The plague circulating and re-circulating Durham (most people I know have had it twice, wtf) has finally struck my lecturers. I feel bad for them, but also, WOOOO UNEXPECTED DAYS OFF. Sure, I'll be using it to do lots of Akkadian work, but I also got a lie-in. It was pretty sweet, I can tell you.

What's going on with me? I went to TT on Saturday, won Best Monster again, and we did medieval entertainment at the Hatfield Ball, which a) went far better and was better received than expected (one drunk guy, who I honestly was expecting to cause trouble, got REALLY EXCITED when he realized we were performing 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' and started yelling at everyone else "HEY, GUYS, SHUT UP! I WANNA HEAR THE STORY!") and b) would have been awesome even if not, because we were given a giant plate of all the leftover meat from the hog roast. HOG ROAST MEAT IS THE BEST IN THE WORLD.

Then yesterday, I didn't do anywhere near as much work as I should have done, and had Elvet Underground in the evening. It was absolutely chucking it down with rain - seriously, soaked jeans and wet socks by the time I got there - so we had a tiny tiny audience, mostly my friends. But it was a GOOD audience, and a really fun show. How many other shows can you play both a singing octopus ("JAZZ TENTACLES!") and Eve, who has become a Martian explorer and is easily turned on by quadratic equations? EXACTLY.

So, I'm off to work on Akkadian now. My life is pretty good right now... there's stuff I haven't even mentioned here. I will soon enough :D


PS: Oh, and not doing NaNoWriMo was SUCH a good call on my part. As much as I've envied everyone else doing it, I think my brain would actually have exploded.

So, I may actually be clambering to the top of the work heap again. This weekend, I just have to do two lots of Akkadian and various Greek exercises and reading for CRMR and start reading for my formative lit review. THIS IS MANAGEABLE. (eep.)

I have also finally finished the first drafts of my stories for the crossover exchange and sent them to be beta'd. Damn, that took long enough. Well, it took me long enough to figure out what the hell to write about. First idea? Too long and complicated. Second idea? FAR too grim, far too quickly, leik WOAH. Third idea, worked out fine. Phew.

Had an improv show last night as well, and that went amazingly, because our freshers are AWESOME. Also, it was for Amnesty International, so, you know, karma points for the rest of the year. And then there was pubbage and epic mucking about with Alistair and generally I love my friends and my life, d'awww.

I am also now the proud owner of Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus. Along with Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!, the Dhoom films, GI Joe and The Core, I have developed a genuine love of cheesy badness.

So, this weekend: tomorrow, adventure, Improv, Hatfield Ball; Sunday, Elvet Underground show, either performing or watching.

I'll probably be right back down to the bottom of the work heap by Monday.

Dear Classics Lecturers,

I know I'm not getting as much work done as I should. Please believe me when I say I AM working really, really hard, pretty much every spare moment I have. I've just had a distinct lack of spare moments lately. I do have a lot of social activities, like Improv, but normally I can work around them.

The problem is, over the past week, I have:

1. Just recovered from flu of the suspiciously swine variety,
2. Had to catch up with all the work I missed,
3. Had to call a doctor TWICE on my housemate who caught the flu off me, to check if we need to take him to hospital, and spent a whole night trying to get his temperature down,
4. Had the power go out in my house,
5. Had my mum come up to visit, and actually spent lots of time with her discussing...
6. ... my various personal dramas which I am most definitely not going to get into here, but are time-consuming, believe me.

Not to mention Akkadian continues to eat a large part of my brain every single week.

Just... I know I need to work harder. And I'm going to, I really am. Just... bear with me, for a little bit.

Much love for letting me delay real life for another year,

Katie xx

OK, I guess I learned my lesson. No million different social activities today - just improv comedy workshop in the afternoon, followed by the Raptor Bar Crawl, whiiich I'm still not sure what will happen on, but I guess since it's the FIRST Raptor Bar Crawl, I GET TO DECIDE. First step: find a toy dinosaur.

