This has been a very good week for me. Tuesday morning I found out that I was accepted to the UMass graduate program. That made me very happy. Like singing and dancing and jumping for joy happy. Then the very next day I got an email saying Phi Beta Kappa is offering me membership. For those that don't know Phi Beta Kappa is the most prestigious honors society in the country and it looks damn good on a resume. I think it significant to point out that Monday night I was driving home and saw a shooting star and wished that I got into grad school. And lo and behold it came true. Now the list had to have been finalized before that moment and one can claim wishing on meteorites is folly, but I think believing you can at least occasionally command cosmic forces to do your bidding is good for your self-esteem, which actually does get you further in life. Regardless of the mystical powers of space rock, knowing I got into grad school has taken a weight of uncertainty off my shoulders. Now when people ask what my plans are after graduation I don't have to preface it with "Hopefully". Plus having certainty in my future plans effectively answers the question I ask regarding my current class load, "What's the point?" I'm now newly motivated and return to my monumental amount of homework with renewed vigor.
P.S. I rock.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Döden!
The Seventh Seal with Max von Sydow and Bengt Eckerot. I can definitely see how this became such a classic. I've never seen a movie quite like it, which is definitely worth something. The guy at the Loft explained that the film became the iconic disturbing art film and whenever you saw movie poster with Death you'd know it wasn't a theater where you'd see a John Wayne film. One thing I noticed in myself while watching it was the fact that I've been so immersed in Hollywood fiction that I had to will myself to accept that a movie in which the protagonists are pursued by Death himself would eventually die by the end. Also, I wonder how much our society's views on death, the afterlife and the need for there to be a God was influenced by the Plague killing two-thirds of Europe.
I'm also rather happy that my Swedish has improved enough to spot the shoddy translations of the subtitles. Then again, it's Swedish from the 50s...
I'm also rather happy that my Swedish has improved enough to spot the shoddy translations of the subtitles. Then again, it's Swedish from the 50s...
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Classes so far
My final semester at the U of A is shaping up to be the most challenging one yet. That's not such a surprise considering that I have to take 18 credits, just like last semester, in order to graduate in May, but this one looks like it will be even more demanding than the last one. Each and every class is reading intensive and a fair amount of writing is heaped in there as well. The tactic among all my professors seems to be to assign a massive amount of reading right at the very beginning of the semester, then reduce it to a more reasonable load. I'm guessing this is to kill off the free loaders right away, but it also makes life a living hell for the people who are committed. The combined number of pages I had assigned at the very beginning of the semester was around 460. And that's not even counting the Swedish book I have to read. It's entertaining translating it for a little while—when the tension starts building every word you don't understand becomes a cliffhanger—but soon you get tired of having to look up every other word. Thankfully things have already smoothed out a lot and I can make it to about every tenth word now without having to look it up.
The classes themselves are, for the most part pretty good. "The History of Modern Britain" is actually rather interesting. It's really just a long tale of military victories, political cunning and exploration, interspersed with insights into their laws and traditions that seem almost alien. My other non-anthropology class is "Love, Decay and Madness in Vienna" and is really, really good. It's cultural history so while there's some dry historical context we have to read through, the meat of the class are poetry, prose and plays. The professor is perhaps the most professorly professor I have ever had. Bespectacled with slightly messy white hair and a goatee, he speaks with a deep resonating voice and a cadence not unlike Donald Sutherland. His use of German pronunciation when talking about authors and concepts belies no trace of conceitedness but speaks to his ability with and comprehension of the German language.
My first anthropology class, "Culture and the Individual" is taught by the same eccentric, enthusiastic professor that taught my very first cultural anthro class. A little more confident than he was three years ago, he teaches how the many ways identity is seen in different culutes and how the modern Western view was shaped through time. He's a fun guy, even though he completely spoiled Memento before I ever had a chance to see it.
My other anthro class, "Cultural Astronomy" is my least favorite in nearly every way. The mounds of readings that are utterly pointless (one reading's hypothesis was essentially "We expect to find only A or only B. But it might be a little of both. Or neither." and whose conclusion was "Further research is required.") which we then have to discuss in class. Since the readings don't really assert any opinions and the only way we could discuss their findings is if we actually had firsthand knowledge of the archaeological sites the discussions mainly involve us silently looking down trying to avoid having to answer the ridiculously specific questions offered by the discussion leader. As if that wasn't bad enough, when we do have a reading that is worthy of discussion the people who chime in give the most stereotypical college drivel. As I recall, very few of the students are anthro majors so I guess they really don't know any better, but I can only excuse them so much.
A typical discussion might go as follows:
A: "It seems to me this culture has a rather Cartesian, mechanistic cosmology. One that emphasizes the scientia over the mythos."
B: "But who are we to say what is or isn't mythology? I mean, all these definitions were all invented by rich white men (an attempt, I suspect, to ingratiate herself with our black, female teacher)"
C: "But if you think about it, isn't not having a definition just a definition in itself?"
It's rare that I get all three of my least favorite things to be said all said in one class. I'd smack each of them in the face if I could.
Well, here's hoping the good classes stay good and the bad one get better. And that my workload will not be the hellish nightmare I foresee it will be.
The classes themselves are, for the most part pretty good. "The History of Modern Britain" is actually rather interesting. It's really just a long tale of military victories, political cunning and exploration, interspersed with insights into their laws and traditions that seem almost alien. My other non-anthropology class is "Love, Decay and Madness in Vienna" and is really, really good. It's cultural history so while there's some dry historical context we have to read through, the meat of the class are poetry, prose and plays. The professor is perhaps the most professorly professor I have ever had. Bespectacled with slightly messy white hair and a goatee, he speaks with a deep resonating voice and a cadence not unlike Donald Sutherland. His use of German pronunciation when talking about authors and concepts belies no trace of conceitedness but speaks to his ability with and comprehension of the German language.
