No Cats Were Harmed in the Writing of this Post

I am not going to say that I hate deadlines because everyone says that, and for me it is not all that true anyway.

I will say that I am not terribly sure about this graduate school idea. I constantly feel...stupid. It is an irritating feeling because I know that I am not stupid about most things, but based on what has happened to me thus far this fall, one would never know it.

Lord, have mercy. If Amber's cat does not cease shouting in the next ten seconds, he shall be tamales.

Right. Graduate school. For one thing, I think that reading a book per week per class is ludicrous. How the hell is anyone meant to learn anything just cramming repeatedly? Furthermore, seminars are also ludicrous. Why in hell am I paying a thousand dollars per class to listen to other people with the same education level as me talk about what they think? I do not CARE what they think, particularly since the majority of it is egotistical prattle. I want to know what the professor thinks, not what that guy over there thinks because science is SOOO much better than history.

AND

I. Do. NOT. Give A Damn about the alleged debate over objectivity. For the sake of all which is holy and the other stuff which is not, I do not understand why it took eight weeks to dispatch it, especially with Smugly McHipsterpants going on about whether or not the furniture is in fact present.

How about I pick up one of the chairs and smack him across the teeth with it? Would that prove that it is there? Or, given that no one can truly be objective, there would be no proof that I smacked him at all. That class has been less than useful.

I am also sick of most things I say being refuted with the phrase "Well, I do not know what YOU have been reading, but..."

DAMMIT, I have been reading the book which was on the bloody reading list, and since I somehow managed to make it for twenty-seven years, through public school and a bachelor's degree, I think I am possessed of fairly reasonable reading comprehension. So when I say that the fecking Franciscans and Dominicans held conflicting notions about what their roles in New Spain -- and that of the lay Spanish -- were, and tell you why that was, I bloody well know what I am on about.

Which brings me to why I am up right now and writing a blog post instead of working on the term paper which is due at half past six on Tuesday evening, or the other term paper which is due at some undisclosed time on Friday. Everything is too damn nebulous. How's that for a nebulous statement?

I want to run off to Gloucestershire and be a blacksmith or something. I can appreciate that I do not know everything about history -- that I, in fact, know very little when it comes to it -- but dammit, when I DO know something, I do not need people telling me that I do not.

And I recognise that the problem is in the nuances, and that is all well and good. I know that I am not very strong in oral presentations and that I communicate much better in writing, so theoretically, my paper should be fine. In the interim, I am probably going to fail out of grad school anyway because my papers do not count for enough.

And because the book review I had to write probably counts for too much. No one should ever ask for my opinion because then I will feel compelled to give it to them, and apparently, that is not even something one should do when writing a book review.

I had a point.

It may have had something to do with the fact that I have lost zero pounds this semester, do not sleep properly, and will probably not get very good grades anyway. That may have not been it after all, but it is still a valid point.

At this point, I feel like I am just in damage control mode. Get the papers written, get everything done, so I can start over next semester in classes with which I have at least a passing familiarity with the material and may hope against hope that no one wants to go on about objectivity.