Aleksandra the Great’s Exploits

Maybe I do live on the wrong side of Clifton Heights

Monday morning I was heading for the trolley and noticed that the back right window of kuruma-kun (Car) was broken. It looked as if someone had hit it with a bat or some such tool, shattering the glass and leaving a little hole. I naturally worried that I had caused it. As it turns out, however, 13 cars in the area had been shot at with a beebee gun. Apparently, some vandals were riding around Clifton destroying property. Hmmm.

And again!

It shouldn’t be too hard to recall my post-colonial lit. professor (since I wrote about him in the last post). We were reading Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, which is a companion novel to Jane Eyre that deals with the [spoiler warning] supposedly crazy woman in the attic. It’s a background, essentially. Anyway, she ends up burning down the guy’s mansion in JE, and there’s one critic who suggests that Jean Rhys is encouraging the metaphorical burning of all books like Jane Eyre (that exploit colonial stereotypes). So, my professor picks his copy of JE and sets fire to the edges.
Canon?

In the post-colonial lit. course we read three novels by women, and the rest were written by men. As an end-of-term activity, we all voted on the books we liked most and least, what we would eliminate if we had to, etc. The women writers were spread out, and Salmon Rushdie won the most-liked. Then the professor explained that the real canon is determined by how many articles are written about particular authors or works. So we voted on what authors we had written about or were planning to write about. As it turns out, the three woman authors were at the top of that list.

My professor said that he knew of only one study done between the critics and their opinions on a work. There was some conference in which a person presented a study on critics of Ulysses. Apparently (I haven’t read it), the woman in it has an affair. So the presenter researched the critics who thought the woman was a whore versus those who thought she was liberated and found an overwhelming correlation between critics who thought she was a whore who had also been involved in affairs and divorces. What does this mean for criticism?

And finally

Ten-to-twelve-page papers are significantly harder to write than five-to-seven-page papers. At least there’s only one more to write.

When Mr. Connelly told us to write in our books, I was shocked. You don’t write in literature. But I really warmed up to that, after a while. Today in my Post-colonial Lit class, we started discussing Midnight’s Children. The title of the first chapter is “The Perforated Sheet,” so we were talking about what that could mean, before you find out what it really is. Everyone thought of a piece of paper to tear out, and my professor enacted this idea on his book by tearing out a random page from the middle. One girl screamed. If throwing books is blasphemy, what on earth is ripping them apart? Another girl went further: a perforated sheet, she suggested, was something to be written on, then torn out and thrown away. So my professor crumpled the page and tossed it in the trash. I take his word for it that he won’t retrieve the page from the trash.

(eigo de: It’s cold!) Finally, it is so cold now that there is not a day with a high above 70 degress in the ten-day forecast!

Also, I find myself rather envious of my New York friends whose weekends have already started. If only the beginning language program were not so intensive! demo nihongo wa ii desu, and I wouldn’t trade it. I haven’t actually said anything about my classes this semester, have I? I’m taking post-colonial literature with an awesome professor (who took pictures—shashin o torimashita; forgive me, I have a test in the morning—of everyone so that he could make flashcards to learn our names) who said he would give extra credit to the person who could say something completely irrelevant about the readings. My other English class is on women’s poetry, but I swear I’m not turning into a feminist.

Bill Clinton came to my school yesterday (Wednesday, actually) with Lois Murphy and Ed Rendell. I waited in line for two hours, and then I waited around in the cloisters (luckily!—not everyone could get in to see them in person) for another hour and a half before all of the speakers showed up. Just as they were about to come out to do their speeches, it started raining. Admittedly, I did not stand in the rain to watch; I had secured a spot along the wall, and when it rained I just stayed under cover. Either Murphy or Rendell (you’d think I should be able to tell them apart, but I can’t remember) brought up something about global warming in their short speeches, which was pleasing. Clinton’s was about the original intent to form “a more perfect union”—a phrase he repeated often—and that the current, special interest, ideological (contrasted to philosophical), most right-wing group of Republican leaders do not have the same goal as our founders. He said that the Democrats were now the nation’s liberals as well as conservatives. Since he was at a college, he brought up a lot about college tuition and the cuts from the education budget that were used to pay his tax cut. He apologized and said that he prefers that we be able to go to college. He, having taken off his coat in the rain, said that it was his 31st wedding anniversary and he wanted to keep his coat nice because he was taking his wife out after the rally.

