Explanation

Hi friends.

So I figure I should explain (if only for the sake of my blogging pseudo-integrity) why updates have been so sparse of late. Basically, I am overloaded, which leads to a distinct lack of (firstly) material for writing about and (secondly) time in which to write about what little stuff I have.

I'm taking a full courseload (five classes), which isn't in itself unusual. I've taken five classes per semester consistently since I first came to McGill and been able to keep up with the work, so I didn't expect this year to be any different. Unfortunately, I didn't think about the reality of the classes that I was taking in assuming this. Two of my classes are completely normal intro-level courses in topics that I'm interested in (sociology and cultural studies). The other three are:

- Travaux pratiques 3: An applied literary analysis course for my French lit major. This involves critical and analytical, in-depth reading of literary works and some presentations and stuff. This class wouldn't be a problem if I were taking four normal classes, it's just a bit of a time-suck.

-Lectures 3: A reading class. This is designed to familiarize French literature majors with various parts of the French-language literary canon, in this case Quebec literature. This class only meets once a month or so and involves reading thirty books, with tests after every 10. Since the tests are basically at the end of every month, I should be reading a book every day and a half. Because I just don't have the time for this, I've only managed to read seven or eight out of the two groups of ten books I should have read so far. I made myself a sticker chart to track my progress, which is kind of encouraging.

-Costuming for the Theatre 1: We design and make the costumes for the English Department of Theatre's play. This seems innocuous enough but it has a mandatory nine-hour weekly production component on top of the three hours of class. If I didn't love sewing and costumes like little else in this world, I would be completely miserable. The fact that I love this class so much and can come out of four-and-a-half hour production blocks (which come an hour after the hour-and-a-half long classes) quite happy makes me think that maybe I should pursue costuming as a career (that's sort of math-like... It involves measuring things and making three-dimensional shapes out of flat malleable stuff...), which is something my mom has been telling me for years.

On top of this, I'll be vice-chairing a committee at the high school model UN conference this weekend.

I'm pretty much going insane. And by that I mean, consuming insane amounts of caffeinated beverages, working all the time and and feeling guilty about sleeping. It's terrible. More recently (like in the last week or so) I've developed fairly intense stomach pain that I'm pretty sure is anxiety-related (I had something similar during the first week of my job this summer as well as various other stressful times in my life) but the sleep deprivation and caffeine-produced dehydration probably aren't helping either. The stomach pain isn't debilitating or anything, it's just not very conducive to eating. It's kind of a lose-lose situation because I still get hungry and will have hunger stomachaches, it's just that eating makes me feel nauseous too.

I had something of a meltdown this week. I've pretty much decided to drop one of the classes I was going to take next semester. This just means that I'll have to take a full courseload one semester next year because I was planning to use my transfer credits from AP French to take four classes in each of my last two semesters. This seems like a wiser use of them, though.