the encroaching doom + resolutions
Jan. 7th, 2011 12:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardI have (finally) gone through and added (almost) all of my textbooks for this semester to the proper Amazon wishlist. I didn't add my Shakespeare II textbook, because it's the same one as Shakespeare I, and the Latin textbook isn't up yet but I think it's Wheelock, which I also already have. I didn't add the textbooks for Children's Lit, mostly because I think I'm going to drop it -- the booklist is up on the uni bookstore website, and I'm not thrilled by it, and I have enough textbooks already that I don't feel particularly compelled to add more. Plus, that would put me at 20 credits, over the max (if I get into Shakespeare II; I'm waitlisted currently), and it's only useful if I do the English minor. I mean, yeah, there are a number of books on the Children's Lit booklist that I already own, but I'd have to haul them out to New Orleans, and nothing thrills me enough that I want to take an entire class on the subject, and sometimes I'm not entirely certain I believe in the concept of children's literature anyway. (Also I hate the term "literature." Sorry.) Sure, I read books that are probably considered "children's literature" growing up -- a number of them are on that booklist, including Little Women and The Golden Compass and Treasure Island -- but the pigeon-holing has my hackles up. So probably going to drop that, I don't need the extra stress on top of six other classes.
I also have one book that overlaps two classes! This excites me, I wasn't expecting Medieval Religious Culture and Age of Reformation to overlap UNTIL THEY DID. I still kind of wish I was in a different section of Honors Thesis Boot Camp so that I could take Ancient Christianity and make this The Semester I Found Religion.
My schedule this semester is a little weird, and uneven to the extent that I dislike -- last semester it was perfectly regular, gah. All my classes except The Etruscans and Early Rome are in the academic quad! Three of them in buildings I've never had class in before! Also obviously at the other end of campus from where I live, which makes it a good fifteen minute walk from my apartment to class, and I think almost twenty for two of them. (So a mile away, basically, or slightly less.) Including my Thursday 8:30 Latin class, blech. This is also the first semester I don't have a 9:00 am, which is shocking, I like having 9 o'clocks. If I drop Children's Lit, I won't have a 9:30 TR, either. (The 8:30 is only once a week, all my other Latin classes are 10 o'clocks.) Oh, gah, I just realized that obviously the only classes I have back to back are going to involve me going from the academic quad to the Newcomb quad (my only class on that end of campus) back to the academic quad. Oh, well, at least those are the fifteen minute passing periods, not the ten. I really wish I could take the other section of Shakespeare II, but that's at the same time as my Medieval Religious Culture tutorial.
*
As a university student, too much of my yearly schedule revolves around the school year to consider New Year's Day any kind of new beginning. I don't know if this is true for other people involved in academia, but for me, it's easier to make resolutions at the start of the semester. The geography of the campus is different than the geography of home, the options more open, and the setting utterly different. The begining of the term is in itself a new beginning, an empty tablet the way the calendar year isn't for me.
New Term's Resolutions for Spring 2011
1. Walk every day. Uptown is beautiful, and I love getting off-campus, though in the past semester my walks were usually once a week to Whole Foods to get groceries. If I'm off-campus, I'm less stressed: I don't feel that panic and pressure that I get when I'm on-campus, the little voice in the back of my head that whispers, you could be doing homework right now. I can't be doing homework right now. I'm not on-campus. I'm walking.
2. Spend less time in my apartment. I'm a homebody by nature, and a lot of the time I can be perfectly happy sitting in my room with my computer, my books, and my knitting. But by that same principle, it's too easy to suddenly feel trapped, like there's no way out, or like my roommates are conspiring in the living room or that I'm shut out of the kitchen. I want to take advantage of Howard-Tilton Library and study more there, where I have fewer distractions from my computer, or take my iPod and knit on the couches at Tilton. I just need to get out of my apartment for at least a couple hours a day. (And yes, I've had days in the past where I just haven't left at all. Scary.)
