Back to School!

Today was my first class of the fall semester.  I have to shout it from the rooftop -- I really am in love with school right now!  Apparently, the three week break and a solid GRE score were enough to leave me feeling rejuvenated and ready for an intense fall line up.

I started with a poetry genre class tonight, which I was half-terrified and half-excited about since I love poetry, but it often eludes me.  First off, as opposed to my summer classes, I am back into graduate seminars and don't have any undergraduates in the class, which means that the depth of discussion was WAY above what I was dealing with all summer.  The tug on one's morale when sitting through asinine comments by undergraduate seniors who think they know everything (which means they aren't yet smart enough to know that they don't know anything) cannot be overstated.  Second, the class is small - only 9 people - so it feels intimate, which is in keeping with the nature of poetry.  Finally, we kicked off the class today with Emily Dickinson.  

What more could I have asked for????  I love her poetry so much!  We talked about one of her poems for a full hour, which was just awesome.  I am sharing it with you below so you can share in my joy of uber-modern interiority and abstract bliss!

As an added bonus...I laughed to myself thinking of "the Seal Despair" as the seal that ate Buster's hand in Arrested Development...and the resultant despair that plagued him due to his dangerous prosthesis.  I do love puns, and apparently my subconscious does too.

And now, I give you Miss Emily Dickinson:

There's a certain Slant of light,

Winter Afternoons--

That oppresses, like the Heft

Of Cathedral Tunes--

Heavenly Hurt it gives us--

We can find no scar,

But internal difference, 

Where the Meanings, are--

None may teach it--Any--

'Tis the Seal Despair--

An imperial affliction

Sent us of the Air--

When it comes, the Landscape listens--

Shadows--hold their breath--

When it goes, 'tis like the Distance

On the look of Death--

43 Hours in Philly

I did feel a certain duty as a Louisianan to show my friends in DC how to have a real hurricane party.  I learned from talking about hurricane parties with many people that many of you actually think that one drinks hurricanes during a hurricane party.  How silly!  Of course not!  Hurricanes are usually reserved for mardi gras or other such occasions.  If you are going to be drinking for days on end without power in the house, light beer is usually where its at.

But I was doing what any self-respecting Louisianan would do during the threats of Irene: laugh in the face of danger!  There was no way that I could take that hurricane seriously, although I must admit that after enough television in the hotel room in Philly, I did insist on having a supply of bottled water.  Instead of waiting out the storm in my own home where I would have to fend for myself and be frustrated by the local over-reaction, I persisted on with plans to spend the weekend in Philly.

I've been to Philly a lot recently for work, but I haven't been there in a long time for fun.  We had a great weekend, especially the first night before the storm hit the next day.  Friday night we had a delicious dinner at a Portuguese restaurant, Koo Zee Doo, in a neighborhood called Northern Liberties.  Then, we walked around the neighborhood, visited the outdoor piazza and found some awesome kitsch retailers, and ended the night at an open air rooftop bar, Standard Tap.  It was really a great return to the city and inspired us to visit the Rodin Museum and the Mutter Museum the next day before hunkering down in the hotel.

Since I have more and more trouble turning off my current obsession with emotion theory, I was pleased to find a particular sculpture to contemplate: Shame (Absolution).  The woman's tucked in legs, overflowing hair that covered her face down to her waist, and arm shielding her face left me thinking about how shame is articulated by the body through inward contortions that shield the front of the body from the outside world.  Shame is a lonely feeling and its expression further isolates the suffering.  Rodin's combination of shame with absolution places shame in the arms of a gentle body that bears the weight of the suffering woman and protects her.  The one who offers absolution is not a priestly figure, but instead also appears to be a woman.  The museum's entryway features the Gates of Hell, which can't help but set a certain tone about religious condemnation...and condemnation of religion.  His attention to the body reveals its expressive capacity, which has left me thinking a lot more about body language this week.

So, there was drinking, TV watching, and general gallivanting in Philly while Irene looked a lot more like a typical summer storm than a crazy bitch looking to take down the East Coast.  

How about that earthquake!

I was in a meeting in the Library -- a concrete monstrosity -- for a meeting when the earthquake was felt in DC. It was a scary moment since I realized I had no idea what to do, had not bothered myself in my 8 months on the job to learn about emergency exits, and not to mention the three floors of stacks and stacks of books directly above the room the meeting was in.

