This is of little to no importance but...

I miss you all.

The R-Word

So because I'm prone to occasional bouts of navel-gazing, and because literature has instilled in me a voyeuristic interest in the navel-gazing of others, I'll share a story, and then a question.

There's a point to this, I promise.

Cornell really buys into the American notion of a liberal arts "take intro courses in subjects you don't care about goddamn" education, so we have mandatory Freshman Writing Seminars. By sheer force of luck (read: rigging the randomized seminar selection ballot), I was able to have the same professor for both of my writing seminars, and so I've had an opportunity to see my writing develop throughout the year through the eyes of another person.

Now, the economics major at Cornell essentially assumes that you will be double-majoring in mathematics if you want to go to graduate school, which is exactly what I'm doing. I am not, by nature, a math person. My first semester in Calculus, I am embarrassed to say, was gotten through by a combination of luck (God Bless you, idiotic premeds, who dragged the mean on exams down to Hell with you) and sheer force of will. Sometime during this semester, though, I had what the alcoholics call "A moment of clarity," an epiphany, or what I would term in this case, "A sudden ability to see the blindingly obvious," and now math just makes sense to me in ways it didn't. I can't explain it other than to say that suddenly, everything that seemed arbitrary to me made perfect and complete sense, and I can't understand why I couldn't understand things.

What's interesting about this is that around the same time that this happened, I started getting comments on papers I was writing for my writing seminar saying that line of thinking was "reductionist." Now, because of my professor's biases, I think "reductionist" should partially be understood to mean "retarded," but if I think about it myself, I would say more diplomatically that the way I think about problems now really has changed dramatically since the beginning of the year.

I remember coming back from TASP and realizing that I just couldn't see the world the same way I did before the program, in part because of the warm and fuzzy experience of TASPer love and all that, but because of my seminar as well -- I read things differently after TASP than I did before, for example. It seems like, much more subtly, the same sort of thing is happening again, but with courses that are stacked toward a very specific kind of logical reasoning (namely,  for the first time in my life, having a schedule packed with math and language courses) instead of the humanities.

So there's the story, and here's the question: 

Are any of you experiencing the same thing? Not that you're specifically being molded by math courses, of course, but that you feel that in some readily identifiable way, you've developed intellectually, for good or ill? What has college done to your brain?

 

LOLITA

http://slavic.uchicago.edu/faculty-staff/sternstein.shtml

This is my professor for 'Nabokov's Lolita.' She is possibly the most amazing professor I have ever had. I am so so so excited for this class. Just so everyone knows.

The Unforgettable BR, among other things

That "BR" is obviously the "Unforgettable" Bruce Robbins. So why would I remember such a beloved character from the summer of 2007? I am continually reminded of TASP-related things when I do the reading for my post-colonial African history course. It's been all Spivak (according to wikipedia she was the second woman to be "elected" to membership in the TA) and post-colonial critical theory. This time it was national shame and blame. So I googled it and here I deliver a link to that lecture (well, to the article that it produced) we will never forget : http://www.columbia.edu/~bwr2001/papers/comp_national_blaming.pdf

And,a side note--I challenge a TASPer to make Matthew Evangelista a wikipedia page. Come on guys, you know he deserves it.

That's it. Not much of post but I'll just add, has anyone else gotten those facebook invitations to Telluride reunions? If you are in Chicago or the Bay Area you have no excuse to pass these reunions up. If you go call me and/or post about it. I need my TA fix.

For the record

I wrote letters a while ago.

They went into envelopes tonight.

My plan is to get stamps and mail them tomorrow.

This is honestly the plan.

Ana, ignore the discussion of the weather in yours, as it is no longer very relevant.

I love you guys.

There was a gas leak in my dorm

We were all kicked out because gas leaks are bad. I was sleeping when the alarm went off, so I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt when I walked out into the rain. It was a good day. Aside from all the work. Anyway, I'm primarily writing this post as an excuse to not start my humanities paper. I have lots of work. I'm probably going to fail many classes this quarter. Or not do as well as I'd like, anyway. But yeah. Today is not as good a day as yesterday. Secondarily, or perhaps more accurately co-primarily, I'm writing this post because I haven't had much contact with TASPers lately. Sad day. Also, I've gotten the impression that recent blog activities have been a little boggarted by Ms. Kling. I think I probably should have made a new paragraph somewhere back there, but I'm not going to check. I also think you should all know that the Core is stupid. For all its vaunted depth, the UChicago Core consists of nothing more than some mediocre survey classes and infantile unit manipulations. I find this frustrating. Oh well. My writing TA for hume(anities) is hot. You should all know. She's 30. But also hot. This is so far the best thing that's happened to me in a Core class. I don't know if this is a testament to my shallowness or the Core's. I wrote a paper about phonological and morphological patterns in the writings of Dr. Seuss. I find phonology to be one of the most useless disciplines ever imagined. Maybe I'm not that imaginative. Laura will probably disagree with me, but hours with Halle and Sapir have taught me that the human mouth can make sound. This is probably the most senseless post I've ever written. Also, a victory for all TASP, Valentin and I have finally become friends on facebook. It's been a long time in coming. So I'm going to be staying in Chicago for spring break, which falls between March 21st and March 29th. If anyone is in the area and would like to visit, feel free. I'm pretty sure Kim's going home. And Ms. Rachel Meng has been notably absent from both our lives. Living in Snitchcock has not done good for her intraTASP relations. At any rate, I will be here. So come visit!