home stretch update

morphology presentation, april 15
discourse presentation, april 16
philosophy paper, due april 30
discourse paper, due may 2
philosophy final, may 5
morphology final, may 6
history of english final, may 8

have nine pages of philosophy paper written, and should probably, like, reach a conclusion or something. (this ain't no book report.) but first, must take a break and eat something (which have not done since about six pm yesterday).

home stretch update

morphology presentation, april 15
discourse presentation, april 16
philosophy paper, due april 30
discourse paper, due may 2
philosophy final, may 5
morphology final, may 6
history of english final, may 8

final page count: 10.33333333333... yay! said some useful things. probably pull down a high B or a low A, i think. (i hope.) will now shower, go hand the damn thing in, get mail, gather laundry, and commence to freak out about discourse paper.

more on the non-suckage of academia

just went over to hand in the philosophy paper (woo-hoo!). was stopped in the hall on the way back by Pleasant Philosophy Boy, who i'm convinced doesn't actually know my name, but who's been trying to make me feel like part of the group for most of the semester. (it's a philosophy of language course, see, and there's all these grad students in philosophy who know one another and substitute-teach one another's courses and etc., and then here's me, the grad student in linguistics, and i know things about language that it never occurred to them even to wonder about, but in terms of philosophy, i've been sort of struggling to keep up. and it's not that the general crowd has been unfriendly, but PPB has made a particular effort, which i appreciate.) he's organized a study group to go over the potential questions for monday's final, but he didn't have my e-mail address, so he hadn't been able to ask me if i wanted to join. so, depending when it is, now i'm invited. maybe i'll make cupcakes for everyone. :-)

(okay, PPB is, in addition to being pleasant, also fine as hell. with the eyes and the smile and the shoulders and the hands and the scruffy facial hair. and v. smart, although he loses a couple of points for his PhD subject being philosophy. and also, taken. so in that respect, i guess it sort of does suck. but just a little. [g])

random taking-a-break musing:

we all have all these epithets. i know we do. in the past two days, i've spoken of Pleasant Philosophy Boy, Loud Gay Boy, and le boy (who gets no capital letters). in this space i've also talked about A.J. (whose epithet involves his real name, so i won't use it, but the "a" stands for "asshole"), R.M. the Camp Counselor, and J.A.S. the Co-Worker. probably among others.

and then it occurs to me to wonder what epithets i get in other peoples' weird little dramatic lives. for all i know, i mean, i'm Quiet Linguistics Girl (i tell you, i'm out of my depth in that class [g]), Crazy Theory Girl, and la girl, respectively.

i was so pleased when i first read bridget jones's diary and saw that my girls and i weren't the only ones who do the epithet thing. that the "vile" in vile richard isn't just an adjective -- the guy's name is Vile Richard, the way jeremy's name is Magda's Jeremy and the gay boy's boyfriend is Pretentious Jerome. love that. love it.

and now it's time for taking-a-break west wing.

it's hard for me to articulate how much i adore CJ's dialogue. :-) i love the way they have this woman speak. gah. (yesterday i passed a car whose license plate said "CJ CRAIG". very cool, even if the character's last name is actually spelled 'cregg', i believe. maybe that was already taken.)

further evidence that, in terms of academic focus, i'm right where i belong:

reading this stuff for the discourse paper? it's flying by. i get it. it makes sense to me. i disagree with it often enough, because i think deborah tannen's arguments are often, hm, circular, but at least i know what it is i'm not agreeing with. i picked up the book (couple hundred pages) at 5:00 and i'm two-thirds of the way through it, having made notes that'll be good for three pages of analysis.

i had to read through grice five times in order to understand davis. and i had to open a vein to get that paper written.

a goodish chunk of the other stuff i have to read is commentary on this book, and even more is other stuff related to the same topic. i'm golden. i'm not afraid.