College students--what are you working on?

[Lyric]

I'm currently in the midst of writing a paper about imperialism and racism as portrayed in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," for my History midterm. I also need to write a review of the Hamlet production we attended last night, but that can wait until Monday.

How about you?

[City of Mills]

1. Pounding through my macroeconomics midterm

I'm taking accelerated classes, so I'm already about halfway through my semester. Also putting together a few project websites for my development course.

[XOEnterprises]

2. Writing about the relationship between liberalism and democracy.

Your paper sounds way more fun, though it would require reading "Heart of Darkness" again.

[leftyclimber]

3. Reading a bunch of very wordy books

and taking notes on them. I have about 14 hours of work left on The Report That Will Never Die (same one I was working on last semester). Just got back from surveying drunk people standing out in the cold.

Ah, grad school.

How was Hamlet? Regardless of his academic pedigree, the dude that they brought in (and most likely paid) to play Hamlet looked like a hopeless doofus in the DA on Friday. He looked like he found Yorick much less interesting than whatever he was meaningfully gazing past him at.

[Lyric]

5. To be fair, I'm no expert judge of acting, but

I really found his performance to be amazing. Very passionate, almost a frightening degree of intensity, like you really *were* in the room with someone mentally unstable. I'm sure you'd know better than I how to judge it, but *I* was extremely impressed.

[leftyclimber]

6. Prolly just a lousy picture of him, then.

Glad to hear it was good. Most college productions of Hamlet are absolute dogs.

How it affects YOU as an audience member is the important thing, not whether you have training how to do it. I'd be looking at different stuff, anyway. I'm not very good at suspending disbelief.

Interesting. He went "insane Hamlet."

[Lyric]

7. Oh yes, definitely "insane Hamlet."

More melancholy/grief-stricken at first, and then progressively more and more unhinged and maniacal as the play progressed.

[Mr. Blonde]

4. brief on actual physical control

I'm in law school, but you don't discriminate against post-grads do you?

[rockymountaindem]

8. Yet more lame coursework

I'm in year two of the MA/PhD program here, which amounted thus far to 2 more years of undergrad-like study at this point. As long as I can make it to May... then no more classes, except this summer when I get to be the INSTRUCTOR (that's right, punks). After that I will just be able to study for comps and do research, then all will be well, I think.

Imagine tacking 2 years of undergrad on and calling it the MA program. Whoop dee doo.

[leftyclimber]

9. I felt that way with my MS.

It was like +2 years of undergrad, with +24,000 dollars of student loans for the privilege (my assistantship paid beans). They didn't cover anything I hadn't covered in the year of postbaccalaureate work I'd done before I started.

The PhD's been a lot different, not necessarily in terms of rigor (with a couple of mind-bending exceptions) but in terms of workload. I feel like I'm running in place most of the time.

Best of luck to you, and have fun teaching this summer!

[pinstikfartherin]

10. Western Civ Final which includes

describing 9 of 12 listed topics/people/places and telling why they are important to western civilization..
one short essay...
one longer essay...

Not very hard, just very time consuming!