Boo. I miss Jamie and Tom. Last night was Waugh night at Hertford, to celebrate the illustrious author and his short tenure at the college. My first trip to Oxford was for Waugh night, and I was there for it last year as well, and so missing it this time around makes me kind of bummed. Not that like, I wasn't expecting it. One cannot expect to fly to England every November on a grad school salary. But still...boo. I miss Jamie and Tom.
Boo also to working on papers in Memorial all day. Boo.
You know what's weird? Precalls. Talk about something I would never have had to do, or even known people did, before grad school. In undergrad I just wept and gnashed my teeth when the books I wanted were gone. Now I bombard my peers with annoying emails.
Also, I really do like writing papers. I do. It's my favorite part of grad school. I hate the deadlines, the pressure, the wading through useless article after useless chapter to find the information I need, the constant pressure/guilt I feel when I'm not working and should be, and the painfulness of those first 30 minutes of a long session when you're not in the zone and would rather be watching TV on the couch. But I love the writing itself, the crafting of an idea, making the words come, adding pages to my documents, the flash of insight when it comes together. It's the best and worst part of my semester, really.
The other thing writing papers makes me realize is how much terrible academic writing there is out there. Great ideas should not need to be couched in horribly convoluted and ridiculously over-the-top terms. They should just be written. What is this notion that if your writing is clear it's not important. I maintain that this is bullshit.
Also, it's way too dark. The end.
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