More of my random yacking on the class...

As the semester is beginning to winde down I have just been struck by a sense of sadness. I have finally come to terms with my lesser writing ability (at the moment!) and finaly feel free to write to the best of my ability with no shame and here we are at the end! Maybe I can just beginn again next semester! Hehe, but seriously I will miss this especially now that I feel as though I have come so far. It is very rare, it seems, that true learning ever occurs in a way that we can really see it. Hell it took me writing my whole final paper before I realized that I had learned so much in this class! Even apart from just the readings we have read I have really learned a lot about life and about myself as a writer! I look forward to useing what I have learned in this class and that (for me anyways) is not a very common occurence! Usually I just jump through the usual hoops until summer comes around and then I scurry out to get as shit housed as I possibly can with all my non-literature friends and I 'delete' as much as I possibly can from my brain because I am so annoyed and fed up with all the garbage that I have had to retain over the past year. However I believe that this summer will be different, I can finally sit down and really use the information I have retained this semester because I AM INTERESTED IN IT FOR ONCE! So nice to finally be declared! No more stupid University Studies! Although it was my goal for quite a while to graduate in that ha! All this to say, I have really learned a lot, I will hopefully continue to use the information and skills I have gleened from this class in further education.

I forgot pictures...

This picture has no real significance, it is just a cool picture I took in Thailand. I just had a sudden burst of blog envy and saw that everyone else had really awsome pictures scattered throughout their blogs and I have zero. Thus today being the last day for blogs I thought I would squeeze in a quick one... who knows (I cannot promise anything) this may be the begining of many pictures.. I may just have a bunch of picture blogs by the end of the day-- no writing added.

Final Paper (What I believe to be the real one)

I honestly believe that by accidentally signing up for a 400 level class as a Sophomore may be one of the best decisions I have made throughout my short college career (hopefully I will pass the class though!). I have had the opportunity to see and interact with 'the greats' of the Literature department-- 'the greats' being a cheesy title for Dr. Sexson and, of course, all of you. Yes you, each and every one of the students in Dr. Sexsons class are a piece of the journey I have taken this semester. When I first set foot into Dr. Sexson's class I was scared beyond belief. Here I was, finally doing what I had always wanted to do, I was on my way to becoming a graduate in Literature and as I sat down in a class full of juniors and seniors I could not help but feel out of place-- severely out of place. I was in a room filled with students that had all payed their dues, they had all had 'Captain Morgan' and had there fair share of chalk thrown at them and all knew what Ben Leubner liked to do in his spare time (which turns out to be reading Finnegan's Wake!), these students knew the In's and outs of the Literature department and here I was barely keeping my head above water, that is until I noticed a familiar face-- Jenny Lynn. It is funny to me how there is such an unsaid bond between kids of a small town, I knew Jenny through a few of my friends from Livingston but for the most part had never really talked with her, in this moment I zeroed in on her in point five seconds and was immediately at a desk beside her. She graciously accepted me as the kind hearted person she is and began giving me advice for all the teachers I had and how to keep them at bay. I literally took out a pen and began taking notes, she reassured me so much on that first day and made me see that this was do'able, that I could De-code this department and that I could survive. I admit I was still filled with fear, all of the students in Dr. Sexson's class where talking to one another loudly as though they had known one another for years (which they had), I felt very out of my element even with the help of Jenny and as I left the classroom on that first day I was still very uneasy. Then, as time went on another friendly 'great' decided to help me along-- Sam. Wonderful Sam who is as equally kind hearted as dear Jenny invited me over to watch 'The Skin of Our Teeth' one night with Jenny at her house. I was so excited I feel almost lame admitting it but I was being welcomed in to this amazing world of high brow and low brow books and I was being shown that I was (I know this sounds like I am a high school girl) being accepted. After we watched the movie we all sat down to read some pages from James Joyce's Ulysses, this was a very special moment for me. People, interested in reading books and so interested in one single book that they are all sitting down together in their spare time to read it with one another! This is most likely every day life for Sam and Jenny who surround themselves in the type of environment that would seem to allow such things but for myself this was a unique moment. Mostly because I live with and education major, my mom graduated in accounting, my dad in psychology (and he has worked with computers for his whole life), I am dating a Finance major, my sister is an architect, my best friend is going to school for chemistry, and my brother is a pilot-- I HAVE NO ONE TO TALK ABOUT FINNEGANS WAKE WITH! I have never been pushed in the Literary field because there has never been anyone to push me! None of the people I listed above even knew what Finnegan's Wake was until I of course lashed them to a chair and gaged them to make them listen to me read it aloud! So all this to say I cannot help but read through the blogs I have written this semester and notice that I continually make excuses for my low brow ways but to be completely honest I now do not give a damn. I am low brow as of right now, I have never been exposed to Literary environment until now and I have not had the chance to flourish quite as much as many of you have. Thus I guess I have returned, I have returned to the first day and I have known it for the first time. I can now walk away from this class with a sense of fulfilment. I have read all the same books as any of you have in this course and where I get discouraged by every one's excellent writing I have learned to accept where I am right now. I am not a Junior or a Senior and I have not had the upper hand that many of the students in class have had and I am O.K. with that now. I can be patient with myself, and I want to thank all those who have been patient with me and helped me along the way. I am very happy to now be a part of this wonderful close-knit literary community.

