Tag Archives: ma

restless roll

i am going through a bout of nightmares about my unfinished MA thesis and am losing a lot of sleep because of it.   It’s like the ghost of Old Hamlet is now speaking directly to me instead of his son: “Remember me…”

13. with child

what’s your favourite album of all time? i must settle on Passengers: Original Soundtracks 1 by the likes of Brian Eno and U2. Most people generally consider this to be a U2 album, and for the most part I refer to it as such. But its sounds are so far removed [...]

Things learned and affirmed

Things I have learned and affirmed this year (by class):

digressions and diversions

i’m spending too much time on the inside.
classes technically ended a week ago, but i’ve still been going at it due to some extended terms thanks to so doctors who were determined to attend their spring-time conferences.  i generally appreciate it when the class isn’t cancelled outright but tacked on to the end of the [...]

the end is nigh

the end of the term is nigh. I had my second-to-last seminar yesterday, to be followed by the final seminal next Monday afternoon. Only two hours remain in my public life as an arts student. There are yet several papers to produce as well as the thesis to complete (and its [...]

To lie in cold obstruction / The undiscovered country

So the prof who I TA for lost a couple of the essays that were to be returned today. Since he’s flying to Mexico City for a conference on the Gothic (I know, I know), he’s asked me to mark the copies that the students will graciously email me this evening. I could [...]

Reports for Schools

how arnoldian.
it is the middle of march, the ides of march, the day of saint patrick, and all the conscientious students are at the library. myself, i spent the day at home marking their papers about metaphorical and physical blindness in either king lear or oedipus rex. i’ve so far encountered the standard [...]

troubled / the reason for being

it should come as no surprise to most people reading this that this year hasn’t been the best year for me. i haven’t been happy with my studies or my department; i’ve been living in poverty for too long, and i’ve been struggling quite a bit with the “what next?” question. Turning [...]

Halifax, The Act of Forgetting, and Africville

In another life I’d have called this not “The Spadina Bus” (cf The Shuffle Demons), or even “Crosstown Traffic“. I realized when I awoke this morning that I’d have to make a trip up to the library at Mount Saint Vincent University, but first had to stop at the library at Dalhousie University, thereby [...]

Reading, writing, and responding

Regular readers will have noticed that the number of posts on derivative have dropped considerably in the past six weeks. This was an unfortunate, yet necessary consequence of the return to school – this time around in a graduate programme. Time and and effort was shifted from the digital tablet back to the [...]