Favorite Places

As each dedicated student can tell you, it is essential to your academic well being that you find a place conducive to your particular style of study. I have found mine and it is pictured above. The great thing about this one room is that there are never more than two people in it a time - an astounding feat for New York.

As this place has become my new sanctuary "away from home"-  as home is always the best place to study - I thought I'd share.

Me in my "favorite" corner looking all stoic.

One of those mornings...

Today is one of those mornings,
Where it is barely nine,

But already rounding the bases,
On a six hour day.

Résumé of the First Week of Classes:

Well, the first official "school week" has ended; for me this means Monday through Thursday. Monday was a holiday so there was no class and my first Wednesday was delayed until next week as was my Thursday class. This meant that in the first week of school I only had to attend one class.

That being said; don't be fooled. This first class is what they call the Proseminar which is essentially a required theory course. I was assigned two texts to prepare for class, one by Paul Valéry and another by Marcel Proust, both either assertions of their methods or critiques of others. I spent all of Tuesday evening and Wednesday preparing these two texts. Both were very informative and I must admit it was refreshing to dip my feet back into the subject. However, that which they put forward was for me rather complex, due to the fact that I had yet to attend class and the historicity of the texts wasn't entirely made plain to me.

Class came and lasted for nearly two hours (an hour shorter than what I was used to at the U). I managed to scribble down six or seven pages of notes and then spent the rest of the evening and a large majority of this morning transcribing them and trying to make sense of the finer points of le Formalisme. This necessitated reading an entire section of an independent theory book to get a clear grasp on the subject. The rest of the day has been spent reading a préface on a work entitled l'Astrée de Honoré d'Urfé, an author of the 17th Century which required several searches into other sources for a complete comprehension.

The good news is the French is coming back rapidly - as I am sure you could imagine - and I can only guess as to where my progress will be by the end of the semester.

Studying. . .

I thought I would just take a second to share the view with you from the Bobst Library reading room on the 8th Floor. I left my camera at home so I had to us the camera on my computer which doesn't do very well with landscapes. That is the Empire State Building in the background.

Daunted

I touched on this briefly in my last post, but since having gone to the bookstore today and purchasing the books for this semester I have once again felt compelled to publicly express my anxiety.

The above photo represents the reading that I need to accomplish before December 17th - excluding the dictionary of course and not including the several hundred pages of online course material. Naturally, instead of diving right in, I am immediately taking a break and posting about what I need to do instead of actually doing what I need to do.

I am, however, still excited for this semester, just with a little more of an idea as to what graduate school is; especially for a literature major. With that being said I should probably get to work.

Yes, Another Blog:

After some reflection upon my track record as phone caller, I have decided to start - and hopefully maintain this time - a blog to keep everyone up to date if I neglect timely phone calls. Although I can't promise to keep this one up either; I will endeavor to at least enter a weekly update.

The  last week or so has been rather a blur with days merging and melting into each other without my body really registering them. Our sleeping pattern has been off quite a bit as we have spent several late nights/early mornings up doing things.

I met the majority of the other 1st year graduate students on Friday. They all seem rather nice and I think I could become good friends with several of them. My first class is on Wednesday this week; I'll keep you posted.

Today was a rather disjointed Sunday. We went to a movie last night "Julie & Julia" at what I thought would be a very reasonable commute to Chelsea. We caught a late showing and the movie was great. However, after the show let out instead of being a reasonable commute, much to our dismay the train we needed was closed for the weekend resulting in a walk across the width of Manhattan, then a long metro ride to the ferry, which only runs once an hour on weekends after 11 pm, which lead to another train ride, and then a walk to our apartment. When all was said and done we got home at 3 am. (This was all accomplished safely and in very public well-lit places by the way, though we did see a drunk man punch a proselyting fire-n-brimstoner in the face on the ferry.)

This morning the alarm failed to go off as we awoke at the same time sacrament meeting started. We had yet to take public transit to the church so we rushed to get ready and find a reasonable route to church. Two hrs later, being at the ferry station, we gave up and went to church in Manhattan and made it just in time for the 1 pm singles ward at Lincoln Center. All of this while fasting.

Needless to say after that we came home, popped some popcorn - as any self-respecting tired fast breaker would do - and took a nap. And that is the story of our Sunday.

And now for some random pictures of the new apartment and things:

This is the view from Bay Street on Staten Island looking across at Brooklyn. That barge just sort of parked itself there a few days ago and hasn't moved.

The view from Bay Street again, this time looking towards Manhattan which you can barely see above the trees on the left.

The "Library."

My desk area in at the end of the hall. You'll notice the pile of yellow books on the desk; that is about 1/6th of the required reading for the MA exam next summer. Found them on sale at a French Bookstore in Rockefeller Center that is going out of business.

The Kitchen in its unpacked glory.

The Bathroom - enough said.

The Tree of Life. This variety of plant is called a money-tree. Picked it up at a local nursery for some greenery. Turns out the leaves and fruit on this thing are edible and it can grow to be 10' tall. 

Evening at Washington Square.

Dito.

The NYU Library: designed by a prison planner. The two men in red shirts sitting in the middle of this picture later did a street show involving jumping over people and various varieties of acrobatics.

Whitehall Street.