BLOODY HELL. I haven't done one of these in ages. I think the times when I want to do them most are when I have the most work on? Like, I currently have to write a 10,000 word dissertation on queer femme identities in literature of the twentieth century and a 4,000 word essay on the fragile/nonexistent? boundaries between human, animal and machine and the ways in which they are massively problematised by sexuality in literature (and a couple of films). I am very excited about both of these but I'm at the stage now where I really need to start writing them properly and I just ... don't want to. I just want my degree to be the fuck over now. I've spent four years either working on it or bumming myself out because I haven't been working on it; I can't fucking wait 'til it's done and I don't have that big pressure hanging over me and I can get a job (god willing) that I don't have to think about outside of working hours and I can read what I actually want to read without feeling guilty and I can have money for lots more tattoos and a keyboard the same length as a piano and lessons in the same and little holidays with Corin and hours to spend with my wonderful, wonderful friends where I'm not frequently thinking I SHOULD BE WORKING. I am so glad I decided to postpone starting my MA (read: realised I did not have the financial means to pay for one just yet). I just need a break. And the prospect of one is such a relief. I want to make my life better: I want to exercise because I like endorphins and I want to eat better because I feel better about myself when I'm slimmer than I am at the moment and I want to go on slutwalks and work on my voice and buy some really awesome underwear. Of course, I can start doing some of these things now, and I have; I just want the lift that will come when I know I've done all the academic work I need to for now. After my last exam on the 20th of May I am going to give myself at least three days in which I will only have fun before relocating my stress to finding a job. I think that will be nice.
Showing posts with label uni. Show all posts
Showing posts with label uni. Show all posts
Tuesday, 26 April 2011
Wednesday, 7 July 2010
Basically a massive whinge
I just had an AWESOME TIME reading lots of blogs I haven't read in ages (Sof Jacques Faith Allie Brosh bit of Angry Greek think that's it) and it made me realise I haven't written in even longer, so HELLO. This shouldn't be very long, partly because I am recovering from a hypo and may sound a bit insane at points because of this, and partly because I get v. limited internet time these days what with not having it in my house and I am meant to be sorting out All The Bills for next year. But I can't right now because I am not fully lucid.
Basically my life recently has been mostly crap with moments of awesomeness. I moved house, and tidied and cleaned everything with only two of my housemates, and am the only person in my current house so have to do lots of things there too. I have yet to unpack hardly anything and the house is a tip because of this. I have to organise getting a first attempt resit for my Romantics exam. My mouse Annie died yesterday. Also on the same day the previous tenants cancelled Virgin so now I only have Freeview to while away my breaks with. Also I on that day I got a letter through the door asking me if I fancied a fuck and leaving a boy's name and number. I don't even know what to do about this - it's totally inappropriate and intrusive and it makes me feel really uncomfortable but it's likely that it was written by someone else so if I call the number and have a go that's like a win for the author, and even if it was written by "Tim" getting attention for it was probably the aim; since it's technically soliciting I could contact the local police but whenever I contact them (twice so far) it's always about sexual intimidation and I know this is irrational but I'm worried that if I do it for stuff that doesn't bother me as much as men following me in cars or men following right behind me up a back street with their hands in their pants then the police might start thinking I'm oversensitive and stop taking me seriously? Also, what if they could, like, be focussing on an actual rape case or something, but then I go along and am like 'I got this message which is probably a joke but I do not find it funny' and everyone's like HUMOURLESS FEMINIST and I obstruct worse things being sorted out? Not that rape really gets 'sorted out' usually but you know what I mean. Also yesterday I got a call from DEBT COLLECTORS and now I have c. 28 hours to pay a £300 bill left outstanding at our old house; Ryan and Sof can come up with their shares, I will have to contact my father for mine which is stressful but I can do it, and Tom is still on holiday (on holiday. At a time like this?! Moving time? I am cross about this and want to talk to him about it but want to do it face-to-face and can't do that until he comes back from holiday) and I tried calling his mum but have as yet had no response and argh. Debt collectors?! GOD. Then I also have to set up TV licence and internet and phone line and TV content and electricity and gas and water. And get a new mouse because they're social and it's cruel to have them by themselves unless it's necessary i.e. they are my old mouse Fran who bit the other mouse's balls off. Also I have therapy every week from which I always leave feeling better but is a lot of WORK and about which I am always apprehensive before I go in. Also I have to revise for two exams. Also I have to read as much as I can for the coming year, having done basically nothing for at least a fortnight. Also today I discovered I do not have enough money even to take a tenner out of my account.