I had a couple of people try to get me to go on the adventure again, either monstering or charactering, but I decided last night (on my way with Beccy, Thorley and Alex to see As You Like It, which a friend of my family was in and got us free tickets for, and was AWESOME) that that would be a bad idea. For one thing, I'm still not fully better - this cough probably won't be going anywhere for another week at least - and running around in the woods in the cold/rain is not advisable. For another, bigger reason, I still have two chapters of Akkadian to complete by Tuesday, and it took me 3 hours yesterday to do the first one.

I don't quite know whether I love Akkadian or strongly dislike it (I think I'm incapable of hating things.) While I was in the depths of that chapter yesterday, trying to work out how one syllable could have so many different meanings, I was pretty damn frustrated, but now that I've (sort of) got the hang of it? It's... kind of fun. I mean, translating directly from the cuneiform is like a PUZZLE. You have to identify all the symbols and write out the syllables represent, then figure out which syllables are phonetic and which are Sumerograms, and finally compact them all together into words, and THEN you translate it! Yeah, I'm back to loving it for now. Ask again once I've done chapter two.

So I hopefully get at least one more chapter done, then head off to improv and the bar crawl, and OH WAIT then I'm going round Thorley's to watch horror movies and write the Halloween Night Bash, probably ending in a VERY late night. So much for a quiet day.

Classes are beginning properly. I got so much reading material for one seminar, to be read over the next fortnight, it was almost as thick as the pad of paper I brought for notes - and that's a class I'm AUDITING.

Also just got my first look at Akkadian. It's terrifying. It's a bunch of lines and triangles. Being able to read and write in it will be the coolest thing in the world, but learning it? Over 4 2-hour sessions? ACK.

So, of course, just as work kicks in, it makes sense for me to get my prompts for the xover_exchange.

!!!!!!!!! THEY ARE SO AWESOME. I WANT TO WRITE THEM ALL. Am currently torn between doing a whole bunch of separate stories, or trying to tie them all together in an incredibly complicated web which would probably require diagrams to explain the plot continuum and have all these fandoms collide.

Oh, and it's our Vary Tales comeback show in Durham tonight. EEP.

(in other news, I've just finished reading the entire archive of Girl Genius. If you haven't read it, DO.)

If you ever wondered what a Bond film would look like made by students - well, here it is.



AWESOME, NO. Unfortunately, we haven't filmed half the scenes, and the guy playing Bond (or Banner, as he's known in this) didn't get back into the university this year, sooooo either we film it whatever weekends he can come up, or Bond undergoes dramatic facial reconstruction surgery.

Also, I'm making a profound effort not to blog about every TV show I watch this year - which has been especially difficult with How I Met Your Mother and Supernatural, both of which are bringing their A-game this season - but oddly enough it's been MOST difficult with Merlin of all shows! It's just being AWESOME! AND NEXT WEEK LOOKS SO MUCH FUN OMG.



PS: Oh, and my classes for next year are all set - I'm doing both Akkadian AND Ancient Greek for beginners, since my lecturer believed I could manage them without going insane, and Preservation & Transmission of Information in the Ancient World. I'm also doing the Classical Research training module and my dissertation, of course, and auditing a whole bunch for funsies.

Goodbye social life.

Update in the Case of the Vanishing Classicist - one of our lecturers, who usually tells us anything and everything? Says she is NOT ALLOWED to talk about this. Hmmmm. Conspiracy? Clearly alcohol-assisted questioning is necessary at the Classics drinks on Tuesday. I will be wearing shoes I can run away in and my hair up in such a way it will fall down at the first sign of a fight scene. Jackie, you and Tanja REALLY have to get that airship ready, or you'll be sorry when the ninjas get me.

Lala, other stuff. Tried to publicise Improv at the station to newly-arriving freshers, realized there were hardly any of them and societies weren't really on their minds right then. So I went off to the first sword practice of the term and took Alistair and Tim with me, and a fun painful time was had by all.

Just got my new campus card with my new college and new short haircut on it. The camera was set so low I look like a giant. It's quite scary, really.

Need to reshuffle module choices as I have learned that 'Preservation & Transmission of Knowledge in the Ancient World' is apparently pretty boring. Will need to find a diplomatic way of saying "I DON'T WANT TO DO BORING MODULES" by tomorrow as an excuse.

