A Girl With a Sword

does that make me crazy?

The mezzanine level of the Cooper library at USC (I'm just going to call it that, okay, you all know I'm not in California, embrace the ambiguity) has a display right now of the manuscripts of William Blake. The Cooper library also has these long curtain things in the front windows made of lots and lots of little gold disks. They look like something from William Blake. I drove past the library last night and it was all the lit up and the front of it is all glass and it was so beautiful, which is funny because its a pretty ugly building. An ugly building where I've been spending a lot of time and will probably be spending a lot more. Undergraduates are everywhere. They all look like freshman to me. And they all act like freshmen too. I am loving Covenant College more and more the longer I am here. And I am hating the plaid shorts/polo shirt combination.

I may have just done something crazy. So I was taking a class with a prof who I could tell I would learn nothing from. So I dropped that and had this moment of panic when I realized that I was only taking three classes and I might actually have free time. Can't have that, academic stress is the drug that brought be back here. So I went and talked to the second language acquisition prof and, under the influence of panic and coffee, decided to take the SLA theory and methods class when I haven't had any SLA before. Now, in my defense, the SLA prof (who is a really interesting young German lady) said that I should be fine taking the class on no SLA, but I'm still worried. I mean, we have to write a research proposal. Plus, my Old English prof took us to the library and showed us every possible resource for Old English when all we have to write this semester is a little ten-page research paper (I like how grad school has got me thinking, "ten pages, sure, no problem . . ." don't think it'll work out like that in practice). And that was . . . a little intimidating. Now I'm just praying for time to breathe this semester. But what is grad school for, grad school is not for breathing. It is for working hard and not eating enough. Speaking of, I got paid today. So I might be Chatty this weekend for the big housewarming party. Just keep your eyes open . . .

church

Went to First Pres for church yesterday, Sinclair Ferguson's (new) church. It reminded me a lot of LMPC--lots of rich, southern, reformed people. The music was good. I don't think they'll be singing "This is the Air I Breathe" anytime soon. It is my belief, though, that in a few years they'll just condense the Trinity Hymnal down to two songs, "Come Thou Fount" and "Be Thou My Vision."

in which I am oriented

And we had orientation yesterday afternoon. We all introduced ourselves in a huge group and I hardly remember what anyone said, but it was beautiful, the linguistic terms flowing like water. Then afterwards we had the reception and the beer. I talked to one of the psycholinguistics profs for a long time, then the phonology prof (who is my current advisor) came over and I got to meet him and we talked about conferences and the LSA summer program. I started talking to some of the returning students towards the end and they were all going out for drinks so I went with them. (It's been so long since I went out drinking with the linguists . . . ) It was great talking about linguistics with a group of people again. It's only been two weeks since SIL, but I did miss it. After we got drinks and some food we decided to go join the English grad students' pub crawl. I love that there's an English grad student pub crawl. I only stayed for the first pub because I had to walk back to campus. It was great to talk to the other students about their experiences and to find out that my coming here feeling completely confused and living in a room with only a mattress is not at all rare. Welcome to grad school. It was a good first night, I feel all oriented up (why isn't the opposite of "oriented" "occidented"?) and have been enjoying my reading for Socioling all afternoon. I decided to stay in the class. This department seems to have a Socioling leaning and I want to make sure I'm solid in that area. Anyway, I'll try not to let my posts get too technical.

start anew

I'm hanging out at a little coffee shop down the street from the horseshoe. The horseshoe is like the "common" area of the USC campus, a nice grassy area where most of the campus's wireless signal is concentrated. Think of it like U of SC's version of the chapel lawn. My mom told me I could sleep in the horseshoe if I didn't find a place to live. Yeah, Mom is not overly comforting (which we all appreciate, Mom). Well, I found a place to live. Yes, it is official, I am living with Maranatha. Now that this has been decided I need to find some furniture and stuff. My sad little room has only a little mattress and two big suitcases right now. And an air conditioning unit in the window. I feel like a real grad student. And I can afford a place to live too, because I got my financial aid package the other day and I found out that my assistantship is my money to live on! So I don't have to sell my ovaries (which is good, because I just learned from Ryan that I only have two! Why didn't I know this before? Maybe I just just turn in my membership card as a woman.)

And classes started today. Don't know what to say about them yet. Today I had Old English (yeah, been wanting to take that for awhile, we're reading The Battle of Maldon and The Seafarer and The Wanderer, all in the original) and Intro to Sociolinguistics, which I may or may not be dropping because I think it'll be very similar to a class I had this summer (we're using the same textbook). I really like Socioling, though, so I'm feel conflicted about the possibility of a drop, although I might replace it with a SLA class with free coffee and cookies. Also started my assistantship today. I got there and discovered that the sc.edu website was down and none of the students had printed out their schedules (I didn't print mine out either, so I couldn't get mad at them) and they all came to me. It was crazy.