3. Take advantage of Reilly's programs. Tulane has a beautiful, gorgeous rec center, and while I have absolutely no interest in jogging along an indoor track or lifting weights, Reilly also offers group exercise classes -- for free! I want to try doing PiYo, and maybe something like kickboxing or stepping, or even zumba. This was the sort of thing I enjoyed doing in PE in high school, and since I have to pay the activity fee to Tulane whether or not I use it, I might as well try it out! Reilly also offers off-campus outdoor programs for a small fee, and I've been lusting over them for two and a half years now, but none of my friends are interested in that sort of thing. There's a rock-climbing one coming up at the end of January, and I like rock-climbing: I'm not particularly good at it, but my high school gym had a rock wall, and I fell off it so many times that I'm not afraid of that anymore as long as I'm strapped in.
4. On a similar note, take advantage of Tulane programming. There are a lot of things that go on around campus, and I usually don't go to any of them. But I started venturing out to talks on campus, either at Tulane or next door at Loyola, last semester, and they tend to be very interesting! (Obviously if they're on a subject I'm interested in.) Plus, sometimes I get extra credit. This also gets me out of my apartment, and I'm getting better at going to events without accompaniment. Tulane After Dark also has some programming that I've looked at the signs for and gone, "That might be interesting..." This is my semester to try it out!
5. All things in moderation, or, don't let the work pile up. I have a bad habit of leaving schoolwork to the last minute -- yes, including reading! Strangely it is a little difficult to read 200-500 pages the night before you have to do it for class. (I know, I tracked it all last semester out of curiosity: how many pages I read a week, for which class, and what days I read them. I can also tell you how little I read for fun, although when I did, I tended to do it for fun: I once read almost 700 pages of Lindsey Davis on one Saturday, along with forty pages of Virgil. Er, yes, I am a pretty fast reader.) I want to start working on assignments when they're assigned, not the day before they're due, and start my reading on some day other than a few days before I have to have it done. (Preferably outside my apartment, where my roommates can't judge me.)
6. Relax! I tend to spend most of my time wound far too tightly -- there was a period of about a week last semester when everything seemed like it was falling apart; I had a fight with a friend, it was at the height of roommate hatred, the dishes would just not get done!, I felt like everyone was judging me, it was in the midst of having various professors confuse me about whether or not I actually had a chance at 4+1 or even grad school in general, I was bursting into tears any time anyone even said the word "language" to me -- and I don't want to repeat the experience, it's not fun at all. So make sure I make time every day to do something for me that isn't sitting at my computer -- knitting, or cooking, or reading for pleasure, or walking.
7. Write for me. Self-explanatory. I write for school, I co-write, but I don't write much for me. (This would be fic, probably. Y'all have probably noticed my fic production virtually vanishes during the school year; it was really obvious this semester.)
8. Branch out while cooking: one new recipe every two weeks. Last semester I certainly branched out and did things I've never done before, then I repeated them throughout the rest of the semester. I want to make sure I keep trying something new. I do have all these cookbooks I don't use particularly often!
9. A very specific one: go down to the Quarter alone. I didn't go down to the Quarter much this past semester because my friends didn't go down to the Quarter much. My tastes are pretty tame: I want to visit the bookshop, the yarn shop, and the Gumbo Shop. Maybe the candy shop. But I never do it if no one else wants to, and it's just a short streetcar ride from campus. The French Quarter occupies a portion of my brain that flashes "danger danger danger!" but it's perfectly safe if I go in the middle of the day at some point other than during the Mardi Gras season. I want to get the Quarter out of my head as some place that one must go to in groups. Preferably large groups. (Last year, I went to the Krewe of Iris parade by myself, since it was the one Mardi Gras parade I really wanted to go to, and none of my roommates were wake -- Iris is a day parade -- and I felt like I had done something impossibly brave, go to a Mardi Gras parade by myself.)
Some non-term related New Year's resolutions/goals/wishes:
1. I'd like to make pasta from scratch, by hand.
2. I'd like to knit 11 Shawls in 2011 -- the first one is already on the needles! Little Valentine (Rav link), in Dream in Color's Dream Club Rose Smash. I'd like to get it done before I leave, so today, but that seems...unlikely. And do a pair of socks a month! (And document everything on Ravelry, so I feel more accomplished.)
