ENGL 357

And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries

I really do have to say it. I’ve screwed up.

I tried to over-​reach my own com­pet­ency and bit off more than I can pos­sibly chew.

My English pro­fess­ors this term were mostly sym­path­etic, wrong­fully so. I thank them for their sym­pathy but I would have thought that they should have chas­tised me for not giv­ing due atten­tion to the lit­er­at­ure about which they obvi­ously care. I have done my read­ings a ter­rible dis­ser­vice, a viol­ent crime, a dis­hon­our by scrib­bling “ana­lyses” tan­tamount to pablum and for­cing my pro­fess­ors to read through them, cringing and win­cing in pain and embarrassment.

Mea culpa.

My sci­ence courses have hardly gone bet­ter. I’ve kept up-​to-​date so far as I can keep abreast of the new­est course mater­ial in case of tests and quizzes. I’ve even grossly neg­lected by two essays for cell physiology, a course that I love and in which I have actu­ally done quite well.

If this year has taught me any­thing, it’s that I’m severely, pain­fully, humanly limited.

There’s some com­fort in that under­stand­ing, and pain too.

All I can do now is just study hard for my exam­in­a­tions to redeem myself, then work towards avoid­ing over­load­ing myself next year. I’m only glad that the stakes are so low right now; this is a life les­son best learned early, when the con­sequences are merely marks, not health or money.

I can do better.

Saturday, April 17th, 2010 BIOL 362, ENGL 343, ENGL 348, ENGL 357, Meditations 1 Comment

as when Women, wondrous fond of place

Considering that the Restoration and Eighteenth Century is my favour­ite period of English Literature, the term paper I penned for ENGL 357 for Dr. Scott MacKenzie was a rather piti­ful attempt over­all. Dr. MacKenzie ended up giv­ing me a reas­on­ably high grade (though, in my opin­ion, unjus­ti­fi­ably so) for the paper so I felt a little bet­ter. I really wish I could view my final exam­in­a­tion essays though – the essays I wrote on the char­ac­ters of the Rake and the Coquette and their par­al­lel evol­u­tions through Restoration and Eighteenth Century lit­er­at­ure was much more inter­est­ing than this.

Incidentally, Dr. MacKenzie is cur­rently teach­ing a sec­tion of ENGL 358 focus­ing exclus­ively on the char­ac­ters of the Rake and the Coquette this year.

Schools for Scandal: Trends in Collaborative Authorship dur­ing the Augustan Era

Introduction

Particularly in the cur­rent post-​Romantic schol­arly milieu, Inge notes that lit­er­ary aca­dem­ics con­tinue to “main­tain the tra­di­tional image of the author as an indi­vidu­al­ist up against a mater­ial world, try­ing to cre­ate some­thing pure and unsul­lied” (623). Stillinger adopts an even stronger pos­i­tion, not­ing that con­tem­por­ary schol­ars are guilty of reify­ing the author as a lone­some prodigy, of sub­scrib­ing to “the romantic myth of the author as a sol­it­ary genius” (202). Others, such as Foucault and Barthes, have attemp­ted to instead ban­ish or sug­gest the death of the author, sever­ing the con­nec­tion between authors and their works (Stillinger v). Adherence to either image, the sol­it­ary author or the dead author, is largely incom­pat­ible with attempts to study lit­er­at­ure of the Augustan era which, accord­ing to Griffin, was char­ac­ter­ized by “[a] higher incid­ence of collaboration…than at any time in the his­tory of English lit­er­at­ure” (1). This fre­quency of col­lab­or­a­tion, con­tin­ues Griffin, “can tell us some­thing import­ant about the lit­er­ary world that the Augustans inhab­ited, a world dif­fer­ent from our own, and requir­ing that we approach it with prop­erly adjus­ted crit­ical pre­con­cep­tions” (1), that is to say, pre­con­cep­tions that do not pre­sup­pose the myth of the sol­it­ary author or the absent author. This paper, then, seeks to invest­ig­ate the ways in which rede­fin­ing exist­ing paradigms of author­ship may lead to mean­ing­ful insight into new ways of study­ing lit­er­at­ure of the Augustans, par­tic­u­larly that of Dryden and Pope. Moreover, this paper will attempt to trace pat­terns of col­lab­or­a­tion by attempt­ing to identify the types of lit­er­ary col­lab­or­a­tion, based upon authorial inten­tion and motiv­a­tion, pre­val­ent in the early and late Augustan periods.