Several times people have tried to get me to register to vote in Bryn Mawr’s district or to volunteer for its Lois Murphy. I love when I tell them that I’m in Sestak’s district and they respond with things like, “Oh, stay in that district; we like Sestak,” and “Okay, if you put your information down we’ll forward it to Sestak’s campaign people.” I must make more of an effort this year to get the Democrats elected (more than in 2004, the only other time I was really that politically-active, when I only went out on election day’s night to make sure the Democrats were voting). Does anyone know if you need your voter registration card (that they sent in the mail) to vote if it’s your first time, or is photo id all that is required?

On Wednesday, I moved in to Bryn Mawr’s Rockefeller dorm, a gift of John D. Rockefeller. This is a very good dorm to get into for the first year at BMC. Most of the rooms are singles and have doors with glass panes that can be painted:

The stairwells and hallways are very spacious. Note the double doors leading to this first floor hallway:

So it’s all luxurious and lovely and everything you’d expect the rich girls at the turn of the century to have. And then there are the servants’ quarters:

The servants’ quarters continue down this hallway, and some of the rooms have the glass doors and everything. Then you come to a wall and a stairway with an Exit sign, but do not find my room. As it turns out, you have to go down the stairs and around the corner to come to four rooms tucked away in the Lost Corridor. As least two of these rooms back here, including mine, are doubles. But they are wide doubles with windows on two walls so there can be air flow, and two separate closets and very low lighting:

That is my half of the room. It is so well-divided that my roommate and I, for whatever unknown reason, could tape a line down the middle and only cross paths at the entrance. By far, though, the best thing about living all the way back here, at least a minute’s walk from the laundry room and tea pantry, is the single bathroom:

See how there is only one shower, one stall, and one sink? That means there’s a private bathroom for the six (potentially eight) of us who live back here. Of course, if it’s occupied, we could always run up the stairs and use the bathroom at the end of the first grouping of servants’ rooms.

So this is where I live. As for an explanation as to why I haven’t posted in so freaking long and a recap of what I’ve been up to since June, that will have to wait until next time.

When I was looking at transfer colleges, Swarthmore topped the list, followed by Bryn Mawr and then Haverford. Swarthmore has a really nice campus and an Aikido club, and it’s terribly easy to travel between the college and my house; not to mention that it’s one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country. But Swarthmore is impossibly hard to get into, so I pretty much counted on a rejection from them.

Bryn Mawr was the only college for which I had a tour and an interview over spring break, and I really loved the college after that. (One of the reasons I didn’t want a tour of Swarthmore after the Bryn Mawr tour was because I didn’t want to fall more in love with the school least likely to accept me.) Bryn Mawr is really neat: we get lanterns in our class color (red for 2009); the whole campus looks like a castle; and there’s a May Day celebration and a cloister with a fountain and a tradition—established by Katherine Hepburn—of skinny dipping. On top of that, most of the dorms are singles and a lot of them have fireplaces and window seats. So I got myself pretty excited to go to Bryn Mawr; my application for this college was best, too, because I wrote it over spring break and not from New York two nights before it was due.

As I’ve already mentioned, I’d been checking the mail every day waiting to hear from the colleges. Bryn Mawr was to mail on the 15th, and Swarthmore said they would notify by the 15th, so I figured I would hear from both colleges by this coming Wednesday. Yesterday Ricky and I were playing ddr when the phone rang and my mother called me to get it. Thinking it was a friend who wouldn’t mind waiting a moment for me to finish a song, I kept playing. But my mother gestured that it was important, so I got off the dance mat and on the phone with the woman in charge of transfer admissions who had interviewed me at Bryn Mawr. She called to say, first of all, that congratulations, I was accepted (yay!); and second, that they were having technical problems with the letters and would be sending them out Monday or Tuesday at the latest with the financial aid information. So I’m going to college!!! It’s such a cute little school that the admissions people call students to congratulate them. That would have taken weeks at NYU.