We evacuated...but instead of being sent home like the majority of DC, we had to continue on our work day. It was so bizarre to have had this thing happen and then, to sit down and try to be productive for the rest of the afternoon and act pretty much like nothing happened. I was in China last year when DC had a minor earthquake, so this was the first time I've experienced one!

And now, we are expecting a hurricane this weekend? WTF?! How many natural and unnatural disasters can DC expect this August? From the debt crisis to the earthquake, it sure makes things feel a wee bit eerie around here.

Is milkmaggedon next??????????????????

100% Mynd Use

I was recently introduced to the term "navel-gazing."  I can't remember if someone said it in conversation or if I read it somewhere or what.  But now that I've heard it, I'm starting to see it everywhere, like this Washingtonian review of Uncle Vanya, which says that the production's "comically morose characters make our 21st century navel-gazing look positively paltry in comparison."  I realize I'm late on the uptake here.

At any rate, I've been thinking about navel-gazing and how of all the problems that I do suffer from and with, I think that self-absorbed complacency (OED) isn't at the top of the list as it seems to be for many other Americans.  This term made me appreciate local DC artist B.K. Adams' mantra "100% mynd use" all the more.

My friends introduced me to B.K. Adams after learning about him because he has a studio in the basement of their condo building.  We attended the opening of his exhibit at the Smithsonian's Anacostia Community Museum this Sunday.  It is a really delightful exhibit!  It is definitely worth a visit.

His pieces explore several themes -- like journey of life, cycles, and a lot of funny puns -- in a variety of ways -- sculpture, canvasses, video, and photography.  I really enjoyed the show; my favorite piece was entitled "family reunion." The sculpture was made up of broken chairs, wine glasses, and bicycle tires among other things.  And yet, the tone was light and the colors were bright, so it didn't feel like a condemnation of the chaos of family so much as an observation of the chaos.  


The exhibit was a wonderful journey through the mind of someone who the Smithsonian says "demands both himself and everyone else to think and be creative."  I really appreciate and respect his demand.  I suppose it is something I strive for myself and look for in others.  


So, stop navel-gazing and get your ass to a part of the city that most of us don't venture into very often!  Support neighborhood business and get coffee or lunch when you visit at Big Chair Coffee and Grill.  

Our National Poet Laureate

I haven't had much time to think about our new poet laureate, Phillip Levine.  So, I'm sharing with all of you as a first step. 


As a first impression, I do note that this is yet another white male poet laureate...which has been the case every year for the past 10 years except for Louise Gluck in 2003-2004.  The Librarian of Congress has been in his position for about 25 years, and I just can't help but wonder if his Princeton education has given him a fairly narrow view of what outstanding American poetry looks and sounds like. 


But I share those merely as first impressions and not as an educated opinion for or against the choice of Phillip Levine.  I am working on becoming better acquainted with Levine's work.  After my poetry genre course this fall, I'm sure I'll have something more substantial to put forth.  For now, I'm happy to share his poem, Alone.


Alone
Sunset, and the olive grove flames
on the far hill.  We descend
into the lunging shadows
of goat grass, and the air

deepens like smoke.
You were behind me, but when I turned
there was the wrangling of crows
and the long grass rising in the wind

and the swelling tips of grain
turning to water under a black sky.
All around me the thousand
small denials of the day

rose like insects to the flaming
of an old truth, someone alone
following a broken trail of stones
toward the deep and starless river.

Post-Exam Bliss

Well, I won't ever have to take the GRE again, and that is a pretty amazing feeling. I got a very decent score, which is one major step towards a successful PhD application! WOOHOO!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not any less outraged than I was two days ago about this exam. I still find the whole thing ridiculous. But now I no longer have to think about it -- ever again. So, want to know what it feels like to have such a stressful exam over with and completed with high marks?  Well, to fully understand, I have to delve back to my first round of GRE misery.

I studied for months on end with a couple of friends back in the summer of 2009 in preparation for my initial application to graduate school. I got several books and spent an inordinate amount of time trying to memorize Kaplan's word groups as synonyms for words that are merely similar, but not synonyms, blah blah blah. I invested a really disgusting amount of time preparing without raising my score at all. I literally got the same exact score that I got the very first time I took it as an undergraduate in 2003.

