"Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do."

I've been in grad school for a week now and I have to say, it's pretty awesome. (Today also marks the something-th anniversary of the beginning of my ill-fated, short-lived journalistic career, but we needn't go into that.)

Last week there was a lovely orientation for newbie graduate students, in which they liquored us up with wine and cheese and grapes and then fed us dinner, with more wine. (Apparently grad school really IS all about alcohol? I had thought that was just classicists, but perhaps not.) We all gradually relaxed and had profound conversations about Starbucks, chai brands, and things like that. Eventually only a small group of us remained, and the conversation pretty much dissolved into a book squeefest until the maintenence staff politely kicked us out.

I began to think then that I might like it here.

Of course, I promptly convinced one of my professors that I am scary and insane, but the other one doesn't seem to have written me off as a total nutjob just yet. She even said that something I said was a good point. I did something smart?! O_O

This whole “actually studying in the evening” thing seems to be working out pretty well, too. I hammered out a three-page paper last night in under three hours. Three pages of utter crap, naturally, but whatever. Booyah!

As I duel stacks of articles and theory textbooks and sentimental Victorian novels, I find myself oddly and profoundly grateful for that nightmare Plato seminar I took during my first quarter at UCLA. Nothing I will encounter here can possibly be more obscure, opaque, or incomprehensible than that course. Also, I’m a legitimate part of the graduate program, not some awkwardly liminal figure in way over my head, feeling like I'm some kind of intellectual fraud. That helps a lot.

So here I am, exhausted but hopeful. The literary criticism seminar is going to kick my ass, I am quite, quite sure. But even so, NOTHING can possibly be scarier than the Phaedrus course. NOTHING.

"Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do."

I've been in grad school for a week now and I have to say, it's pretty awesome. (Today also marks the something-th anniversary of the beginning of my ill-fated, short-lived journalistic career, but we needn't go into that.)

Last week there was a lovely orientation for newbie graduate students, in which they liquored us up with wine and cheese and grapes and then fed us dinner, with more wine. (Apparently grad school really IS all about alcohol? I had thought that was just classicists, but perhaps not.) We all gradually relaxed and had profound conversations about Starbucks, chai brands, and things like that. Eventually only a small group of us remained, and the conversation pretty much dissolved into a book squeefest until the maintenence staff politely kicked us out.

I began to think then that I might like it here.

Of course, I promptly convinced one of my professors that I am scary and insane, but the other one doesn't seem to have written me off as a total nutjob just yet. She even said that something I said was a good point. I did something smart?! O_O

This whole “actually studying in the evening” thing seems to be working out pretty well, too. I hammered out a three-page paper last night in under three hours. Three pages of utter crap, naturally, but whatever. Booyah!

As I duel stacks of articles and theory textbooks and sentimental Victorian novels, I find myself oddly and profoundly grateful for that nightmare Plato seminar I took during my first quarter at UCLA. Nothing I will encounter here can possibly be more obscure, opaque, or incomprehensible than that course. Also, I’m a legitimate part of the graduate program, not some awkwardly liminal figure in way over my head, feeling like I'm some kind of intellectual fraud. That helps a lot.

So here I am, exhausted but hopeful. The literary criticism seminar is going to kick my ass, I am quite, quite sure. But even so, NOTHING can possibly be scarier than the Phaedrus course. NOTHING.