Today while I was out, a letter came from Swarthmore. My stepfather told my mother that it wasn’t a small letter (rejection), but it wasn’t a large letter (admission) either; it was kind of in-between. So my mother told him to open it (without my permission—isn’t that breaking some federal law?), and it was indeed neither a rejection nor a letter of acceptance. I got wait-listed. But isn’t that so awesome? Swarthmore College says I’m qualified, and the person who wrote the letter (who actually bothered to use my nickname in the address) seemed genuinely sorry that there weren’t enough spaces right now. The letter-writer even hoped that I had other options to pursue. Nearly 5000 kids applied for freshman class, and nearly 200 were trying to get in as transfers, so I understand that I didn’t get one of the coveted positions; I’m just amazed that they didn’t actually reject me.

So it looks like I’m going to Bryn Mawr. Or, at least, I’d better be after I dragged my mother and Stephen and Dave all around the campus in the lovely rainy weather today to look at the school and buy lots of shirts and pens and mugs, etc. in the bookstore. Luckily, the shop was open, and we were even able to get inside the buildings. It’s possibly because today was graduation (I swear I thought the website said it was the 20th). I think I’m still going to keep my name on the list for Swarthmore, though. They may just want to give me a free ride after wait-listing me, and I don’t know if I could really pass that up. I haven’t actually heard about money from Bryn Mawr yet, and I haven’t heard anything from Haverford, but they’d have to give me a lot of money for me to choose them over Bryn Mawr. The thing is, though, if I go to Bryn Mawr I can do all the cool traditions that they have and still take part in Swarthmore’s Aikido club and enjoy their campus (as well as my own). If I went to either of the other schools, I wouldn’t get to live in a castle or dress up in white and dance around May poles or any of the cool things that Bryn Mawr kids do.

Mood: V. happy

Edit: Amusingly enough, Haverford rejected my application for admission. It’s okay; I didn’t really want to go there anyway. They sent out an email on Tuesday, and I thought maybe they were emailing rejections rather than wasting the paper to send out all of the bad news letters. Apparently, though, they were just emailing as a rough draft; a physical letter came with the mail on Wednesday, along with my acceptance package from Bryn Mawr (complete with temporary tattoo). It’s still very funny that Swarthmore would accept me if they had room while the so-thought safety school would not. The only problem is that if I want to learn Japanese, I’ll have to take courses at Haverford.

¡Adios, Nueva York!
I checked out of my dorm late Wednesday evening, meaning I can no longer call myself a New Yorker. I have two finals on the 9th of May, and then my first year of college is finished, and I hopefully won’t have to go back to New York (except to use my two free passes to MoMA—is anyone interested in going with me?). But there are still 32 days until I’ll have heard from all of my transfer colleges (meaning I’m anxiously awaiting the mail every day).

Finals
On Thursday morning I had my World Cultures: Chinese and Japanese Traditions final with Ricky and my Lit Interp final. They decided to make the WC final on the last day of class rather than on Reading Day, something about which I was very pleased, since I don’t have enough train tickets to travel to and from New York one more day than I thought I had to and because you’re not allowed to have finals on Reading Day; they let us arrive at 7:30 rather than at 8 so we could have extra time. Anyway, the amazing thing is that I filled a Blue Book! During the midterm in my AmFic class last semester, for which we only had an hour and fifteen minutes, some of the students requested second Blue Books. I think I filled half of my first book during that exam. After about an hour and a half of writing in WC, though, I went up and got my second book. I’m pretty pleased. [Edit: I know that’s the same thing I said about those boys and their grammatical correction. Sorry.

One more thing: The final did not prove to be very difficult. We read five works and had to answer one of two essay questions for each one. They were all pretty reasonable—comparing some of the plays of one collection, examining characters’ actions, ect. One of the books we had to read was Soseki’s And then, a novel that deals with this guy Daisuke and his friend Hiraoka and Hiraoka’s wife, Michiyo. One of the essay topics for that book was “Write the main narrative as seen from Michiyo’s perspective.” What kind of essay is that?! It didn’t even require that we think about the book, only that we know the plot. And telling it from her point of view made it even easier than simply summarizing since she didn’t know all of the side stories with Daisuke’s family. Needless to say, I chose that one.]

Where’s Tabby?
This morning around 6:30 my mother came in my room to say that we left the back door open last night and the cat (Tabby) was missing. My mother said she’d looked around outside and couldn’t find her and didn’t hear her meowing, so she really believed my cat was dead. My step-father heard, and he and I got ready quickly and went to help look for the cat. By the time I got to the basement, however, they had found Tabby. She had hidden under my neighbor’s car and very luckily was neither run-over nor stolen. Tabby enjoyed a very early breakfast and lots of attention this morning.

