I don’t have anything specific I want to write about, so I’m just going to start typing and see where I get. I can’t promise not to edit, though.
1) I got home this evening to find that Clementine, whom I had left in the kitchen instead of in her crate because I felt sorry for her (oh, the irony), had escaped the baby gate, gotten into my bedroom, and TORN THE PLACE APART. I seriously cannot see my floor for all of the clothes, yarn, scraps of toilet paper, fabric, bobbins, socks, beads…wow, I have too many crafting materials.
2) Two things encouraged me not to kill her: she didn’t actually destroy anything–she’s not a shredder, she just likes to carry my clothes around for a while–and she didn’t pee anywhere. Hooray for that.
3) I am coming to realize that I know Hebrew significantly less well than is acceptable. I am discovering this when it comes to using the Biblical Hebrew to build other languages/dialects (Aramaic, Rabbinic Hebrew, and Modern Hebrew are what I’m working on now) and I FAIL because I don’t actually understand the rules for vowel shifts or have the paradigms for anything other than the very basic verb forms memorized. You’d think if I could recognize forms I could reproduce them, but oh you would be wrong.
4) This means that I am going to have to spend the summer going back over the introductory grammar and learn it for reals this time. I swear I am going to do this.
4a) A troubling thought: I am becoming so used to the warm fuzzy feeling of being surrounded by people who care about the same fiddly things that I do, such as the relative merits of the Lambdin and Seow grammars for embarking on said reconstructive project, that I am in danger of becoming really super boring to the 99.9% of people who are not specializing in this field because they have better things to do with their time. I shall try to avoid this. I cannot promise anything about the contents of the blog, though. Consider yourselves warned.
5) I am making a quilt! With the wonderful sewing machine I got for Christmas! It is going to be fabulous!
6) My most recent project on the sewing machine was a stuffed bird ornament from a book on quilting that I bought because I wanted to make everything in it (Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts, in case you’re wondering). It looks…handmade. In the bad way.
7) Most of the time this semester I have been feeling terrific–cheerful, happy to be here, busy but not TOO busy, challenged but not stupid, feeling like I’m in exactly the right place, basically.
8 ) Today is not one of those days. I feel slow and stupid and man, is there a lot of stuff out there to learn. So much so that four years (8 semesters, 30 classes, not counting summer languages) of graduate school (assuming I get into Notre Dame for the Ph.D) feels like too short of a time to learn anywhere close to enough to actually TEACH this stuff or contribute to this field. And the assumption is not a safe one to make by any means. My goodness are there a lot of people who want fellowships. And knowing that, and knowing that my professors will judge whether they want to let me in here for the Ph.D based on whether they like what I’ve done in the MTS, is kind of freaking me out. Not most days…just the days where I feel slow and stupid and wonder why I want to work with languages when I can’t remember vocabulary words for longer than 30 seconds at a time.
9) I will stop feeling sorry for myself now. I swear.
10) Annnnnd, to end on an entirely unimportant note, Mary Frances, I stole your nail polish color and I am NOT GIVING IT BACK.
Okay, off to read about virtue ethics. Good times!
9 comments
Comments feed for this article
February 18, 2009 at 9:30 pm
elizabeth
Haha, I love that you just admitted via internet blogging that you stole MF’s nail polish. And there’s absolutely nothing she can do about it. I like your style, Davenport. Keep it up.
February 22, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Mary Frances
well i had no idea the nail polish was even missing…so clearly it doesn’t matter. keep it forever. what color is it? as long as it isn’t the one i used on my wedding day, then you’re fine. i actually DO want that one.
February 22, 2009 at 2:37 pm
lovethequestions
Well it’s not actually your specific bottle of nail polish. I just bought a very similar color to the dark dark red-brown you wear all the time and which I NEVER would have thought of except that it looks really good on you. So in that sense I stole it.
February 22, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Mary Frances
also 2) thank you so much for saying that there were factors that encouraged you not to kill clementine. i love it. and
every day. blah. but i’m glad that most days are 7) for you!!
February 22, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Mary Frances
ok that ridiculous smiley face is apparently what happens when you write 8 followed by ). i would never stain your blog with such tackiness.
February 22, 2009 at 2:37 pm
lovethequestions
The first draft of my post did that as well and I had to go through and fix it.
February 22, 2009 at 7:33 pm
ndmycar
I can’t tell you how many times #8 has dominated my thinking and motivation in the last semester and a half. A world of knowledge uncontrollable by our own learning is wonderful but also absolutely frightening and discouraging. I’m sure it gets better…
Your point about the tomb is a good one and even more challenging when put in the context of the Peter’s speech in Acts 2: the crucified Christ confronts the ones responsible for His death–no evading that–but He does it in love and forgiveness, in a spirit antithetical to the cyclic spiral of the violence that led to the cross (cf. Rowan Williams’ “Resurrection”). I think that’s something that too often gets left out of the cross, as if it’s just the cross that saves us. It’s not just the passive, suffering Christ who saves: it’s the raised Christ whose scarred hands open to reconcile with His murderers.
February 23, 2009 at 1:08 am
lovethequestions
Wow…I’m really looking forward to your colloquium!
March 1, 2009 at 2:17 am
Luke
Re: 4a) I don’t know how to talk to people who aren’t chemists any longer. Well, that’s not true. But I don’t have anything much to say to them that I couldn’t have said a year ago.