3. I'd like to knit my first sweater. And colorwork. (And on that note, I'd like to get my Narnia bag (I reversed the colors so that it was a golden lion on red) finished, blocked, and lined. The actual bag has been done for two years now. It needs to be done!)
4. I'd like to make pizza from scratch.
5. I'd like to finish Dust II. (This one is a long stretch, I know...)
6. I want to go hiking this summer. I love Washington, I want to see parts of it that I haven't seen since I was ten and we used to go hiking and camping and canoeing all the time.
I also have one book that overlaps two classes! This excites me, I wasn't expecting Medieval Religious Culture and Age of Reformation to overlap UNTIL THEY DID. I still kind of wish I was in a different section of Honors Thesis Boot Camp so that I could take Ancient Christianity and make this The Semester I Found Religion.
My schedule this semester is a little weird, and uneven to the extent that I dislike -- last semester it was perfectly regular, gah. All my classes except The Etruscans and Early Rome are in the academic quad! Three of them in buildings I've never had class in before! Also obviously at the other end of campus from where I live, which makes it a good fifteen minute walk from my apartment to class, and I think almost twenty for two of them. (So a mile away, basically, or slightly less.) Including my Thursday 8:30 Latin class, blech. This is also the first semester I don't have a 9:00 am, which is shocking, I like having 9 o'clocks. If I drop Children's Lit, I won't have a 9:30 TR, either. (The 8:30 is only once a week, all my other Latin classes are 10 o'clocks.) Oh, gah, I just realized that obviously the only classes I have back to back are going to involve me going from the academic quad to the Newcomb quad (my only class on that end of campus) back to the academic quad. Oh, well, at least those are the fifteen minute passing periods, not the ten. I really wish I could take the other section of Shakespeare II, but that's at the same time as my Medieval Religious Culture tutorial.
*
As a university student, too much of my yearly schedule revolves around the school year to consider New Year's Day any kind of new beginning. I don't know if this is true for other people involved in academia, but for me, it's easier to make resolutions at the start of the semester. The geography of the campus is different than the geography of home, the options more open, and the setting utterly different. The begining of the term is in itself a new beginning, an empty tablet the way the calendar year isn't for me.
New Term's Resolutions for Spring 2011
1. Walk every day. Uptown is beautiful, and I love getting off-campus, though in the past semester my walks were usually once a week to Whole Foods to get groceries. If I'm off-campus, I'm less stressed: I don't feel that panic and pressure that I get when I'm on-campus, the little voice in the back of my head that whispers, you could be doing homework right now. I can't be doing homework right now. I'm not on-campus. I'm walking.
2. Spend less time in my apartment. I'm a homebody by nature, and a lot of the time I can be perfectly happy sitting in my room with my computer, my books, and my knitting. But by that same principle, it's too easy to suddenly feel trapped, like there's no way out, or like my roommates are conspiring in the living room or that I'm shut out of the kitchen. I want to take advantage of Howard-Tilton Library and study more there, where I have fewer distractions from my computer, or take my iPod and knit on the couches at Tilton. I just need to get out of my apartment for at least a couple hours a day. (And yes, I've had days in the past where I just haven't left at all. Scary.)
3. Take advantage of Reilly's programs. Tulane has a beautiful, gorgeous rec center, and while I have absolutely no interest in jogging along an indoor track or lifting weights, Reilly also offers group exercise classes -- for free! I want to try doing PiYo, and maybe something like kickboxing or stepping, or even zumba. This was the sort of thing I enjoyed doing in PE in high school, and since I have to pay the activity fee to Tulane whether or not I use it, I might as well try it out! Reilly also offers off-campus outdoor programs for a small fee, and I've been lusting over them for two and a half years now, but none of my friends are interested in that sort of thing. There's a rock-climbing one coming up at the end of January, and I like rock-climbing: I'm not particularly good at it, but my high school gym had a rock wall, and I fell off it so many times that I'm not afraid of that anymore as long as I'm strapped in.
