For my Film Experience class, I'm supposed to write several papers about the movies we watch in class to fulfill the HASS-D requirement. My first paper was on the role of accident in Buster Keaton's The General.
This is a story of what NOT to do (and what I'll never ever do again, I promise).
I have a lot on my plate lately, between all my classes and debate and WMBR. The extracurriculars don't take up that much time away from p-sets, but the work consumes every other waking moment (when I'm not obsessively checking my e-mail or Google Reader, of course) of my life. P-sets that require math (which is pretty much all of them) get my attention first, because I know they will take me the longest. Then I work on chemistry, because the math for that mostly just requires a calculator - yea for no derivatives!
HASS-D? What HASS-D? Oh, yeah, HASS-D... That one class that eats up every Tuesday evening with two lectures and a full-length film (sometimes two of them!)... Now, I really like the subject. And I really like the fact that it allows me to write (Too. Many. Numbers.). But I forgot about the essay that was due today until the last minute. I started working on it last night (Mom, Dad, I know you're already freaking out... Just hold your horses and remember how I said I would never ever do this again...) and didn't get much done. Then I woke up late this morning, without much time to work on my paper.
Panic set in, and after the quickest shower of my life (no joke) I was pounding away on my keyboard. I only paused to get juice from our fridge on the opposite side of the room, then I was back to describing what some critics call Keaton's greatest film.
Page totals:
Last night - 1.25 pages
This morning after an hour and a half of work - 5 pages
Oh snap. I powered through nearly four pages of an essay in an hour and a half. At that rate, I would have had my Senior Project paper (all 12 pages of it) done in a day. Truth be told, I had no idea I was capable of that. Another great thing - this isn't my worst writing ever. As in, I'm not ashamed to turn it in like it is.
But I will never ever do that again because now my brain is fried and I need some food.
In other news... I got eight hours of sleep last night! Go me! That's a record, I think, for the past two weeks. Which is terrible. But, I've been doing a bit of it without caffeine, so that's good (This is not to say, however, that I've not had coffee. I completely forgot how relaxing it is to just get a cup of coffee and sit in a comfortable chair for a while, not doing any hardcore work until I did it at Starbucks the other day... I need to do that a little bit more often).
Turns out I got a 65 on my 18.01 (single-variable calculus) test last week... WHICH IS AWESOME. In the real world, this might not be a very good score, but for MIT (and me) that is not bad and I am really really happy about it. And we are now going to completely ignore the train wreck that was my 8.01L (physics) score.
There's a ton of cool stuff going on tonight, however. Dale Chihuly is speaking at MIT tonight at 6:30, and I am unbelievably excited for that. He's an amazing glass-blower and I've seen his work exhibited all over the US, so it'll be really interesting to actually see him speak and give a presentation. Also tonight is the Vice-Presidential debate! I'm not too impressed with either Biden or Palin, so this will be interesting. The Tech had a wonderful take on the upcoming debate (I don't recommend playing this game - alcohol poisoning is bad - but it's at least funny to read).
Also, TWO WEEKS UNTIL NATIONAL CONVENTION. That's right, the annual FFA National Convention in Indianapolis is coming up, and I am missing a whole week of classes to go and compete/kick some serious butt in Ag Communications (a journalism contest). It's going to be amazing!
Random tidbit of information: Buster Keaton's The General was filmed entirely in Oregon. That's right, they've been filming movies in Oregon since at least 1927. In my book, that's awesome (and far more awesome than The Hunted being filmed in Oregon City).
1 comment:
That drinking game was pretty funny. I didn't play because 1), I had no desire to get that inebriated, and 2), I watched the debate at the Dean of Students' house. But I enjoyed reading it.
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