I'm not a big study-in-library person, in part because I'm lazy and, since I have a single on a quiet floor in the house, I usually see no need to study elsewhere. Last night--a Friday night, mind you--I went to Crerar, however, the moderately-creepy science library on campus, since a few friends were going. We nabbed a study room so that we'd be able to talk once in a while, and we left at about 11pm, 5 hours after we arrived. My friends mostly worked on papers due on Monday and Tuesday, and I worked on studying astronomy (four hours to go over notes and check solutions to homework, apparently) and started consolidating information to study later this week for Italian.
Now today, a Saturday, I've spent about three hours studying in one of the general dorm-wide lounges with another friend. Again, "studying" here means finishing writing out all my Italian stuff and consolidating info for my art history final, which really doesn't require much if any actual studying since it's a take-home final that's posted online at noon on Tuesday and due back by noon on Wednesday. It's open notes, it's three short compare and contrast essays for different artworks/monuments, and it really isn't much of anything to worry about, since after my initial B+ on my first writing assignment for this class, I've gotten As and A-s on the other graded assignments we've had, including the midterm. It's better to push papers around and take notes, however, than it is to work on my Foucault paper, the thing I am dreading most about finals week. It's now not due until Wednesday, but I have to spend Tuesday doing my art history final and studying for Italian on Wednesday morning, and I have to spend most of tomorrow making my cheat-sheet for astronomy on Monday (all of the class condensed onto one piece of paper is really fun to make). So really, I need to plot out Foucault pretty rigorously tonight, write it tomorrow/Monday, and do some sort of editing on Tuesday.
I really need to be thinking about Foucault, but I absolutely hate sosc papers (they are so joyless, compared to other types of papers, not that any paper is really that fun), and I know that no matter how much I try, I'm likely going to get a B+ on it (like I've gotten on all my sosc papers) and a B+ in the class for the quarter. I'm completely down with B+s, but I just do not want to write something that likely isn't going to be top-notch work anyway, since sosc papers require such agonizing succinctness and dry accuracy, a far cry from the "brimming-full-of-random-stuff, close-read-to-pieces" English-y papers I prefer to write.
Fortunately, the quarter is indeed almost done. Unfortunately, however, the most important (and most agonizing) part of the quarter is just beginning. As if determined to make it that much harder to care about these classes anymore, classes for spring quarter finally came out yesterday. I'm taking Italian 203, the third quarter of sosc, an English class called Modern Love in Victorian Poetry and Prose, and a psych class called The Social Brain and Empathy, which is taught by world cognitive-neuro-empathy expert Jean Decety. No astro, no art history, just stuff I actually could conceivably care more about (besides sosc) and/or enjoy doing work for (again, besides sosc).
After this quarter, I'm done with physical sciences for the core. After this year, I'll also be done with sosc. After this year, the only core I will have left is civ (civilization studies), which will be happening fall quarter. In Rome. Then, after I get back from Europe, I'll have to take classes that will eventually give me a degree and a future. Chyeah?
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