"Bart, with $10,000 we'd be millionaires! We could buy all kinds of useful things, like... love!"
Most of the time, I don't feel like I'm in grad school, especially when I read blog posts like
this one of
Miss Hass's. I have class pretty sporadically, I spend more time teaching English to rambunctious high schoolers than I do researching, and I get more sleep than I probably should. Today at my last class for the next 4 weeks, I actually *felt* like a grad student. My seminar consisted of a doctoral student giving us an historiography of the patron-client relationship during the Old Regime for an hour and a half. Mostly boring, save a couple of things. First, he mentioned Colbert (Jean-Baptiste) a couple of times, which made me think of the Colbert Report, so that wasn't so bad.
And secondly, a tower of a French early modernist is at my school, and he was at the seminar (sitting right next to me; kind of fun reading his notes) so when the student mentioned his books, he interrupted and corrected but in a funny way. The seminar ended with him just talking for 15 minutes or so, and that was cool. As much as I enjoyed the history department at the BYU (say what you want about the school, but the faculty, in my experience, was fabulous) we didn't so much have famous historians who defined their fields, and I dig getting that here. (I also dig the near-constant invoking of the name of Derrida, who was easily the most famous professor we've ever had. It's not like we're talking about deconstruction or even philosophy, but for some reason, people just happen to bring him up. A lot.)
Afterward, I went out with my advisor, a few of the students, and a couple of profs who'd all been at the seminar. We're sitting there at the cafe talking, and we start making these jokes about Louis XV marrying off his daughters (or rather, the fact that most didn't marry) and, oh, the lack of Merovingian primary sources, and other stuff that's incredibly boring to anyone who is normal. Between making jokes that weren't the slightest bit funny to the .02% of the population who could get them and peering over the shoulder of eminent historians, I actually felt like I am what I am. Nifty.
In other nerdly news, was poking around craigslist earlier, and found this
listing, advertising the sale of this
chateau. I'm pretty sure my life would be perfect if I could have that for my house, and really, 1.7 mil isn't that much. Would anyone like to ensure I love you forever? Christmas is a perfect time for the
perfect gift.
