Casu Consulto

So the university (or rather our department) is doing its damnedest to fuck us over by introducing a proposal to change the date we have to submit the final versions of our MA theses - from two weeks before the defense to TEN WEEKS. Which means that we might have to have them ready by just after Easter, or else have to defend in the fall. Apparently everyone at the department board meeting was against it, and the dean was the one who pushed for it, they're going to have him "think it over" and issue a final ruling that nobody will be able to appeal. And to make matters worse, nobody from the student council was at the meeting, which they're supposed to attend so they can, you know, look out for our interests.

Which is, of course, bullshit. And it not only affects us but also our thesis supervisors, who have to put together the exam commissions and find reviewers and everything else that much earlier. But, you know, who cares about that? There's some office monkey somewhere higher up in the hierarchy, possibly in the ministry of education, who incidentally has no idea what the fuck they're doing, who decided to show off by submitting a proposal like this, and now everyone's running with it. Without a moment's thought for the students. And now nobody knows what's happening, and everyone's in a panic, and don't even try to figure out how to plan the next six months of your life because fuck you, that's why.

I'm personally leaning towards deferring my defense till the fall anyway, because that'll give me a little more time to finish my thesis without having to, as our supervisor told us to do, cutting whatever's not needed and just getting it done. I may hate this university, I may hate my institute, I may hate my advisor, and I may hate the useless, unimaginative, lifeless husk that I call my thesis, but goddammit, I've made it this far, and I'd like for this thing to actually be something more than throwing up half-digested bits of other people's research and calling it a thesis. *siiiiigh*

We found all of this out on Tuesday, and I've been so fucking pissed off since then, I can't think straight. I have an essay to write for tomorrow, plus a cover letter and a resume to put together (also for tomorrow) so I can apply for the internship program they're offering this year. If I get into the program, it's 120 hours over two months, with the possibility of being offered a job with the company we intern with. Which means that I'll have less time to work on my thesis, which means I probably won't make the deadline, whether they move it or not. But the thing is, the internship is going to be a lot more useful to me in my professional life than a degree nobody cares about me having. So that's pretty much my decision made for me.

Wanderlust: A very strong and irresistible impulse or desire to travel the world.

I'm leaving for my trip in about 80 hours, and I still have to decide what I'm going to take and PACK ALL THE THINGS and catch up on some work before I go and AHHHHHHH I'M GOING TO NEW YORK AGAIN.

*curls up and breathes into paper bag*

Mirrored from Tangents and Digressions.

So I went to see an ENT specialist today, and between paying for the visit and paying for the meds, spent a lot of money on my health, like, 1/6th of my entire monthly budget. Eep. But I'm getting pretty desperate to get rid of this sinusitis/tracheitis/whatever the hell is going on with me, and just be better. I'm tired of coughing, I'm tired of sniffling, and I'm just plain sick and tired of being sick and tired.

( Nothing gross, just cutting for medical discussion and length. )

It sucks having to watch every single thing I say and do, but if I'm willing to make the effort, the result is a fairly frictionless interaction with everyone, so maybe it's worth it. I'm just so tired of having to walk on eggshells around everyone and not speaking up when people thoughtlessly trample all over my feelings. *sigh*

The cakes both turned out awesome, you can barely tell there are lumps in the cream, and despite being composed of several pieces each, the cake layers held together and looked and tasted fucking amazing. I'm crediting the gluing power of my tears and rage, which are apparently not only crunchy and delicious, but combined with some willpower also make for good desserts.

Today my grandfather backed into some dude's car that was hauling Christmas trees and shattered the rear windshield in his car (everyone's fine, the only damage was to the window). This means I have to change my travel plans, but hopefully I can figure out something that will let me get back to Wrocław at some point tomorrow. I'm not looking forward to schlepping my suitcase/purse/camera tripod with me to the hospital (I have to go pick up some paperwork) before going back home, but it might be the best solution. I've got a few trains I can catch during the day, so I've got choices.

I'm ready to go home. For whatever value of "home" can be applied to my place in Wrocław.

*siiiiiigh*

(Yes, I know the full moon isn't until tomorrow, but I've got an almost-full moon shining through my window right now, and I couldn't resist the subject line. And for once, the keywords for this icon, "by the light of the blood moon," are appropriate, since the October full moon is apparently the Blood Moon.)

