This is going to be a pretty short entry, since I’m so busy
with so many things right now. My English class has moved on from Wordsworth to
Keats, and on Wednesday my professor is giving us the prompt for the first paper.
I’m pretty nervous because I just don’t feel ready to go into paper writing
mode. However, I am very glad that I’ll get to write a paper on just a single,
relatively short poem, because last term was characterized by six-page papers
on King Lear and Paradise Lost. There’s just so much to include. It’s incredibly
hard to stay within the page limit. It’ll be much more satisfying, I think, to
focus on just a few lines of a really rich and concise poem than trying to
follow a theme throughout thousands of lines of verse. I’m also hoping that I
can write on Wordsworth and not Keats, because so far what we’ve read of Keats
has not resonated with me as deeply as “Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern
Abbey” or “Ode: Intimations of Immortality.” Anyway, the thing is that the poetry
paper is going to be due on the same day as the paper for my other English class,
which is probably going to be on More’s Utopia.
So the next two weekends are going to be dedicated to re-reading, picking out
passages, doing close readings, outlining, and finally constructing each paper.
And on top of all the usual homework!
In between poems, I did manage to include a little bit of a
social life last weekend. One of the Akin RAs (or Resident Advisors), Andrea, organized
a hall-wide photography session and tea/coffee party, which was a lot of fun.
On Sunday night, my friends and I took the Pioneer Express bus
downtown to get pho. But when we arrived at the restaurant, we saw to our
horror that it was closed for the Super Bowl. I was really bummed, because I’ve
never tried pho before and was looking forward to going. But we decided to make
the best of it and go to Chipotle, which was less delicious, but still pretty good.
We also watched the second Rurouni Kenshin movie, which was awesome, and lots of excited screaming happened, and then I
went to go play Ninja (see my previous post about these two things).
So, all in all, things are busy, but pretty good! If you
have any questions, email me at jessicakostka@lclark.edu.
Best,
Jess