clo_again

Dear person who just requested one of the MAIN BOOKS I'm using for my dissertation,

You are a complete and utter asshole. Thanks a lot for waiting until the day before the holidays to request it for so there's no way I can request it back before the dissertation deadline. And since you haven't requested it until now, I'm thinking it isn't important to your dissertation whereas it's absolutely vital to mine. So now I have to go and buy the damn thing and it's expensive even second hand.

Whoever you are, you are a complete and utter cock.

NO LOVE AT ALL.

Clo

edit: Oh and I just found out that we, for some reason the college never see fit to explain to us, have no hot water. But I absolutely had to wash my hair because I'm going home later and won't be coming back to my room after my seminar to do it.

I am very cold right now.

So my dissertation meeting this morning was at 9am. Checked my email before I left, because the tutor was ill yesterday and had cancelled L's meeting. No email, so reluctantly assumed it was on and dragged myself up to main campus an hour earlier than usual.

Only to stand outside her office for twenty-five minutes, wondering if she was still ill but not wanting to leave in case she was just late. Asked the English office staff if she'd phoned in to say she was still ill and they didn't know. Finally quit at twenty five past nine and wandered off in a sulk to get a cup of tea. Came back at quarter to ten (because my 10am seminar was literally just down the corridor from tutor's office) and there was a printout on her door saying she was ill and wouldn't be in all day.

Yeah. Thanks for letting me know. If she was still ill last night, why didn't she email me to reschedule just in case? She emailed L back right away, so isn't like she can't use the computer.

Okay, so it's not like I'd done any work for it anyway and quarter to eight isn't the earliest time to get up but... it was pointless! I could've had another good hour and a quarter of sleep!

Bitter now.

315 words and I'm meant to be aiming for at least 1,500 before tomorrow morning I think. Joy. In addition to which I'm not feeling fantastic again which is just sucky. >_<

Maybe I'll have a nap. It isn't as if it matters whether I get much sleep or not tonight anyway, given that tomorrow is my last day and I can sleep from 3pm onwards if I feel like it. Which I probably will.

Dissertation tutors. Argh. He never did email me back from this morning.

edit: 700 words. Mmmm. Bored.

edit: 1,074 words and time for shower, pyjamas and a snack. 426 words left to go if I'm going to make my self-imposed target of 1500 words, but to be honest that'll be pretty easy. It isn't even as though I'm paying much attention to what I'm writing. Case in point; I just referenced Superman. Anytime I do that, it's pretty much a given that I'm not exactly trying.

edit: 1241 words and I'm totally bored senseless, mostly because I'm writing senselessly boring crap. Screw this, I'm going to bed. I can scribble the final few hundred words in the morning. This is such a waste of time. Argh.

In spite of going with 'the hero' as my first topic of discussion and finding a bunch of interesting stuff that relates to it (apart from the depressing aspect that everyone seems to have done my dissertation before), still bored. Even though tomorrow is now my last day of this term. Even though I just found a folder full of interesting notes meaning I don't really have to do all that much research. And found something I thought I'd ripped to pieces and burnt a long time ago which I'm a little dismayed that I didn't but that's easily fixed.

Three LJ posts in a few hours. I'm clearly working for the first time this term at least.

... *mooches aimlessly*

My dissertation tutor, who I emailed last Wednesday to ask if I could change meetings to this Friday and never emailed back? Yeah, so I emailed him again yesterday to check he got it -- yesterday *morning* no less -- and he's emailed me back just this second now. Saying he was 'waiting for some other information that influenced his answer' before emailing me back -- might have been nice if, you know, he'd let me *know that* instead of leaving me wondering if my email had even got to him for six days -- saying sorry, all the Friday spots have gone and I'll just have to leave my seminar for the half hour meeting.

Aside from the fact it's my last seminar *ever* with George and I don't want to miss a third of it to spend time with a creepy man who's only going to yell at me for my lack of work, this also means I have to have written my 2,500 words for tomorrow. Tomorrow morning no less since I'll have to email them before my 10am seminar.

The 2,500 words I haven't started or done any reading for yet because I was working on the basis of having the next three days to do it.

Yeah. I officially hate my inconsiderate moron of a tutor. And now I have to go away and start typing.

edit: I just read through my reply email before sending it and um... it comes across more than a little snarky. Um. But he has inconvinienced me horribly when a simple reply email last week to say "Thanks for the info but not sure the change will be possible, will keep you posted" was all I needed.

Oh fuck it, he's really pissed me off now. It isn't as if this is just a meeting we can turn up to; it needs several days preparation and I don't care if we're meant to have been writing all term because even if I had done the work I'd only have it in note form. I *don't* type stuff into essay form as I go; I do it all after I've got my notes and plan and bash it all out in one -- or in this case over several days -- day. It's sent and he can be pissed all he wants but I'm feeling off-colour, he's just sentenced me to a day of typing crap and he's asking me to miss my last seminar ever with my favourite tutor in the world. For an utterly pointless meeting. If he doesn't like my email, he can damn well go sing about it from the rooftops for all I care at this point.