Plan to go to Newcastle today for shoppings and possibly seeing (500) Days of Summer. Also tomorrow, other than module selection, is Freshers Fair, which is also on Wednesday, along with Matriculation (all over again) and, oh yes, the first Improv show of the term, which, honestly, I'm scared is going to suck, because we are all out of practice and three of our best guys have left. ACK.

But hey, we're being paid £150 in advance. WIN.

Life, life, busy busy life.

So... one of the professors in my department? Has just upped and left. Like, practically no warning, he was all set to teach modules and supervise dissertations this year, but then he just turned around and announced, "I'm leaving!" and DID SO. He hardly took any stuff with him, just important stuff, and boom, gone.

I don't know many details, having only heard this from a friend of mine on the street, but the Classics department is apparently scrambling around in a panic going "OMGWTF HALF THE DEPARTMENT ARE ON LEAVE ALREADY NOW WHAT." I feel bad for them, and bad for the professor, because he was probably in a bad place to make such a snap decision, but...

That big damn adventure story I was writing this summer? BEGINS PRETTY MUCH EXACTLY LIKE THIS. The heroine's old university professor just ups and leaves the Babylon excavations, with no warning, leaving everyone going, "Bwuh??" And she goes to investigate and gets embroiled in it all and there are conspiracies and pirates and robots and adventure archaeology and airships and the Russian Mafia and it's basically what I DREAM my life will be like one day.

So I am torn between feeling bad and thinking, "HOLY CRAP ADVENTURE TIME."

Term hasn't even started yet and I'm already making my first dumb work-related decision.

I've gone from vaguely considering to deciding I really DO want to do the 'Warrior Poets in Heroic Societies' module... even though the professor says I really should have some knowledge of Old Norse for it, and will probably have to audit those classes as well in the winter term just to pick it up. He's happy for me to take it, just warns it's going to be a lot of hard work.

Does this intimidate me? Hell yes. Does it put me off? No, it makes me want to do it MORE. EXTRA WORK WOOOOOOO.

Bets on how long it is till my first 'OMG SO MUCH WOOOOORK' entry?

Wow, I do an epic 3-part 12,000 word post about Edinburgh and then disappear. My summer holidays are THAT awesome and erratic.

OK, so now I'm in Americaland with Jackie! We're moving back and forth between her parents' house in Portland (where there's stuff to do) and her own apartment in Corvallis (where we sit in playing Mario Party and eating taquitos) and generally are attempting to have an awesome time on a budget. It's working so far! Today we're going to do underground glow-in-the-dark pirate mini-golf (yes, I DO have to call it by its full name every time) and hopefully meeting up with ibroketuesday, GLEE.

Also getting started looking at modules for my MA next year. It's actually all VERY EXCITING. Right now, I'm thinking of doing Akkadian, Preservation & Transmission of Knowledge in the Near East, and this module called Warrior Poets in Heroic Societies from the English department, along with my dissertation and the research methods module. Yay!

OK time for shower.

I AM ALL GRADUATED. I NOW HAVE 'BA (HONS) DUNELM' AFTER MY NAME.

Graduation itself was pretty awesome. I'm not really used to formal clothes yet though - I had to run back to the house to put on a camisole under my shirt, because it kept popping open, and I didn't exactly want to be remembered as The Girl Who Flashed Bill Bryson. And the gowns we had to wear were really warm - it was a generally hot and humid day, which wasn't fun - and most of the time waiting to go into the cathedral was spent adjusting them, trying to make them hang right. I saw a marshall going up to a guy fiddling with his and telling him he was wearing his hood like a girl. He was not happy.

In the ceremony, I ended up on camera far more often than I would have liked - not as much as poor Gethin from Improv though, he ended up being filmed as an exemplary Durham Wave and as first in line - but the cathedral was nice and cool. The speeches were good, especially Bill Bryson's, though when I finally got called up to shake his hand I was less savouring the moment and more thinking "DO NOT TRIP OVER DO NOT TRIP OVER DO NOT TRIP OVER."