And here is a picture of me as a grad student:

(or Julie Delpy)

cool water and surround sound

The dangerous thing about setting Language Log as my homepage is that I keep getting stuck on it and forgetting to move on to email and other important internet matters. But I learn important things, like this:

Is "singular they" verbally and plenarily inspired of God?

I am at the Lapish house in Charlotte. I've really been on the internet all night (when I wasn't watching Gilmore Girls or eating), can't get enough. It's so sad, my one addiction (besides, like, oxygen and sleep and hot showers). I've been catching up on all the blogs I haven't read all summer. I feel like I need more pictures on my blog. Pictures on blogs are the way of the future. Here's a picture:

now I'm cool. This was the last night everyone was still at SIL, we went out to this place in East Grand Forks, Minnesota called the Blue Moose. It was the main hangout place over the summer and we had a lot of good times with the Moose Drool beer and the boneless chicken wings and the Blue Moose:

That is actually the back-end of the moose.

so far

Well, the parking sucks, but that's the worst thing I've run into this morning. I'm on the campus wireless network right now and I'm just praying that it works at my house too. I have my doubts, though, apparently it doesn't work in the dorms. What the heck? They expect all of their students to live without wireless internet. Why don't they just lose the indoor plumbing too. I don't understand it. So I've living with intense driving and internet frustration and it just feels like nothing works, but I know things do work. I just wish I could remember what they are.

I did have my orientation for my assistantship in the language lab this morning. It was good, I like the people there. Looks like I'll be doing a lot of trouble-shooting equipment and helping people find the software they need. Shouldn't be too hard, and I'll probably have time to do homework there, too. I am so tired at this point. I'm probably just going to going to go home and sleep before going out to face the finding a job part of my day.

I Rule!

3 days
1200 miles
19 hours of driving
40 gallons of gas
2 cups of coffee (yeah, don't ask me how I did that, they were both McDonald's too)

The three-day epic driving fest of Linnea is over. I made it to Columbia at six thirty, only five hours after I left Chattanooga, alright! I beat the predicted driving time on Google maps by two and a half hours. Got here, met the girl who will probably be my roommate. She drove me around Columbia, but I was really far too tired to take it in. Now I'm in a coffee shop soaking in the caffeine and the wireless internet. I always have a moment of panic when I get to a new place and can't get wireless. I did this in Grand Forks, too, and I think my addiction kind of scared my roommate there, so I did not share my fears with Maranatha. That's my rommate's name, isn't that awesome? And even cooler, she has been okayed by the Amy Knutson (who I feel deserves a definite article). The house where I'm living is an old brick house. I have the top bedroom, my own personal Valhalla. It's a shabby, hardwood floor, chipping paint kind of place, like our house in Boston. I like that.

fire and powdered sugar don't mix

I think everyone should be given coffee money in life, because that's the only thing I really want when I have no money. I just want to be able to go out and get coffee and read. I bet if we were a socialist country we would get coffee money. I bet they have coffee money in Sweden. That's how they come up with such good ideas, like IKEA, and the name "Linnea."

I am finished with SIL. I'm sad it's over, but not as sad as I would be if I weren't starting more classes in about a week. I'm going to grad school at the University of South Carolina this fall, getting my M.A. in linguistics. I'm so happy to be getting back to a normal school life, this past year I've felt like I was wasting my time and not being productive and on top of things. I'm really excited to be going into linguistics, too. I feel like it's relatively undiscovered territory for me, but I do love what I've learned about it. And I decided that being confused about phonology definitely beats being confused about life. Let me just defer life as long as possible.

Again, I welcome all grad school advice that anyone cares to dish out. More specific questions will be coming soon.

cut along the dotted line

Today our Phonology prof handed out Exam 2, with malicious glee in his eyes. On the front of the test, a set of data from the Seri language, he has written "A three-page Seri data set is enough to make even a grown phonologist cry, but as innocent new phonologists none of you should know enough to be scared." Further down the page he adds the comforting words "Don't panic. Nothing is as hard as Seri appears to be." This is a four-day exam. Tonight we make morpheme cuts. A couple weeks ago for student skit night some of us did a skit about Might Morpheme Power Rangers, which was hilarious and very true to life. It was about Power Rangers who had great morpheme cutting skills (morpheme cutting is separating different parts of the word by smallest section of meaning, like the morpheme cut in phonologist would be phonolog-ist.), but they were threatened by the Evil Lord Suppletion and his army of Possessed Nouns. Morpheme cutting skills should never be underestimated.