I am at my grandparents' this weekend, because Grandpa is going to visit his sister (Gran has refused to go, so much so that the mere mention of the possibility of her going is met with I'M NOT GOING AND THAT'S FINAL STOP BOTHERING ME), so I needed to come down and spend a couple of days with her. I'm hoping to get some work done tomorrow afternoon, hopefully, because the last few days have been a disaster where that's concerned. I've been feeling under the weather and fighting off a cold or some sort of plague, and so I've been ending up lying down "for a short nap" and sleeping through the afternoons. Hopefully the tactic of letting my body rest as much as it wants and keeping it warm and full of vitamin C and cold/flu meds will help. My cousin/roommate is sick, taking antibiotics, and barely functioning, and I really don't want to get sick, too.

I have a meeting with my thesis advisor on Monday, for a preliminary discussion of my thesis, and AHHHHHHHH, I have no idea what I'm going to say. Generally, I know what I'd like to write about, but I need to sit down and like, plan out what I'm going to say so I can be coherent and not ramble on like I usually do. I think he'll approve of the general topic, and I hope he'll be able to steer me through the "omg what do I do?!" minefield. The biggest possible problem I can see is that he's an anthropological linguistics specialist, and I'm not really on friendly terms with linguistics—or, well, I like reading about it, and talking about it, but actually learning the stuff and then having to demonstrate my knowledge in a test? GET IT AWAY FROM ME KILL IT WITH FIRE. But the approach I want to take to my thesis is closer to anthropological linguistics than it is to literary theory, which is what I've focused on up until now, so hopefully we can make it work.

Annnd I just realized why the entries crossposted from my other blog all turned up with the same icon—my DW account expired, so not all the icons are there. Boo. That's going to have to wait until next month, at least, since I'm kinda skint broke right now. Bleh.

Tomorrow morning, I'm going grocery shopping with Grandpa before he leaves, and I've decided I'm going to pick up ingredients for this yogurt chocolate cake with chocolate ganache. I may go crazy and bake the orange yogurt cake with Grand Marnier and dried cranberries (also linked from the first recipe) and take it with me when I go back to Wrocław on Sunday.

It is now after midnight, so this totally counts as a Monday post.

On Saturday, I went to Wrocław to look for a place, and managed to find one! My cousin and I are going to be renting a place together. It's a three bedroom apartment on the lower floor of a two-floor house, and it's kinda awesome. It's a little expensive, so we may end up getting a third person to take the third room, but for the moment, we'll try it this way. We may have to eat a bit more ramen than normal (or bring bigger care packages from home), but I'm optimistic about our chances. She's a lovely girl, a bit of a fangirl too, so we'll have things in common that way other than just being family.

I'm hoping the place will work out. We have to go over there tomorrow to pay rent and probably sign some sort of rental thingy (things like that aren't formalized here in Poland, so IDK what the lady owner will want to do), and then she's going back home because her classes don't start until Wednesday. Neither do mine, but because I'm starting my MA program, I've got an organizational meeting on Tuesday.

So far, registration for classes has been a disaster. They divided the number of students by the number of seminars they're offering and ended up with 12 spots for each one. The problem is that there's only one translation seminar, but a lot more candidates than just 12. Put together slow internet + buggy browser with everyone trying to register all at once, and the seminar filled up in about a minute and a half. And there's no provision for setting up a second seminar group, or extending this one. Even though there is one seminar that's completely empty because nobody wants to pursue "second language acquisition studies" apparently. So there's been a lot of frustration this weekend, and people telling me that this is normal, that it's always messy like this at the beginning, that master's programs are always geared towards the instructors' interests and not what the students want, etc. Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that university is free in Poland. But the advantage of having to pay for my classes is that I get what I pay for—and I can demand to be treated like a paying customer, instead of being told that I should be grateful I'm given a chance to study. What's there to be grateful for if I'm forced to study something I have no interest in because the administration wasn't competent enough to ensure that there would be enough seminars relevant to people? *sigh* I've got a request letter I'm going to drop off tomorrow that basically amounts to some fancy begging to please let me have a spot in the seminar, because otherwise I'll be stuck with "Friendship in 19th Century British Literature" with a professor I don't really enjoy having classes with, and I really fucking hope I can figure something out because I really don't want to have to write an MA thesis on literature when I've spent the last three months gearing up for writing one on translation studies.

BUT. First things first. Moving tomorrow! Apartment, unpacking, then locating a grocery store and getting settled in. then Tuesday I'll go to the meeting and we'll see where things go from there. Good thoughts re: school will be appreciated this week, though.

