Rainy days in cozy cafes

Today is another rainy, grey Saturday, the kind made for sitting in cozy coffee shops listening to melancholy acoustic music and working on homework (or blogs) while a friend (in this case, Keo) sits across from you doing her own work (reading a biology textbook). The coffee shop we’re in is a new find for me—it’s called Cahoots and is decorated in all warm colors—the walls are red, the tables orange, and the window sills are a sunshiney yellow. I’m not sure how I’d feel about it on a hot day, but today it just feels warm and welcoming, like wrapping yourself in a Persian carpet.

[Note: I'm sorry this is being posted so late--I finished it much earlier in the day, but then I lingered at the cafe until quite late, working on reading for class and eating sweet corn and salmon chowder with the darkening blue of the sky highlighted against the rich red of the cafe walls.

It was pretty lovely, even if my book did almost make me start crying in public...]

After reading my blog last week, Grandma asked if I was feeling a little down—she said the tone of it was more subdued than it has been previously. I have been feeling kind of sad since I’ve gotten back—somehow this year I’m feeling kind of detached and a little lost. I can’t quite pinpoint why—I’ve had some lovely times with friends, two care packages and a card in the last two weeks, and Macalester continues to be green and lovely—but I feel completely unmotivated and rather melancholy.  Today’s weather rather aptly fits my mood as of late, actually.

Part of it, I think, is that I’m not really enjoying my classes. Part might be that my friends are mostly living off-campus and are therefor a little harder to connect with (and it’s definitely an adjustment no longer sharing a room with one of my best friends). Maybe I’m just having my senior slump a little early. Whatever it is has not been particularly helped by the cold I’ve had for the last two weeks (when will it ever leave??).

It seems to be fading a bit (the melancholy, not the cold…although that, too) as time passes, so maybe by the time I write next I’ll be back to my old absurdly-bubbly writing self.

Anyway, on to actual news!

First, pictures of my room!! I finally just took them on a nice day and then haven’t’ really had time to post them until now. But here they are!

 The common room! The door on the left is Katrina and Hannah's door, the sideways-y-middle one is our coat closet/pantry/miscellaneous cupboard and the main one is the door out into the rest of the hallway. If you look very carefully at the right of the picture, you may be able to see the doorway into our bathroom.

 This is the other side of the room. The desk here is the same as the desk in the other picture, to give you some sense of the space. You may be able to tell, from the laptop and familiar blanket and pillow on the couch, that I spend a lot of my time stretched out on the little couch, tea cup on the windowsill beside me.

My door's decorations, and some of our room decorations. Hannah wanted to group our photographs around a thematic word, so she picked some words and then we sorted the photos we'd printed by category.

  

The back of my door (from inside my room) with the edge of my poetry wall, my insane whiteboard of reminders, and my ever-growing and beloved scarf collection.

 My bed,decorations, poetry wall, and window.

 My desk.

The last little bit of my room. You can see the edge of my door (now open) on the left side, and behind the door is another door--the door to my closet.

 

(found on the door into my dorm building--I especially appreciate that someone was detail-oriented and sassy enough to not only give our magnetic mascot a protest sign, but to title his books "Global Citizenship" and "Hegemony")

Secondly, as I said, classes have not been as awesome as I could have hoped. Postcolonial Theory is getting better—I’m starting to figure out how to engage with the texts in the ways the professor expects, and we’re reading fascinating works. Our first paper is coming up and—because I am clearly a freak—I’m excited for that. 

 (A picture taken from the building I have my postcolonial theory class in--we have it on the fourth floor, and walking up all those stairs is always more exhausting than it should be. But the view is nice!)

The feminist visual culture class with Joanna is still driving me a little crazy, but we’re starting to look at works I haven’t seen before, which makes for a major difference.  Joanna still seems to expect very specific answers to all her discussion questions, which I find a bit stifling.

