Survival Guide

i have started grad school. and, yes, my friends, it is very hard. i am also a Teaching Assistant this semester. the funny thing is that in order to be a teaching assistant (TA), one must also take 3 graduate classes. of course, this would not be a problem, if i wasn't a full-time mom and half-hearted housekeeper. my life is in chaos right about now.

but, not to worry! i think i have devised a plan that will help me get through this semester. My weekly schedule should look like this:

Monday Morning: Attend History 1301 lecture in the morning.
Monday Evening: Graduate class in the evening, AND READ!

Tuesday Morning: Clean a little, study a lot, AND READ!!
Tuesday Afternoon: Attend both graduate classes at night.

Wednesday Morning: Attend history lecture.
Wednesday Afternoon: I MUST READ!!!

Thursday: My thursdays will now become "Toilet Thursdays!" Huzzah!!! I will try to dedicate this day to cleaning my house, i.e. sweeping, mopping, changing the sheets, All day cleaning-palooza!! Yay for me!! AND, OF COURSE, I MUST READ!!!!

Friday morning: Attend history lecture.
Friday afternoon: Treat myself to something nice before the weekend onslaught that is having my girls and my husband at home, AND I MUST READ!!!!!


Saturday: Is the day of Laundry!!! Also, my girls have to dust their rooms. And, if I feel particularly cruel, I'll make them clean out their drawers, AND I MUST READ!!!!!!

Sunday: Beside going to church, it will be the day of preparing clothes
for the week, AND I MUST READ!!!!!!!

do you see a common denominator in all seven days? the exclamation points will give you a hint. here is another one, GRADUATE SCHOOL = READING!

yes, yes, there is a gob load (<--is that a word?) of reading. each week in my monday class, i will have a book review due. EACH WEEK! in my english literary theory class, i'm having to read things that are WAY, WAY, ABOVE MY IQ!!! i didn't/haven't read Derrida, Heidegger, or Freud, Lacan, Foucault, or anything that resembles that. really, i need a crash course in all of these writers. But, i will try to make the most of it. we read Terry Eagleton's introduction to literary theory book this past week. other than the minor detail of not knowing who the aforementioned people were, i found his writing to be charmingly caustic and absolutely lovely. i found myself laughing outloud at my kitchen table.

Here is one of the passages that cracked me up:

(in writing about freud and neurosis)

"One question which immediately arises, however, is why it is human beings who should be the neurotic animal, rather than snails or tortoises. It is possible that this is merely a Romantic idealization of such creatures and that they are secretly a good deal more neurotic than we think; but they seem well-adjusted enough to an outsider, even though there may be one or two cases of hysterical paralysis on record" (132). Terry Eagleton's, "Literary Theory: An Introduction."

i thought that was funny.

anyway, being that today is thursday, which has now been declared as "Toilet Thursday," i must tend to my courtly duties at the three different thrones.