The lyf so short

Oh ye gods and little fishes, my exam results finally showed up. And I passed. And the two missing results are decent, too (1.7 in Japanese, 1.3 in English Literature (with Prof-whose-style-I-do-not-get-at-all, too! Adding a touch of feminist ranting was apparently a good idea.).

Assuming that I did the calculations correctly, which isn't entirely certain because the guide on the uni page is somewhat unclear, my final grade would accordingly be:
2.1.

Measured by my expectations from the start, that's a disappointment; measured by my re-assessed expectations after the bloody thesis, it's a relief. On the whole, the disappointment factor prevails, but eh well. Not much to do about it. And: At least it's over. Yes, NOW it's over!



Time to write job applications, I guess. And hope I find someone who's nice and/or stupid enough to employ someone with a suspiciously round belly and an unexciting degree in Weird Stuff. *le sigh* Complications, complications.

Oral (final final) exam: tomorrow.
Panic: all there.
Knowledge: all gone.

Oh joy.

Today, the first exam results have been published. Most people have got the results of at least one exam. Some even know the results of two.
And some haven't got a single result yet.

Guess which group I belong to?

Yeah. [Image censored to protect the guilty.]

Next publication date: January 6th. Aside from the fact that I'm surprised that anyone at the university of the Holy Roman City Of Cologne is pretending to do anything work-like on Epiphany of all days*, that's so far away. I mean, that's like, NEXT YEAR! :p

I'd really hoped that at least one of the three professors might have made up their minds. Not surprised that Japanese professor isn't done yet, since she's got a shitload of work to do practically single-handedly (...), but the others don't quite have that excuse. And it's not like I wrote insanely lengthy essays. Twelve hand-written pages, that's not too much for a four-hour exam. Bah.

(Says the girl who managed to review exactly two stories for this year's MEFAs between *drumroll* June and December... :p)

To make things even better, office hour on Tuesday was cancelled due to illness. I don't mind that professors fall ill, that sort of thing happens. What I do mind is when I make my way to Cologne after heavy snowfalls, have to deal with the incompetence of Colognian drivers, manage to find a parking lot, rush into university, and THEN find a notice on the professor's door saying "Sorry, office hour cancelled". Dear professor's assistants: There were six people on the wait list. Each of them left their e-mail address in case of something going wrong. How much work would it have been to send an e-mail to these six people about the cancelled office hour?

And thus I don't know yet whether my choice of texts pleaseth the examiner. Could as well have procrastinated. :p

Don't I love being in Limbo.


- - -
*Cologne cathedral supposedly holds the bones of the Three Wise Men, so Epiphany is a bit of a Big Thing (TM) there.

- for the rest of the year!

Professor decided to be a normal human being and ask nice general questions about (for both topics) the very first focus I had outlined. Somewhat oddly worded, but I hope my essay fits anyway. Had a wonderful sentence for the conclusion in my head all through the writing process only to forget it when it actually came to writing the conclusion. This is why you should take notes...
Eh well. It should suffice for a passing grade. I suppose hoping for more is graceless.

It's been snowing ever since I came home yesterday. Snow levels: rising! My hopes for a white Christmas: also rising! (Last year, about the only week of thaw we got all winter was the week around Christmas. Very funny.)

Speaking of Christmas, it's become fairly obvious that I won't manage to write Christmas cards this year. Sorry, folks! Next year.

Now, for all those creative projects that were put off or on hold in order to deal with the exams... augh, so many! Almost looks like hard work. And, of course, all those Christmas preparations.

Well, time to get started. ^^

When I went into the whole final exam thing - that is, when I registered for the whole mess - I was having a fairly good relationship with academia. As in, when people asked (as some people were prone to do) whether I was considering to add a PhD. after my M.A., I said "Sure, if the opportunity offers itself, I think that would be cool."

At the moment - having writen my thesis, and having taken the first written exam, and ten hours before the second written exam - I am having a lot of second thoughts.

Well, firstly I am doubting that the opportunity is going to offer itself. I am not even certain that I'll manage the bloody M.A., not because I am stupid but because I function the wrong way. Even if I manage to pass, it definitely won't be with the grand results I've been secretly expecting (and this is not just my usual pessimism; with the grade I got for my thesis, I'd have to write positively brilliant exams and excel at the oral exam, something I have always been naturally bad at, in order to still get a 1.something grade*. Not likely.). Nobody is going to come to me going "You know, we have this postgraduate office to fill, would you like it?" Nobody is going to ask me to write my Ph.D. thesis under their tutelage.

