My Blog is Dood

Yes, the title of this blog is a pun on a Stevie Smith poem. None of you are going to get the reference. Don’t worry about it. At any rate, this entire post is going to be about my degree. At least until the inevitable digression.

I just finished my first paper, and it was horrifying. It took me an entire day to write, more or less; it’s never taken me that long to write a paper before in my life. My topic was some weird comparison between Sir Philip Sidney’s Defence of Poesie and an excerpt from John Skelton’s “A Replycacion.” Exciting. I actually really dislike the Defence of Poesie because it’s very dense and difficult to read. On the other hand, I really love “A Replycacion,” but I might be biased because it has an awesome rhyme scheme and I do like that sort of thing. It is one of those poems with terrible Elizabethan spelling, though.

And then when I turned my paper in, I was ridiculed for using MLA citation style. I guess the Brits are fond of their Chicago style. Though the tutor (which is a fancy British term for TA) was more amused than anything, since I went all-out in MLA. Usually I just do the in-text citations, but I followed all the rules for this paper because I figured the Brits would like that sort of thing. They just thought it was weird, and I was singled out for being a citation pedant. But they consider being a hardcore MLA citation person to be a typically North American thing, so I guess I’m just fulfilling my academic stereotypes.

That aside, I discovered my favourite poem. It’s Sir John Davies’ “Faith (wench) I cannot court thy sprightly eyes.” I have also seen it titled “A Lover Out of Fashion,” but I’m going by the title I found in my textbook as opposed to the title on Google. I love it because it’s pretty much an anti-love poem, and it’s explicit, and it’s hilarious and because I got to work on it with the cute guy in class. Those Elizabethans were pretty fond of dirty poetry, I have found out. Suddenly Shakespeare makes so much more sense. I keep thinking the Elizabethans were the uptight ones, but that was the Victorians. The Elizabethans were pretty chill about things. Which, when one thinks about it, sort of explains why the Victorians were so uptight.

I also learned that you could determine prostitutes by the fact that they walked about with their chests uncovered and they bleached their hair. So, really, not all that different from skanky types today. The more things change, the more they stay the same I suppose.

Also, my tutor is pretty hilarious. Only he would say something along the lines of “People were building pretty bling houses” in reference to the Elizabethan era.

I am sitting with a bunch of maths majors and I am so confused. Someone made a joke about derivatives and I just stared blankly at them in an awkward fashion.

Back to English things. I sort of want to go to grad school now, because it will give me an excuse to move to Vancouver. Though it looks like my grades aren’t quite good enough to get into UBC (which is amazing, because my grades are awesome. But UBC is like the UC Berkeley of Canada), there are other colleges I can look at. For one thing, Canada is so much cheaper than any school in the UC system. I checked. I’m paying the same tuition for an undergrad degree at UCSB as I would for graduate tuition at UBC as an international student without any scholarships. There is something seriously wrong with that picture, methinks. Of course, if I do move to Vancouver then everyone at home would be quite displeased with me, because they would never see me again. And I would have to jump through all those visa hoops. And what if I decide to stay in Canada and never come back? What would my citizenship do then? I want to get my Irish citizenship on top of my American citizenship, but I’m pretty sure having three citizenships would be completely ridiculous. So I’d have to drop probably my American citizenship to become a Canadian citizen, and why am I even talking about this it’s stupid and at least two years in my future.

English things. I want to study all of Shakespeare. I wish I’d brought my massive complete works of Shakespeare book with me, even though it would have been heavy. It certainly would come in handy this term, since we’re reading 3-4 plays at the very least. But it would have been worth it, because then I wouldn’t have to buy them. I will seriously have single copies of every play on top of my anthology by the time I graduate. Waste of money, methinks, but there really isn’t anything I can do about it.

I’m sitting in the kitchen right now, typing on my laptop while a handful of other people are playing drinking games. Nobody invited me to play with them, or to go out clubbing after they finish with the drinking games. I can’t just invite myself along, because that would be really awkward. Plus, I’m pretty sure I’m considered that weird American kid.

Case in point: I was critiqued for how I handle a knife and fork today, on top of being critiqued for my use of MLA citations. And someone had to tell me that you don’t eat prawn crackers with a knife and fork. Also, I am officially to blame for everything because I am the American. Yet I am strangely OK with this, because it gives me high school nostalgia. Also, the situation was hilarious.

Nobody invites me to things, so I stay home and write blog posts about how my studies are going. Even the people I usually eat with have stopped messaging me about when they’re going to get breakfast or dinner. Yay.

On the upside, my camera should be arriving soon so I can go out and take a bajillion pictures of things I see around York. And the weather has warmed up, even if it’s supposed to rain all weekend. Why hello, English weather, I’d wondered what happened to you!

Returning to English yet again. I have finally finished that stupid book series Heather leant me six months ago. FINALLY. Now I can read other things! Like Neil Gaiman! And Shakespeare! And Doctor Faustus! Good times.