mothwing | Back at the university

Back at the university, back to work, back in reality. Joy. Lots of work, little time, little sleep, and all in all around 1300 pages of different books to read for next week plus a term paper due on Monday.

Today, I had one of the most enjoyable courses at the university, the one about the Narratological Approaches to Gothic Fiction. I daresay I am only so fond of this course because the in my opinion best professor at the entire university is teaching the course. He is not so much of a show off, knows a lot more than others in his department, who most of the time seem to be busy seeming important, yet he does not brag all the time - as opposed to others who only seem to teach to sell their books. He is a wonderful teacher in spite of being a university professor, most of these never thought about there being methods of teaching, they just hold long, rambling speeches, quite forgetting to add minor points like structure or a point. This professor is different, the pace in his classes is fast enough to prevent boredom and circular discussions but slow enough to prevent confusion - love this man.

The only thing which might be felt negative about him is his absolute, heart-felt enthusiasm when it comes to literature. It is absolutely nonsensical to judge books by length. But this semester, length really is a factor. Time is a factor. Especially in the Gothic course.
The whole course heaved a collective sigh of relief when we heard we did not have to read the whole The Mysteries of Udolpho (673 pages) until next Friday, but only the first volume (only 150 pages). Our fit of gratitude ebbed off as soon as he announced that instead of the rest of Udolpho, we are to read Burke's Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (only ca. 200 pages).
Not that I complain.
I love literature, maybe even as much as he does.
But he is not the only one. Others love literature as well. The professors who want me to read the whole Interpretation of Dreams (ca. 600 pages), Freud's Interpretation of Jensen's Gradiva and Gradiva itself plus two shorter Freudian essays (all in all around 300 pages), excerpts from the Genesis plus a few theoretic texts and short lyrical pieces (around 30 pages) and who want me to do the preparation of a short talk about the evolution of behaviour for next week (uh... depends on how many texts I find) probably also love literature and cannot think of any better occupation than reading, probably not even eating or sleeping. Reading is enjoyable, yes, but... not if it's Radcliffe. Or an overdose of Freud.
I want my holidays back.

Oh, and then there is the term paper due on Monday.

All this just needs more time! I tried to speed-read my assignments, but when I had successfully overlooked the death of Emily's (=main character) father in Udolpho, I went back to normal speed.

I want to crawl into a cave, curl up in a corner, and not come out or speak again until this horrible month is over. And the next one as well just to be on the safe side.
I've got a cold, am once again nothing but a financial factor for my father, am heading at a very own personal crisis, it's autumn, my annual depressive phase kicks in. Since my father is in Hesse, I am suddenly the official computer expert in the house, but I have no clue about what is wrong with the router. I have no time due to the university and suddenly, and my family kindly left me to deal with half the household because the four others are busy with training a dog and working, fourteen year-old boys, in Hesse or my 84-years-old grandma, who is an exception because she actually does something.

I can't believe that I'm feeling sorry for myself in the middle of the night again. Must be the gothic influence of Udolpho. The novel makes me wonder how Radcliffe herself stayed awake,throughout all the descriptions of nature, indirect renderings of people in raptures about nature, romantic/gloomy/melancholy moods and diegetic summaries of anything that might have been vaguely interesting if it had been elaborated and rendered in a more direct way.

I wish Crocky was here. Things are so empty without her, especially at this memory-infested university in this memory-infested city. Especially since Julez is in Glasgow as well now and my other friends are gone or angry with me for being busy all the time as well. Why is Hanover so far away?