My first anthropology class, "Culture and the Individual" is taught by the same eccentric, enthusiastic professor that taught my very first cultural anthro class. A little more confident than he was three years ago, he teaches how the many ways identity is seen in different culutes and how the modern Western view was shaped through time. He's a fun guy, even though he completely spoiled Memento before I ever had a chance to see it.
My other anthro class, "Cultural Astronomy" is my least favorite in nearly every way. The mounds of readings that are utterly pointless (one reading's hypothesis was essentially "We expect to find only A or only B. But it might be a little of both. Or neither." and whose conclusion was "Further research is required.") which we then have to discuss in class. Since the readings don't really assert any opinions and the only way we could discuss their findings is if we actually had firsthand knowledge of the archaeological sites the discussions mainly involve us silently looking down trying to avoid having to answer the ridiculously specific questions offered by the discussion leader. As if that wasn't bad enough, when we do have a reading that is worthy of discussion the people who chime in give the most stereotypical college drivel. As I recall, very few of the students are anthro majors so I guess they really don't know any better, but I can only excuse them so much.
A typical discussion might go as follows:
A: "It seems to me this culture has a rather Cartesian, mechanistic cosmology. One that emphasizes the scientia over the mythos."
B: "But who are we to say what is or isn't mythology? I mean, all these definitions were all invented by rich white men (an attempt, I suspect, to ingratiate herself with our black, female teacher)"
C: "But if you think about it, isn't not having a definition just a definition in itself?"
It's rare that I get all three of my least favorite things to be said all said in one class. I'd smack each of them in the face if I could.
Well, here's hoping the good classes stay good and the bad one get better. And that my workload will not be the hellish nightmare I foresee it will be.
Monday, February 04, 2008
Språk
Swedish is a fun language. Aside from the fact that I can curse at people in a normal speaking voice and not a soul will understand me, there are all sorts of weird words and phrases that give the language a unique flavor. Take the word for jealousy, avundsjucka, it literally means "envy sick". It seems to suggest that the Swedes regard jealousy/envy (curiously, the Swedes don't seem to make a distinction between the two terms) as a sickness, something which afflicts someone, rather than a personality trait. I rather like that implicit interpretation, just like the symptoms of the common cold are nothing permanent, jealousy is something that infects us but can be cured.
I recently learned from my Swedish class there are two ways to say "will". There's the regular ska, which my tutor says denotes roughly an 80% certainty, and kommer att, which denotes a 90-95% certainty. So for a while when I wanted to say "I will fly to Sweden" I would have said "Jag ska flygga till Sverige" but now that I've bought the tickets, I'd say "Jag kommer flygga att till Sverige". The Swedes apparently can hear a situational difference between the two and it would sound weird to them to use the wrong one.
One of the eternally confusing things about Swedish (and many Germanic languages, for that matter) is their insistence upon combining words together while we would simply have a phrase. There wouldn't be a problem with this except for the fact that a lot of their words are combinations of other words already. So when you come across one of these you can't be sure if it's a phrase or a word and picking apart a word as though it was phrase only makes things more confusing. For example, nymodig means "modern", but if you thought it was a combination of words you'd translate it as ny (new) modighet (courage). This happens to be one of the more charming instances of picking apart Swedish words, it's so fitting that modernity then is "new courageousness". It just sounds so progressive and optimistic. There's also gammalmodig, which means "old-fashioned", and if picked apart you'd get "old brave". I thought that made nymodig even more charming because not only is it brave to embrace the future, but so is holding on to tradition and heritage. Then I found out from my teacher that mod in this case is more akin to "mode" in English and that it's just "new mode" and "old mode". But by God, I still say there's something to it! Swedes should know this better than anyone: there is something to be said about retaining the old while embracing the new. I for one believe in modighet, both ny and gammal!
I recently learned from my Swedish class there are two ways to say "will". There's the regular ska, which my tutor says denotes roughly an 80% certainty, and kommer att, which denotes a 90-95% certainty. So for a while when I wanted to say "I will fly to Sweden" I would have said "Jag ska flygga till Sverige" but now that I've bought the tickets, I'd say "Jag kommer flygga att till Sverige". The Swedes apparently can hear a situational difference between the two and it would sound weird to them to use the wrong one.
One of the eternally confusing things about Swedish (and many Germanic languages, for that matter) is their insistence upon combining words together while we would simply have a phrase. There wouldn't be a problem with this except for the fact that a lot of their words are combinations of other words already. So when you come across one of these you can't be sure if it's a phrase or a word and picking apart a word as though it was phrase only makes things more confusing. For example, nymodig means "modern", but if you thought it was a combination of words you'd translate it as ny (new) modighet (courage). This happens to be one of the more charming instances of picking apart Swedish words, it's so fitting that modernity then is "new courageousness". It just sounds so progressive and optimistic. There's also gammalmodig, which means "old-fashioned", and if picked apart you'd get "old brave". I thought that made nymodig even more charming because not only is it brave to embrace the future, but so is holding on to tradition and heritage. Then I found out from my teacher that mod in this case is more akin to "mode" in English and that it's just "new mode" and "old mode". But by God, I still say there's something to it! Swedes should know this better than anyone: there is something to be said about retaining the old while embracing the new. I for one believe in modighet, both ny and gammal!
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