Too much to do = happy/stressed Sarah

Here are the big items on my to-do list:

• Write conference talk
• Write undergraduate lecture
• Expand/revise my last essay for first-year review
• Proofread a book for one of my freelance clients.  Gulp.
• Row in preparation for May Bumps (same concept as Lent Bumps -- see earlier post)
• Read some books that have been on the shelf for months, because they're due soon

So yeah, nothing to stress about, right? :P

But at the same time, we're seeing a lot of sunshine (albeit with cold breezes), and there are lots of opportunities to see and have fun with my Trinity Hall buddies.  And you know I love to fill my schedule to the breaking point.  Fortunately, this term is about huge exams for a lot of people, so the department isn't offering many lectures to distract me, and there is a decidedly studious air to the libraries and -- well, pretty much everywhere else.

Speaking of which, it's time to close this window of procrastination.  Until next time!

Apparently, I'm a jock

Well, a "heat wave" has brought mid-70s weather to Cambridge -- and good heavens, there are so many more tourists than in winter!  This mellow weather makes it a delight to sit in the Jerwood Library at Trinity Hall, looking out at the back lawn as punts drift by on the river and muffled chatter drifts in through the window.  Of course, the actual amount of work accomplished is somewhat less than it should be...

Part of this is because I find myself with many a sports training this week.  I've been learning some cricket basics with the university women's team -- some of you may recall that I learned a few skills when I was studying abroad -- and of course rowing is re-convening as we all trickle back into town.

As a result, I'm feeling especially sporty this week, though it's a feeling that has been growing all year.  Since the fall, I've definitely lost circumference as clothes are fitting more loosely, and I'm generally firmer in areas that I used to dislike.  In addition, as a boatie, I'm automatically part of the jock crowd -- but without the sense of exclusivity, because everyone knows that the boat club would love for everyone to row.  Still, it's funny that people treat you with mild reverence when, say, you mention that you've been out on the river earlier in the day.

In other news, my next academic "milestone" is also coming up: submitting a form with supervisor's signature, stating that I intend to register for the PhD at the end of the year (technically I'm probational right now).  Doing this starts the gears turning for a meeting at the end of term with several other professors, who will discuss what I've been doing and how to proceed.  Everyone says not to be scared of it, but that's a bit challenging.

I'll try to post some pictures next time to break up the text.  Wishing you all a happy Easter.

Back in Cambridge, back to work

Three weeks at home went by in a blur, and now I'm back in England.  It's a couple weeks yet until Easter term, so the town is pretty quiet, and spring has truly burst forth since I left.  I find I have only clichés at my disposal: the air is perfumed with flowers; songbirds twitter from every direction of the deepening dusk...You know, I wasn't especially depressed by winter here, but this explosion of sweet nature really shows you the appeal of ancient paganism.

While I was at home, I spent some time reading and writing for my schoolwork, saw some friends, and generally enjoyed the California spring.  I watched Stanford football's spring scrimmage against itself, and I even went to Disneyland before flying from LAX to London via a close connection in Chicago.  I've been working a conference the past couple days, but starting tomorrow it's back to the grindstone for me.

One reason?  I've gotten the go-ahead to give several talks this term: one for my fellow Tit Hall grad students (friendly crowd); one for English department "undergrads" (though I've only seen grad students and faculty at the other talks in this series); and one at an English grad student conference in London (my first conference paper!).  Here are the titles for each:

• Searching for a Ghost Town in the Eternal City: Writers in Rome in the Nineteenth Century.
• "A Collection of Faded Metaphors": Language, Meaning, and the Implications of Philology in the 19th Century.
• To “look on Spirits breathed away”: Locating the Spirit in In Memoriam.  

I know, you totally wish you could come, don't you?  It's really exciting to have these opportunities, but it means that I have to write some really polished material, more or less from scratch for the last two.  But at least I'll have lots of daylight and perfumed air in which to do so!

Spring! (sort of)

Last week's weather went something like this:

Monday -- a welcome day of sunshine, albeit chilly.  Someone cracked a window or two in the English faculty library and created sweet-smelling breezes.  Yum!

Tuesday/Wednesay -- clouded over again

Thursday/Friday -- frigid; I pulled out my down coat and picked a seat in the college library next to the heating vent.

Saturday -- gorgeous and cloudless, warm enough for a thin layer over a t-shirt.  Just right for the BBQ a friend had planned.  Students were out on the back lawn of Tit Hall (allowed this time of year), and the river was clogged with punters.  Be-a-utiful.

So spring is slowly creeping in, two steps forward and one step back.  I'll never see a daffodil again without thinking of Cambridge; they're everywhere!

I took the opportunity Saturday to check out something I cycle past nearly every day.  I live up Cambridge's only hill, Castle Hill.  There is a pub about halfway between me and town called The Castle Inn.  Behind it, there is a grassy mound, which I've always suspected might be the remains of, well, a castle.  Here it is:

It turns out that there has been some type of fortification there for 2,000 years: Iron Age folks, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, William the Conquerer, and Cromwell all built things there.  Apparently this is the highest point on the River Cam that you can get a ship before it really becomes marshy fen, and it's the last good place to build a bridge for the same reason.  Bonus fact: the county's administration is still based on the site, in a modern building about 50 yards away.

Anyway, there's not much to see, but you can climb the hill and look down at Cambridge.  Here's a shot of me with King's College Chapel in the distance.

I now have two days to finish the books I'd rather not schlep home, and then I'm California-bound!  Verdict on Lent term: off to a slow start, middle weeks of feeling lost and sad, last month filled with friends, fun, and victory on several scores.  Hurray!

