Who's bad?
Hello, chicklings :)
My last post was the...Uh...14th, I think, so that was forever ago. Even if nothing has changed since then, I figured I should let you all know that I'm alive.
Screaming toward the end of my first month at university and I have to say that I think I'm adjusting alright. I think. I don't get as lost now, I'm more comfortable in the lectures, even if the tutorials still scare me a little. I still don't have a social life and haven't met any new friends, which kind of sucks...Sort of. The thing that I can't get used to is being surrounded by eighteen year olds. That's really strange...I mean, granted, I'm not that much older than them, but man, there are light years between eighteen and twenty-one.
I think it's all going well. I have an English tutorial presentation due on Tuesday and I'm nearly finished it. It's basically presenting a poem and finding how it related to the themes of the course (namely modernity and time), and then composing two questions about the poem with which to lead (I hate leading things) the class discussion (and discussing stuff isn't much fun either). Basically it'll be fine - I know what I'm doing, I'm reasonably confident that I understand what I'm supposed to do and so forth...It's just that I really don't enjoy speaking in front of people. Oy. But, I'm sure I'll be even better prepared by Tuesday and it'll all be well. It's just a pity that the tutor doesn't seem to know what he's doing...I hope he's new, otherwise...Well, he's not very good, lol.
My Jewish Civilisation, Thought and Culture (or, more conveniently JCTC) class is small. Really small. Like, woah, small. My tutorial class has about five or six people in it, and the lecture only has six or seven more people than that, so yeah, dude, small. Apparently the numbers for that particular course have dropped pretty steadily over the past few years...And I would have to suggest that it must have been quite the decline, lol. It's a good subject, though, even if I find ancient history slightly boring, lol, I love the cultural aspect of it.
I was very seriously considering dropping Philosophy on Thursday. I had my Phil tutorial and had to talk a bit about Realism, which was the subject I was given in the last class. Suffice it to say I felt stupid and I'm sure that I looked like an idiot as well. I really hate not feeling like I know what I'm doing, and I really, really hate when other people can see that. None of it really made any sense to me and I was really struggling, you know? Which is unusual for me, because I generally don't have to work that hard to understand basic concepts....So I was thinking, what's the damn point? You know? I could be doing something that I'd enjoy and can do with no problems (Latin, baby!!)...So, later in the day I had my Philosophy lecture and found out that we're doing Consequentialism, which I like much more and can understand (by and large, lol). So, I guess that crisis is averted and I feel a bit better about it. I guess I just have to get used to dealing with things I don't really have a point of reference for (which is why I chose Phil in the first place, lol) and I have to get used to learning in a different way...Not that I'm not expecting future difficulties, because I am, but I think it'll be OK,
Which leaves us with Linguistics, I think. It's my favourite subject, which I had anticipated, and we're currently studying Phonology, which is the way that words sound and the basic sounds (or phonemes) that make up the words. It's a little weird, actually, because I'm starting to hear sounds that I'd never noticed before, like the 'h' sound in the word coat (it comes after the initial 'c'). We get these problems each week upon which we'll be graded...We've done one so far (which I think I messed up a bit), and we've got the second one. These two, apparently, are designed to help break us of "spelling blindness". Frankly, I never want to be blind to the way that words are spelled, lol, but it's supposed to get us to translate the words according to sound, not to the way that they look. Not quite as easy as I was thinking it would be, but it's a nice challenge.
So, I'm just really trying to adjust to this whole new routine and stuff. Also trying to break myself of my wont to procrastinate...Which is really fucking hard, lol. I'm used to procrastinating. I'm used to getting it done at the last moment...Right at the last moment, lol...But I know that that won't fly now. I need to do the work as I get it (mostly). I think it'll pan out, but I just have to get there.
Aside from all that, nothing much is happening. Home life is the same as it ever was...Nothing interesting is going on...Except that I ate organic felafel for breakfast, lol - it's not exceptional, but mildly interesting, I guess.
Uni tomorrow - bliss. I have...Uh...A linguistics lecture and my JCTC tutorial (where I have to hand in a small, unimportant paper...Which I did about a week ago, yay me).