Texts and Power has changed from more than just a little too easy to INCREDIBLY DULL. The works we’ve been reading have been very engaging—excerpts from Marx, Hegel, and Althusser—but the class itself? UGH. He wants us to just parrot back to him whatever the author has said, without really engaging the work beyond some sort of baseline understanding. I absolutely hate being asked to just repeat what we’ve read (it makes me feel exceedingly uninteresting and unintelligent), so I’ve been far too quiet in the class compared to my usual standards of participation.

On Thursday, the class got into this very excited conversation about the ramifications of Althusser’s theories on ideal societies—including those suggested by writers like Marx—and everyone was engaged to an unprecedented extent (except for the kid asleep in the corner, but who cares about him) and we were coming to some great conclusions when the professor CUT US OFF. !!! He told us we’d gotten too off-topic (because we were discussing the text in a slightly wider context than the actual words on the page??) and made us do this silly exercise involving the front page of the NYT. Within minutes, the classroom atmosphere had descended to its usual stupor. It was so tragic. Not only was this frustrating for me as a member of the class, but it also seems to me like pretty bad teaching. If you have a class that you specifically define as ‘discussion-based’, shouldn’t you let a discussion happen, as long as it even tangentially relates to the topic?? I mean, if we’d been heatedly discussing cows, or the deforestation of Brazil, okay, but WE WERE DISUCSSING ALTHUSSER!!

Anyway, that class is by far my least favorite. The other problem with it is that the professor has mentioned multiple times that he doesn’t want us bringing in knowledge of cultural or critical theory that we haven’t yet covered in the class. For me, this is like trying to turn off a massive piece of my brain, since not only did I take a heavily cultural-studies-based class last semester (British Youth Subcultures), but I’m taking two other critical theory classes this semester. The ideas of postcolonial theory and feminist theory that I learn there don’t just disappear when I walk into Texts and Power, and I don’t know how not to think about our concepts using those frameworks. I obviously need to go talk to the professor in office hours, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.

 (random picture to break up the monotony and lighten the mood--a 'found' poster I found all over campus this week...)

YA creative writing continues to be a constant joy. The work for it is challenging and extremely fun, Megan is wonderful and warm, and the classroom community is shaping into a lovely group of friends. Thursday before last, Megan had another commitment (she has a few throughout the semester, since she was called to teach this class very last minute), so she sent us on a field trip to the only YA bookstore in the Twin Cities—an adorably tiny place called Addendum Books. It’s owned by a pair of friends, one of whom is not only a Mac alum, but also apparently the daughter of Professor Warde (?!?). She was there to talk to our class—and to offer us a 20% discount on any books we bought. Which seems like a nice thing to do, but is basically akin to the role of the snake in the Garden of Eden. HOW COULD WE RESIST?? Most of us came home with at least a book or two (myself included).

This last Thursday, she decided that we all needed a little bit of a break—we’ve been reading extremely dark books for class, everyone is tired, and there’s this dumb cold gong around—so she had us play a writing game. We all wrote a story for about thirty seconds and then folded over the paper and passed it on. Each time we got a new piece of paper, we had to continue our story at the place we’d left off on the last piece of paper. Then she read a couple of them to us and saved the rest for when we need pick-me-ups during the rest of the semester. Then we went to the children’s section of the Mac library, where we were instructed to choose two picture books and write detailed plot summaries for a YA version of the plot. Not only was this very fun, but it was actually a really good writing exercise as well. It made us really think about the differences between plots for children and young adults (something I’m very interested) and the ways those plots can be aged for a new audience.

