Casu Consulto

I bought Bucky a dangly toy on a string recently, and he loves it SO MUCH OMG. It's kinda freaky to see your cat's eyes dilate ALL THE WAY as he prepares to pounce on it. But while I'm super glad he loves it, I'm kinda starting to regret it, because he wants to play with it ALL THE TIME, and when it's put away, he goes around the house looking for it and yowling at the top of his lungs. I guess there's still a bit of training to do with him, to get the concept of "quiet time" across to him. On the other hand, when we do play with him, it's a good way to tire him out and get him to sleep through the night and let us sleep in the morning, rather than waking us up at 5 am.

We'll be looking at changing apartments at the end of this school year, to get something a little bigger and nicer (this apartment isn't bad, but the administration is HORRIBLE and full of useless putzes who barely get anything done), and when we have something, we'll probably get a second cat. And then we can look at building them a cat tree with dangly toys attached. Of course, knowing my luck with cats, Bucky will completely ignore it, and who knows about the second cat? I mean, Bucky doesn't even react to catnip the way a cat should. We've tried a spray and the regular dried stuff, and nothing, he just turns his nose up at it and avoids it. *hands*

Now that I have a PC, I can play games, and I've been using gaming as a way to keep from going insane with all the stress of school and stuff. So far, it's working great! I've got about 2/3 of AC: Brotherhood to go, plus the Mass Effect trilogy, and a few others I've been picking up here and there (mostly at Steam sales) with the hope of being able to play them sometime in the future. Well, now I can! *evil laughter* If anyone's interesting in some Star Wars games, Humble Bundle has a really good deal on SW games: right now there are nine games, with more coming soon, including Knights of the Old Republic I and II, Force Unleashed I and II, and a bunch of others. As it stands, it's $115 worth of games. I installed STFU this morning, and wheee, I missed being able to go around Force-blasting stormtroopers around. :D :D :D

I've got three out of four grades for this term already (including my MA seminar, thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster). The fourth one is my French grade, which theoretically should be only the exam grade, but the instructor's convinced we're supposed to get a semester mark and an exam mark, so who knows. The exam is made up of four parts (writing, reading comprehension, listening comprehension, and oral), so she's split it up into two parts: today is part one, and then the second one on Tuesday. And then I'm done with the semester, whee! Not sure how much "free" time I'll actually have, since I can't really just take a week off entirely, but hopefully we can unwind a bit and recharge for the last semester. There's a few things I need to get done over the break, like fixing my bed and organizing the upcoming translation projects, but it's doable. I'll have to go see my grandparents for a few days, so that'll be my "do nothing but try to relax" time during the break.

I am horribly behind on reading my flist and everything else, so if there's anything fun/interesting/wanky happening, feel free to let me know, either in the comments or via e-mail, mkay? *gloms you all*

Saw Mom and Stepdad off to work, and I'm taking my sweet time doing anything, including showering and getting dressed, because it's my goddamn birthday and they're gonna be gone most of the day, so I can be a slob if I want to. I have some translation that I really need to finih, because I was supposed to send it in on like, Friday, but travel and everything kind of got in the way. And then... I don't know. It's snowing, and it's supposed to rain later, so maybe I'll go to a museum somewhere? I have no idea what I want to see.

Mom took me to her friend's bachelorette party on Saturday, we went to a concert at Juilliard on Sunday, Mom took me to Dia: yesterday, with a caveat of "I know you don't really like modern art, but I think you'll like this" (I did, mostly), and we're going to see Waiting for Godot (!!!!) on Wednesday. The tickets are like, in the nosebleeds and I think they're actually standing tickets, but given the chance, I wasn't going to miss this. We're probably going out for sushi tonight, and there's something else I' probably forgetting for Thursday afternoon, so I'm having a quite busy and activity-filled week. I'm really glad I'm getting today mostly to myself, because while I enjoy doing stuff with mom and Michael and I'm very glad I'm here, I'm getting a tiiiiny bit burned out on being social and not curling up under a blanket and not coming out. So getting a bit of alone time is great for recharging my batteries.

Tomorrow morning is registration for classes back home. We finally got the schedule late yesterday, and oy vey, it is a HUEG mess. There are classes overlapping, and they've given 5 groups of one course to one instructor and only one to another, so there's going to be a big rush on those. Assuming I get everything I'll be trying to get, I may possibly have Fridays off, which would be nice. In a small school like ours, we don't get more than one section per class, so if you want to take something, you're stuck with what they give you, time slot-wise, and there's no alternatives. And although one might think that small school = more instructor time for every student, that's definitely not the case at our institute. I keep saying we need to stage a coup and start running things with the students in mind, rather than just catering to the needs of the faculty. My mom keeps saying I should stay on and do a doctorate (at which point, because you have to teach as part of the program, I'd be part of the faculty), and try changing things from inside, but IDK...

