Blow It Apart Y'all

Hey y'all!

First of all, I'd like to say that since starting my first-ever Latin course this fall, I now truly appreciate the word "y'all" and am committed to using it more than ever. "Y'all" is awesome for at least two reasons:

1) In Latin, there is a plural second-person that is different from the singular second-person. In English, we've just got "you" to cover everything, but Latin has a distinction between the two. It's seriously useful, and I get to translate plural second-person to "y'all" making translation way more fun.

2) "Y'all" is a great alternative to using "guys" or "you guys" to address a group of people. Why would you need an alternative? Because when one says "you guys" one is probably not only addressing male-identified humans. Ever since this was pointed out to me, I've been trying very hard to strike "you guys"/"guys" from my personal vocabulary. "Y'all" is awesome, because it carries no gender specification. Plus, it's just fun to say, right?

All right, ranting aside, this semester is already about a month in. Mid-term evals are due in about two weeks, which is terrifying. On the one hand, I do feel settled into my classes, on the other, it feels like I haven't made nearly enough progress. This semester's line-up looks like this:

Plan Seminar: reading the Norton Anthology of English Literature. Which I really should be reading right now...but you've seen the title of this blog, right?

Latin 1A: I now know how to translate "errāre est humanum." ("To error is human.") Which is good, because I feel like it's a good excuse for when I mess up in this class.

Fiction Workshop: This is the third time I've taken this class. When that happens at Marlboro, we're allowed to change the name of the class in our transcripts. Maybe I'll change it to something like, "Alien Fiction Workshop" and leave it semi-ambiguous.

Novel Writing Tutorial: This is going really well. I think.

Advanced Shakespeare Tutorial: This class is what the title of this blog refers to. Here's why:

So Advanced Shakespeare Tutorial is my tutorial for writing my critical lit Plan paper. Which is, as previously mentioned several hundred times, about William Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. I'm arguing for an interpretation of the play where Cleopatra is considered a tragic hero. It's a great topic, and I love reading and writing about it.

Last semester, I had finished a 30-page draft of this paper, and I felt pretty good about it. Good enough that I felt like it would be done after a few more weeks worth of at-Marlboro work. Then I decided to take another semester.

Sections that I had considered nearly-done, are now back in draft-phase. I'm reading a new selection of dense philosophy texts to apply to the Aristotle's Poetics section. I'm spending my time trying to answer questions like: what is history vs. fiction? and trying to define the phrase imitation of action. It's thrilling reading and writing but y'all, I am blowing apart my paper. 

And it's scary, but I'm hoping that what results from the wreckage is a stronger argument, and a touch more pretentiousness.

It's Happening Again

Here I am, a day away from the beginning of my Senior 1 semester! I'm so excited to begin my Plan work! I hope I don't procrastinate too much! Blahblahblah sources! Omg Plan is not as hard as you think it is -- wait, wait, it's way harder than you think it is!

My life has become Ground Hog Day and/or an episode of Doctor Who. (Don't tell me if there's a Ground Hog Day Doctor Who episode -- I'm only just finishing series 4.)

If I told my last-year self that I would be taking an extra semester and finishing up in May 2014, I think Last-Year Molly would be really annoyed, and a little bit heartbroken. My horrible health started when I came to Marlboro, for a variety of reasons, and my goal was always to push through it and get my schoolwork done and graduate as planned. I had this thing about not letting my health "defeat" me.

And then on the plane home from my research trip to London in May, I had a seizure. The British Airways flight attendant who saw it was calm, and sweetly said, "What just happened, love?" I didn't really know what happened; I thought I was going to die. Luckily, I didn't, and what followed was a series of weeks where I felt very dizzy and had to go to the doctor a lot.

We found out there wasn't one big reason I had a seizure. My brain was/is functioning as per usual. I most likely I had a seizure because my body dealt with big stress in London. Not big stress for healthy people, but big stress for an unhealthy/healing person: jet-lag, long days, lots of walking, a less-than-stellar diet, a few bad allergic reactions, and a broken air purifier. All of that = seizure on the plane.

I've spent the rest of the summer trying to take good care of myself, and a lot of that has paid off! I can run 5 miles now, which beats my record from before I became unhealthy. I feel a lot steadier physically and mentally. But over the course of these weeks I did a lot of thinking. I realized my Plan work over the past year has been rewarding, but it was difficult and done in spurts in between allergic reactions and bad fevers and colds. I realized I wanted a year where I could actually do what I wanted to do when I came to Marlboro: work. And enjoy the work. And enjoy the community and people around me without taking on unneeded stress. And I realized if I tried to finish in December, I could probably do it, but with the risk of putting my body in another compromising position.

My parents, Geraldine, and Paul were super supportive of the plan (Plan!) to stay till May, and so here I am, almost at the beginning of my Senior 1 semester again. It feels more like semester 2 of 3 though -- I know what I'm doing for the most part, and now I can do it at a steady pace and get into it. Which is what I was supposed to be doing in the first place.

I'm at a much different place when it comes to my health now. It's not "defeating" me if I take time to take care of myself. It's not me against my health status -- I am my health status, and if I'm working against myself it only gets worse. It's OK to go a little slower than what I wanted. Being alive throws a lot at you and things change.

Anyway, sorry this post is so horribly long, but I felt like I needed to get this out there if I wanted to keep writing in my Plog (Plan Blog). And I have a goal to do a weekly update now -- not sure what day, it'll depend on my schedule, which I'll find out this week. Harriet and I leave tomorrow for Marlboro around 6am -- and it all begins again! Allons-y!

(As a side-note: my disability requests are finally happening this year, and I get to live in an awesome allergy-free apartment suite with great roommates, and that I get to eat in the dining hall for lunch :D)