An Ash Wednesday reflection

A pause in the usually vivacious nature of my entries.  As Cambridge's Lent term draws near its close, actual Lent begins tonight.  I attended a small Ash Wednesday ceremony in Trinity Hall's tiny chapel, and I was struck, as I often am, by the confessional line, "We have not forgiven others as we have been forgiven."

Maybe it's especially because in the last year I dealt regularly with someone who was emotionally borderline abusive and thus one of the very few people in the world whom I actually, truly hate(d).  I was taught as a child not to use that word casually because of the strength and viciousness of what it implied; I use it intentionally and with full force here.  In any case, I find myself once again wondering what exactly forgiveness is -- how it looks, how it feels, how you do it.  Here are some aspects of that pondering, still unresolved.  I remember Pastor Greg at UniChu gave a good sermon on this once, but I don't think he gave a firm solution, either.

• I'm naturally a person who doesn't hold a grudge for very long, at least in terms of how I spend my mental energy day-to-day.  But I can and do become re-angered when recalling certain offending events.  With time, eventually even the ability to re-conjure anger fades.  But this seems to me not to be real forgiveness.  It's just letting time heal wounds.  And what if someone naturally finds it harder to let go, or it takes way longer (or never) for that fading of anger to happen?  I think part of the answer is to keep yourself from indulging in the satisfaction of going over and over your reasons for resentment.
• Alternatively, you can try to perform a moment of forgiveness.  I generally think of this as resolving in your head and stating to the universe, "I forgive so-and-so."  But if you have to encounter that person again, you may quickly find that you haven't wiped your mental slate clean.  Does the offense have to be over before you can forgive it, or do you have to sustain forgiveness as a process as long as you encounter the offense?
• Do you really have to do/say something face-to-face?  Because much of the time it's inappropriate to say explicitly, "You are in the wrong, but I forgive you."  There may be power dynamics involved (e.g. at work), or you could just come across as condescending and make matters worse if the other person doesn't think they're doing anything wrong.

I suspect this is one of those questions that no one will ever have a neat answer for.  And it's worth mentioning that I'm aware and grateful for the fact that I have little cause for resentment in my life.  I have the love of family and friends, health and intelligence, the opportunity to put them to use, and the humility (I hope) to appreciate these things.  For these very reasons, I don't want to be lazy and get away with not knowing how to forgive just because it doesn't come up very often.  A good contemplation for Lent.

Bumps results and general rejoicing

Well, it was an incredible bumps for Trinity Hall Boat Club (THBC).  Out of the five crews, racing four days each, no one got bumped at all -- the first time in nearly 40 years!  (Here's a shot of us rowing home afterward.  I'm at the end.)

Consequently, everyone was in a jubilant, festive mood for Boat Club Dinner on Saturday night.  This was a black-tie dinner in hall with the master in attendance -- which didn't prevent group rounds of foul-languaged drinking songs!  I was awarded most improved of the lower-division women and had the time of my life that night.

After dinner, the MCR (grad student community) was having its every-other-week cocktail night, which was naturally jammed with boaties, as well as many people I just generally like to be around.  We proceeded to viva, the "undergrad" every-other-week party, where dancing and bar-chilling filled up the hours.  While not wasted, I was "somewhat the worse or the better for wine" (quiz: what movie is that from?), and thus I was quite chatty and prone to hugging people.

The only gaps in my memory are about how conversations got started that I remember being in the middle of.  Which is really funny to think back on.  Why exactly was I telling the MCR president to have more self-esteem because power is an aphrodisiac?  Why was I recollecting the DisneyWorld episode of Full House with a fellow student?  And why did someone tell me to pick up and twirl a 6-foot-plus rower when I was in heels?  Good times.

Lent Bumps 2011

Happy Friday to everyone, the close of a week that has flown by, mostly with rowing.  But first, let's back up a bit.

Several weeks ago, I set myself a deadline of this last Monday for sending my supervisor an essay comparing two Tennyson poems.  The first half was fairly easy; I've already told you what I was basically arguing about his most famous poem, In Memoriam.  The second half, about one of his lesser poems (The Princess, which I'm starting to think was intentionally funny), was harder to make a statement about.  Still, I finally managed to send the essay off late Monday night, thus freeing myself to enjoy this week.  I meet my supervisor Tuesday, and I hope it will be productive.  Here's an illustration from an American edition of The Princess, which was later adapted into the G&S show Princess Ida.

Now, on to Lent Bumps.  This is a series of races, nearly one a day.  It's kind of like a simultaneous playoff series: 17 boats line up, equally spaced apart.  The order is established by some combination of how good your qualifying time was and where your boat ranked last year, if you had one at all.

Your goal is to "bump" the boat in front -- either with physical contact or drawing up alongside until their coxswain concedes.  Then those two boats move off to the side and the ones behind keep going.  In theory, the next boat can row past the two who are off to the side and bump the one that was ahead of both of them -- this is called overbumping.  When it's all over, they shift the order accordingly and the next day you do it again.

As you can imagine, this causes a great deal of chaos and is an imperfect test of proper ranking.  But it's kind of fun anyway.  Tuesday and Wednesday we bumped the boat ahead of us almost instantly.  As signs of victory, we got to row home with ivy wreaths in our hair, gleaned from trees on the bank (see photo).  Today the boats ahead of us weren't very good and bumped each other out before we could get to them.  This left a looong distance between us and anyone we could possibly bump.  So we just finished out the course and will remain stationary in the order for tomorrow.  This is called "rowing over."

But check it out, there's video of me rowing!  Our boat appears at 2:18 and goes out of frame for a bit before they turn the camera.  I'm in the bow -- i.e., nearest the camera, with white sleeves.  It looks like we're just having a leisurely day out, but it was so hard to breathe!

With that, I wish you all a good weekend.