My score from 2003 and 2009 was only in the 75th percentile, which was far lower than the cut off score at most highly ranked universities. I not only broke out into tears immediately upon walking out of the building, I went a little crazy. Just as I was trying to compose myself at home, I pulled a shirt off of a hanger in my closet. The feeling of it was so satisfying in that moment that I proceeded to rip everything in my closet off of its hanger one-by-one until the whole closet was a big pile in the middle of my room. Yeah.

So, now, fast forward two years. I was really not eager to relive the experience. I bit the bullet and signed up for a Kaplan course, and studied for exactly four weeks. I did zero preparation on math, and I did one round of vocab memorization before abandoning ship. This time I simply learned the silly test methods, and voila! 85-90th percentile!

The post-exam moments were far better this time around too...I shared the experience with my friend and colleague who also took the exam yesterday.  We celebrated with wine and stayed up until 3 am chatting outside on a beautiful night.  Ahhhhh, the relief of having completed one big hurdle in the lengthy application process, feels great!

GRE: Gimmick Ridden with Equivocations

Who is ready to play along with the new GRE?

I haven't been blogging as regularly these past few weeks because I've been overwhelmed with the demands of summer school, preparing for the GRE, a pressing amount of work professionally, and contending with the fact that summer school to-date hasn't been relaxing at all. 

Right now, I'm about 40 hours away from taking the GRE.  Yes, I am in graduate school.  Yes, I am succeeding in graduate school.  Yes, I still have to take this standardized test that is supposed to predict my performance in graduate school in order to apply to PhD programs.  What a farce!  This whole thing makes me angry for personal reasons, such as the fact that I do not see things in strict binaries of black and white and right and wrong.  Thus, I have a whole host of troubles trying to answer GRE questions that are supposedly straight forward, but are only straight forward if you think about things from a very narrow perspective...which is not a highly valued skill in English departments.  In fact, I am doing so well in graduate school precisely because I question people's assumptions and pick apart underlying meanings.  I really could go on and on about this.

I am also outraged at the big business of the GRE and how every school requires it, and it requires stupid tricks and techniques rather than real intelligence to perform well.  So, if you aren't of a very specific and certain kind of mind, you have to pay for study materials and possibly classes, etc.  You have to pay for scores to be sent to more than 3 schools and at the end of the day, GRE makes hundreds of dollars off of impoverished students without really telling anything about the potential for that student's success. 

But really, what I'm fired up about right now is the new format, which is supposed to be more useful...but really has a whole lot of questions based on a very specific type of logic that seems suspect to me.  You have social scientists and English majors all trying to take this damned thing, and I can't foresee how students who have been taught to think critically in either discipline will do very well with these ridiculous questions.  The biggest section that I am getting wrong...and whose answer choices are consistently rooted in faulty logic are the new "inference" questions.

I don't want to leave y'all out of this terrible experience because misery does love company.  So, I'm challenging you try out a few of the easy sample questions here to get a taste of how silly the new structure is: http://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/about/content/verbal_reasoning.  Remember schools require you to be in the 85th percentile for the most part, so if you get just one wrong out of four, you are sliding down a slipper slope.

Best of luck!  Bon courage!

What a time to be a graduate student!

This debt ceiling business is frustrating on so many levels...and there are many people with more expertise in economics and policy than myself talking about this.  Don't worry, I'm not even going to bother. 

BUT what I am personally bothered by is the fact that this new law eliminates subsidized student loans for graduate students, like yours truly, who are not "enrolled in a teaching credential or certification programs required by the state." Wow. So, for five years while I'm pursuing my PhD, I will have interest accruing from day one.

Wasn't there a saying that school debt is "good debt?" Well, it seems like pretty terrible debt to have right now. And then, on top of it, there are articles about how prostitution among the educated is becoming a big business...precisely to pay for education...which I thought was supposed to make us wiser, but perhaps is only making students better able to adapt logic and intelligence to fool themselves.

What depressing news today. Escapism is not typically my preferred method, but today I'm really happy that I'm finally going to see Midnight in Paris. I need a little bit of distance from the harsh realities of the day.