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Thursday, August 27th, 2009 ENGL 357, Literature No Comments

To the waters and the wild

BIOL 335 has really per­plexed me; I’m not quite sure what we’re sup­posed to know and what we’re not. It seems a little wishy-​washy but I sup­pose that’s because I had BIOL 334 right before this. If you bump into me, feel free to ask me about bac­terial gene trans­fer, the lac operon or recom­bin­ant gene technology.

“Children of the Earth” has star­ted air­ing in Britain so of course I can’t wait for the North American view­ings. I’m halfway through the first episode…and wow! It’s incred­ible. No won­der I love Torchwood. (Unfortunately, Toshiko, my tele­vi­sion girl­friend is dead so that’s a bit of a downer.)

I for­got to post my courses here so here is the list!

  • ANAT 390 001
  • BIOC 302 202
  • BIOC 302 T56
  • BIOL 240 1D1
  • BIOL 300 101
  • BIOL 300 L08
  • BIOL 304 102
  • BIOL 304 L07
  • BIOL 337 2W2
  • BIOL 360 L01
  • BIOL 361 101
  • BIOL 362 201
  • ENGL 304A
  • ENGL 312A 0011
  • ENGL 348A 005
  • ENGL 357K 002
  • ENGL 409A 001
  1. I’m on the wait­ing list for this course due to some issues with the SSC not recog­niz­ing me as an English Literature major. How unfor­tu­nate! But I’ll get in, I know it! ↩
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 ANAT 390, BIOC 302, BIOL 240, BIOL 300, BIOL 304, BIOL 334, BIOL 335, BIOL 337, BIOL 360, BIOL 361, BIOL 362, ENGL 304, ENGL 312, ENGL 348, ENGL 357, ENGL 409, Television 5 Comments

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail

Last night, I stayed up until mid­night with some clas­sical music and Agatha Christie just to wait for my marks to be released. I’m far from dis­ap­poin­ted but I know there’s room for improve­ment; I’ll just have to work harder! It’s been a great year though – I can really reflect on courses now:

  • BIOL 200 – This course was actu­ally quite inter­est­ing (con­sid­er­ing I’m into cells and all) though it was a little poorly com­mu­nic­ated exactly what was needed to do well. My sec­tion (Berger) did cata­stroph­ic­ally on the section-​specific midterm so we were scaled up. I’d advise reg­u­lar study­ing for this course – it’s a lot of con­cepts and pro­cesses to understand.
  • BIOL 201 – I really dis­liked this course for the sole reason that what was taught was not dir­ectly trans­lated into exam­in­able mater­ial; far too much mater­ial was expec­ted to be gained by doing the prob­lem sets. It almost seemed like lec­tures were extraneous.
  • CHEM 233 – Difficult but reward­ing if appro­pri­ate (i.e. lots) time invest­ment is alloc­ated for this course. It’s easy to fall behind so stay ahead by study­ing early and often.
  • CHEM 205 – Straightforward and simple – there aren’t any tricks to this course. Learn the mater­ial, and learn all of it. Practice the prob­lem sets, they’re harder than the actual exams.
  • CHEM 235 – Fun and easy but decept­ively tough on mark­ing. Take the time to watch all the pre-​laboratory videos and study hard for your writ­ten final.
  • ENGL 221 – Easy, peasy and fun elect­ive course. Covers Romantic era to modern-​day lit­er­at­ure. Should be pop­u­lar with those who dis­like older literature.
  • ENGL 348 – Absolutely amaz­ing. This class is by far my best class at UBC – sym­path­etic instructor, enlight­en­ing class and inspir­ing people. There isn’t a lot of work either, just walk in with an open mind and do attend as many classes as possible.
  • ENGL 357 – Enjoyable read­ings and a great instructor made this one breeze by. I wish it were longer but I’m happy with the fair mark­ing overall.
  • PSYC 100 – Biggest mis­take ever – this course sucked my soul from my body and left me an empty shell. Entirely rote mem­or­iz­a­tion – the exams test on ridicu­lously minute trivia. Would not recom­mend to any­one who has a pulse and a brain unless it was abso­lutely neces­sary. UBC Psychology, work on your ped­ago­gical devel­op­ment! Doing those psy­cho­logy stud­ies was fun though; espe­cially for credits.