ETA: Oh! I forgot! Because there's no internet at the new place yet, and all I have is my mobile router with a limited amount of data, this week's uploads will probably be a bit late. Sorry about that.

Yesterday was such a good day, and so was this morning, for about half a hour, and then I sat down at the computer to try and work and my brain just seized up and my heart started pounding and I can't breathe and—

NOPE.

*crawls back into bed and pulls blankets over head* NOPE NOPE NOPE.

I listed all the finals I have in the next month (!!!) to my mom, and she was all "oh my god, I can't believe you have so many!" and it's like, yeah, I have a couple more exams this year (that actually take place in the exam session), but this semester I have the fewest classes in the last three years. Well, no, that's not right, the first term in Wales had even fewer, but there was a lot more work involved in those, so they don't count. And logically, I know everything's going to be OK - I may not get the highest marks possible, but I probably won't have too much trouble passing (except for History of English, which freaks me out because I have no idea how to even get started studying for it) - but I can't help stressing out over the whole thing anyway. Like, I've been alternating between having zero motivation and zero fucks to give, wanting to curl up and cry, and actually sitting here and bursting into tears.

Which is what happened today. They posted the MA seminars we'll have to choose from next year, and of course the guy who told me that my approach to the topic I was thinking of writing on was "too Western" and that I should try to make things more "encyclopedic" is the one running the translation seminar. *headdesk* I'm going to try and get to the dean's office tomorrow morning before class and find out if there's a procedure for finding a different advisor (I'm sure it involves written requests in triplicate and probably at least a piece of my soul) but as things stand right now, I cannot see myself writing anything with the current seminar instructor as an advisor (mostly because I got my hopes up and he unceremoniously stomped on them, and also he's running our integrated skills/grammar class this semester, and I realize that it's not his fault that the curriculum and the testing procedures are shitty, but I'm blaming him for it anyway and WE HATES HIM, PRECIOUS) (and yes, I realize I'm being overly dramatic, but shut up, let me have my freak out). I've sent out notes to other universities asking if they have lists of seminars for next year yet, so I'm not totally excluding the possibility that I won't be staying at UWr for my MA. I just... There's only one translation seminar, and I really don't want to get stuck having to do something I don't want to do just because the advisor wants me to go go by the book and not try to come up with anything new and challenging. I thought that was the point of grad school, getting to do new things! trying to come up with new approaches! But nope, don't rock the boat, don't think too hard, and don't you dare come up with anything other than what's already been done to death, because otherwise you'll make life more difficult for your advisor, and you don't want to do that, now, do you? FUCK POLISH ACADEMIA IN THE EAR.

Why do I have to go to grad school, anyway? Why can't I just run away and live on a small island off the coast of Scotland (or the Pacific Northwest) (or somewhere possibly less rainy) (but let's face it, I'd totally take either one of those places anyway)?

I'm sorry for all the woe and angst and whining that's been going on here lately. I JUST HAVE ALL THESE FEELINGS and I don't know what to do with them. Hopefully in about 4-6 weeks, things will settle down a bit (unless of course I don't pass my finals / don't pass the BA exam / don't get into grad school, in which case I apologize in advance).

Also, apologies for the late uploads from earlier this week. I'll try to get the post done at some point tomorrow, because I just don't have the spoons tonight.

I have a proseminar today in which we're going to discuss feminism and gender. Just thinking about what my classmates will be like makes me gag. DO NOT WANT. We have something like three or four guys in the class, and I'm actually expecting them to be more or less thoughtful and able to contribute to the discussion. Some of the girls, though, view feminism through the prism of *Polish *second-wave feminism (as do a lot of people in Poland, really), and treat it like something icky and unfortunate and can't we just lock it in the attic and pretend it doesn't exist? If I had any herbal sedative pills left, I'd be popping them right now because I've got a feeling it's not going to be an easy class.

And then next week, we get to discuss masculinities and race, so THAT SHOULD BE FUN ALSO.

Add to that the frustration with people in my year who are all "oh no, they moved up grad school registration to the same time LITERALLY EVERY OTHER UNIVERSITY DOES IT, let's write a petition to postpone it till September because I already bought my tickets for the summer and because two months is not enough time to write a 600 word research proposal," this is definitely going to be A DAY. *breathes into paper bag, reconsiders the need for sedatives*