So…classes. Not my favorite semester, as of yet, but still exciting in its own ways. In personal life things, I’m still doing well. I have meals with friends pretty frequently and Charmaine and I have managed to spend lots of time together.  The movie I mentioned heading off to last time was Man of Steel (the new Superman remake), which was hilarious and bad and therefore kind of great. By the end of it, Charmaine and I were extremely giddy, which is probably why we found the concept of a superman seahorse so hilarious (there were actual reasons based in the movie, I swear, but I doubt they’d be funny when explained). Anyway, the next day I made her a drawing that I’m pretty proud of:

This weekend we went to see Iron Man 3, which was bad in a not-funny way. There were definitely good parts, but for some reason the writers also made the choice to give the main character what was clearly un-diagnosed PTSD and then NOT TAKE IT SERIOUSLY. I’m not even joking—every time he had a panic attack, it was framed as comic, and the one time he had a nightmare in which he accidentally scared his girlfriend (WHILE UNCONSCIOUS) (without hurting her!!), her only reaction was anger at him. Anyway, it was a pretty annoying experience, but I also got to hang out with Charmaine and eat free brownies and popcorn, so that was a plus (and they had berries as garnish, so I stole two raspberries and a blackberry. fruit-related highlight of my week.).

I also got to hang out with her lots last weekend. Friday we talked and had tea and played Bananagrams

 (I swear we were having more fun than it looks like...)

and then on Saturday she studied in my room, we went to her house (the Chinese house) to cook a lovely (if eclectic) dinner,

(from top to bottom: lightly fried shrimp with lime, avocado and tomato salad with lemon juice and olive oil, and a fried egg)

and then went back to my room to watch Megamind with Katrina and swoon over the adorability of one of the main characters:

(The internet thinks he looks like John Green. The internet is not wrong.)

It was very lovely. We also went and got cheese shop sandwiches for dinner one evening—one was prosciutto and fig-black-tea jam with ricotta and the other had some mystery cheese with spring in the name that was very lovely and ginger-pear preserves and arugula. We shared them, so I got half of each. Mmmm…

I think that’s all that’s going on in my life at this point—it hasn’t been a very eventful year so far.

I love you all, and I’ll be back in two weeks! <3      

 

(I stole some roses from the many rose bushes we have on campus and put them in a tea cup on my windowsill.)

Guess who's back?

HELLO ALL!

So, it’s been forever since I’ve written, mostly because it was finals week and then it was immediately after finals week and I was all burnt out and then it was summer and I didn’t really feel like I had much that was interesting to say. But I’m back at school now and I’ll try to get back to my old schedule of every other week.

First, to set the scene: I’m in my room, with the window open and a cup of tea on the sill and the rain falling lightly into the evening outside, hanging out with Charmaine and Katrina (one of my roommates) and a friend of hers, most of us having been here all day.  In a few hours, we’re going to go watch Man Of Steel (new Superman adaptation) in the Campus Center.

It’s been a lovely, lazy sort of Saturday—a perfect kind of day to recharge. Tomorrow will be lots of work, but it’s definitely worth it.

So, onwards to my life so far as a junior (I’M HALFWAY DONE WITH COLLEGE WHEN ON EARTH DID THAT HAPPEN??):

1. Room

I’m living in yet another building this year, on the second floor (I’ve been moving down a floor each year—does this mean I have to live on the first floor next year?). I’m in a suite, so there’s a common room with a bathroom, then two bedrooms off of that, a double and a single. I’m in the single and Hannah and Katrina are in the double. We’ve finally gotten everything decorated to our satisfaction, so it’s starting to look very lived-in and homey. I meant to take pictures, but I kept waiting for the light to be good today and it never got un-cloudy (and now it’s nighttime), so I’ll have to post them another day.

We’ve had some problems getting used to living with people we aren’t best friends with—Katrina has spent a lot of her time elsewhere on campus and Hannah and I have been a bit lonely, now that we’re not living with our people.  But we talked it out a bit and planned ways to make it better. We watched The Princess Bride last night in a giant, sprawling group with vast quantities of popcorn and had an absolutely lovely time. We’re going to try to do things like that—game nights, movie nights, teas—at least once a week so that we all feel more connected.

2. Classes

Okay, so new classes!! Always equally exciting and insane.