I MEAN. I'm sorry to whine. But this is essentially my life now. Although I am obv not obliged to keep everyone up-to-date about everything. But still.
GOOD THINGS, HOWEVER: Sapphic Traffic was RAD, especially DJing fun and Sof birthday fun and seeing Faith and Ray-Ray was AWESOME, Corin is now here after only being away for a week and that's awesome and if she can get a job in Leeds she will stay for summer which would be lovely, Germany has made me interested in football?? so that's new and interesting, once my room is done it will be lovely, I like reading, I have three pretty comfy sofas in my living room, there are a few beers in the fridge for later on. There is also a lot of Friends on TV, which I appreciate, although accept that there will be less now that I have fewer channels. Julia Downes' EastEnders barbecue is coming up and that will be brilliant, I have decided. Also soon I will hopefully have money.
Basically my life recently has been mostly crap with moments of awesomeness. I moved house, and tidied and cleaned everything with only two of my housemates, and am the only person in my current house so have to do lots of things there too. I have yet to unpack hardly anything and the house is a tip because of this. I have to organise getting a first attempt resit for my Romantics exam. My mouse Annie died yesterday. Also on the same day the previous tenants cancelled Virgin so now I only have Freeview to while away my breaks with. Also I on that day I got a letter through the door asking me if I fancied a fuck and leaving a boy's name and number. I don't even know what to do about this - it's totally inappropriate and intrusive and it makes me feel really uncomfortable but it's likely that it was written by someone else so if I call the number and have a go that's like a win for the author, and even if it was written by "Tim" getting attention for it was probably the aim; since it's technically soliciting I could contact the local police but whenever I contact them (twice so far) it's always about sexual intimidation and I know this is irrational but I'm worried that if I do it for stuff that doesn't bother me as much as men following me in cars or men following right behind me up a back street with their hands in their pants then the police might start thinking I'm oversensitive and stop taking me seriously? Also, what if they could, like, be focussing on an actual rape case or something, but then I go along and am like 'I got this message which is probably a joke but I do not find it funny' and everyone's like HUMOURLESS FEMINIST and I obstruct worse things being sorted out? Not that rape really gets 'sorted out' usually but you know what I mean. Also yesterday I got a call from DEBT COLLECTORS and now I have c. 28 hours to pay a £300 bill left outstanding at our old house; Ryan and Sof can come up with their shares, I will have to contact my father for mine which is stressful but I can do it, and Tom is still on holiday (on holiday. At a time like this?! Moving time? I am cross about this and want to talk to him about it but want to do it face-to-face and can't do that until he comes back from holiday) and I tried calling his mum but have as yet had no response and argh. Debt collectors?! GOD. Then I also have to set up TV licence and internet and phone line and TV content and electricity and gas and water. And get a new mouse because they're social and it's cruel to have them by themselves unless it's necessary i.e. they are my old mouse Fran who bit the other mouse's balls off. Also I have therapy every week from which I always leave feeling better but is a lot of WORK and about which I am always apprehensive before I go in. Also I have to revise for two exams. Also I have to read as much as I can for the coming year, having done basically nothing for at least a fortnight. Also today I discovered I do not have enough money even to take a tenner out of my account.
