Well it is crunch time for the semester. I have, oh so much writing to do and I am just not feeling it today. Everyone keeps saying they can’t wait for the semester to be over but not me. I need a few extra weeks in order to finish everything. I have to complete:
2 >essay rewrites – the biggest part is cutting some of the material
1 >essay (from scratch)
Shakespeare project or paper
2 >rhetoric papers – 1 short, 1 longer (but only 2000 words each – piece of cake)
1 >5-7 page essay for British Lit – my most challenging class (the page count is not challenging, it is coming up with something to argue about the material and keeping it within 7 pages. Ha, I wrote a 10 page essay about a short story!)
1 >10 page research paper for my Woolf class. This is going to be challenging…
2 > journals to complete
YIKES! I got less than 3 weeks. I need to write my ass off…
Though the semester has been challenging and I took on way too much as usual, I have really learned a lot and enjoy all my classes and professors. I don’t want it to end. I will probably cry; well maybe not. Probably will be too stressed and tired, ha.
I am going to miss writing my journal for Jan, my writing professor. I love writing for her – she is so positive. I have written all sorts of great stuff though not nearly as much as I would like to. I kind of feel bad because I have also written a lot of the bad stuff I have been through in my life. I told my friend who also had Jan and this creative nonfiction class about and she said she did the same thing – she found she was using her journal and essays as therapy. I have found it not only makes for good story/drama, but that it helps me to get it all out so I can work with it. I needed to get some stuff out, for my sake and so I can frame it in positive ways. There is so much I want to use in future writing, in different ways. Overall, I find I am getting rid of the bad to make more room for the good, which has also highlighted all great stuff that has happened to me, and my achievements despite many challenges. It has also helped me rediscover my strengths and evaluate how far I have come since I started my education. I am bringing forth some great stuff that I want to keep working on – not only will it help me personally, but as a writer and a counselor as well.
I finally wrote about my husband’s penis! Ha. Ever since I wrote a lit analysis paper on a character and his penis back in 2008 my husband teases me that I should write about his ‘johnson’. Yeah, men and their penises – their world revolves around them. Well I wrote in my journal about all that and then a funny story about my husband and his member, plus some other stuff about how much I enjoy sex, hehee. Jan posted back to my journal that she loved it! She said it was the first journal entry she had ever gotten about a penis and it was from a woman. She also said it is very seldom that women write so lustily about sex. I loved that! Really I could write a lot about it but I don’t want to overwhelm her, or for her to think I am a pervert and only think about sex 24/7.
Well, penises are all over the place anyway – I mean in literature. (LMAO) I realized more this semester than in any other just how interconnected everything is. Psychology and writing; literary analysis and psychoanalysis; rhetoric and identity; rhetoric and philosophy; rhetoric and psychology; rhetoric and literary analysis, and fiction, and writers; writers to other writers or to psychotherapists (Freud, Jung – I have heard those two names more this semester in English classes than I ever did in any of my psychology classes). I can go on and on. One great connection that happened for me personally was I met a Doctor of anthropology in my writing class and we talked quite a bit about both step-motherood and motherhood (here in America and how it is in Africa – so different, much more communal), and of course sex – teenage sex. It was so great to meet her, to get her perspective on the things I was writing about; so great that she just happened to be in my class.
Then there is Virginia Woolf – wow. Her writing is some challenging stuff. I had a hard time at first and that damn play and movie, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” kept going through my head. I can still hear it. The class is still challenging but I think it has been worth it. I have learned so much about myself, my writing, the subconscious, identity – her novels and short stories really open the door to an inner life. My writing has improved – well it has helped me tap into stuff I have stuffed down or forgot about.
So I will be sad when it all ends. Everything I have done this semester, even band, has strengthened me overall. I will have to keep reading challenging material and writing about challenging subjects.
Jacquelyn's Space 