silva rerum

To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

School has been abso­lutely intense! Thankfully, the bulk of midterms are finally over and I’ve been faced with mod­er­ate suc­cess. I could have always worked harder, though, and I hope that I will do so before my finals.

I’ve been watch­ing tele­vi­sion (using Miro!) and play­ing video games to assuage myself this term, more than ever. I think that the stress is get­ting to me. I always thought I was imper­vi­ous to stress but the grow­ing emphasis on men­tal health nowadays has been mak­ing me aware of the unhealthy and unhealth­ful ways in which I live my life.

I think this will teach me some good les­sons about decision-​making (e.g. course plan­ning, job seek­ing, etc.). I’m not the per­son I thought I was, nor do I know if I will become him.

I’m excited to write my paper for ENGL 304, though. I’m not entirely sure of my topic but I’m try­ing to flesh out the details – it will be about sci­entific pub­lic dis­course (that is to say, the bilat­eral dis­cus­sion between sci­ent­ists and laypeople) about genes and genet­ics. I’m inter­ested in examin­ing the ways in which sci­ent­ists describe genes and genet­ics, the ways in which sci­ent­ists elu­cid­ate the pub­lic and how it is (mis)represented or (mis)used. It goes back to my essay in ENGL 112 on gen­omic meta­phors; I’ll be dig­ging out that old essay to look at.