I MEAN. I'm sorry to whine. But this is essentially my life now. Although I am obv not obliged to keep everyone up-to-date about everything. But still.
GOOD THINGS, HOWEVER: Sapphic Traffic was RAD, especially DJing fun and Sof birthday fun and seeing Faith and Ray-Ray was AWESOME, Corin is now here after only being away for a week and that's awesome and if she can get a job in Leeds she will stay for summer which would be lovely, Germany has made me interested in football?? so that's new and interesting, once my room is done it will be lovely, I like reading, I have three pretty comfy sofas in my living room, there are a few beers in the fridge for later on. There is also a lot of Friends on TV, which I appreciate, although accept that there will be less now that I have fewer channels. Julia Downes' EastEnders barbecue is coming up and that will be brilliant, I have decided. Also soon I will hopefully have money.
Thursday, 15 April 2010
Something that has been annoying me of late
Sorry - how can the Conservatives seriously have 'vote for change' as their tagline? Aside from the obvious Obama comparison ridiculousness, they're called the CONSERVATIVES. Clue in the name? Kind of doublethinky? Ridic.
In Other (but related) News my friend Nat Guest has started an awesome project where she rounds up the day's news in verse. It's hilar, and here.
Also, I am back in Leeds now. I should be reading Caleb Williams (it has taken me so very long; I am somewhere towards the end of volume two) but instead I am endlessly clicking on my iTunes icon and wondering why it won't load so I can listen to Evelyn Evelyn. I came home to my EE package; it's very exciting. Exciting exciting, even. (Exciting exciting, even even.) (Sorry.) It includes a really cool sticker with a picture of the twins and 'WHAT EVS', which has led me to decide that I am going to lift the ban on multiple acoustic guitar stickers and cover the thing with awesomeness. One of these stickers will be of Scream Club, because part of awesomeness is understanding that what you value won't necessarily always be there, and that you have a responsibility to be part of what continues it in the world. Also, I still fancy Cindy Wonderful, so.
In Other (but related) News my friend Nat Guest has started an awesome project where she rounds up the day's news in verse. It's hilar, and here.
Also, I am back in Leeds now. I should be reading Caleb Williams (it has taken me so very long; I am somewhere towards the end of volume two) but instead I am endlessly clicking on my iTunes icon and wondering why it won't load so I can listen to Evelyn Evelyn. I came home to my EE package; it's very exciting. Exciting exciting, even. (Exciting exciting, even even.) (Sorry.) It includes a really cool sticker with a picture of the twins and 'WHAT EVS', which has led me to decide that I am going to lift the ban on multiple acoustic guitar stickers and cover the thing with awesomeness. One of these stickers will be of Scream Club, because part of awesomeness is understanding that what you value won't necessarily always be there, and that you have a responsibility to be part of what continues it in the world. Also, I still fancy Cindy Wonderful, so.
Tuesday, 9 March 2010
Today
Something really annoying just happened.
Picture the scene: I am settling into a seat in Conference Auditorium 2 for a lecture on eighteenth-century literature. I am alone; there is nobody around me to whom I can quietly rant/at least gesticulate. Behind me are two students, a man and a woman, bitching about all the reading they have to do. Then THIS happens:
She: God, and we have to read Mansfield Park this week.
He: Ugh, that's just a load of feminist crap.
She: Mansfield Park is not feminist!
He: It's written by a woman, and it's shit. [she giggles] That's feminist.
[LIZ DIES]
Obviously I was in no position to question this self-assured DICK CHEESE because the lecture started (it turned out to be on landscape and nature again - why is it that whenever I actually turn up it's to the boring ones?). Anyway, I was totally disinterested, and there was no way for me to conveniently leave since I was in the middle of the row, so I started Mansfield Park. Which so far has yet to be feminist or "feminist."