After the ceremony, I went and got photos done and collected my 'Class of 2009' pin, and chatted to various friends and finally met their parents. We headed off when we heard thunder, but didn't quite make it back to the hotel before the heavens opened and it started absolutely TIPPING it down. I was fine walking in heavy rain - in fact, I love heavy rain, and especially after the humidity, it was a relief - but my mum insisted we wait under an overhang by the cinema for it to stop before going the rest of the way.

After FINALLY getting home, I grabbed a few friends who were in the middle of moving to come have dinner with us that night, and there was delicious food and awesome (mostly parental appropriate) conversation.

And now I am home and have a chocolate student lollipop for later. I think it's Durham's way of saying "Don't worry if you're not feeling mature yet, that's not a required part of graduation."

Short story: I got a 2:1! I get to do my MA!

( Long story... )

After three years, many social events, and a large amount of time puzzling over what to write on my yearbook profile, I finally, FINALLY, have my defining memory of Grey College, the one that'll stay with me in years to come.

This morning, at 4am - when the sun was just rising, the air was still cool from the night's rain, and the cathedral was wrapped in mist - Sophie and I went out of the JCR, in ball dresses, to find pretty much the entirety of the college on the lawn, singing 'Wonderwall' in spirited drunken unison. Some were standing on walls, some on picnic tables, some on the grass with their arms round each others' shoulders. There was just this incredible feeling of togetherness and community. Drunken, drunken community.

That's not the defining memory, though. The defining memory is when they then switched to 'Working 9 to 5' and about ten guys leaped up onto the wall and started dancing.

( But I'm getting ahead of myself. )

I AM DONE WITH EXAMS. THANK THE SWEET LORD JEEBUS.

This last one was way better than I'd been expecting. The first translation was great, I pretty much remembered the whole thing in English, and the second one was good up till a list of obscure stuff at the end, where I just used the Latin terms placed around the English verbs to show I understood the grammar, so here's hoping I get reasonable marks anyway. Both commentaries were pretty good, though I get the feeling everyone else would have chosen those two as well, and as for the essay -

Well, I chose the one which I'd already done a presentation on, 'Death in Petronius', since I could basically remember all my points and the scholarship. BUT, afterwards, about half the class came up to me and thanked me for my presentation, because they'd basically used all the points in the essay. Sooo all my arguments and original insights are now replicated on about five different papers! I'm torn between feeling happy I've helped everyone and a bit miffed that something I worked so hard on is basically being used by so many people, and so won't look as original to the external examiner. Bitchy, I know, but hey, I'm only human.

BUT NOW THEY ARE OVER, AND I CAN BASICALLY DO **NOTHING**. HUZZAH.

Well... that one's done.

I'm not quite sure how it went? I mean, it was Interpreting Greek Tragedy Today, which is kind of a vague subject, so I was never quite sure how to assess if I was doing well in it. I showed knowledge of the plays and multiple critical perspectives in the gobbets, and in the essay, when we only had to mention two of the plays and one critical perspective, I brought up all three and discussed two critical perspectives. While I could have brought in more, I talked about those two in a lot of detail, and even named some scholars and their theories, which... is good, on paper, but it still felt kinda bleeehhh while I was writing it.

And now my brain has completely died. Like, failing at making full sentences. Me no speak good, basically. Typing is still all right, because I can go back and delete and reword stuff, but... bleeehhhh. BLEEEEHHHHHH.

This is very bad timing considering I still have one of my hardest exams first thing tomorrow morning, and was kinda counting on tonight for some last minute revision. LAME.

Two down! Today was Roman Religion, and while I wasn't brilliantly prepared, I was very lucky with the questions I got - two of the gobbets and one of the essays were on subjects I knew pretty well and knew different scholarly arguments for. Another gobbet, I didn't know all that well, but it was obscure enough that I was pretty sure hardly anyone else would choose to comment on that one, so I'd look good for having a go at least.

Then after I went and got falafel, and the guys there gave me a cookie!

5 days now till my next exam. I'm going to see Star Trek again tomorrow night, and I'm taking Saturday off since it's my birthday, then they kick in again next Tuesday, with Greek Tragedy and then Petronius on Wednesday. THEN I'M DONE.

