Familia & Beowulf

I woke up at 8 this morning to the electronic drone of my roommate's alarm clock. My first thought was what happened to my alarm clock? The night before, I set it to go off at 7:30, but I never heard it. Well, the answer was fairly simple. I forgot to change the time zone . . . again (see Wingless Soar). I guess it was lucky that my roommate and I have class at the same time.

I managed to get up and get out with enough time to have a quick breakfast and still make it to my first class with time to spare.

 . . .

I apologize. I'm distracted. My roommate is watching tv and I keep typing the words that their saying on the show. So, if my language suddenly resembles the vocabulary of a teenage girl with boyfriend and best friend issues, now you know why.

My first class of the day was Modern Latin American history in Robinson Hall. Unlike what most people were expecting for the first day of class, the professor didn't simply hand out a syllabus, spend a few minutes going through the text, and then release us early. Instead, Professor Kanter, a small Chicago woman with a Russian Jewish background, started showing us photos from different times in Latin America's history and asked us to determine where the photograph was set, when, why, and who was in the picture or what the people's relationship was to each other. In every case, the theme was family, because it was and still is such an important part of Latin American culture. It was an interesting exercise because it forced me to pay attention to the details behind the picture. What are the people wearing? Is there a city behind those pictured or are they indoors? Is it an engraving, a picture, or a photograph? I never thought of those aspects of visual works. Now every time I see a picture, I can't help but ask these questions. I guess that's a good thing.

My second class wasn't until after noon, so I spent the hours between classes in my study spot, well, studying. I guessed right on which text was the main one for my history class, so I had already read the introduction that was assigned for Wednesday. But that wasn't the only thing assigned, so I had plenty of things to read. I was even able to have a small conversation with a freshman named Jerry who was a political science major and history minor. Turned out his younger sister's name was also Nora.

From my Brit Lit classroom

British Literature I began at 2:10 in Vulgamore Hall (which I keep wanting to call Voldamort Hall), and it was the class people were expecting. We received our syllabi, went through it, and were dismissed with the assignment to read the first ten pages of the introduction (which smart me did on Saturday : D ) . . . and the first 1250 lines of Beowulf . . . by tomorrow . . . At least the poem is interesting and I didn't have to read it in Middle English or Old English.

At 6:30, after six hours of total studying, I was ready for tomorrow and mostly ready for my Wednesday history class. I still have a short paper to write, and I need to memorize all the countries of Latin America and their capitals. And yet, here I am still up at midnight. *sigh* So it begins . . .