The hour before this lecture was my eighteenth-century lit seminar, in which I had to give a presentation on James Thomson, Anne Finch and Mary Leapor's nature poetry. I spent most of it talking about the gender personifications in Thomson's 'Spring' - how the masculinised aspects of nature are imperial, powerful and, at one point, literally penetrative, and how the feminised aspects of nature are smiling and willing, how gales only 'sigh', and how feminised Nature's assets are separated into desirable and not desirable (there's a line referring to the 'moist Meadow' and the 'wither'd Hill'). After I'd spoken my tutor said something along the lines of 'that's a really interesting point; I've read this poem hundreds of times and I'd never realised that. I'll never be able to read that moist line again!' I mean, I recognise that of course not everyone has the same research interests as me in this field, but I'd always assumed gender was pretty rudimentary; my tutors in the past have never flinched to bring it up, and I've certainly never been in a situation before where my observations about what a text says about gender (or that a text says something about gender) have been met with such surprise. Then I was thinking about my previous tutors and I realised that the majority of them have been feminists, so maybe I've just been super-privileged until this point. But still. Weird. She's working in an institution whose English exam papers and essay questions always, always include a gender question.
Finally, and less angrily (although I will likely get angry about this when the time comes) I discovered this morning that Germaine Greer is giving a public lecture in a fortnight at Leeds Met. I'm pretty excited; I hate her so much. I mean, I've not studied her works or the period so I have only a dim idea of what she did for second wave in the seventies; all I know about her really is what she's said when wheeled out onto Newsnight Review and what other feminists have said about her attitudes towards more contemporary feminist concerns. From this I have deduced that she is a belligerent, sanctimonious, self-serving twit of a transphobe. Corin feels very similarly, although I haven't asked her what she knows of Greer so please don't anyone assume she's as ignorant as me. We're both really looking forward to it. It'll be good to actually experience some of her ideas first-hand - either I'll end up with fewer things to be angry about or my anger with her will gain something resembling authenticity. Woo!
Picture the scene: I am settling into a seat in Conference Auditorium 2 for a lecture on eighteenth-century literature. I am alone; there is nobody around me to whom I can quietly rant/at least gesticulate. Behind me are two students, a man and a woman, bitching about all the reading they have to do. Then THIS happens:
She: God, and we have to read Mansfield Park this week.
He: Ugh, that's just a load of feminist crap.
She: Mansfield Park is not feminist!
He: It's written by a woman, and it's shit. [she giggles] That's feminist.
[LIZ DIES]
Obviously I was in no position to question this self-assured DICK CHEESE because the lecture started (it turned out to be on landscape and nature again - why is it that whenever I actually turn up it's to the boring ones?). Anyway, I was totally disinterested, and there was no way for me to conveniently leave since I was in the middle of the row, so I started Mansfield Park. Which so far has yet to be feminist or "feminist."
The hour before this lecture was my eighteenth-century lit seminar, in which I had to give a presentation on James Thomson, Anne Finch and Mary Leapor's nature poetry. I spent most of it talking about the gender personifications in Thomson's 'Spring' - how the masculinised aspects of nature are imperial, powerful and, at one point, literally penetrative, and how the feminised aspects of nature are smiling and willing, how gales only 'sigh', and how feminised Nature's assets are separated into desirable and not desirable (there's a line referring to the 'moist Meadow' and the 'wither'd Hill'). After I'd spoken my tutor said something along the lines of 'that's a really interesting point; I've read this poem hundreds of times and I'd never realised that. I'll never be able to read that moist line again!' I mean, I recognise that of course not everyone has the same research interests as me in this field, but I'd always assumed gender was pretty rudimentary; my tutors in the past have never flinched to bring it up, and I've certainly never been in a situation before where my observations about what a text says about gender (or that a text says something about gender) have been met with such surprise. Then I was thinking about my previous tutors and I realised that the majority of them have been feminists, so maybe I've just been super-privileged until this point. But still. Weird. She's working in an institution whose English exam papers and essay questions always, always include a gender question.