And I am pretty certain that I am not going to struggle for some postgraduate university job or a Ph.D. supervisor myself, at the moment. I am, at the moment, so sick of academia. In the past weeks, I have been reading a shitload of texts that were obviously just published because someone somewhere had to write it in order to keep their job. I have read a shitload of texts that were practically just a review of previous research, the sort that students have to do (without getting paid for it) for classroom presentations. Or where four pages of a six-page thesis discuss the history and use of a certain term, the validity of said history, and the use the present author is going to make of the term in the face of said history and for what reasons. Then follow one and a half pages with some illustrative examples, and a conclusion along the lines of "fascinating topic, further research necessary". I know that these people aren't doing this to make me roll my eyes. They're doing it because it's academic convention, and because they're working in a publish-or-perish system where instead of the common-sense "If you don't have anything to say, just keep your mouth shut" the rule is "If you don't have anything new to say, sum up something old". And make it sound important. And make it sound like you believe it.
And at the moment, that is not what I want to do with my life.

A few years ago, I was reading a book by Pam Houston. It was full of autobiographic episodes, and one of them concerned how one day she was standing in the office at her university, waiting for a signature on the final credit certificate she needed in order to qualify for her final exams, and she overheard two of her professors utterly absorbed in a discussion about the difference between (I think) "immanent" and "innate". And one of them, she knew, had serious personal trouble in his private life, and here he stood discussing "immanent" and "innate" as if anything depended on it.
And she quietly turned, and left the office and her certificate behind. And she never returned.
At the time of reading, I thought something along the lines of, "Wow, way to throw the efforts of the past years away." I mean, she had ploughed through 95% of her university career. Even if she now realised that it was all pretty pointless, couldn't she have done the final 5%? Tsk, really.

But right now? Right now I really, really sympathise. Right now, I look at people discussing the difference between "postcolonialism" and "post-colonialism" for four pages as if anyone cared. And I think, I can live without that. I do not need to be able to rehash a lot of problem-mongering only a fraction of which actually matters to anyone outside of academia, and most of which doesn't even matter to academics. I can read and enjoy books without knowing what literary theorists think about them. I can write stories that some people like, and I can paint pictures that some people think good, and I can travel and think and grow plants and restore an old farmhouse and design things and sew historical clothing and -- I can do all this without all that.
And I am so, so tempted to just throw it and skip the rest of the exams and extract myself from the Matrix exmatriculate and do - well, something that makes at least a small bit of sense. Something that doesn't force me to pretend that the difference between postcolonialism and post-colonialism matters. Something that doesn't force me to pretend that knowing the half-cooked opinions of Sigmund Freud enhances my understanding of Shakespeare's work just because someone who never left her ivory tower thinks so and I have to please her in order to pass.

I won't throw it. I am going to leave university, but I'll do it with an M.A. degree in my pocket. I'll do the final 5% because even if at the moment it all feels not only pointless but actively repulsive, I suppose even a bad M.A. may be of use. I'll do it because I am not a quitter, and I can still try and do something that makes at least a small bit of sense come January. I have wasted so many years, I can waste two more months.

And perhaps in a year I'll feel differently, and I'll feel the urge to discuss immanence and innateness and postcolonialism and post-colonialism, or the Freudian Uncanny² in Shakespeare's comedies, or whether Beowulf was composed orally or in writing. And then I can return into academia because I'll be a postgraduate and all set to go.

But at the moment, I don't think I'll want to. And at the moment, I am almost envying Pam Houston for the courage to just throw it overboard, to turn her back on all the bullshitting and all the do-gooder self-flagellation and all the "We cannot solve the problem, but we are really aware of it!", and to do something else entirely.
I am definitely envying her for landing on her feet and being a published author these days. ^^

Eh well. Time for bed.


- - -
*Note on academic grades in Germany: 1.0 is the best passing grade, 4.0 is the worst. You do not have to understand our system.

²And you don't want to get me started on the Uncanny. The entire notion is based on an etymological assumption that is not actually tenable. And literary critics my exam professor still believes it.
Sometimes - and I know that this is embarrassing and arrogant - I think that it's not that I'm too stupid for all this. Sometimes I think I'm too smart.

After the office hour with my third examining professor, I have come to the conclusion that the purpose of the Magisterexamen in English philology is to make the examinee hate the English language and all literature ever produced in it. Thanks for nothing.

Taking two hours for the 45-minute drive from Cologne back home didn't improve my mood. Also, clowns everywhere. Fucking fifth season. Lantern-bearing kiddies, on the other hand, are rare, presumably due to the storm going on outside. Poor kidlets missing out on their treats. ;_;

In this sense, I hope you have a bloody great carnival and an even better Martinmas. Anyone coming by with a paper lantern singing a nice (or even a stupid) Martinmas song will get candy. Anyone coming by with a poppy and a pathetic poem will experience firsthandhead the ballistic qualities of The Riverside Shakespeare. Yes, the hardcover edition.