Anyway, that's not what the crying in the subject line is a reference to, actually. gorgeousnerd linked to the last MCR song and video and foolishly enough, I watched. I'm jut glad that the parental units were out of the house, because I burst into tears about halfway through and didn't stop until it was well over. This band, I swear. I fought getting into bandom for the longest time, resisted listening to MCR for a while, and then when I fell, I fell hard. Waking up to the news that they'd broken up on the day I was due to leave Wales last year was hard, and getting to hear a new song on my birthday... well, it's definitely a bittersweet thing. I'll have to listen to the song a few more times before I can fully appreciate it, but I'm thinking that won't be today.

So for one of our classes, with the oh-so-appealing name "Writing on the Doorstep: Dwelling and Hospitality in Contemporary American Fiction," we had to write four 1-2 page response papers to some of the texts/novels/movies we discussed in class. And throughout the semester, our instructor kept reminding us about plagiarism and the rules and basically "don't do the thing." In our last class, I handed in the last of my assignments, and we all settled in to wait for him to grade them and give us our final marks. Then a few days ago, we got another e-mail from him, saying that despite the warnings and instructions, there were still papers with plagiarism issues, and would the people who did the thing please get in touch with him and "propose a further course of action." But you know, there wasn't actually a list of people, and he didn't get in touch with us individually. I guess he was expecting us all to come and see him to pick up our papers and get our index books signed. So I decided to e-mail him and ask, because I won't be back until the end of the semester, and I'd like to know all my grades before I leave.

And you see where this is going, don't you?

He e-mailed me to let me know he'd get back to me with grades and comments today, but there's an issue with one of my papers, where I totally "misappropriated someone else's words as mine," which is, by the institute's rules, plagiarism. I'm too pissed off with myself to check what the rules for dealing with that are (it's one paper out of four, hopefully it won't mean a failing grade, but I'll probably get a barely passing one instead), and it's 3pm and I haven't heard from him yet, and it's so frustrating, because I did forget to cite the quote, and printed out that version, but then I fixed it and printed out the correct version, only apparently I got them mixed up and handed in the wrong one by mistake. *facepalm^infinity* I wrote back to tell him that last night, but he's just as likely to say "nope, sorry, don't believe you" as he is to give me a break.

So, yeah... Oops. If he decides to fail me, I can say goodbye to qualifying for a stipend. It won't be the end of the world, but oy vey, the whining from my family if I don't... /o\

*rocks back and forth* SO MUCH SCHOOLWORK TO DO. And yet I can't focus on anything that I actually need to be doing. I should be writing a response paper for tomorrow's class, but my brain checked out on me a couple of hours ago and nothing I do is helping. *cries*

Things I need to write:

- 3 response papers for the Writing on the Doorstep class
- essay for Children's Lit class
- presentation for Life Writing class
- presentation for conversations class
- paper for translation class
- finish assignment for translation class
- as much as I can write of the first chapter of my MA thesis

And all of this has to be done before the 21st. *cries forever and ever* I'm not panicking. Yet.

BUT HEY AT LEAST I GOT MY YEAR-END MIX FINISHED.


here at inmediasres

Is there a name for that feeling of "what do I do now?" that comes with the end of a work project that previously took up all your time and now that it's done, you have other stuff you want to do, but you just don't have the motivation? Because that's pretty much how I've felt this week. I have fun stuff I could do. I have school stuff I need to do. I have movies to watch and TV to catch up on. And all I've done is go to class, get through the day, and then come home and nap. :\

I know it's probably normal for my brain to need to rest, but it'd be really awesome if it could also shut up with all the ideas and little reminders that yes, my thesis advisor is going to expect me to come back from the Christmas break with at least a few pages of the first chapter written, and hey, I'd better get on that, pronto. Every time I look at my computer, I'm reminded of all the stories that I haven't finished, and all the ideas rattling around in my brain for new stories.

I had a meeting with my advisor on Monday, and while I didn't come right out and say "I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing," I kind of hinted at being a bit lost, and he helped me lay out a bit of a path, so there's that at least. Hopefully I can actually manage to pull my shit together over the break and cobble together an outline and maybe actually start working on the first chapter. Because our MA seminar group was assembled after the semester started, we don't have any formal classes with him this term. I asked him what his requirement for our grades is going to be—some seminar groups have a 10 page research proposal due, others have a title and a bibliography, others just have to have an idea about what they're going to write about and start putting things together. He said "I don't want you to just talk about what you're going to do, I want you to do it." I'm going to aim for an outline and getting the theory basics down into something coherent, and possibly go and see him after the break to make sure I'm on the right track.

