FINALS ARE OVER!!!!

Thought I'd let you know how happy I am. :)

The Victorian Literature test wasn't very bad, actually. The only problem is that I always run out of time! This happens to me on every test in McCuskey's classes! There were 40 quotations from Middlemarch, 20 of them spoken by and 20 of them describing one of 20 listed characters, and we had to match the character to either the two things they said, the two things describing them, or one of each. Piece of cake. Then we had to choose three of four essay questions, which were all based on the major themes of Victorian culture that we discussed in the first half of the class: Industry and Class, Victorian Ladies, Victorian Gentlemen, and Science and Religion. I answered the last three, and my essay on Victorian Ladies was pretty well-done for a thirty-minute essay if I do say so myself (actually it took 45 minutes, which is why I didn't finish the Science and Religion question...oops).

Now that school is officially over the only problem is that I have nothing to do, except crochet and read and watch movies and be lazy in general. And water and mow the lawn, prep and plant the garden, weed the landscaping, etc but I had a massive headache so can you really blame me for not doing anything? I didn't think so. I suppose this will give me time to work on some of my goals that school kind of prevented, like practicing the piano more regularly and practicing my French, because I really don't want to lose that skill, but I need a job! *insert sound of frustration* This weekend I'm going to do some serious yard work, help my friend Christina move into our apartment, and visit my parents' house in Kaysville. If I don't have a job by Monday, I guess I'll just have to apply at grocery stores and bug the theatres to get a job.

So Christina moves into my apartment tomorrow, which is AWESOME because not only is she super cool, but my other roommate Ellie is going to Orlando (among other places) for a WEEK AND A HALF!!! If Christina wasn't going to be here with me, I. Would. Go. Nuts. I like the idea of living alone, but I don't think I could handle it right now, and my not having a job yet would make it exponentially worse. Christina moved about half of her stuff into our house today, including her DVDs, which I helped her put on the shelves in the box window. I saw that she has Becoming Jane, which I have wanted to see again for awhile, so I said, "Christina, I love you." A little while later I saw she had an Avatar: The Last Airbender DVD and I told her how excited I was that she likes Avatar too. She said she only had the one DVD, so I told her that I have them all, and she said, "Christina, I love you." :) Ah the joys of roommates.

My movies take up three of the four shelves on the right. Christina's are on the top two shelves on the left. Ellie has two DVD's still in their cases and the rest in CD cases on the second shelf up on the left. In the middle is our lovely picture window, which is closed because it faces the setting sun and I didn't want to blind you.

P.S. Thanks to everyone who wished my luck on my exam this morning! Let me know what you think about my plans, what your plans are, life in general, anything and everything. I want this blog to be a way of letting others know how I'm doing and of facilitating communication between us about the things we have in common, so please, comment away!

Silver White Winters That Melt Into Spring...

No, unfortunately, I have not watched The Sound of Music recently, because I don't own it. But the song "Favorite Things" popped into my head today and that line stuck. I'm so happy that spring is finally in Logan!

A few days ago I found a patch of tulips growing in our front yard!

And today they looked like this! I'm so excited! I love flowers.

Now, as everyone knows, it's finals week. For our "final" in my Poetry Writing class, we just met during our scheduled examination time as if it were class and discussed submission tips and read aloud some of our poetry before turning in our final portfolios. It was a fabulous experience. As a writer in a writing class, I'm aware of others' writing because we workshop, but I don't really think about them much because I'm concerned with what I'm writing. I never realized how many brilliant poets surrounded me in that class. One girl read a poem all about the letter X: how it only says its own sound above a door in an "exit" sign, how you can see it in the body of a cheerleader, how it replaces a cartoon figure's eyes to signify death, and how it changes a person by putting itself in front of their title (ie, ex-boyfriend), among other examples. I never would have thought to write a poem about a letter! Another girl, K.J., shared a poem about Joseph Smith, Jr.'s First Vision of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ from the point of view of the tree he knelt next to. It was amazing. I realized that religious themes crop up in my ficion writing--in fact, religion has been a major theme in my two most recent stories--but for whatever reason they never seem to show up in my poetry. Any guesses why? I have no clue.

As far as Fiction Writing goes, our "final" was a major revision of one of the two stories that we wrote this semester, which I started and finished all yesterday afternoon before turning it in early this morning. I got a lot of useful feedback for my second story, "Crisis of Faith" (see that religious theme? it's even in the title!), which was about an LDS girl's attempt to reconcile religion with a dating issue and which I didn't really like once I'd finished writing it, but even though I think better of it now because of a great workshop, I decided to revise my first story. "Unexpected" was about a girl in an American tour of Italy and how God and art history work in her life in one day and it needed a lot of work, which got crammed into one afternoon and evening. Hopefully it turned out all right and I can pull off an acceptable grade in that class.