Finally, and less angrily (although I will likely get angry about this when the time comes) I discovered this morning that Germaine Greer is giving a public lecture in a fortnight at Leeds Met. I'm pretty excited; I hate her so much. I mean, I've not studied her works or the period so I have only a dim idea of what she did for second wave in the seventies; all I know about her really is what she's said when wheeled out onto Newsnight Review and what other feminists have said about her attitudes towards more contemporary feminist concerns. From this I have deduced that she is a belligerent, sanctimonious, self-serving twit of a transphobe. Corin feels very similarly, although I haven't asked her what she knows of Greer so please don't anyone assume she's as ignorant as me. We're both really looking forward to it. It'll be good to actually experience some of her ideas first-hand - either I'll end up with fewer things to be angry about or my anger with her will gain something resembling authenticity. Woo!
Monday, 8 March 2010
Monday, 22 February 2010
douche
This week (slash by Friday at 4pm) I have to write an essay about the problem of 'female beauty' in Alexander Pope's 'The Rape of the Lock' and another essay about the relationship between adulthood and childhood in Songs of Innocence and Experience (I think - I have yet to plan this essay so it is, helpfully, subject to change). So far today I have set my alarm for eleven, woken up at one, faffed around since one, and continued to faff by writing this post. I need to be in uni by quarter to seven at the latest this evening to be in charge of a FemSoc film night. Afterwards I will probably eschew continued social contact on the grounds of work then come home and faff around then go to bed late. Tomorrow I have two lectures and a seminar for which I need to do a buttload of reading. The day after I have CBT, which is early, but draining; the following day the English department is on strike, which is nice, but makes Friday hell because I have to do the lectures/seminars I missed as well as the ones I am scheduled for. One of the ones I am scheduled for requires that I read Letters written in Sweden, Norway and Denmark beforehand. Once again, I hate myself for leaving everything too late and sacrificing my creative freedom for what only amounts to a grotesque lack of discipline. Obviously I am doing nothing to help the matter by whining on here. Argghhh. ARG.
Monday, 2 November 2009
holler
I am migrating here from my livejournal just like everyone else, because I love starting things even more than I hate maintaining them and, to be honest, I felt chained to a style of expression that I didn't really want to keep up with. Essentially I want to take blogging (read: myself) more seriously, and I also want to meet the challenge of writing about my life without the safety net of making entries private; I'm not very good at being discreet or widely appealing, you see, and I want to improve, and I won't improve if I continue to hide in my friendslist. Also, coming back to my second year of university after a year out a couple of months ago brought the harsh reality of essays back into my life, and frankly the more practice I can get at extended prose the better (turns out after months of only writing a song's worth at a time it's challenging getting back on the wagon). That said, I handed in my second important essay of the term today and I think it was a lot better than my first; unfortunately it was also a lot later than my first and both were due in on the same day so the marks will likely be depressingly similar. But! It's progress, I hope.
The other Most Important Thing In My Life Right Now is Sainthood, Tegan and Sara's new album, which I am entirely addicted to. It's been a long time since I've felt this way about a recent release; it's nice to have it back, because sometimes I worry that I don't put in the effort that being passionate about music requires and am in fact a fraud because I rarely discover new things and generally limit myself to exploring the back-catalogues of artists I should have gotten into years ago. Quite why I see music fanship as a competition and not a hobby is neither here nor there at the moment. I don't even know who I'm competing with; I don't really care about the extents to which other people integrate themselves with music unless they like something I like, or might like.
Anyway, I meant for that last paragraph to end with the news that I started learning Hell on the guitar earlier (hence my username, for the 0% non-queer and/or -queersensitive members of my online audience) and playing it is simultaneously fun and calming, which is probably the best combination of effects possible. I'm so annoyed that I didn't obtain my loan in time to get a ticket to see them in Manchester. In fact, I haven't even received my basic loan now, and it's November. Now I will go and learn the rest of Hell to soothe myself. See you bassoon.
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