My author sent me another partial payment for the translation, but since she lives in France, the bank transfer takes a while, so I've been sitting here, refreshing my bank website, waiting. She sent it through Monday night, which means it was sent through on Tuesday morning, but it takes, in the words of a bank customer service rep, "up to four business days" for them to go through. I'm pretty sure the last time it took like, a day, but I could be wrong. I just really really really hope it gets here tomorrow, because I'd really like to be able to get some food and also get a ticket to go home for Christmas. I was hoping it would get here today, and had been considering getting a small Christmas tree for the spare room with some random decorations for it, but it's probably a good thing that it didn't, because if I'm going to be gone for over a week, the thing would just dry up and shed needles all over the place and nobody wants to clean that up.

[redacted "ugh, going home for Christmas" rant because nobody wants to see that, including me] Let's focus instead on the possibility that I might (MIIIIIGHT) be able to swing going to New York for the winter break in February. I've never been there in the winter, and I imagine it might make a nice change from the OMG DYING heat of July/August. And if I can manage the tickets (next month, though, so the prices will probably go up, but alas, I can't afford it right now), I'm totes calling it a birthday present to myself. Cross your crossables, folks!

So my regular Wednesday class was canceled yesterday due to the instructor's illness, and thank goodness, because it meant that I didn't have to read the stuff that was assigned and also didn't have to write a response paper on it. Unfortunately for me, I spent most of the day fighting off a migraine for the second day in a row and didn't get as much work done on the translation as I'd hoped. I'm so far behind on it, it's not even funny, and it sucks because the very thought of the book gets me going in a full body shudder. :( I just want it to be done and over with, so I can focus on things that don't make me physically ill, like, oh, reading the eleventy hundred pages of possible research material for my MA. *headdesk*

But! I also had the fangirls over for dinner (we had the baked orzo with eggplant and mozarella and some pumpkin cheesecake for dessert), so that capped the day off nicely.

Unfortunately, this morning I woke up with another migraine, and while yes, I've already taken a migraine pill and I can feel it working, it's going to leave me woozy and muddled for most of the morning, which will make class kinda awful and I'm seriously considering e-mailing the instructor and letting him know that I'm very sorry but I can't make it. Hmm.

I'm also supposed to be getting a call from my aunt about when the ENT specialist she knows can get me in to see him. Getting an appointment that's paid for by our public health care with any specialist towards the end of the year is pretty close to impossible, because all their funds are used up and "I've got a space open in February!" I could pay and get in sooner, sure, and while I don't normally go the "hey, friend of a friend, can you do me a favor?" route, I figure this is pretty important. I'm so tired of this sinusitis, if they can do anything to get me better, even if it means actual surgery on my septum, fine, let them do it, I don't care, I just want to be able to breathe normally again and not have the fucking cough rattling me like crazy.

I think I'm going to go get something to eat and see how I feel. I have a couple of hours before I have to make the go/stay call, and as much as I'd love to just curl up under a blanket and not go anywhere, leaving the house would probably do me some good, so I should probably consider it.

(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.

They've announced that "due to administrative issues" they're not going to extend the number of spots in the translation seminar, so those of us who didn't manage to sign up are SOL and have to sign up for other ones. I managed to snag a spot in the "Friendship in 19th Century British Literature" group, which is... well, sucky beyond belief. But in the interests of keeping my sanity and actually being able to function and attend classes, I'm going to try and make the best of it. I need to go to the dean's office tomorrow to find out how it works when you have someone else as your advisor (because it's possible to do that), whether you have to basically do double the work—both the seminar stuff in something you're not interested in, and the research for the thesis, or whether your advisor grades your work and the other instructor just inputs it, or what.

If it's possible not to do double the work, I'll have to do some more work over the weekend and write an actual thesis proposal so I can take it to the instructor I want to ask to be my advisor, and then get started on formalizing the paperwork. If it's not possible, I may attempt it anyway, provided I can get a clear answer on the "how does it work" front. And the worst case scenario is that I won't do a translation MA, and will have to redirect my efforts and try to get a bit more interested in literature again.

I read the seminar description in more detail tonight, and if I get stuck in the worst case scenario, there are possible glimmers of hope in the part about what we can write about:

Friendship in 19th-Century British Literature
In the seminar, the emphasis falls on the literary realizations of the theme of friendship in 19th-century British fiction. However, the modernist and contemporary realizations of the theme of friendship will also be considered. Thus, with the theoretical basis in cultural studies, the students’ theses can also be written with the focus on contemporary popular fiction as exemplified by the works of Tom Holland (retreat into coteries, secret societies in contemporary gothic: The Vampire, Deliver us from Evil, Supping with Panthers).