Final Paper conflict and the Blogs that have inspired me...

Once again I just went to skim through some blogs to try and get ideas and I ended up reading Doug's entire blog-- I mean every single one he has written for this class. His writing is very pleasant and personal, yet still intellectual-- I would like to write like he does some day. Then as I went on I clicked on Zach's blog for his final paper just to see what he was writing. He wrote that he scraped his entire idea of relating Buddhism to T.S. Elliot's poetry, I have to say I can't blame him. I have already scraped two of my idea's for this damned paper and I may do it again! I was going to write my neat little story about how a character goes through all of the stories we have read and incorporate all of the works and all of the things I got from class into the characters travels but went out to dinner last night with my girlfriends and one of them being an elementary education major (a very smart girl) was telling me what she planned to write for her 200 level class that she has with Dr. Sexson. I have to admit I was a little discouraged when she relayed to me the exact same story idea I was going to do. Perhaps we are both creative and intelligent or perhaps I am lowering the bar for myself (I know this all sounds very rude and mean of me but it is just how I feel) I cannot help but wonder am I being too low brow? Is that just the way I am right now? Thus I now cannot decide whether I should be writing from personal experience or of the travels of a fun character? Perhaps I shall write both! A high brow and a low brow version of my final paper?! Ha! If I have time that is... I will write my next blog as a blue print for the high brow version (as high brow as I can get).

Pessimistic Thoughts on the Eternal occurrence

"As Dr. Sexson says, you've all been here before, you're the same class I taught last year, and the year before and twenty years ago and we still haven't gotten it."

I copied this from Rio's blog page where he was talking about what to write for his final paper. I have been reading others blogs very frantically in an attempt to come up with ten blogs by Monday (at least! Ha we will see) and I continue to come across Rio's (sorry Rio, not blog stalking you!) anyways I really liked where he was going with this quote that he got from Dr. Sexson. It really makes me feel very small when things are put into such terms as eternal occurrence and reincarnation. Perhaps one goes through an entire lifetime just for one small moment and one small situation to do differently, a 'glitch' so to speak. What if all of our lives came down to one tiny moment in our life, this moment could happen when we are three or perhaps seventy who knows? Or perhaps it will not happen at all perhaps we will miss our chance for this opportunity of profound learning and change and we shall just have to wait until the next life time? I have not read much into reincarnation so to those that have this may all seem very mundane and simple but to me it is my first time to really think about it and I must admit it arises a very hopeful feeling along with a very scared feeling. Hopeful because I like the idea of being given a second chance yet scared because if each tiny thing in a day is so special and could amount to such a giant impact it is hard for me to keep my mind still. I believe that I may be realizing for the first time or maybe for one of many times, that every day counts, and beyond that, every moment, every second counts. I am not sure how to act with such knowledge, usually I would just lay in bed and let the knowledge wash over me. I should get up though, I should try and make it all count, but it just seems to me that there is so much pressure, so much weight on every moment that it is hard to not want to give up. I am at a loss, I do not know what to think. Perhaps I should try to be a bit more optimistic about the whole situation...?

Finergin

So... I took a Finergin to attempt to stop vomiting today. If any of you know what a Finergin is I am sorry, and if you don't, please do not google it or try to find out ever. Anyways I most deffinately thought that my mother was yelling "take a Finagin!" I was mistaken. But regaurdless... I am fine... again.

The Alchemist

ALSO whilst I am in the blogging mood! I never wrote what I thought about The Alchemist! I have to say that it was VERY hard going from reading all the very High Brow books to something so fun and simple! It was kind of nice to be able to shut my brain off for a second and just relax and read! No MaMaLuJo and Paddybarkes echo good safe firelamp bappy go gully! No talk of eggs, Shem, Shaun, or Issy! No Burnt, Giddings, Salvages! However (of course) there was the whole theme of "the eternal returen" and the act of beinging where one started and knowing the place for the first time so point proven, High Brow and Low Brow are very much one in the same in the very simpilist of ways. I like that we had to read that book, it was really calming to have such an easy read yet at the end of it I found myself a little in aw that I had just read this entire book and the whole point was that the treasure was where he had begun, and I was also somewhat annoyed at this because there is so much that goes into the High Brow books. There is the theme of coming back to where one started, the eternal return but on top of that there is five other themes lolling around in the book as well, and on top of THAT perhaps the book happens to be in a DREAM LANGUAGE???? So yes I was somewhat stunned when I realized that was all that there was to The Alchemist, yet as I mentioned it was a very nice break!