I'm done! Linus celebrates by...

Well, I survived year one of graduate school. Halfway to the masters! Woohoo!!!

Now on to a summer full of research, reading, working, sunbathing, traveling, dancing, and...dead computers. Huh. I don't remember that on the "I can't wait until I can--" list.

The laptop I was given by the graduate school (Linus) has always had a strange fondness for power outlets. I get that. Not everyone feels confident trusting a battery for life and automatic updates. It's okay, Linus, really. There is no judgment here.

But this week, the handy-dandy AC adapter given to me by the graduate school has also gone kafritz. And by that I mean dead. Linus lasted about 6 minutes (his average), and then went into power cord withdrawal and promptly shut down.

*cue ominous music*
*cue epic battle footage*
*cue Darth Vader breathing*
*cue Ian McKellen voice-over*

"...the battle for Helm's Deep is over. the battle for Middle Earth..."

Okay, so maybe that was more epic than I intended. Point is, the I.T. center can't give me a new one; I would have to buy it for a substantial amount of money. Point is, the graduate school says they won't replace it because it counts as an extraneous part. Point is, I'm not buying either the new adapter or that explanation.

You give me a computer to use for two years - it's already two years old, and the battery is shot. You won't replace the battery, fine, but without an adapter OR a battery, it's useless. If I'm paying to go to your graduate school, and one of the perks is a free computer, then the logical assumption is that--sans abuse or mistreatment or extreme circumstances--said computer should be usable for two years. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

Grrr...

Fight face on.

This is a matter of principle.

...to be continued...

Today's Recipe

Recipe for today's goal:

Ingredients
William Shakespeare's Macbeth
Bill Cain's Equivocation
Pandora's Broadway musicals
Very quiet campus

Directions
Stir
Bake for 11 hours

Makes (I hope!)
1 topic
1 thesis
8 or more pages of writing

Outcome to be determined. Not a family favorite at this point...

"If" - graduate student edition

If - for Grad Students*

If you can keep your mind when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust your laptop with the I.T.,
But make allowance for a virus too;
If you can live sans sleep and keep your eyes from drooping,
Or, after three espresso, write your name,
Or, asked "how goes it?", don't give way to weeping,
And yet don't look too crazed, nor talk too wild;

If you can chat - and not make Google master;
If you can think - and not make sense your aim;
If you can meet with "perfect" and "nice effort"
And treat the "but" that follows just the same;
If you can bear to read the words you'd written
After the three Red Bulls first hit your brain,
Or watch the drafts you gave your life to vanish,
And scream and hit restart and write again;

If you can make one heap of all your savings
And risk it on another stretch of school,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and hand and brain cells
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Deadline saying: "Git 'er done";

If you can talk with crowds whose grammar pains you,
Or read Bhabha - nor lose the common speech;
If neither B's nor minuses can hurt you;
If all steps count for you in metered rhyth'm;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of papers writ -
Yours is the book and everything that's in it,
And - no more - you'll be a graduate my friend!

*Props to Rudyard Kipling for the original.

He Thought It Was Worth It

Hope!!

From entrepreneur to college lecturer: Ditching a $500,000 salary to teach lit. (CNN Money)

Now I just have to figure out the $500,000 salary part.

The Finals Countdown Has Begun

The Finals Countdown Has Begun

...and is so extreme that it requires caps to describe...

Remaining classes: 4
Class days left: 3
Writing Center hours to go: 5
Final exams: 1
Pages due: 52
Days until the end: 17

Let's do this.

Paperwork Potpourri

Getting ready for international travel (this summer!) is akin to climbing a hill of sand trying to reach a beautiful scenic view, except that in this case, the sand is paperwork.

Have I mentioned that I don't like forms?
Have I mentioned that this is not paperwork-filling-out weather?

Keeping the end goal in sight can be kind of difficult at times. And then I feel like an ungrateful wretch. You can't win. Haha.

In the meantime, reading some one-act plays from New Zealand for fun, re-reading Macbeth, writing papers about women's on-stage violence in the seventeenth century, memorizing lines from Dryden's All for Love, and doing unpaid product tests on over-the-counter allergy medicines.

3 weeks and counting.

Novels' Dangerous Truths

This article presents an interesting perspective on Christianity and literature--not really new thoughts, for me, but worth considering nonetheless: Dangerous Truths and True Dangers: Can - and Should - Christians Read Novels?

The author ends with a list of novels that have informed her search for Truth through both positive and negative models. Here are a few of the books that would fall on my list:

-Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
-Redeeming Love, Francine Rivers
-Woman at Point Zero, Nawal el Saadawi
-A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving
-Till We Have Faces, C.S. Lewis
-In the Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez
-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling
-The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky
-Macbeth, Shakespeare
-The Bronze Bow, Elizabeth George Speare

What about yours?

It's Raining Pollen

Welcome weird spring/summer weather. Please stop raining pollen on everything. I need to be able to see to write papers, and Kleenex is pricey stuff.

The drug companies that make allergy medicines can't be paying you that big of a bribe, can they? I'm sure I could match them if I took up a collection. (...beyond the obvious problem that letters addressed to the weather probably end up in Santa's mailbag and merely give the postal workers a good laugh.)

If you keep this up, I will have to become smarter, as in remembering to roll up my car windows overnight to keep the pollen limited to the outside of the car.

That is all.

McDonalds March

I think (?) every graduate student has a "McDonalds month" now and then. March was mine. (Substitute your favorite stress-antidote, if you like.)

In a very sneaky, very perceptive advertising strategy, our favorite golden arches sent out a book of really good coupons in January ... starting off with a no-strings-attached free frappe and going downhill into French fry land.

Before you know it, that side trip on the way home or "no time for dinner" run gets easier and easier.

In the midst of midterms, papers, and presentations, and faced with the impossibility of stretching time, my defenses were down.

Oh, McDonalds. Oh, comfort food. Oh, stress.

But that month is over. Your coupons have expired, Ronald; your time is up.

...

...

Chocolate, anyone?

He is Risen

When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him.

And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?”

And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back—it was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed. And he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.”

And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

-Mark 16:1-8

He is risen indeed.