B'r'lady HELL.

... till my first final.

I am not too afraid of the essay part. It is going to be horrid, but it was preparable, which is worth something. As long as I can remember my framework and the Kanji it should go okay. (If I can remember my framework and the Kanji...) I'm afraid that the translation part is going to break my neck though.

Should any of you just happen to have a free moment tomorrow morning, 9 am to 1 pm (CET), I'd be grateful if you could press your thumbs, cross your fingers, or otherwise send a good thought or two, thanks.

Also, I have now come to the conclusion that Premodern Japanese Buddhism = Vegetarian Catholicism. Yes, with everything that entails.

Have this little gem from the Nihon Ryôiki*, for instance, paraphrased in the words of yours truly!

Dramatis Personae
- A demon, messenger of King Enra of Hell
- Hirotari, a man
- Nameless Woman, his ex-wife
- Hirotari's relatives

Hirotari: *randomly dies and iz ded*
Hirotari's family: Oh, we've heard so often about people coming back from the dead, let's not burn him yet.
Hirotari: *looks around* Dude, is this the afterlife?
Demon: Might be. Do you know this woman?
Hirotari: Yeah, kind of looks like my wife who died three years ago.
Demon: And she is!
Hirotari: Oh. Um. Cool. Hi, darling?
Nameless Woman: Hello Hirotari. Did you know, since I died with an unborn child in me, I am held responsible for murder and was condemned to six years of torment before I get to go through whatever crappy next life they find suitable?
Hirotari: Ah. Um. Sorry to hear that, sucks to be you, look on the bright side, you're halfway through?
Demon: Yeah, about that. Since you were kinda responsible for the child being in her in the first place, you get to share the last three years of torment with her. Yay?
Hirotari: Yay. Not. Um. Perhaps I'm not actually the true father?
Nameless Woman: Oh believe you me, you are.
Hirotari: But it's not my time!
Demon: By necessity, it is. But take heart, as you've been an otherwise decent guy, you'll be reborn as something ~*nice*~ afterwards!
Hirotari: Um, um, if I were to copy the lotus sutra and pay a lot of money to the local temple, could we kind of cancel that? Totally for her sake, of course. Because, um, she's already suffered so much and three more years are really not necessary, right?
Demon: Your offer is acceptable. Byebye, see you later!
Nameless Woman: You tell me that NOW?
Hirotari's relatives: Wow, good thing we didn't burn that body!
Hirotari: I say! Now excuse me, I got a sutra to copy and all my money to give to the temple.
Hirotari's relatives: Dude, not cool! Why?
Hirotari: Because otherwise they'll come for ME again.
And the moral is, dear children, you should give all your money to The Faith so nobody needs to go to hell! As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs!

Ladies and Gentlemen: Any questions?

Disgruntled Lyra out.

- - -
*"Chronicle of Weird Shit That Happened in Japan". Formal title is longer and means "Record of Miraculous Events of the Recompense of Good and Evil in the Country of Japan", but, you know, it boils down to "Weird Shit".

Today was a Good Day.

I had to skip work in order to go to Prof E.'s office hour, but it was totally worth it. Prof E. managed to take pretty much all the fear I had about the Japanese studies part of my exams from me. Quote: "You know, I think these exams are about showing that we taught you well. You'll doubtlessly have other professors who're trying to make your life hard. I'm not into that."
<3

Thus motivated I finally dared to check my e-mails and see what Prof K. replied to my mail about Thursday's presentation. I've been scared of that ever since Friday, because my handout sucked, but all he said was "I assume you'll elaborate and give further examples in the powerpoint?" Which I was planning to do anyway, so yeah.

I also made chocolates. For posterity: Yes, you can totally grind pistachios in a nut mill. If you toasted them beforehand.

Colloquium was ok - got some helpful tipps for properly organised thesis-writing, let's see if I remember them when the time comes.

Best part came afterwards, though. Pretty much on a whim I decided to go to the university choir's "inofficial Christmas concert" because choir! music! and it was lovely. It's so embarrassing how much choir music does for my mood. Listening isn't quite as nice as singing, but still good. ^___^

Yay!

the Japanese exam = excessive amounts of angst, hate and failure.

Serenity = excessive amounts of happy shiny fangirly love.

I think that's about it.

So. Tomorrow is the intermediate exam in Cultural Anthropology.

( Inane Rambling, cut for depression and length )