A Sunday List

Well folks we’ve officially hit crunch time again… or maybe still.  It’s kind of hard to tell at this juncture.

I apologize for the frequency of random lists in the past few weeks, but I’m having trouble doing much that fits into a consistent narrative… and better posting something than nothing, right?

1)    One of my professors decided that in lieu of a standard in-class presentation on pre-assigned reading, she would turn the reigns over to us for half a class each.  Essentially, each student has the opportunity to teach an hour and a half’s worth of material in lecture some week.  This week is my week.  I decided to teach Love’s Labour’s Lost with an emphasis on the 2000 Kenneth Branaugh film and its repercussions as a performance as it resounds with film audiences.  I love this film.  Apparently, I’m one of the only people in the history of its viewing who does.  Every article and/or review that I can find has something middling to say about it (if not scathing).  The only alternate explanation for this phenomenon that I can fabricate is that I’m the only person in the history of its viewing who’s not ashamed to admit that I love it.  In any case, paper forthcoming on this topic… possibly for the Blackfriar’s Conference this year as I so-far have come up with nothing better for that…

2)    There is something so vindicating about telling people that I will be in a PhD program next year.  Apparently getting one’s PhD is much more impressive than getting one’s MA.  Whenever I talk to people about it (both people whom I know for some time and people whom I have just met), they get horribly impressed in a way that they didn’t when I talk about the MA.  This makes me happy and appeases my inner academic snob.

3)    It occurs to me that I might just be happy that they are no longer asking me “Oh, well, what are you going to do with that?”  Apparently, having a PhD to have a PhD is reason enough to want a PhD.  The instances in which I have been asked the loathed question have rapidly decreased since I was admitted to a program and can tell people that that is my plan for the next several years.  It may just be because I am telling them about some goal I am actively perusing rather than some goal which I am nearing the completion of (going into a program rather than graduating).  Either way, I will take it.

4)    This does not make it any less irritating when the random person does ask “oh, well, what are you going to do with that?”  My hackles still rise, I still get upset and angry, I still feel the need to chew them out using fifty-cent words and theatre jargon.  I think what feeds this problem is the fact that most people who do ask me that question aren’t willing to listen to my entire explanation.  I want to change the face of American Shakespeare Performance, thank you very much.  Arrogant self-righteous jerks.

5)    Okay, maybe saying that makes me an arrogant self-righteous jerk… but someday I’m going to be DOCTOR arrogant self-righteous jerk… so I’m entitled, right?

6)    ….sometimes I am what I hate about academia.

7)    At least I’m still cute.