Book-learnin'

I'm sick. Tear.

Early in the week I started coming down with what I hope to be just a cold. My throat is sore and I'm all mucus-y and gross. On top of that, sadly, I was also going through withdrawals (see the post from late April about the withdrawals), and so it was hard to tell if I was getting a flu, or if some of it was just my body's natural reaction to being under-medicated. Anywho, I'm back on regular meds plus some stuff for the ick, so I'm taking it slow, but things are looking up.

I missed two days' worth of classes this week, and when one's week only lasts three days (plus an hour on Monday), it's a lot to try to make up. I am also missing work today, but hopefully I'll be back at work on Saturday-- I need the money. Thankfully, I don't think I'm really going to be behind on anything except for 3D animation. Unfortunately, 3D is kind of my class of dread this semester because it forces me to be sequestered in a lab for three straight hours staring at an illusory universe of my own creating. There are few things that could be scarier, dear readers, than a universe of which I am the creator. Be afraid.

I guess I could speak a bit to my semester, since I haven't said anything much about classes. I am really enjoying my Jewish Scriptures class, and I'm learning a lot about the culture(s) which birthed what we Christians know as the Old Testament. It's a class taken from a clearly liberal perspective, and we aren't dealing at all with the theological issues that are raised (state school), but I find it greatly insightful all the same. I'm also taking 5th semester Chinese, which is cool. The other student in the class is a French woman who lived in Beijing for a few years with her husband. She's just trying to keep up her skills, and am I, so we're pretty well matched. We are working this semester to get ready for the HSK (Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi) or Mandarin Proficiency Test. It's kind of like the TOEFL for Chinese. Anyway, I'm excited and daunted to think of taking the HSK in December in Memphis. I'm also working on my Senior Honors thesis, and doing quite poorly at it. It's supposed to be a novella about a young woman who becomes a Christian in China and then the stresses that her faith and her nationality, etc. place on her as life becomes more complicated. I have a plotline kind of made out, but getting it out of the nebulous places in my head and into written words is proving to be much more difficult than I thought it would be. Aiya!

The other class I'm taking is Digital Film 3. It's basically the first semester of the two-semester capstone class for my major. I'm enjoying it well enough, and the professor seems to know what he's talking about, so hopefully I'll be able to channel some of my ideas and aspirations into the movies I'll be a part of in the next several months.

In conclusion, I'm blogging in order to put off the free-writing that I need to do to get my thesis into gear, so I'll sign off.

T