Cannot freaking wait.

One exam down! Three to go. It went pretty well - the seen translations were ones I knew pretty well and could remember in English, the commentaries were poems I could find enough things to talk about, and the essay, on whether Horace had a coherent philosophy in his poetry, I'd talked about in a summative essay for another module, and I could still remember the viewpoints of various scholars for that, so it looked like I was really well-read in an obscure area of secondary literature. WIN.

Unfortunately I just looked up a translation of the unseen, aaaaand I got the complete wrong end of the stick (I guessed there was something going on with wind!) but hopefully I'll have done well enough in the other sections to make up for it. I also let a bit of sarcasm slip out in my discussion of Horace's poems addressed to various friends reminding of them of how they'd die soon and how they couldn't enjoy life's pleasures after they were dead, '... which I'm sure they appreciated.'

Afterwards I went and had burger and curly fries at the pub with some of the others in the class, then came home and watched an episode of Being Human (just got the DVD!), read Order of the Stick and napped on my desk.

I probably should have started revising for my Roman Religion exam on Wednesday, but... eh.

Essay is not going well. I'm about 600/1500 words in but I'm still not FEELING it. Every sentence feels like an effort. I love the conclusion I ultimately make, and I feel like it'll be original, but still... it's being a bitch to write.

And I keep getting distracted because - do you know the song '99 Problems' by Jay-Z? Since studying Propp and this theories of narrative function, and the mythemes that make up every song, I can't get this out of my head:

"If you're having plot troubles I feel bad for you son,
I got 31 functions but this story ain't one!
You got the opening with an Absentation,
the Interdiction then its Violation..."

Alternative geeky scholarly rap songs do NOT get me extra credit. *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk*

I'd just had two very busy days and I have Wednesdays off, I decided to let myself have a lie in today.

Unexpected side-effects:
- I accidentally slept till noon. I didn't realise I was that tired.
- I slept awkwardly on my neck and now can't turn to look very far to the right.
- I went to sleep on hair still damp from the rain, so now I have the most epic bedhead ever.

I regret nothing. I got sleep.



ETA: Screw YOU, universe, I've still gotten stuff done. Roman Religion essay is done (and pretty OK), Horace essay is currently just over 2000 words (limit is 3000-4000) and the rest is planned, and I'm loving how it's going - I've already argued two scholars are wrong and presented my opinions - and I keep coming up with more ideas for my last essay, on Trojan Women, which are kinda making me squee.

Sigh. Of COURSE I'd only figure out how to work efficiently and have fun writing essays when I was at the end of my final year.

Neck still hurts, though. And hair hasn't calmed down yet.

Since it's St George's Day (and I'm meeting up with Beccy later for English food-eating and Sharpe-watching and general Britishness) I tried to think of a very English icon to use. I toyed with one of my Doctor Who ones - probably one of the British-est shows out there, and third on the list of English-est things we could watch, after Hornblower and before Love Actually - but settled on this one for general implied themes of monarchy, literature and AWESOMENESS.

Anyway.

I may be done with one of my essays. I mean, it's 2000 words of semi-coherent argument on what was a wishy-washy topic in the first place (the different functions of magic and religion in Roman society, should've been more interesting than it was), and while it IS summative, it's only 30%, while my other two summatives are 50% and 70%. The only reason I did this one first was it's due in first, and I've already half-plotted out the other two. I probably could make it a bit better, but I'm going to spend some time on the other two first. So, yay?

Definite yay is that I just bought a metric fuckton of soup from Tescos, and ALSO, bacon. As in, a pre-cooked joint rather than slices. The sort of delicious which you mean to get out of the packet and put on a plate, but it somehow gets lost in your mouth en route. YAY FOOD.

OH MAN. I have to take Thunderbirds tonight as well. I've been procrastalginating watching that with MattMatt, and it's one of those great shows which is actually just as good rewatching as you remembered from when you were a kid. Though we do have a little too much fun looking for signs that Virgil is gay and John is on the brink of a breakdown.

Also, Gordon was a bit rubbish. We never knew.