before. Last night I had to take a bunch of sentences and draw those little phrase structures trees for them. It made me giddy.
Yes, I really am a nerd. But at least I live in the 21st century so I can be a nerd in grad school and not a visionary nun or a prostitute that writes poetry. Hmm, maybe those would be better options...
Comments
I wouldn't worry about the syntax class. Especially since there are so few students. My second semester of grad school, I took Beowulf. In Old English. Without having taken the the Old English class to actually learn the language the previous semester. But with so few students, you can work through and compensate for the learning curve.
And you can always rely on prostitution as a backup career.
And I'm sitting here trying my very hardest to think of a way that I can participate in your syntaxification. From fifteen hundred miles away. And I don't speak Spanish. But I'm jealous.
Try my approach: I sit in my own corner and I absolultely glare at people who try to make friends with me. Either that, or I turn the other way and pretend that they're not talking to me until they go away. And the teacher has never told me to separate myself from other students. It just happens naturally.
Ah, I'm a wreck.