A Brand New Day

Thinking this is going to be one of those lame Obama reflections? Ha! I fooled you all! I love politics much more than the next person and even I have no interest in inaugrations, balls, or speeches. Ignored the whole thing and I couldn't have cared less. Instead, I was ever-so-wisely watching a new episode of Bones on Hulu the day before it aired! Which was good, because it only took Hulu two hours to realize the mistake and take it down.

Getting down to business, it's the beginning of the new semester and I only spent two days consumed with terror/baseless anxiety. I'm taking my first real graduate seminar and it had me frightened to my core. There were PhD people in there. PhD people! (Paul gave many pep talks of the "don't compete with others, just be your best" variety.) I was pretty rattled by the professor just casually handing out 2.5 pages of a classical text to be discussed. Oh yeah, I can totally read and translate that! No...but it did get all worked out when I showed up later for my Chinese class and he remembered how I didn't know classical Chinese. It's probably still going to be a holy terror, but at least now there's going to be some easing of the coursework and his expectations are more reasonable. My other classes are just a continuation of last semester, so things will probably be about the same. My Japanese class might be more of a pain. We started the semester a day behind (according to the syllabus). I was pretty shocked by that. You, the professor, make up the syllabus. Why on earth would you choose to assign work before class begins without telling anyone? Why start behind? It makes no sense!