Entering the Home Stretch

In the Matrix movies, whenever Neo does some sort of ninja, reality-bending moves, the film slows down to what is called "bullet-time" so that the viewer can see what's happening (specifically so that you can see the bullets zipping past him). For the last 15 weeks, I feel like I've been living my entire life in bullet-time.

This is the LONGEST semester that I've ever endured. I can barely remember I time when I wasn't enduring the mental wrist-slitting that is Old English and 19th Century Magazines, and I feel like I've been dealing with the same bitchy students for 12 eternities.

But now I've only got one more week to go. The nice thing about grad school (a positive comment???) is that unlike the undergrad, the stress actually gets lower during finals week. My Old English paper was due on Tuesday, and my Magazines paper, which is actually half done, is due next Tuesday. I practically feel like I'm on vacation already.

I actually liked Old English by the end of the semester with the exception of the final test. I've never been raped by a man-ape, but I imagine that this test was the emotional equivalent. Aside from that (and the mid-term that was actually more painful), I liked the atmosphere of the class. There were many laughs to be had (often "with" or "at" the professor), and translating Old English wasn't really all that difficult with the book that practically translated everything for us anyway.

19th Century Magazines was a like a needle in the eye from beginning to end. I never really understood what the class was supposed to be about. Slavery was a big issue, but there's only so long that 12 white grad students can talk about the trials of black slaves without sounding like pompous assholes. I think the time span is about two weeks. Fortunately my final paper is shaping up nicely. I'm working with 19th century Christian magazines. Longtime readers of the blog should understand why my paper may contain some asinine and scoffing comments. (Anonymous Assholes should read my "Stormin' Mormon" entries from about a year ago to understand this and other previous references.)

My two English 101 classes have been a mixed bag. I let them do message board postings instead of short writing assignments, which totally bombed as an idea. Ninety percent of the students posted about two hours before the deadline each week; you can imagine the clusterfuck that resulted. By the end, everyone realized that the whole thing was a failure, but we all muddled through it because they didn't want to write short papers, and I didn't want to grade them.

My second class was actually pretty good. There were a few really lousy students in that class, but they were all pretty colorful people. It made for entertaining classes. More importantly, they thought I was comic genius. As you can imagine, I loved them.

My first class never laughed at my jokes. Assholes. Even when I gave them gold. Yesterday, they were filling out course evaluations, and I told them, "Don't write anything that could be interpreted as inappropriate by the social justice department. Lines like 'He's touched me in ways I've never been touched before' don't go over too well." I got maybe two chuckles. I was also telling them how stellar writing quality won't necessarily get them an "A" if they haven't met the basic requirements of the course. I said, "If you show up to work and give the boss 110% and do a great job, but then at 5:00 every day, you take a big dump in the office wastebasket, you're still going to get fired." They all stared at me. The douchebag who wrote on his evalution "His jokes are cheesy and he has a poor sense of humor" back in my first semester would have been right at home in this class. My A-material is wasted on them.

Only one week left, and then I can enjoy four weeks of watching TV and movies, playing Super Mario Galaxy, and drinking at the Kittanning bars as I belittle everyone that I graduated with.

-----------------------
Christmas Break: Long enough to unwind, but too short to get a real job. It's a lazy man's paradise!