ritas kleine welt

last week, i attended a block seminar in the institute for eastern europe studies. our group consisted largely of students from the german department, a handful of students of eastern europe studies -- and me as the representative for the english department. the seminar was great; i learned a lot -- and in nine out of ten cases i had not a single clue what the others were talking about. talk of the whooshing sound of a topic going right over your head. they were a nice but scary bunch of phd-students. bouncing off cultural theories off each other as if they hadn't done anything else during the last ten years of their lives. scaaaaary!!!

we only got to meet a couple of times during my last visit to wales one year ago. but we clicked instantly and had a couple of animated conversations. this is how i will remember duncan tanner:

you are sorely missed!

1) finished marking the first-years' exams

2) made someone laugh

3) eating my first kimchi

i have finally started outlining my thesis. most of you are probably now asking, 'what the hell has she been doing the past year?' well, it's easily explained. although i have all these crazy and wild ideas flying through my head, i hate pinning them down. i hate being nailed onto the concrete word. i don't want to be pinned down. of course, resistance is futile. who ever was awarded a title for being silly? (apart from chaplin! but he was a genius in his own field. i'm not even going there.)

so. outline. because, lets face it, if i don't start conquering my demons pretty soon, there's hell to pay. probably even quite literally.

sitting here with my breakfast (cheese on toast and a welsh tea with milk), watching the snow fall outside and looking forward to watching the gold rush on the big screen with a number of people in the english department this evening. it doesn't need much for happiness.

when i came to my office today, i stopped by my pigeon hole really quickly just to see whether some of the house mail had been delivered and if some form had to be returned. there really was a form that needed signing, but on top of it all, there was also a small paper envelope.

let me just say, little gestures like that are the best picker-uppers in the world. a little bit of validation of what i do here at the university with teaching literature and cultural studies sure helps LOADS. because, frankly, i most often get the impression that my seminars are one thing above all: pointless. but every once and a while there's something like this...

you wanna see how i drive myself mental? it really doesn't take that much. i simply start rambling until my train of thought starts going round and round and round and round...

this year's first years are a bunch of unmotivated, lazy students. it seems like nothing i do might interest them. not even remotely! i don't know. either my questions are really that stupid and the answers so obvious, or they just can't be bothered with using the grey matter between their ears. whatever i do, i receive blank stares -- and an occassional blink, as if to show me these are not puppets sitting in front of me, but actual people.

let's hope next week it picks up, now that we have covered the least favourite bits (poetry and history of english theatre).

from jan morris, the matter of wales: 'in the course of the year 1902 the caban at one blaenau ffestiniog quarry, for example, which met over jam-jars of tea by candle-light in a damp tunnel, organized a mental arithmetic contest, a singing contest, a discussion on the recent education act, a lecture on the subject 'how much greater is a man than a sheep', a spelling bee, a contest to create welsh words, a discourse on vanity, a debate on 'whether a wife is a choice or a necessity', a quiz on the bible, a debate on whether ministers should be appointed for life, a contest to interpret a set poem and several competitions concerning the writing and memorizing of verse.' (267) (though if truth be said, this book isn't worth much because it reads a bit too much like, 'cymru am bydd!' and 'death to the english!')

i love my field of research!

1) dietmar's baby is cute

2) dietmar's baby scares the living day lights out of grown men

3) dietmar's baby is cute

my first week back from the yookay and it was pretty much a story of success, though not fortune and riches. how could it? i'm making a living in accademia where the money well has usually run dry three semesters ago. but! andrea and i have struggled, read and tied knots into our two brains -- and won in the end. we've read an entire book by foucault and still managed to talk intelligently about it -- and then denounce a great deal of his ideas as pure crap. (there just went my last 5%-likelihood of ever attaining something akin to a carreer in university circles.)

andrea, maria and i are on a brave journey and we are passing through darkness and into the light. in other words, we are reading the order of things by michel foucault. the book holds loads of puzzles and has lead to many moments of wonderment in the past month. but we are not faint of heart, but drudge ahead with full speed.

bellow you will find a collection of the best answers from last week's exam marathon. all in all, the students performed brilliantly. but there was the odd occassion when my learned colleague (MLC) and i were literally poking in the dark. i don't know whether on that occassion my face either showed utter disbelief or whether it registered mild amusement. let's hope for the next round i have finally acquired a poker mask!

after 56 oral exams starting last tuesday in the grizzling hours of the blessed a.m. and the consumation of countless cups of tea, it is finally done. i can now officially anounce having survived the marathon that answers to the name of "modulprüfung 1102". it is over. it is accomplished. i am pooped and brain dead. which means that i can return now to the blessings of mr foucault and his warped ideas about the order of things.

you have no idea how much i am looking forward to that one week in london next month!