Cleaning out the thoughts: one side of A4

After nearly eight years of college (I did take a year off though), you would think that I would be better at time management. I’m bad at managing the downtime, working through the breaks. I’m no good at long-term projects. Short papers, short bursts of energy, are fine. Dissertations are not my cup of tea, which is a funny thing considering I’m on my third graduate degree. No wonder they’ve all been so short. Sometimes I can get away with it: my first master’s degree had a lot of data analysis, and tables take up less space than prose. My second master’s degree had word limits, and was a one-year degree. My undergraduate honors thesis was also short, but my Oxford master’s dissertation was shorter, I think. This year, I’ve been writing in short bursts. The first term was bad, because I was sick for so long. I only managed eight or nine thousand words of detached thoughts, which actually turned out to be helpful when writing this term. In Hilary, I wrote lots of short papers, two to three thousand words. I just could not bring myself to write any more for those papers. This term, we had to submit a transfer paper, allowing us to move from first-year probationer status to full doctoral status. The transfer paper has to be ten thousand words. I did this by cleaning up three of my papers from last term and tying them together with an introduction, conclusion, and some unifying thoughts. It ended up to be about twelve thousand words long. I’m rather pleased with it. The title, if I have not mentioned it already, is “Figures of Authority: Cervantes’s Responses to the Platonist Critique of Fiction in Selected Works.” The theory stuff, the Plato, scares me. I did not do well in theory last year, and I struggled with theory in my first master’s. But theory is useful, so I guess I should get to know it. I love the Cervantes stuff, I’ve been doing it for years. I don’t get tired of reading Cervantes. I also like reading Cervantine criticism, even when I don’t agree with it. Like E.C. Riley for example. His argument about Cervantes’s influences seems a bit spotty. He says we can’t tell who Cervantes’s influences are, then he goes on to list a whole slew of likely influences. He says that Cervantes was influenced by these people in this order. If we can’t tell, then what makes these people more likely than anyone else? I get excited when I find specific, relevant examples or bits of the story that I haven’t read before. I’ve read the Quijote about ten times now, which is no small feat. It’s kind of like saying that I’ve read the Bible from cover to cover ten times, or War and Peace, or something like that. It’s not really something to read for the beach! But I love the fact that every reading is a new reading. I think I’ve said that already, haven’t I? This is why I hate writing long papers. I always end up making the same argument or quoting the same statistic twice…every time! I submitted my transfer paper on Friday. Technically I’m “done” for the term, but obviously I need to keep working. But not now. I need to take time to breathe for a bit. I will have a transfer viva at some point, but I don’t know when. It could be in July, it could be in September. Part of me hopes that it is in September. In the meantime, I will keep plugging away, reading Plato, looking for specific examples in the Quijote and the Novelas, and hopefully learning Latin at some point. I struggled with a lot of readings this year because I didn’t know Latin. I can pick up bits of it because of my Spanish, but other than that, I’m really in trouble. So I will take a course at some point. Now that I’m done, my schedule is full of lovely social things: dinners with friends, black-tie parties, punting, garden parties, barbecues, shopping, et cetera. It is a lovely time of year, but also a sad time of year. It is the time when people start packing up and going home for good. Every year is different at Catz, since many graduate programs are one year, so the turnover is quite quick. There are new faces coming in and going out every year. I’m sad because my matriculation group is getting smaller and smaller, and the people I care about the most are graduating or getting jobs or going home to finish writing up. In Oxford, the people you start with are the ones who are most important. Since the college system does not separate people by subject, we get to meet a whole variety of grad students doing different types of degrees. And because of this, not everyone finishes at the same time. So it’s the people you start with who count. I really like this system, as it helps me to become familiar with all sorts of subjects I wouldn’t know otherwise. My friend Haris makes a point of talking to everyone about his/her subject at some point. He knows that Oxford is full of great minds, and he should take advantage of the knowledge while he can. I think it’s a great idea, and I’d like to do the same. I’m sad that I haven’t taken as many photos this year. This is due primarily to the fact that my camera sucks. Someone spilled beer on it at a party in February, and I had to get a new one. Now I just rely on my friends to take photos and send them to me. It’s not as fun, and it’s hard to rely on people for that, but it’s better than nothing, I guess. I’ve always liked taking photos. I used to carry around a throwaway camera in my purse, just in case. I actually did have a “just in case” moment – I nearly had the opportunity to meet Celia Cruz. She didn’t show up, though. Oh well. I don’t know what I would have said to her. I always think of these great things to say when I meet a celebrity, but when the time actually comes, I just end up freezing up and saying very little. Then, afterwards, it’s always a “woulda, coulda, shoulda” situation. I’m very excited about the next two days of events. Tonight, Wednesday, is a black tie dinner at St. Hilda’s, where I will be a guest of my lovely friend Elizabeth. Thursday is the garden party for OLGA, the association of Modern Languages graduate students at Oxford. The party will be at the amazing Christ Church, and I’m bringing Chrissie and Chung as my guests. I’m very excited about that, and I have lovely new dresses to wear at each. Lots of pictures to follow – either mine or ones stolen from others! Why is it that I struggle to write 3,000 words, but writing this entry was a piece of cake? It’s nearly 1200 words, and it hasn’t taken me very long at all. I’m trying to fill up a sheet of A4 paper – I’ve set the margins to zero on Word and am typing away, standard twelve point font, single space. Perhaps it is because I am not really thinking about what I am writing? I know I’ve asked this before, but it still amazes me. I think it’s good for me to just clear the thoughts out of my head now that I’m technically done for the academic year. Between now and July, I need to focus on getting cleaned up and packed up, organizing myself for next year. When I return in September, I will be junior dean, and will begin training right away. That will be an exercise in time management. But honestly, I’ve always done better when I’ve had a full schedule. It teaches me to manage my time and keeps my mind active. This has been one of the hardest things about being away from home – now that I have all this quiet to myself, I don’t know what to do with it! Off to bed now, lots to do tomorrow, good night folks! x