what i've learned/what i know

several years ago, i would post these entries throughout my semester. i want to start writing them again. i think they give me a good pulse on how my semester is going. they also help me count my long weeks down. so here we go:

what i've learned:

school started on august 31, and tomorrow will be september 21--i guess that is about three weeks? (i really don't feel like doing the math :)

Grammar:

it turns out i really like the professor, dr. heckler. although he seems like a very serious man, he has these little quirks and sayings that make him very affable. so far i've done o.k. in the class. i do remember, however, a homework assignment that appears to be bleeding profusely. my only saving grace is that homework is only corrected, but not graded--thank you Lord! another very interesting tidbit I've learned is the origin of the word grammar. according to the professor it comes from the greek word "gramma" which means something in writing. and then the french word grammaire which was a combination of occult and learning. the occult learning, of course, was done when the church prevented the people from learning how to read or write. therefore, it was done in secret. he had another comment on the word spell--which could mean putting words together with the alphabet or as in magic, a magic spell. i don't know about you, but i find that kind of nerdy stuff very interesting!

Hemingway:

we have mostly gone through his short stories and should be starting The Sun Also Rises tomorrow. my biggest connection or apparent thought process is whether or not Hemingway meant to correlate the still born baby at the end of A Farewell to Arms to the fake peace agreements after World War I. when i worked on a mid-term for my history class last semester, i came across that theme. it was by a guy named Edmond Taylor in his book, The Fall of the Dynasties, written in 1963. this is what he thought WWI was about and its consequences, "...the story of the decline and fall and rebirth of despotism, of blind leaders and deluded masses of old wrongs perpetuated and of new ones imposed, of revolution leading to war and war leading to revolutions, of peace still-born, of hopes once more aroused and again betrayed, of vast regressions, of one small, halting step forward" (397). i don't know, haven't studied enough to know if Hemingway was making that same connection, but i think it a nice coincidence (even if it exist only in my brain).

Dev. of Am. Novel:

seriously, i have no opinion to give. or rather, i will keep it to myself for now. suffice it to say, i want my money back!!!!

Descriptive Linguistics:

this is proving to be a hard class. is it ox/en or oxen. how many morphemes? is it human/itari/an? discreteness? arbitrariness? mode of communication? morphology? phonology? i must say, it is all GREEKOLOGY to me! i will find out tomorrow (probably) when the professor returns the quiz.

Survery of Literary Theory:

this week we read "The Yellow Wallpaper" and "Ode on a Grecian Urn." i so wished that i had paid a little more attention to the presentation on the yellow wallpaper given by some students when i was in mrs. sample's class. i must admit that i had never read the story in its entirety. apparently the woman is suffering from post-partum depression. but, it is my impression that she had suffered all of her life with mental illness; which is what i wrote because i think the professor wanted to hear our thoughts--no matter how crazy (no pun intended, of course) they were. as far as Keats poem, my pitiful attempt at interpreting the last sentence, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"--that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know" is that the beauty of the grecian urn is the only thing (perhaps not the only thing, but an important thing) that has remained from that ancient civilization. that is my story, and i guess i can stick to it, until someone tells me why i'm wrong.

what i know:

i know that my body is breaking down. i have awful pains in my legs. and i'm trying to get back into jogging with little success.

my one bright and shining spot in the whole week was the one hour i spent with my french tutor. je suis tres heurese. i am very happy. the bible instructs us not to despise the day of small beginnings. friday was such a day of small beginnings for me. my hope and dream is to learn french. c'est mon reve.

a bientot!