The Last Course

I have one course to take and then I will be finished the film minor of my Women’s Studies Degree – not a degree with which I am going to make any money, nor a minor that will get be a job with any status for that matter. But one that I am going to finish, never-the-less.

I have been having my in-class fun – beginning today with two new tasks. I learned how to hook my computer up to the wireless network that is in many of the university classrooms. And I learned how to send an in-class assignment to my teacher through the digital drop box. I should get an A in the course for making my way just through those two tasks.

Sweat. Sweat to learning new technology. One of the last things in the world to make me breathless.

And I hadn’t had to do any real thinking yet – at least nothing that came out of books. I just used a gender-bias, looked around the room to find a man who looked technologically savvy and asked him for help. I had done everything right but didn’t have the final piece. After connecting to the network I had to close down and come back in. That doesn’t sound like a really big piece of information I was missing, but it was big enough to keep my computer black.

The movie course is called Film 307: Natalie Wood and the Sexual Revolution. I had to preview 5 of her films before getting to class and the group sees another film each day, plus we all do a piece of writing for the professor during the last hour of the day.

How cool is that?

Kelvin and I have both been reading tonight.

Him? The Book of Mormon.

Me? Eva Illouz’s article “Freud: A Cultural Innovator."

Hard to know who is having a better time reading.

If laughing while you are reading is any indicator, then it is me who is drawing down the most enjoyment. A charming old article – so much fun to read historical documents from the past.

Trell came over a couple of days ago and found me reading Norman Mailer’s “The White Negro”. Stunning writing on Mailer’s part and such a bad thesis.

Trell laughed after he saw what was on my screen and I gave him the title of the article. He was going to go home and put up on twitter, “You will never guess what I found my 70 year old mother doing today?”

Something bad happened to me in class today. I am going to blame it on having just watched Natalie Wood and James Dean in Rebel without a Cause.

I didn’t exactly answer the question the teacher had posted on the board.

I couldn’t help myself.

I saw another beautiful argument to make ... and why not. I do not recommend this tactic to anyone else who is reading here.

I tried to go through the pessimist/optimist strategies to make myself be good.

The worst thing that could happen is that one of you is going to ask what my mark was.

The best thing that can happen is that of the first 4 assignments, the mark on the lowest one gets expunged. And it might be the F I am going to draw on that assignment.

I did another radical move.

Professor Sullivan told us to be concise, clear and to use short sentences. Use absolutely no semi-colons. No big words. And no sentence more than two lines long.

She then said that she was going to eviscerate our writing, in any event, but she warned us to keep at least those rules.

What does eviscerate mean?

And is it a big word?

And it is a good thing that this is my last course.

Arta