Day 65, 12 March: Analysis and the Last UEA Choir Rehearsal

Norfolk Terrace, Day 65. Analysis and the Last UEA Choir Rehearsal

[If you read for purely non-academic entertainment like Vinnie, the post script is a good story.]

            14 lines. Read through, get rhyme scheme, doesn’t fit a regular sonnet, read a criticism on the poem, brace yourself for the analytical bits that you wish you had figured out before reading the criticism, reread poem, delight in a detail missed!, find out later that it clashes with an ambiguous context, rely on the solid perspective point that starts off the first body paragraph, resort to Oxford English dictionary several times, apply alternative and workable definitions of ambiguous words to solidify argumentative arch, resist editing thesis or the paragraph too soon, go on, that’s good for now, phew.

            This took up the bulk of my day: analysing Percy Shelley’s 1818 sonnet ‘Ozymandias’. The title is a name, the Greek name for the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II. I have miles to go before my thesis is solidly intact and the thematic progression matches the analysis yet to be discovered.

            At times, I wonder how exactly I’m at uni, or more to the point, how English is to be studied. Like my fellow peers in this English course, I am tested on final products of analytically layered processes shaped into precise arguments on literary works, I am tested on the rhetorical delivery of an original argument and the progression of that claim to a satisfying. It’s so odd, being in a skill-developing major, as opposed to a technical one.

            I woke up at 8:30 after getting to bed at midnight. I found a large parcel from my parents at the post room. I was not expecting to receive it today, but I was both glad and impressed by seeing a large FedEx box big enough to lug back to my room before heading to the library. Inside I found [items of which I will not mention due to their desirable ‘sweet’, ahem-delicious-ahem nature and Vinnie—and flatmates—

may read this and find them out—I’ll share some, maybe…all in good time…].

            I attended my last UEA Choir rehearsal. I haven’t mentioned it on this blog, but I discovered long ago that the Saturday of the concert is the same day Katya arrives. Having my priorities straight, I will be in the London Heathrow Airport that day awaiting to see her beautiful face for the first time in two and a half months. So for all those weeks of me attending rehearsal…that was for fun, for the pure sport of practicing and singing and sight-seeing in a big group. As Michael (Oregon student in choir with me and Anna) phrased it, it’s just the journey for me. I wish the group luck on what will be a great destination. We ended twenty minutes early today because the director was satisfied that we were where we should be.

            Joseph, Emma, Katy, and Vinnie decided to take a long midnight walk around the lake. I’m listening to the Piano Guys’ new album I just bought, Hits Vol. 1. I can’t get enough of classic music-infused-with-hip-rhythms. I sign off on that note.

            Or not…I just got an email from my Romanticism tutor. Apparently there’s no difference between a research and an analytical paper here…tomorrow’s office hour is going to get interesting.

Post Script (i.e. ‘P.S.’): I meant to go to bed straight away, but on the way back from the bathroom, I encountered Matt knocking on Charlie’s St. Paddy’s Day-themed door. A mat was jammed in the margin between the door and the carpeted floor. Apparently the door had been forced shut, and upon Charlie’s attempt to open the door from the inside, it wouldn’t budge. He was stuck in his room. It only took a minute for the majority of the flat to be at Charlie’s door, wondering how to get him out. Finally, Vinnie saved the day by kicking the door—he had reservations at first, if he had to pay for any damages he caused, but he went for it anyway—and after a few hits, the door slid open and the wrinkled mat was spared. The End.