Five Random Words meme

How It Works
You comment to this post, and I list five things I associate with you. They might make sense or they might be totally random — then you post that list, with your commentary, to your lj. I and other people get our lists from you, and the meme merrily perpetuates itself.

elissa_carey gave me these: Cute, Editing, Scholar, Tarot, Dreams.

Cute -- Um... I'm cute? I do cute fairly well? Cute is part of my charm? I giggle well? I have a cute dog, and my kids are cute, and... okay, I'll cop to a theme here. I think I'm especially approaching anime cute at the moment as my purple streaks are now pink. This cannot stand.

Editing -- So, editing is something I still do and may do more of in future (Phil, I haven't forgotten). I'm not doing nearly as much editing as I once did, having completed my transition into the English Studies Grad Student prestige class. That said, a goodly part of my work in the writing center comes down to teaching other people to edit their own work, so it's still with me. I still enjoy it; I feel like it's a really strong contribution to the projects I do work on (see Eclipse Phase winning Best Writing at the ENnies this past August). It's not everything I do anymore, though. That said, if you're reading this and are interested in having me edit, please do contact me. :)

Scholar -- Me! Yay! :) Seriously, though, I admit that I'm just getting a handle on this scholar thing, for all that I spent the last few years in school. Going part time and going full time are two very different beasts. Going part time means that school is this thing you do rather than who you are. Going full time... well, you have to own that and stake your claim in it if you want to get anywhere, at least as an adult, and I'm doing that now. I'm really happy to be a student again, although I could argue that's different than being a scholar. Perhaps I've been a scholar all along, and only now am really letting that have its way. It's hard to tell, but I think there's some truth there. Even when I'm nervous and feeling overwhelmed, I'm still more comfortable here than I've been in a long time. Funny how that works.

Tarot -- Huh. I find this interesting because, although I like getting readings occasionally and, I think, have had one or two from Elissa before, I don't actually read the Tarot myself and I don't currently have a deck. I'd like to get one again sometime, but it doesn't tend to be my thing. That said, I think it's an incredibly powerful tool for self reflection and interpretation. I've been known to base characters on cards, to use it to lay storytelling paths, to take inspiration from in general. For a while, if I were to pick a card to represent me, it was the High Priestess. I'm not sure that it still would be, though. I don't know where I fall in the pantheon any longer. Then again, I think maybe that's okay too.

Dreams -- Dreams can be really important, at least for me. Not just the ones you have when you're sleeping (and I've had some that are still with me), but the ones you have for your waking life. It is not unrealistic to say that I am living the life of my dreams right now, and that if I succeed in becoming a professor, I will be living out another of them right there. This by no means indicates that it's easy; dreams don't come for free. You have to buy them, although money is usually the least important currency you'll spend. I worked hard for what I've accomplished, for what I dreamed up back in the day and somehow the universe agreed that it could happen and threw me here. I even got more than what I dreamed of, because never in my wildest dreams did I dare envision relationships like the ones I have now -- from Matt and our dynamic together to the friendships and, dare I say it, family that I've stumbled into. There are people in my life who are around me on a daily basis, who support me and care how my day has been, and who think that having me around is a good thing. People who look forward to seeing me regularly, to spending time with me... it's frankly kind of awesome.*

I sacrificed a lot to make these things happened, and possibly the first step in that was acknowledging that my world could be different from the one I had -- and that it would necessarily involve giving up what I had to get something more. Even now, I can feel the reverberations of that conflict still going on, especially because life then included having my sons with me, and life now does not. That's not forever, though. We'll get through it. It's just an example of the price of admission, I guess. That said.... I'd do it again. I feel the weight of that statement and sit in judgement on myself for making it, knowing some of the things that says about me, but I would. I hope someday my kids understand that, and are able to dream for themselves.

Okay, done. :) Now for more cleaning and putting away of my stuff. Cleaning powers, activate!

Film Class

So my one sort of elective this semester (my other two classes, Research Methods and Rhetoric and the Teaching of Writing, were mandatory) is Intro to Film, taught by Professor Robert Spadoni. I looked over the list of things I could take, and this was one of the few in the department that a) interested me, b) didn't conflict with another class, and c) had the prospect of being actively useful to me, as I haven't had a good basic film theory/criticsm class, and it's a good thing to know going forward. You never know what kind of texts you'll teach, after all. I find my presence here kind of amusing, if only in the respect of "how often do I watch movies of my own accord again, really?" Truth is, though, that I actually do like movies. I just don't like watching them on my own, so I didn't.

Thus far the only film we've watched (and which I missed, so I have to see on my own) is La Jetee. I'm missing an accent mark there, but such is life. It's apparently a classic and the film that 12 Monkeys is based on. It's also available streaming over Netflix, so if anyone wants to join me in my film watching journey, I recommend it.

Tuesday night is Groundhog Day, working into the section on Film Narrative. I've seen Groundhog Day, but never with an eye to critically viewing it. I would ordinarily hem and haw at the idea of critically viewing it, but if quality isn't really an obstacle to critically viewing a text, it certainly won't be to a movie. I may make a post about it next week. We shall see.

The other one I need to see soonish is The Third Man. See, we get to write a paper on some aspect of a given film of our choice for this class; for grad students, it's a research essay of 15 pages, which is fine. My problem is choosing a movie I want to work with. When your choices are "anything you want," it's sort of hard to cut it down. That said, I really do love The Third Man, Matt hasn't seen it, and there's got to be something in there that I can work with. It's worth seeing again in any case. Others on the shortlist, as it happens, are the new Sherlock Holmes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Quiet Man, The Philadelphia Story, The Maltese Falcon, Shakespeare in Love (or maybe Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead), Glengarry Glen Ross... and a couple of others I'm not thinking of right now.

So that's my class! Until next time, the balcony is closed. :)