on lethargy

I'm losing all motivation to do well in my graduate school classes, which is a weird feeling for me.  Especially considering these are literature classes.

Well, sort of.

My "Gospel Music and American Literature" course has turned out to be a pretty thorough waste of my life.  Instead of reading literature and supplementing the course with music, it's a music class cleverly guised under a literature course number.  When we write papers, it's on music.  When we discuss things in class, it's about music.  Never mind the fact that most people in the course don't have the foggiest bit of musical training--we still discuss music, exclusively.  We did read one novel--just one--and when I tried to parallel a certain scene with elements of gospel music, my professor flat out admitted that the novel didn't have much to do with the music at all, and wasn't relevant to the discussion we were having.  (This is where the "waste of my life" part should be repeated.)  I love music as much as the next person--even gospel music, which can gets pretty irritating after listening to 1,000 "different but not really" songs--but honestly, I'm in a literature program, I signed up for a literature course, and I expect you to teach me about literature.  I could care less about the book you're writing, professor, or how you're using our class as test subjects for music analysis.  How about you teach me something that's going to be useful when I'm an English teacher?

As for "Literature, Language, and Society"...it's undergraduate literary theory all over again.  Same readings, same authors, same topics.  I don't look forward to going to class, and I don't enjoy doing the homework, and I don't feel like I'm learning much.  That being said, I know 99% of gaining new insights into things is from taking an active part in the learning role, which I've never struggled with much before, but now I feel like I'm pulling my own teeth out trying to enjoy these classes!  My SVU professors were much better at asking the "right" questions and leading me to understand the broader purpose of what I was learning.

It may just be a matter of adjusting to a new way of doing things.  Maybe next semester I'll have classes that spark more of my interest.  I hate to be such a whiner, but it's just so disappointing!

Now that you're all thoroughly depressed, I have to tell you that life really hasn't been going badly!  I still don't have a job, but it means I get to bum around the house all day and watch The X-files and Doctor Who on Netflix while I wait to get called for interviews.  Ricky and I have almost been married for 8 months, which is incredibly hard to believe, both because it feels like we just got married and because it feels like we've been married forever already...which is a good thing.  Being married has been a huge, enormously delicious piece of cake.  I'm grateful to have a husband who's so easy to get along with and ridiculously fun to be around and supports (most of) my crazy whims.  I know there isn't just one "Mr./Mrs. Right" for each person, and that I could be just as happy married to someone else, but I feel like I would have to work at it so much more than I do with Ricky.  In fact, I hardly have to work at all!  Our lives blended together so nicely when we got married that it felt like Ricky had always been there, living in my apartment and doing the grocery shopping and drinking milk out of the carton.  It's not just easy being happy with the guy, it's easy living with the guy, which seems to be a big hurdle for some relationships.  That isn't to say that those relationships aren't just as awesome, but only to say that I'm really, really grateful for Ricky and everything that he is and how lucky I am to have found him.

Also, it's his birthday tomorrow!  Hence the long, totally not-interesting-to-you monologue about how cool he his.  He's going to be 25, which I'm fairly envious of, because I feel like age 25 is probably around the time when society stops telling you you're too young to be married.  Shove off, society!

I hope you all are doing fantastically well, wherever you are.  And update your blogs, dang it!