lizfuh

So I’m finally in my senior year of college. I say “finally” as if I’ve been waiting for this forever…but that couldn’t be any further from the truth. College has just gotten better and better every year, and I’m dreading graduation. However, in just 8 short months, I will be donning my scarlet cap and gown and walking across Nickerson Field to receive my diploma. And after that…scary, scary real world! Scary, scary health insurance and scary, scary paying off loans and finding a job and an apartment and moving to God knows where. It’s going to be a huge change…part of which I welcome and part of which I’m terrified of.

I just have to remember that finishing college is a both privilege and an achievement and I shouldn’t take it for granted.

So this goal is NOT going very well. At the start of the summer, I made a list of books I wanted to read and went to the Boston Public Library and took out a bunch. I started reading To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf as it is her first significant published work, but I found it very difficult to get through and easily tired of it after about 50 pages. Instead, I picked up Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by Joyce, recommended preparatory reading for the Irish Lit seminar I’m taking this coming semester (and something I’ve personally wanted to read for ages). I’m about halfway through…I keep getting interrupted!

Otherwise, I haven’t been reading “classic” lit. I decided I wanted to read the Harry Potter series again, so I’ve read the first two (and am picking up PoA, GoF, and OotP next time I go home) and am eager to read the rest. Harry Potter’s a classic though, right? ...We’ll just say yes. Unfortunately, it doesn’t at ALL fall into the “books I haven’t read before” category. I’ve read the first two about 15 times each (not even kidding), the third one probably about 10 times and the 4th one about 5 times. It’s really just the 5th, 6th, and 7th that I need to re-read. I can’t explain why, but these books are still funny, suspenseful, tear-inducing, and touching every single time I read them, and I always find something new that makes me smile.

I’m currently reading a book called Disgrace that I stole from my cousin, and I also read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, which was a quick but good read. I also plan on getting through One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Omnivore’s Dilemma before the summer’s through.

The good news: got my book list for next semester, and I’m going to be reading a LOT of staple classics that I think are definitely necessary in my education as an English major. So I’ll give an updated list once I actually start building up a repertoire of novels read!

So instead of signing up for Spanish, I decided to keep taking French classes (so I don’t lose my French skills! That would be awful).

I am, however, trying to learn Spanish the do-it-yourself way using About.com’s lessons. They’re actually pretty useful and have an audio component so I can try to learn pronunciation and whatnot. So far, I’ve just gone over simple things like the alphabet, pronunciation of vowels and consonants, and pluralization. They also have little quizzes that you can take at the end of each lesson so you don’t just read the lessons and forget.

I can already tell that French is going to be a hindrance on my pronunciation. No nasal sounds in Spanish! And they actually pronounce most of the letters in words, whereas in French, you drop half of them. For example, the masculine article “un” in French is pronounced as a nasal “Uh” sound. “Une” is the feminine article, but it’s pronounced just like “un” in Spanish. Argh.

Well, I’ll update when I’ve made more progress!