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Monday, January 14, 2013

Back to school, but crunch time over (for now)

So my most recent crunch time was because someone who is half retired (the technical term is phased retirement) wasn't offering extensions that reached into this semester, so I had to get things to him by yesterday or fail.

What did not occur to me was that yesterday was Sunday, and thus the place to drop them off was closed, so I couldn't use it's office hours as a deadline as originally planned.  And then there was a meeting I had to run off to which was just about when I planned to put things in the mail slot, and in the end I just wrote until my brain sort of shut down.  Words blurred together, sense was not to be made, stuff like that.

Then I put everything I had through the mail slot.

I don't know yet whether a) that counted as by yesterday (if he stopped by at some point to pick up everything dropped of yesterday it is possible that he stopped by before I dropped it off even though both happened yesterday) or b) what I got done was enough to pass.

What I had to do was this:
Journal of a certain length, first half on Odyssey by Homer, second on Ulysses by Joyce.
Shorter paper on comparing Odyssey to non-Ulysses thing that takes and plays with the Odyssey somehow.
Longer paper (say about five times as long) on some chosen part of Ulysses but be sure to talk about how the part related to (or failed to relate to) the Odyssey at least a little.

What I got done is this:
Journal that was way too long but once I got started I couldn't stop and ended up doing a not quite on topic stream of consciousness-ish commentary on the Odyssey with nothing on Joyce (didn't get that far) that went on for 50 hand written pages on plain white paper, which means more text per page than ruled paper.  (I can't control my focus, not starting to focus on something, and not stopping to focus on something, so once I somehow got started on commentary on the Odyssey I Could. Not.  Stop.)
Shorter paper that may or may not make any sort of sense comparing Odysseus of the Odyssey and Odysseus of Sophocle's Philoctetes.  As well as the presentation of lying in each.
Longer paper that fell short of full length (I had worked through the night before, thus no sleep, it was getting later, I was running out of brain power) that almost certainly doesn't make sense.  And also, even though it's a Joyce paper it doesn't have that much Joyce in it.  The plan was first third Odyssey section that relates to that part of Joyce, second third comparing the two, last third just Joyce.  The result was part 1 done badly, and running out of steam not that far into part 2.

No idea if that's enough to pass.

But now the new semester is on except...
1) At the moment I'm not totally awake (figure I was up for more than 40 hours straight yesterday and the day before, some people can do that.  I get knocked out of whack by going to bed a bit late.)
2) The problems that made me need incompletes last semester, two of them still outstanding, remain.
3) The schedule I'm signed up for isn't what I'll be doing.  It's more some of what I'll be doing combined with placeholder classes and artificially inflated class(es?) (yes I know it's a one credit course more for the laid back joy of doing than the accumulation of credits, but just say it's a 3 credit course for the moment) so that the Orwellian bastards at Student Accounts (which used to, more honestly, be named "Student Billing" as any part of your accounting that doesn't involve billing his handled elsewhere, for example the financial aid offices) will stay off my back because we need to keep the money changers happy.  (They don't care if I'm actually going to take the classes I'm signed up for, so long as the number of credits, which is what they charge by, remains constant.)
4) Stuff.
5) More stuff.

Anyway, hopefully I'll be able to be more active in various things now that crunch time is over.

8 comments:

  1. Good luck!

    Don't know if you're like me in this regard, but I find there's a certain freedom in being able to say that one's involvement in the thing is done, for better or worse. Alea jacta est and all that.

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  2. I'm going to guess "The die is cast," even though I don't know "Alea" and usually work in things that don't use "j" (but, thankfully, usually use "v".)

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    1. Yup. We don't know where it's going to land, but it's left any place that we might have influence over it.

      ("iacta" in more modern Latin orthography. Suetonius claims that Caesar said it on crossing the Rubicon, which action kicked off the civil war with Pompey.)

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  3. You turned stuff in. I am wicked proud of you. I felt bad after Wednesday after I remembered you had tons of work.

    SRSLY that is awesome. All the high fives/jedi hugs/etc.

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    1. Do not feel bad at all. That was the best day I've had in forever. Everything on either side of it was straight push, without the break I probably would have had a breakdown.

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    2. It was the best day I have had in forever, too. We should do it again ASAP.

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    3. We should do it again ASAP.

      I agree.

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  4. I found "The Pragmatical Princess" online here: http://www.fantasy-magazine.com/new/new-fiction/the-pragmatical-princess/

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