I'm tired, so goddamn tired. I just cannot wait till the semester's over, so I can sleep like Rip van Winkle this coming winter break.
I only slept for 2 hours two nights ago and an hour last night--a total of 3 hours in the past forty-eight hours.
I finished my 15-page Anthro paper last night, or should I say this morning, and gave my presentation of the paper in a dazed state-of-mind. A bunch of grad students in this otherwise undergraduate course are required to give presentations of our papers for about 8 to 10 minutes; undergrads are exempted, of course, unless if they volunteer to do it to earn brownie points.
Everybody else used flashy PowerPoint slides, which I wished I could have done because everybody loves to look at pretty pictures. Also, it would have been so much easier showing people where Indonesia is on the map, instead of engaging in pathetic attempt at verbal illustration. Anyway, I wrote a hasty half-page impromptu speech outline just before I had to go up in-front of the class.
My paper was about Indonesian nationalism and the conflict in Aceh. These are all issues/topics I know very intimately, which proved to be a bad thing if you do not have a definite structure to keep you on-track and on-message. Juiced up on caffeine combined with scattered, unfocused mind, I just went rambling on and on about these two issues. It was part diatribe against the Western and local colonial intrigues, part rumination on the plight of the poor, and part incomprehensible attempt at term-defining. I didn't realize I was going way over the limit when Prof. Zhou kept pointing at his wrist. I thought he just wanted to show off his fancy watch, but I thought wrong!
Anyway, it'll be another virtually sleepless nights for me in the next nine days. I have a paper due this Friday and two next Wednesday, oral test for Thai language this Thursday, and two finals next Thursday and Friday. Am I missing anything here?
All I want really badly right now is a good, solid 6-hour sleep. Oh, and I feel like I'm coming down with a flu. Please, can it at least wait for another week?
4 comments:
I would love to be there when you were giving your oral presentation. You must have sounded like a moron! Or maybe a zombified aging minority with his panties in a twist.
That said, don't stress out too much over finals and stuff, whhat am I saying, of course you will! Just try to limit your coffee intake and eat proper meals while you're at it, GOD!
Before I start to sound like a nagging mom, take care! -RQM
Hey, lookit here.. my "other mom" just chimed in. And mom, yes, I've been limiting my coffee intake these past few days and been drinking tea instead until my shit turned to concrete. I can't promise you on eating regularly though unless if you willing to be my personal chef and make me your world-famous "ikan masak sambal."
But yeah, I think I did sound like an old curmudgeon hectoring on about the evils of colonialism and unchecked capitalism. I did get pretty riled up when I talked about Aceh and Dutch/Javanese colonialism.
miss you a-dogg, hope your semester has gone well. if you're in milwaukee for winter break we should meet up at roch sometime. i've started up that darn smoking habit so i'm a big, big fan of roch again:)
-b
You're not going anywhere for the break? I'll be in Milwaukee on and off, and I'm also planning to go to DC if I can find a cheap flight, maybe for a week or so.
See, what did I tell you about quitting smoking? I'll give you a ring when I'm in Milwaukee. And yeah, I do miss Ro (and most coffeeshops there) since there's a city-wide ban on smoking in public establishments here in Madison. Caffeine and nicotine--they're a match made in heaven, or hell!
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