My first class is Postcolonial Theory (MWF 1:10-2:10). I love my professor, he’s very absurd and adorkable and charming. It turns out this class is cross-listed with International Studies, so I was concerned it wouldn’t really feel Englishy, but we’ve been studying the prose of what we’ve read in a very literary way, so that’s fantastic. And we only have one reading a week (usually a book, but still), so we really get to focus on that one thing. Also! He has us do a presentation on an additional book of our choosing, so I found a book about postcolonial art and art history in India that looks absolutely fascinating. I’m excited to read it!

Second is Gender, Sexualities, and Feminist Visual Culture (MW 2:20-3:50), which is with Joanna (who taught Art of the West II last semester and who is one of my advisors). I’ve really liked the readings so far, but I haven’t been as thrilled in-class. I feel like Joanna kind of has an agenda with this class, so she doesn’t really want us to interpret articles differently than she has (and I think sometimes she’s wrong in her interpretation!). When she isn’t talking feminist theory, she’s trying to give an overview of feminist art in history, which ends up being pretty repetitive for me. And, worst of all, she’s decided that I’m a student she can call on when no one has their hand up, but who she’ll ignore when lots of people have something to say. Which makes sense from a pedagogical perspective, but sucks as a student.

Third is Texts and Power (TR 1:20-2:50), which is fine. I think it’s going to be too easy for me, but that’s not terrible. Our professor clearly expects us to have no grounding in theoretical thought at all—and for us all to be freshman. But still, even if all I get out of this class is a space in which I am expected to read all these foundational texts in the field, that’s still pretty valuable.

And last, but ABSOLUTELY not least, is YA Creative Writing (TR 3:00-4:30). As I think most of you know, I was really skeptical going into this class, not least because of a last-minute professor change. I had signed up to take the class with a former Mac history professor turned published YA author, but she bowed out at the last minute and the professor was replaced. I was concerned that the person they’d picked was only an author, which I didn’t think would make her a very good teacher. Plus, I find creative classes far more intimidating than academic ones—not only does criticism of creative work hit closer to home, but doing well always feels like a more precarious concept.

ANYWAY. I was so skeptical for this class, but I LOVE IT. My professor—Megan—is not only completely warm and approachable and lovely, but she’s also done just about everything. She’s been a publisher, agent, editor, author, and now teaches regularly at Hamline (another school nearby), so she definitely knows what she’s doing. And the idea of a professor who’s like a friend doesn’t actually sound good necessarily, but she’s like that in the best possible way. I love her class so much, and always leave it feeling re-charged and happy. She has us turn in a short craft-analysis paper each week on the YA book we’ve read and then five pages of creative writing (a story, part of a story, writing exercises, whatever). Both have been challenging and exciting in equal measure. Anywho, this class is fantastic (even if next week’s book is so far VERY STRANGE).

3, Life in General

It’s weird and good to be back, and more exhausting than I’d expected. Somehow this semester, I’m more overwhelmed by all the people—being surrounded by people who you sort of know is more exhausting than being around strangers, and meeting/trying to remember the names of more than 100 people in a week is completely draining. But I’ve also made sure to have one-on-one dinners/teas/lunches with all of my friends, breakfast with Charmaine pretty often (we used to go to breakfast with each other at least four or five times a week), and we had a big Doty 4 reunion tea last weekend that was absolutely lovely.  So it’s been good, but I’ve also just had some trouble re-adjusting. And not just socially, but academically—I feel like my brain has stagnated, and I have to get it up and running again.

Anyway, I’ll try to write more in two weeks—I’m off to a movie!

Love you all!

(We took a picture of the tea reunion to send to one of the other Doty 4 girls, who's currently doing a study abroad program in Denmark.)

P.S. I just learned that defenestrate means 'throw out the window,' which I'm thrilled about for a wide variety of reasons. 1: There's a word that means 'throw out the window.' FANTASTIC! 2. Fenêtre. OH MY GOODNESS!