Quivering under the threat of a quiz...
Honestly, I am past that point in my life where quizzes should seem like an intimidating threat - yet I am sorry to admit, I am not. I have a quiz tomorrow in production and Patrick is notorious for giving these unforgivingly technical quizzes. I am a grad student in a 300-level, predominantly undergrad course. I go to class every day. I take categorically excellent notes. Just the same, I need to review my notes and study for this stupid thing. It's going on 11pm, I split a bottle of wine with Eric, and I just don't feel like reviewing the color wheel or all of the terminology about lighting (note to all future production students - never be quizzed on two lecture's worth of lighting notes by someone who is writing a dissertation on lighting and cinematography). This has a way of making me feel very small and I have the sinking feeling that I'll have to wake up early to remind myself of the additive primaries, the color wheel complement of cyan, or three ways to add "textual diffusion" to a light. Ugh.
Also, I did my reading for Classical Film Theory under the threat of a quiz. As a grad student, there is nothing more mortifying than bombing a quiz - namely because, I imagine that my professors would lose all (whatever?) respect for me they currently have if I prove to them that I am not doing the reading or absorbing the main concepts. My professor is in Hong Kong so we had a 'sub' lecturer tonight (a different professor) but I trudged through all of the Eisenstein readings tonight on the off chance that David would still give us a quiz. That's pretty idiotic and I should just be doing these readings because I love them and I love learning - but in reality, I've hit that burn-out point in the semester and the only thing keeping me honest and on the ball is the threat of academic humiliation.
Just the same, the wonder of David being out of town is that no human can keep up his three-hour theory lectures. As a result, our rather lackadaisical sub let us out at 7:30 (yet we still covered a lot of ground). Eric and I got to have our bottle of wine and be home by 10pm. Previews of the summer and next fall, when I unbelievably have no evening classes / no night screenings - the promise of which, is just liberating.
I want to lay in bed and enjoy the Netflix - namely, Resnais's
Hiroshima, Mon Amour., but I don't feel capable of much, and I'll feel too guilty if I don't at least look over my notes before tomorrow's quiz. I really do look forward to a time when quizzes will be behind me (or at least I'll be in that constant quiz-giver, fear-inspiring role). Until then, I am setting the alarm for 7am and shaking in my boots...
posted by lmjasinski at 10:55 PM