I woke up a bit earlier today to have break­fast with my dad and grandma. It’s always nice spend­ing time with them; I find that I’m typ­ic­ally out of the house for most of the time dur­ing the school/​work year so meals are good fam­ily times.

Afterwards, I promptly went to cam­pus to return my boat­load of books on col­lab­or­at­ive author­ship and the Augustan authors (evid­ently, I received 88 on my paper and 90 on my exam where I wrote two essays — one on the char­ac­ter of the Rake and the other on the char­ac­ter of the Coquette through the Restoration and eighteenth-​century). I then met with J where I was a tad on the gar­rulous side, talk­ing about OpenCourseWare and First Year Seminars. I know he’s still look­ing for an Associate Vice President Academic and sev­eral com­mis­sion­ers so I’d look out for those oppor­tun­it­ies. J is driven, smart and dip­lo­matic – I think he’s poised to effect real change this year. I hope he reaches out to S and J for their great ideas though.

Afterwards, I bumped into S at the Minischool office where we’ve got…let’s say…a pickle to sort out regard­ing book­ings for Fall courses. While it will be a phys­ical night­mare (can one of the pre­requis­ites for my assist­ant be that s/​he must be able to lift their own weight in wooden stages?), I’m cross­ing my fin­gers and pray­ing that the book­ings people can help us out. I found out that she might be head­ing to Edmonton which sad­dens me a little, but she’s doing what she’s always wanted to do so more power to her. We joked a bit, had a free lunch cour­tesy of the AMS (who says there are no free lunches in this world? mine had penne car­bon­ara today!) then par­ted ways.

I went to go pur­chase my BIOL 334/​335 text­books which were exor­bit­ant but thank­fully K has assured me that I may bor­row her set for the sum­mer. I get to return my books and get my money back! Hurray.

All in all, not a bad day at all. I’ll be spend­ing my day with S tomor­row doing Minischool turnover stuff. I’m still wait­ing on A to fin­ish his turnover so I can begin Director of Finance duties at SUS.

Seems like I never take vacations.

On a happy note, I found a video of “My Boyfriend’s Back.” It brings back memor­ies of ball­room les­sons with L. Weren’t those fun, L? See the video after the jump.

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Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 AMS, BIOL 200, BIOL 201, BIOL 334, BIOL 335, CHEM 205, CHEM 233, CHEM 235, ENGL 221, ENGL 348, ENGL 357, Family, Food, Literature, Minischool, Music, PSYC 100, SUS 3 Comments

Strapped, noosed, nighing his hour

I’m sit­ting at my desk, fin­ish­ing up some review of Thermodynamics in CHEM 205 and frantic­ally hop­ing that I won’t fail.

Nothing really happened today – I’m sur­roun­ded by the soft hum of my com­puters and piles of study mater­ial. The cur­tains are drawn closed, thank you very much, I don’t think star­ing out­side into the gloomy rain­clouds will do me any good. I still have a pile of books leftover from my ENGL 357 research paper – I should go return those.

My brother came home today from lead­er­ship train­ing. It was quiet, too quiet, in the house without him. I won­der how he found it? I think I read some­thing about advanced kayak­ing on one of his itin­er­ar­ies. He was so thought­ful – he clipped me a few coupons before he went. I won­der if I’ll get a chance to use them? I’ll have to remem­ber to check the expir­a­tion dates on them.

I watched Desperate Housewives from 9-​10pm today. It’s a lux­ury, con­sid­er­ing that my exam is tomor­row but I don’t mind. I’ll get by this exam, I think.

I spent some of my breaks read­ing blogs of people I know and sift­ing through their words. I want to know more about people, I find. Everyone’s got a story; I want to read them all!

All this study­ing has made me ter­ribly mel­an­choly. I hope when exams are done that the sun is out and I can “sport in the wind.”

My par­ents brought me home brunch and din­ner today – some­times I won­der if I should mind eat­ing takeout meals alone – whether they’ll be the norm when I get older. I do enjoy fam­ily meals but my sched­ule is just pro­hib­it­ive some­times. I hope I won’t have to eat too many takeout din­ners alone. Though it’s some­times quite nice – gives me time to think and to muse…I do that a lot.

I’m cur­rently listen­ing to “My Skin” by Natalie Merchant. It’s nice and sooth­ing. I’d best be off to study more.

Edit: Is there any­thing Youtube doesn’t have? See what I mean after the jump.

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Sunday, April 19th, 2009 CHEM 205, ENGL 357, Family, Television 2 Comments

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