Uncreated Conscience

Happy Bloomsday, all! For those of you who are unabashed lit nerds like myself, June 16 is the day on which the events of James Joyce’s ULYSSES take place.

I knew there was a reason I loved Ben so. He reads Joyce as well!

I’ve been kept so busy at work assisting La Redactora that I’ve scarcely had the time to blog, but as Cap’n Sweet Valley is out of the office this week, I have a bit of a breather. Last week I asked for blog topics; surprisingly, people wanted to know about the editorial process. As we only have two titles under our belt (yes, we just acquired our first nonfiction title!), I can’t say for sure, but I promise to walk you through the editorial process of SWEET VALLEY CONFIDENTIAL soon–from acquisition to publication.

Anyway, I’m not going to blog about the editorial process today. Today I’m going to talk about this strange little saying: Rules are made to be broken.

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Happy Bloomsday, everyone! I would give ULYSSES a read-through today, except my friend Kristine has my copy and my other one is so destroyed it has literally fallen apart at the seams. No matter, for I am rereading CATCHING FIRE more slowly this time around (to savour the small details), and Kristine introduced me to this video:

It’s the end that slays me.

Oh, and because they need to be shared again: James Joyce’s EXTREMELY dirty letters to Nora Barnacle.

I am so incredibly mad right now that I need to vent somewhere so I’m going to rant here.

I had my entire fucking schedule nicely planned out last night, with not a single class or recitation going past 3:15 in the afternoon. I had no classes on Tuesdays or Fridays, and they were cool classes.

1. Conversations of the West: Antiquity and the 19th Century (taught by Renzi, the Classics professor)
2. Expository Writing: Writing the Essay
3. Cinema and Affect: Why the Movies Move Us
4. Creative Writing

It was going to be beautiful. The first two are required classes, and the third is a Freshman Honors Seminar, required of me.

However, I get to registration about a half-hour early, but don’t get called in by my bloody advisor until ten-thirty, when every single FUCKING CLASS on my FUCKING LIST was FUCKING CLOSED. All the other groups had everything set because their damn advisors had their fucking acts together, but my bloody advisor is a piece of cow shit. We drew lotto numbers and I was the third to last to get registered.

I didn’t get a single class on my fucking list.

So I had to rework my ENTIRE BLOODY SCHEDULE. I am so fucking pissed off. I’m slightly mollified because I happen to like the classes that I’m taking now, but I AM SO RUDDY ANGRY at my scum-beneath-my-toes advisor. First off, she tells me that my Con West class with Renzi is closed. No big deal. I rework my Writing the Essay class around so that I’m taking Ulffer’s Con West class, who is the Linguistics professor. But then she tells me that one’s closed too. I’m not particularly interested in any of the other Con West classes offered (there were those for the Medieval Ages, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment…I REALLY wanted 19th Century) so I’m stuck in a rut. Then she says that I can’t take my Creative Writing class until I’ve taken the Expository Writing. She told me fucking yesterday that I could take them fucking concurrently! Then the clincher: I can’t take my Freshman Honors Seminar (the Cinema one) because THAT’S closed.

Shit, I might as well have drawn up an entirely new schedule.

Which I did.

Now I have a 8:00-9:15 class Monday through Thursday (of my own design because I don’t want a late afternoon class) and a World Cultures recitation on Thursday from 3:30-4:45 (bloody hell, I was trying to get out of class or recitation by 3:15 at the latest). Wednesdays I also have my new Honors Seminar from 9:30-12:15. But I have no Friday class and Monday I’m done after 9:15.

They are as follows:

1. World Cultures (also required): China and Japan
2. Expository Writing: Writing the Essay
3. Freshman Honors Seminar: Yeats and Joyce
4. History of Western Art II (Art History)

I’m excited about these classes, but I’m still cheesed about my stupid advisor. I seem to have horrible luck with these types of people. Yeats and Joyce sounds great and so does my Art History class.

BUT THAT DOES NOT MAKE ME FEEL ANY LESS PEEVED RIGHT NOW.

Where’s a damn piano? I need to vent.