My father ordered some wine from Australia, but since the company is not allowed to ship in to Pennsylvania, he had to send the bottles to my dorm. I’m fairly certain he didn’t have to put his date of birth on the order form or promise to send them a copy of his driver’s license, so theoretically anyone could order wine from this company. I had worried about getting it from the front desk of my dorm, thinking that it would require that someone over 21 pick it up, but I tried anyway. The guy at the front desk signed it right over to me, completely disregarding the “ADULT SIGNATURE REQUIRED—MIN 21″ notice on the packing label. So much for the drinking age.

Since I’ve decided that I want to transfer, and that I’d rather commute (if I don’t get in to any of the three transfer colleges) than have to live here, I did not really feel like walking all the way over to Carlyle (my assigned dorm for next year, either my second or third pick, and all of five minutes from my dorm) to spend the approximated 45 minutes signing up for a dorm that doesn’t really matter. My dorm selection time happened to be 8:18, which would probably make me miss the Colbert Report. This was all just unpleasant, and I considered not even going.

But I don’t usually skip required university events, so I went. By the time I made my way through Carlyle, which is, admittedly, a rather nice-looking dorm with a central mostly-cement courtyard, the people in charge of housing had already talked to everyone else supposed to select a dorm at my time. Oh, well. I went back alone to a room where maybe five or six housing people were standing and sitting around talking. One girl said, as if annoyed that I had been late although I arrived probably 15 minutes early like the website recommended, that she had already talked to the others and would explain to me what she had just told them. Apparently, there were no more spots left in Carlyle. Heh. By the time they get so far down on the housing selection list as I am (and this is only the second night?), they sometimes run out of rooms. But since I’m guaranteed housing, they’ll definitely fit me in somewhere. She even said they would try to find an opening in my first choice dorm. Well, that’s nice.

I, not really concerned with housing and just rather amused by my fortune, didn’t get upset or demand a room or anything of the sort. When I left, one of the housing boys said he wished all of the people they had to tell that to were like me. I didn’t quite have the heart to tell them that I probably wouldn’t be living at NYU next year, anyway.

I was doing so well with posting somewhat regularly and then I just lost it again. It’s partly because I had midterms and a paper due. It seems like I worried too much about the exams because I didn’t think they were that difficult, but I haven’t gotten the grades back yet.

Friday night Ricky and I attempted to walk up to Christina’s dorm, but we ended up taking the subway. It was already 1am and it actually felt like winter this past week. They had Cranium up there. I tried to resist playing; how could I take part in an activity that Mr. Connelly hates? Eventually I became a limited player. I feel like I betrayed him.

Possibly more important, I’m applying to colleges again. Late last semester I got really stressed and wanted to transfer to somewhere closer to home (since I come home almost every weekend anyway; I know that’s pathetic), but I’d missed all of the application dates. I wasn’t really considering it this semester until it came time to study for midterms. So now I’m applying to Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, and Haverford. Needless to say, I’m quite worried. Although I’m not sure that I would transfer yet (I just want to have the option in case I decide to), right now I’m rather fond of the idea of transferring, so getting accepted seems like a much bigger concern than it needs to be. After all, even if I don’t get in to any of them, I’m still in college, and it’s not terrible. I think my wanting to transfer is somewhat influenced by Honey and Clover—it’s an anime about these students in an art college and they have their little group and they’re very friendly with the professor. Maybe I want something like that (as if transferring would automatically create that situation).

Other than that, there isn’t much of import except that it’s the second night in a row in which I’ll be up till five if not past then. Rearranging my sleep schedule is not a good idea when I still have 8am classes to attend.

I’m taking Calc I, which should be pretty easy since I had a lot of it before. Still, calc was my worst subject in high school, so I’ve been worried about passing it with a sufficient grade. It’s even better that our only grades come from two midterms and the final. The first midterm was Thursday. I studied for probably four hours total (that is so much time compared to my usual studying) Wednesday night, but I didn’t know how to do one (simple) problem, and the chain rule had been giving me a lot of trouble.

So today the professor emailed us the results in a list. I first looked at the score for a person with a very similar NYU ID—F. I almost panicked, but then I realized that the A underneath that score was attached to my ID. Yay! This is silly bragging, I know, but I’m excited. The curve on that test was very reassuring. I could have gotten a C with 55%; passing didn’t even require having half of the answers correct.