And tomorrow is my final in Dr. McCuskey's Victorian Literature class (for which I have not studied...!), after the roommate tradition of IHOP during finals week! It really shouldn't be that difficult of a test; he said it was mainly to prove that we'd read Middlemarch and could relate it with the other stuff we read in the first half of the semester. Well, wish me luck!

Additions to my Bookshelf

Before I get to my summer reading list, I have some other books to tell you about. First is the Sigma Tau Delta Rectangle, the journal of creative writing for the International English Honor Society (the only Greek organization to which I belong). I haven't actually started reading it yet, but I'm way excited to read it, and hopefully I can begin next week as a break from finals. This yearly publication has a good smattering of poetry, short fiction, and creative non-fiction, and one award every year for each.

Next is the Sigma Tau Delta Review, the journal of critical writing, which I'm also very excited to start reading. I find it strange thought that the Review is smaller in thickness than the Rectangle, as if the judges value creativity over criticism...? Maybe that's just me. The goal this year was to incorporate some modern criticism of Middlemarch into the essay I gave to Dr. McCuskey and submit it for publication to the Review but the deadline is April 30, and I have finals and revisions and portfolios to work on, so...I might not make it into the 2010 journals. Hopefully I can write and revise some really good critical and creative work in the next year and submit next April. That will be my last chance to submit because the journals only accept work by enrolled students.

So this is my plug for Sigma Tau Delta. There are tons of English majors at USU but our chapter is so small! Please join! Come to the activities! Network! Make friends! Have fun! Get scholarships! Beef up your resume! Submit your writing and maybe get published! A one-time fee gets you lifetime membership, and a subscription to the journals as long as you're an enrolled student. We have lots of great ideas for activities and things to help each other in our various disciplines this year, so come see what it's all about! If you're interested in finding out more, visit the website at www.english.org/sigmatd.

The other addition to my bookshelf is Jesus the Christ by James E. Talmage. I've decided to do my best to study the good word in the morning and at night, so it will feel like it's a greater priority in my life than it might be if I only read before bed. Last night I read chapter 4, which proves the antemortal existence of Christ by the significance of his names; for example, "Jehovah" (and the related Hebrew word for "I Am") means "Self-Existent One" or "The Eternal." Remember when Jesus tells the Jews in John 8 that "Before Abraham was, I Am"? Talmage tells us that "The true significance of this saying would be more plainly expressed were the sentence punctuated...as follows: '...Before Abraham, was I Am'; which means the same as had He said--Before Abraham, was I, Jehovah." I thought it was so interesting to prove the premortal divinity of Christ by using scriptural evidence of his names and titles. I highly recommend this book, and I haven't even finished it yet.

A little bit of everything

Thanks to Dr. McCuskey, my summer reading list now also includes John Fowles' (sp?) The French Lieutenant's Woman, which is a (short) Victorian novel written in 1969...how does that work? Anyway, he said it was really great so I think I'll try to give it a shot.

So my internship at the USU Press is officially over...*sigh* This weekend I will write an essay about my experiences there in order to get credit for the internship. Before today, I thought that I would be changing my emphasis to Literary Studies (which doesn't require elective credits like Creative Writing), and getting a 40+ hours per week job over the summer, and therefore volunteering at the Press like I have been except without the official title of internship, just to learn more about publishing and copyediting, but then, my fellow English Creative Writing major Curtis (I think that's his name...) and I were talking today about Creative Writing when Dr. McCuskey's class got out early. It would honestly just be easier for me to finish school in Creative Writing. For Literary Studies to work, the stars would have to align perfectly, and they're not likely to do that. And I've heard good things about the classes I have left to take. But I've already signed up for Lit Studies classes, and now Access is down so I can't see or change what I'm registered for...!

Anyway...(can you tell ellipses are my new favorite form of punctuation?) My Middlemarch essay was due today so I took the evening off from doing any work, since yesterday was stressful enough. I was up till 3 am writing it! But it's okay. I'm done. I'm watching A&E's Pride and Prejudice, one 50-minute video cassette a night, which means that my crocheting is coming along nicely. I'm so excited to make this afghan! Many thanks again to Sarah for teaching me this useful art.

The finished pattern will be 100 or so of these hexagons stitched together like this.

