Jobs.
After having my writing sample reviewed I sent it in yesterday and am now awaiting word on whether or not they want to grant me that illustrious second interview. Though I’ve always been terrified of letting people read any of my fictional work/poetry, I have ball o’ steel (so to speak) when it comes to any sort of educational writing. I’m confident that the piece I sent in is well-written. However, I’m not as sure that I nailed the content. Compressing a 20-something page packet into two pages presents some interesting editorial challenges. Hopefully I kept, and ignored, the right pieces of information.
Meanwhile, I have picked out my next frivolous novel for the summer — Interview With a Vampire. I really enjoyed Rice’s erotic collection, as well as Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt and have decided to sample her vampire collection. The only problem I’m having thus far is getting the movie out of my head as I read.
reading
I think I discovered the reason for the reading block I mentioned in my last post, that being that I am trying to cram my head full of those “academia approved” books. While I intend to get to these novels in due time, I think my brain is tired of digesting material that is wholesome and meaningful.
I devoured a sci-fi/bodice-ripper (I know, it’s an odd combination) of 200 pages last night after work. Which is to say that from the moment I started reading it I didn’t put it down. Realizing now that what I need is trashy, literary junk food I have decided to devote this summer to reading bodice-rippers and other such light reading.
LITERARY JUNK FOOD FTW!!!
Summer Reading List
I revised the list since my last blog. It’s nothing major, I merely added a book that I happened to pick up while at the Indianapolis airport. I seem to have found my excuse to push back my reading of Naked Lunch by reading Rant instead.
So without further ado, the updated reading list:
- 1984 by George Orwell
- Rant by Chuck Palahniuk (currently reading)
- Naked Lunch by William Burroughs
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
- Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
- Middlemarch by George Eliot
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
- Dracula by Bram Stoker
- Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
Reflections
I don’t know how to make the URL in my old journal an active link. Hopefully you have simply figured out how to get here from there.
I don’t know if I’m just melancholy after coming back to Boston from Indiana, but I have spent this entire morning reassessing my desire to be a librarian. It is a nice work environment, it is very relaxed and not exceptionally hard, but I think I would grow bored with it. Three weeks into working here (I am at the library, I just don’t start working until Nine o’clock) and I’m already bored. My days are four hours long, and I can’t fathom working a full day. “How tedious!” I think to myself.
Sometimes I think I only want to work a job like this one because it requires a graduate degree, as if by having an MA (then PhD) will be the ultimate testament to my intelligence. As if it would be undeniable proof that I am an extremely smart person. Not that I think that in itself is remarkable, because there are millions of very smart people. Some of those people, as a matter of fact, are incredibly smart without even a BA/BS. One of my best friends has to be the smartest man I know, and not having a degree doesn’t change my opinion of his intelligence one iota.
I am insecure. That is the only conclusion I can come to, or, at least, that is a factor in the conclusion I have come to. Do I want a graduate degree because I need it for the path I want to walk in life, or do I need it to feel validated?
Trin de Siècle – A clever little rhyme
Fin de siècle is French for “end of the century.” Now, let’s replace that fin with Trin and suddenly we have Trin de siècle, a bastardized French(ish) phrase (roughly) meaning: Trinity of the century.
I am a clever one, aren’t I?
