Out of Tune
This is ridiculous. I went to bed at midnight in such a tired state that I set my alarm for 11, glad that I had no morning class to attend and sure that I would need the extra time.
At 5:30am I wake up, fatigued mind and body. I am unable to connect a single thought, but my mind races and fights off sleep while begging for it at the same time.
Finally, my thoughts are able to focus on one thing. The freshman composition class that I'm being forced to take (and pass with flying colours) for the third time due to transfer credit losses.
Last year I took months and months of British Romantic Era poetry and loved every second of it. There in my composition class, we get to Keats's Ode to a Grecian Urn and the professor tells us it's probably the hardest thing we'll be doing that semester. I wonder what's so hard about a pair of lovers carved on a pot, when some girl starts talking about how it must mean that there's a woman cremated inside the urn.
The instructor, as baffled by the American stupidity as I was, but much more used to replying to it, was able to gently tell her that her insight was good but in this case definitely not the standard accepted interpretation. In blunt words, there's no cremated woman. It's a freaking water pot with a carving on it. The girl nods and we continue fighting the uphill battle with the freshmen to interpret the rest of the poem.
Coming to the very end, the same girl starts again talking about the ashes of a woman cremated. Meanwhile, John Keats's corpse is struggling to come to life to wrap his bony fingers around her neck and shake.
I don't have my book out, as I'd left it in my car that day. But out of luck or misfortune, whichever you'd prefer, I have the same professor for a high level Victorian Literature course. He sees me and feigns annoyance.
"Where's your book?" he asks in a tone I know means he isn't serious.
"I don't need it!" I beam back at him.
"Oh, you just have it all memorized?" He smiles back.
"Of course!" I say.
"Look off that guy next to you and read The World is Too Much With Us out loud," he tells me.
"The world is too much with us; late and soon," I begin, looking straight ahead,
"Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts awa-"
Here he laughs and stops me to ask the freshmen to butcher Wordsworth this time and let Keats have a rest.
Another freshman picks up, stopping at the end of each line just as everyone ignorant of poetry does for the longest time. I grin to myself as they go on with,
"And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;"
I've no love lost on Wordsworth, but I wonder if he would smile or groan at the joke he causes so many struggling freshmen to play on themselves with his words. It makes me wonder if any humour has been had at my expense by scientists or mathematicians, but then, if you would consider my amusement at the situation I've described here as somewhat dry, I can hardly imagine how painfully dull a mathematician's play must be.
At 5:30am I wake up, fatigued mind and body. I am unable to connect a single thought, but my mind races and fights off sleep while begging for it at the same time.
Finally, my thoughts are able to focus on one thing. The freshman composition class that I'm being forced to take (and pass with flying colours) for the third time due to transfer credit losses.
Last year I took months and months of British Romantic Era poetry and loved every second of it. There in my composition class, we get to Keats's Ode to a Grecian Urn and the professor tells us it's probably the hardest thing we'll be doing that semester. I wonder what's so hard about a pair of lovers carved on a pot, when some girl starts talking about how it must mean that there's a woman cremated inside the urn.
The instructor, as baffled by the American stupidity as I was, but much more used to replying to it, was able to gently tell her that her insight was good but in this case definitely not the standard accepted interpretation. In blunt words, there's no cremated woman. It's a freaking water pot with a carving on it. The girl nods and we continue fighting the uphill battle with the freshmen to interpret the rest of the poem.
Coming to the very end, the same girl starts again talking about the ashes of a woman cremated. Meanwhile, John Keats's corpse is struggling to come to life to wrap his bony fingers around her neck and shake.
I don't have my book out, as I'd left it in my car that day. But out of luck or misfortune, whichever you'd prefer, I have the same professor for a high level Victorian Literature course. He sees me and feigns annoyance.
"Where's your book?" he asks in a tone I know means he isn't serious.
"I don't need it!" I beam back at him.
"Oh, you just have it all memorized?" He smiles back.
"Of course!" I say.
"Look off that guy next to you and read The World is Too Much With Us out loud," he tells me.
"The world is too much with us; late and soon," I begin, looking straight ahead,
"Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts awa-"
Here he laughs and stops me to ask the freshmen to butcher Wordsworth this time and let Keats have a rest.
Another freshman picks up, stopping at the end of each line just as everyone ignorant of poetry does for the longest time. I grin to myself as they go on with,
"And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;"
I've no love lost on Wordsworth, but I wonder if he would smile or groan at the joke he causes so many struggling freshmen to play on themselves with his words. It makes me wonder if any humour has been had at my expense by scientists or mathematicians, but then, if you would consider my amusement at the situation I've described here as somewhat dry, I can hardly imagine how painfully dull a mathematician's play must be.
posted by red at 04:24
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