4. On a similar note, take advantage of Tulane programming. There are a lot of things that go on around campus, and I usually don't go to any of them. But I started venturing out to talks on campus, either at Tulane or next door at Loyola, last semester, and they tend to be very interesting! (Obviously if they're on a subject I'm interested in.) Plus, sometimes I get extra credit. This also gets me out of my apartment, and I'm getting better at going to events without accompaniment. Tulane After Dark also has some programming that I've looked at the signs for and gone, "That might be interesting..." This is my semester to try it out!
5. All things in moderation, or, don't let the work pile up. I have a bad habit of leaving schoolwork to the last minute -- yes, including reading! Strangely it is a little difficult to read 200-500 pages the night before you have to do it for class. (I know, I tracked it all last semester out of curiosity: how many pages I read a week, for which class, and what days I read them. I can also tell you how little I read for fun, although when I did, I tended to do it for fun: I once read almost 700 pages of Lindsey Davis on one Saturday, along with forty pages of Virgil. Er, yes, I am a pretty fast reader.) I want to start working on assignments when they're assigned, not the day before they're due, and start my reading on some day other than a few days before I have to have it done. (Preferably outside my apartment, where my roommates can't judge me.)
6. Relax! I tend to spend most of my time wound far too tightly -- there was a period of about a week last semester when everything seemed like it was falling apart; I had a fight with a friend, it was at the height of roommate hatred, the dishes would just not get done!, I felt like everyone was judging me, it was in the midst of having various professors confuse me about whether or not I actually had a chance at 4+1 or even grad school in general, I was bursting into tears any time anyone even said the word "language" to me -- and I don't want to repeat the experience, it's not fun at all. So make sure I make time every day to do something for me that isn't sitting at my computer -- knitting, or cooking, or reading for pleasure, or walking.
7. Write for me. Self-explanatory. I write for school, I co-write, but I don't write much for me. (This would be fic, probably. Y'all have probably noticed my fic production virtually vanishes during the school year; it was really obvious this semester.)
8. Branch out while cooking: one new recipe every two weeks. Last semester I certainly branched out and did things I've never done before, then I repeated them throughout the rest of the semester. I want to make sure I keep trying something new. I do have all these cookbooks I don't use particularly often!
9. A very specific one: go down to the Quarter alone. I didn't go down to the Quarter much this past semester because my friends didn't go down to the Quarter much. My tastes are pretty tame: I want to visit the bookshop, the yarn shop, and the Gumbo Shop. Maybe the candy shop. But I never do it if no one else wants to, and it's just a short streetcar ride from campus. The French Quarter occupies a portion of my brain that flashes "danger danger danger!" but it's perfectly safe if I go in the middle of the day at some point other than during the Mardi Gras season. I want to get the Quarter out of my head as some place that one must go to in groups. Preferably large groups. (Last year, I went to the Krewe of Iris parade by myself, since it was the one Mardi Gras parade I really wanted to go to, and none of my roommates were wake -- Iris is a day parade -- and I felt like I had done something impossibly brave, go to a Mardi Gras parade by myself.)
Some non-term related New Year's resolutions/goals/wishes:
1. I'd like to make pasta from scratch, by hand.
2. I'd like to knit 11 Shawls in 2011 -- the first one is already on the needles! Little Valentine (Rav link), in Dream in Color's Dream Club Rose Smash. I'd like to get it done before I leave, so today, but that seems...unlikely. And do a pair of socks a month! (And document everything on Ravelry, so I feel more accomplished.)
3. I'd like to knit my first sweater. And colorwork. (And on that note, I'd like to get my Narnia bag (I reversed the colors so that it was a golden lion on red) finished, blocked, and lined. The actual bag has been done for two years now. It needs to be done!)
4. I'd like to make pizza from scratch.
5. I'd like to finish Dust II. (This one is a long stretch, I know...)
6. I want to go hiking this summer. I love Washington, I want to see parts of it that I haven't seen since I was ten and we used to go hiking and camping and canoeing all the time.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-07 10:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-07 10:15 pm (UTC)Good luck!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-08 01:11 am (UTC)Good luck to you too!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-08 03:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-08 08:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-08 06:06 pm (UTC)