Studious Nocturnus
My new schedule makes socializing, blogging, and tv-watching difficult. Granted these are the three luxurious distractions grad students shouldn�t be able to afford, but it�s the challenge of the moment. The way my schedule plays out, I have to come to school every morning for class (teaching or learin�) by 11am. Then, I have scattered events in the late afternoon and then a screening or a lecture every night that sets me free into the world after 9pm. It really is the life of a night student and I was promised this is an atypical schedule in the department. I just find that I have lots of unproductive downtime during the day and then I am usually too tired at night to really tackle dense reading.
I am definitely staying afloat. This weekend I finished my reading for the week and it allowed some cushy coasting time. I have more to get through this week, but I am on top of my classes, I graded my students� assignments and returned them within a day, and I still get more than enough sleep. Life is good and I have already impressed myself with boughts of productivity and organization.
Socially, my project this week has been to develop some solid girl friendships. Granted these relationships take a lot of time to really build up, but it was a big void at Middlebury. There, I didn�t really put the requisite time into developing girlfriend relationships. But now I seem to have two good gal pals lined up � one is a funkier musical sort and the other is a more conservative conscientious-type (and my TiVO hookup) from Atlanta. So I feel like I�ve covered both extremes and it�s also a good plan to have friends from outside of film� next week I start yoga with one of the other new incoming film students.
Speaking of film� I am torn alternatively between the urge to not see movies and the real desire to see the films I most want to see. I see a lot of movies these days and they are really all over the map: old 1920s Hollywood movies, documentaries, Hong Kong action / Gangster films� at the same time, there are several things playing now that I�d like to see (namely documentaries about Fellini, environmental artist Andrew Goldsworthy, and another about the anti-Vietnam Weathermen). There just isn�t a convenient or enough time. There are also several films on my rental list for possible papers or just to round out my viewing canon. It�s just hard when you are really tied up from the morning until after 9. Here�s hoping next semester is better. Of course, my classes next semester (including classical film theory) are much more demanding, academically, and there won�t be time then for watching movies either.
posted by lmjasinski at 12:25 PM