This is one of the hexagons. The colors from the inside out are green, pink, yellow, and green This one actually has 6 corners! (some of them have only had 5, unfortunately)

Summer Reading

Any ideas? So far my list includes Inkheart, thanks to the movie; Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, because there's an essay scholarship based on that book in September; all of Jane Austen's novels, because I still have my fingers crossed that I'll be able to get into Dr. McCuskey's British Writers class this fall (which is all about Miss Austen); oh and I still have to finish Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. Maybe I'll even read God Grew Tired of Us, since I didn't read it when it was the Aggie Readers Book Club book of the month. Another book I saw in the bookstore that caught my attention was The Book Thief, which sounded extremely interesting.

I can read boring stuff too. To further my hopeful career as a freelance editor of scholarly writing, maybe even graduate theses, next fall, I'm hoping to get and should probably read The Chicago Manual of Style, maybe even books about the other top two academic styles, CBE and APA.

And just to be totally random, I want to read Made from Scratch by Jenna W., the author of Cold Antler Farm blog. I've decided I really like the idea of being green and doing some of the things that she's done, especially the "back to the land" idea. Being a semi-city girl I probably don't realize what I'm saying, but you never know til you try, right?

I love comments! If you have a good book you think I should read, please let me know!

Hiking, Dresses, and a Jester

Remember the problem with my camera? Old batteries. Thanks to Sarah for giving me new ones so I could take some pictures on our hike on Saturday! Sarah and Andrew invited me to go with them on a hike to the Wind Caves, which was awesome (and totally wonderful of them to include me). This was my first time hiking in Logan Canyon. Enjoy the pics!

The view across the highway.

Me inside the Wind Caves. It was a lovely cool respite from the warm sun (I actually did get some minor sunburns). I could hear and feel the wind really well. No wonder various Native American groups thought the wind was a spirit.

Sarah and Andrew eating lunch on the very ledge of the cave. Crazy kids.

Besides hiking, I watched two movies this week that I haven't seen before. The first was "27 Dresses" which I had never wanted to see before, but my friend Kellie brought it with her for the weekend while she was visiting and talked me into it. My first thought after the movie was over was that the cover of the DVD really didn't do Katherine Heigl justice. And having only seen James Marsden in "X-Men" as Cyclops and in "Enchanted" as Prince Edward, the role of city slicker-newspaper writer was a very refreshing one to see him play. For those of you who don't know, Heigl plays a woman who has been a bridesmaid 27 times, and has issues with planning her sister's wedding to the man Heigl's character loves. As far as plot, it seemed like th only thing the movie had to fall back on was that Jane mothered everyone; the movie hit home the point the first time really well, so the second time felt weird. I wish there could have been two problems with Jane, or two different versions of the same problem that were more obviously two different versions. Her tendency to mother her sister and to always say yes to her friends didn't feel as unrelated as I wanted them to be. The movie did do a good job of setting up suspense and major plot points, though. Within the first five minutes I knew who the love interest would be, and when the car hydroplaned down the hill I knew exactly what was coming next. It was a nice kind of predictability. I would recommend this movie to chick flick lovers, the kind of people who love the kind of chick flick that has no other plot besides falling in love.

I also saw an older movie today called "The Court Jester", which was hilarious. If you like musicals, or old-fashioned movies, or medieval England and Robin Hood-ish tales, this is a movie you must see. Danny Kaye plays a carnival entertainer who joins the forest band of the Black Fox (the Robin Hood-ish figure) to help overthrow an unlawful king, and ends up going undercover as the court jester. This movie had more twists and turns than most modern movies; probably the closest a recent movie (that I've seen) has come to that many plot turns is "The Dark Knight", and that one only because it was three hours long. Or felt like it. Anyway, hilariously funny movie, especially if you like tongue-twisters. Highly recommended to everyone.

Why I Love to Read

So in Dr. McCuskey's class today, we talked about why it's good to read novels, which is a hard thing to discuss because the satisfaction that comes from reading a good book can't be quantified, and that's how our society does things (for more on this, visit an older post, The Director of USU Press). This is how Dr. McCuskey proved that it's good for us to read deep, difficult novels like Middlemarch:

Books like Middlemarch are deep and slow, and therefore the opposite of things like Twitter with its instant updates. According to some new research, the rapid-fire news updates like those on Twitter come too fast for the brain's moral compass to process properly, which can negatively affect a person's morality. So if Twitter is bad for you, then it's opposite--books like Middlemarch--must be good for you.

I love it. Life is beautiful (except when you have chest cold and cough--ARGH!).