One down — A couple more to go

I’m so happy to have finished one essay that I can’t type properly. I did the entire first draft yesterday evening, in between posting on the fanfic forum, and I typed most of it out at university today. And guess what? The first draft was done by hand! Mostly I don’t even do a second draft for essays anymore. I suppose a change of medium works miracles. It does nothing for sticking to the word limit though. I can never do that anyway.

I should be in linguistics at the moment, but there’s nothing I can’ learn by looking over the notes which I print off the computer, and by reading the textbook. I do have my Linguistics tutorial soon though. *Sigh*. I can’t believe it’s turning out to be one of the most boring subjects. Plus, I don’t really like my tutor. She’s nice, but she doesn’t seem to accept that there are other was of pronouncing things. Like, I always pronounce my ‘r’s, so I put that in transcription, but she mostly says it’s a mistake. It annoys me, because I’m trying so hard to adopt a more widely accepted/comprehended accent. New Zealand English is hard to understand, and lazy pronunciation means bad spelling, in most cases.

So I’m totally exhausted. I have to do some history, and read up for my revolutions essay. I have to say I like this topic more than my previous one. This time I actually have some idea of what I’m going to talk about. Now I just need to grab those books from the restricted loan this afternoon. I wonder if I can leave the tutorial early.

Going to wolf down lunch now. I think I’ll do a proper entry later.

My Weekend

It’s almost the end of the weekend. Time passes so quickly, even when there’s nothing going on. Saturday, I spent almost the entire day on the computer. I wrote half of my essay, but just today, I decided that what I’d written wasn’t good enough. It was hugely convoluted and sounded like straight narrative. I’m going to have to do some organization before it’ll actually be a proper history essay. Also chatted quite a bit yesterday, on the computer of course. I lack a social life. I need one, but I’m shy, and usually, I’m not one to go with the crowd, so it makes maintaining conversation a bit difficult.

Today, I got up twenty minutes before noon. Call it my catch up sleep. It does nothing for my creativity, but sleeping in on Sunday feels good. I tried to work on my essay, but footnoting is so boring that I gave up. Come on, it’s Sunday. I am not going stress myself. Might miss Linguistics again tomorrow to work on my essay. It’s much quicker to print off the slides and learn from that.

The first thing I wrote this morning was my argument on the use of adverbs, metaphors and similes. My take on it was that a writer shouldn’t use too many of any of those. Adverbs are too vague. Figurative language is useful for setting the scene, but there’s a fine line between a good atmosphere and absolute tediousness.  

The Key to My Imagination

I have not written anything at all today, mainly because I slept in. Everything seems to be closing in around me. I have two essays to write, a test on Monday, so many history books that I need to read. I need to learn the first three Crusades, and all the evidence I’ve found about the fall of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem is contradictory. I suppose it’s a subject in which there is no mid ground. I am undeniably biased towards the Ibelins, thanks to the movie. They don’t seem that bad, compared with all these other people whom I have read about. I certainly prefer the ‘Dove’ faction to the ‘Hawks’. The Doves seemed smarter, and they cared about the state of the Kingdom. I’m not fond of crusaders, but movies do influence me a lot and I like Balian of Ibelin, real or fictional.

I’m in university again, class starts in 25 minutes. So far, I have resisted my desire for coffee, since the vending machine swallowed up my two dollars yesterday and didn’t give me my M ‘n’ M’s, and I’m hoping to make up for that stupid incident by saving up the dollar sixty, which is how much a coffee costs. Besides, this class isn’t one which needs a caffeine boost. I’ll be having one tomorrow though, because of this boring boring compulsory class in which the lecturer cannot even speak properly.

I know I should be working or reading history books in preparation for the exams, but I’m really not in the mood. The library is so hot and stuffy, and I need to see Kingdom of Heaven; It’s a ‘desperate and unyielding need’, if I may quote Jack Sparrow from Pirates. I don’t know why I’m being so slack this year. All right, I was slack last year as well, but at least I knew what I was doing last year. This year, I have no idea where I’m going, and it’s actually important. I need the good grades to be accepted into the first professional year for Speech and Language Therapy training. They only take a small percentage of people, and not many make it out successfully as Speech and Language Pathologists/Therapists.

I have texts which I need to read, but they’re at home, and I really can’t be bothered reading more academic language for the week. I need to read some good fiction, preferably lighthearted and silly.

In this prison I sit

surrounded by books

Their pages muffle the noises outside

 

Words entrap me

coming out of pages

Winding themselves about my head

 

I’ve had enough, I say,

I need to be free

to feel and hear and breathe

 

And in the darkness I grope

for a way out of prison.

What’s this? A chink, a ray of light

seeps into the murky gloom

 

My fingers scrabble.

I find a pen,

and an open door on blank pages

 

The pen is a key.

I open the door,

and step into my imagination.

 

Yeah, that’s my bad poetry. I can’t write poetry — I only muck around with it when I’m insanely bored.