Theoretical references: In the seminar the discourse of friendship it is approached (1) from the critical perspective of cultural materialism and New historicism, as a cultural, historical and political construct, and (2) from the philosophical perspective, as an important concept in ethics. Thus, it is viewed as a concept evolving in the debate conducted within the sphere of philosophical ethics beginning from the classical ideals of friendship (Plato’s, Aristotle’s, Cicero’s) , to medieval Christian (St. Aquinas), to Montaigne, to Kant’s taxonomy, finally, to contemporary consideration of friendship in the works of Gadamer, Derrida, and Agamben. However, there will also be considered works of the philosophers who do not discuss friendship as such, but rather human relationships within a broader ethical perspective of responsibility (Levinas) and solidarity (Rorty). The philosophical questions concerning friendship will include the problems of taxonomy of friendship and other relationships (C. S. Lewis, Aristotle, Kant), and the issue such as, for example, utilitarian and ideal friendship, disclosure in friendship, ending friendship, another self-in friendship, moral limits to friendship, self-sufficiency, celebrating sameness and difference, self-love, self- delusion, pride, vainglory and justice in friendship.

So, you know, if contemporary popular fiction is allowed, maybe I can do something with that.

*cries* I should have known something like this would happen. I got my hopes up, I got too far ahead of myself, and now I'm paying for it. But I'm not going to let the last three years go to waste, goddammit. I will not let this get to me. I WILL NOT LET THIS BREAK ME.

And if it doesn't work out my way, maybe I'll just set the building on fire.

Well, not quite, because we don't get the diplomas til September (I don't know why, possibly they're waiting to print them all until the fall exams are done?), but:

I PASSED MY BA EXAM

So theoretically, I am all graduamacated and everything. Of course, a BA in Poland isn't really worth much, and a lot of people from the older generations don't consider you "done" with university until you have an MA but w/e, w/e, I am calling this one a win.

We had a bbq yesterday with the family next door, and my grandfather opened a bottle of champagne that he was theoretically saving for when I finished my MA, but then he got all paranoid about how he'd gotten a bottle from someone else some other time and it went bad before he opened it, and this one was already four years old, so screw it, we're drinking to your BA instead. I was a little worried that it might be bad luck to toast it before I had the results, but everyone was all "pfft, as if you didn't pass, shut up." Then I spent the night waking up every two hours to check whether they'd been posted (I don't know why, it's not like the IT guy would post them at 4am, but apparently my brain didn't get that memo), and then fending off four or five super short but intense nightmares of different scenarios in which the results were posted and it turned out that I didn't pass.

The results finally went up at around noon, and while I didn't do awesomely on the exam itself (I scored 76/100, which is a 3+, so I guess the equivalent of a C+?), my diploma mark (which is 75% average from the last three years, and 25% the average from the two parts of the BA exam) works out to a 4.5 (so a B+, I'd guess, or a 2-1 in the UK system, but IDK, I wish there was a uniform worldwide grading system, because this is ridiculous), so I'm actually pretty damn happy with that.

Now I'm going to take the next two days to pick up my paperwork from the uni, pack up the rest of my stuff, clean out my room and settle my bills/rent, and then on Thursday I'm going to have to get to work on the translation. I have the MA interview in a week, so I still have to prep for that, but I'm trying to think positive, because I really really really REALLY hate interviews and interview-like things (the prospect of having to do an MA defense absolutely terrifies me), and considering that I almost bombed the last interview I had (the Erasmus qualifying interview), I'm more than a little nervous. But THINKING POSITIVE, dammit. I can do this, I can do this, I CAN MOTHERFUCKING DO THIS. *resolve face*

Do you ever have a conversation with someone where you touch on various topics, and it's a really good and thorough talk, and you feel good after having it, and then you get an e-mail from that person and it's like that talk never happened? And it feels like maybe, just maybe, the conversation you had was with some alternate version of that person, because nobody could forget everything you talked about that quickly, unless it actually wasn't them you talked about it with?

This ramble brought to you by late-night school writing, and possibly too much Night Vale Radio listening. Last night I dreamt I was a Rule #63 version of Cecil, and when I woke up, my heart ached from the ferocity of my feelings for Carla, perfect Carla with the perfect hair, who smelled of lavender chewing gum and who sat with me on the hood of my car, our fingertips touching as we looked up at the lights above the Arby's...

And then I woke up and it was hot and sticky and miserable and not at all like the dry desert heat in my dream. And then I had a couple of hours of panic when I thought I'd lost my ID card, which would have been very double plus ungood, but then I realized that the last time I used it was when I went to the reading room at the library, so I high-tailed it over there and thankfully they hadn't gotten around to putting it in the mail to send to the address on it, so YAY.

Now I just have to finish this stupid research proposal, which is proving to be more trouble than I suspect it'll be worth. But apparently I've become so set in my ways that the night before it's due is the perfect time to be writing it, even though I spent a good part of last week sitting there thinking "I should be working on the proposal, I should be working on the proposal" and getting exactly jack shit done on it. This does not bode well for when/if I get into grad school and have an actual MA thesis to write. /o\