Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Weirdness

Donna, I suppose in an attempt to get me to post, has tagged Amanda and me to post six weird things. But these are not just any six weird things, but six weird things that relate to graduate school and English literature. So without further ado:

1.) When I'm reading something, I often talk out loud in order to think. However, I only do this when someone else is in the room; otherwise, my thoughts are written or kept internal. They often think I'm actually talking to them (and I usually direct my comments in their direction), but really I'm just thinking out loud.

2.) When I'm doing research, I attack books (especially ones I shouldn't write in) with tiny Post-it Notes. Sometimes the notes just mark a spot that I'll cite in my paper. Mostly, I scribble little notes on them. I do this a lot with each book, so when I'm done, the book has a zillion varied colored notes sticking out all over it.

3.) I'm obsessed with office supplies. I love Post-it Notes, pens, pencils, erasers, staplers, notebooks, and all forms of supplies. I especially love Post-it Notes. Every year, I have to resist buying spiral bound notebooks when they're on sale (10 for a dollar! Sweet!) since I have a plastic storage tub full of them. The Boyfriend mocks me for them, and for my office supply obsession. Luckily, being in graduate school means I have to buy office supplies every now and then...

4.) Whenever I find another person as obsessed as me about literature, I hop up and down and squeal. I get really excited about finding other literature lovers. In fact, I found one over Christmas, and he was as excited as me to find another English MA student, so perhaps that's not so weird after all...

5.) I HATE feminist criticism. I like feminists, though. Or feminism, at least. But feminist criticism? Drives me insane. I hate it. I hate how they ignore the text, skew everything to be about feminine oppression, and how they use terms like "the father", "phallocentric", etc. to interpret literature. Sometimes their points are valid, but for the most part, I have little use for them.

6.) I tend to relate things in real life to books I'm currently reading/obsessed with. Sometimes, it carries on to such a degree that those around me roll their eyes and wonder how they put up with my zaniness and nerdyness. I also tend to relate other books I'm reading to books I've just read, coming up with some odd connections that please me in an intangibly, indescribably satisfying way.

Now, who to tag? There are relatively few people, I believe, who read this blog, so...Michael, you're the only one. Do it. Do it now. And to take a page from Donna, you have to relate your six things to technologically based weirdness...

2 comments:

Chinmay said...

Well what makes me write this comment here is not this post but ur about me - 'work at a university instead of slaving as an administrative assistant'.
Weirdness? Ha ha.. except for the first one(which is different but not weird) but rest are pretty normal, it would be weird or rather unfit for your aspirations if you didn't.. I see that you are writing a novel.. Probably you should be a lot more weirder, how else will you find a captivating enough story ;).. And moreover students like me are too bored of conventional lecturers, a weird professor will be intellectually titilating ;)..

And aah! by telling you this I complete my social responsibilty of making future classrooms a bit lifelike.. My soul feels so gratified, a just out of college lad's tribute to my friends still in college..

Jenn said...

Alas, my weirdness is not so weird as I hoped. However, I was given constraints which dampened my weirdness options. I suppose in comparison to non-English majors I'm totally weird, though...

Perhaps I should have put down my passion for various bit of punctuation, mmm? (I adore the semi-colon, the colon, the dash, and the ellipses...)