So it's week seven of our term now. I knew on an abstract level that I was meant to have written a quarter of my dissertation by the end of this term but we were told tutors wouldn't read it, we'd just have to bring it along and basically summarise it for them verbally. We were *told* this. Hence, my non-worrying. At all. To the point where I've *not started reading anything*.

So this email? Not reassuring.

You should let me have in advance the required written material: that is, about 2.5k words which represents a probable first chapter. Please note that I do not read all of this carefully, but speed-read in it to ensure you're on roughly the right track. Our meeting can then be used to discuss any issues arising from your work so far.

Hi, I am Clo and my weekend is going to be spent doing dissertation work. Yeah. This is possibly why I shouldn't have sat around doing nothing for the last two months. At least I've got yet another two-day-week next week and my Shakespeare essay isn't in until after Christmas but factor in the fact this weekend will be my last free one before that meeting so oh, minus around seven days from the total of days left...

*goes away to count that. ShutupI'manEnglishstudent;)*

Okay, leaving out the days I'll be busy with seminars and visiting people and home trips... eleven days. To read three books (admittedly one of those is The Hobbit so, you know. Not so much a hardship), buy and read research books of an-as-yet-variable number and write 2,500 words. Oh and I should probably actually read at least a few of the *nine Shakespeare plays* we were meant to have read this term, of which I have read, as of right now? None.

Ah English students. We do love our stressful little moments. :) Sometimes I wonder if I do it to myself on purpose for more of a challenge and then I think no, actually I'm just lazy.

Firstly, why is this not being released until a good six months after I've finished my dissertation and secondly, can someone assure me that no, it isn't a huge piss-take even though the words "Angelina Jolie as 'Grendel's Mother'" should never be written seriously, not ever?

Other news; if you mention NaNo to me right now, I may have to make you shorter by a head. Just, you know. Friendly warning. ;)

edit: Just cleaning out the fish again -- I need a new filter, god do I need a new filter -- and Kermit the loach promptly uprooted the plastic plant I'd spent five minutes carefully weighing down with gravel. Amidst much cursing, stuck my hand in the water to weight it down again -- and Rizzo bit my finger. Okay so he's a fish and has no teeth for it to hurt but he was damn well trying. If he'd so much as had a couple of teeth, I'd be missing a chunk of finger right now.

I told him his mother must have been a malformed toad to teach him such manners. He's looking suitably ashamed, though I suspect Kermit is still eyeing that damn plant.

Really. I try and try and still this is the thanks I get...

Found the entire second half of Stargate SG-1's season eight on a random disc my brother sent me months back. There's another disc with it which, I suspect and will check once the second half is done copying to the computer, will have the entire first half.

Have I mentioned lately, that my brother is awesome? This cheered me up no end after realising I need to take half my bookcase to uni for my dissertation.

edit: Actually it was the second half of Stargate:Atlantis season one that I've been telling him for months he never sent me.

Um. Ooops?

Okay now I'm confused. I looked at this and went "Huh. Anything to do with Labyrinth?" And then I read 'about the movie' and "...Huh. Are they SURE that this has nothing to do with Labyrinth?"

Reading more about it makes it sound much less derivative but I'm definitely intrigued. Between Lancaster's brand new 'normal' cinema and the artsy one I might actually get to see it, which is a whole new thought for me. I've got used to waiting until I get home to catch up movie-wise for the last two years.

I'm also suddenly wondering why I never so much as considered working Labyrinth into my dissertation. It could've been so easily done and now I'm left headdesking. I guess working in discussions of it along the cinema's contribution to the development of fantasy would work. Hm. At the least I can talk about how the conventions of written fantasy show up onscreen.

None of which is an excuse to spend a year watching David Bowie run around in tights. Nope.

I need to settle on a fourth book for my dissertation -- now finally titled Patterns of a Genre: Conventions in Fantasy Throughout History -- around the Middle-Ageish sort of period and I'm torn between Chretien de Troyes's King Arthur stories, mainly the Grail quest one -- which I haven't read yet, dissertation, yeah, not like it's important that I *know* what I'm doing or anything ;) -- or Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan which has a dragon and a love potion and mistaken identity and lots of fun fantasy stereotypes but then, *King Arthur*. Ultimate in cool.

Or I could ignore all that and do Beowulf. Which I also haven't read and is a little earlier than what I was thinking but then, my first book is The Odyssey and that's like what, 800 B.C., and then Tolkien and Gaiman which are pathetically close together in comparison so it's not as if I can use time spans as any criteria for choosing.

It would help if I had actually read any of these books when making this decision. Probably why I should've been thinking about this more than two days before the proposal has to be written but eh. Oh and I'm still vacillating between Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit as my third book. Though I'm almost definitely thinking Hobbit. Almost definitely. Probably anyway. Actually the Wikipedia Hobbit article has a section on 'similarities with Beowulf' and oh look, I think that just made my decision for me.

...

I still kind of wanted to do King Arthur. Dammit.

edit: Yeah, I'm pretty much going with Beowulf.

Oh well Hamster. You tried to convert me with your shiny Grail program and failed. Don't feel bad.