Multiple Post Day! #2: What I'm doing this semester

As many of you may or may not be aware, I'm actually in England to go to school. Novel, I know. Anyhow, that means that I need certain things set up before I can actually learn anything, and once I got in, that was pretty much what I spent my time doing.

First of all, I had only one tutorial set up for certain before I left. That was my Aesthetics tutorial, which I am taking with the same tutor who tutored me in Ethics last term. I'm excited about this, because I feel like we got on well together. He challenges me and makes me defend myself about pretty much every view I put forward, and he expects me to form my own opinions, which is somewhat novel for an undergraduate-level course of study, at least for me. I'm also excited to take the course as-is, because Aesthetics is almost like a meta-commentary on literary criticism, or at least that's what I'm getting out of it. So, it ties in with my English interests. To give everyone an idea of what I'll be doing, my first prompt is something to do with Plato and his inconsistencies in his judgments of poets and artists. I'm geeking out already.

So I arrived in Oxford without another class to take. Thankfully, this was fixed through a few e-mails between myself and the head Philosophy tutor here, who tutored me in Language and Logic last term. As it turns out, my other tutorial is going to be Philosophy of Mind.

I have a meeting with this tutor on Monday, but in the meantime, he asked me to read a textbook. I already knew most everything in the textbook, superficially speaking, but this is no indication about how this tutorial is going to go for me. This tutor also expects me to attend up to five hours of lecture a week for his tutorial, and so far, I don't have a syllabus from him. I assume I'll get it when I meet him for coffee tomorrow morning, but as of yet, I really don't know what to expect.

Any other things I'll be doing this semester will probably revolve around writing or criticism in some degree. I really enjoy going through the indexes on TVTropes, and I feel like they help my writing immensely (when you know the trope you're talking about, you know whether to play it straight, subvert it, or avoid it altogether). I also enjoy the communities I watch on LJ that have to deal with terrible writing. When I know what people hate, it's easier to... well, not do that. They're very critical, extremely snarky, occasionally sarcastic, and ultimately useful. So, that's my 'critical' lens, at least a few popular ones.

As far as my writing goes, I'm struggling with a multi-part epic I want to plot, but I have another few pieces of writing that might actually be coming along well, if I can find the time to dedicate to them instead of getting distracted by various other things. I also missed the meeting of my writing club today, but I don't feel bad as I had nothing to bring. Perhaps by next week I can edit part of a chapter from my NaNo and get some criticism of it. That would also be felicitous, because I believe next week they're doing a first-time-readers-of-the-club style of meeting for people who are shy or just haven't had time to present before will get the time and support to do so. Quite exciting.

Welp, I have another blog entry to write after this one, so I think I'll leave this off here.

- Jen -