Wrapping Things Up

Hah! Lab essay and Greek essay are out of the way, just leaving my don rag this Tuesday and my math essay due just before Christmas break. I realize I neglected to mention what a don rag is in my last post. Since St. John's doesn't emphasize grades (you have to ask to see your grades) don rags are how we get an idea of how we're doing, what we should keep doing, and what we need to work on. The format is once a semester until our senior year we meet all of our tutors, excepting music, and they talk about us in the third person. For instance, "Miss SoandSo is doing well in participation regarding her math class perhaps too well..." etc. After they finish talking you are able to respond to their comments, ranging anywhere from "That's wildly unfair!" or "Yes, I had noticed that I needed to study my Greek paradigms more, I will do so in the future."It's a bit intimidating but most people find it extremely helpful. We don't do it in our senior year unless we request it as the assumption is is that by that time you should be able to assess your own work fairly. I'm not anxious about my don rag but I'm hoping I'll get some useful criticism out of it. There are definitely areas I need to work in but overall I feel I'm doing pretty well, although that assessment might change afterwards.

Regarding academics we've just moved out of biology in Lab and now we're on physics. I'm not sure if I like this change but it's difficult for me to not like Lab. In math I feel like I understand ratios for the first time but I'm still not looking forward to that essay. For Greek I read a work by Nietzsche for the first time even though he's definitely not an ancient Greek. But he wrote an amazing book at the age of 25 titled The Birth of Tragedy. I don't like nihilism but the book is not about nihilism, it examines how Greek tragedy came to be and what it means to man. It's a bit of a downer for college students. "See what he did at 25? Will you be able to write something so astounding in seven years? I thought not." I've read a great deal of Plato lately for seminar even though it's nowhere near the collected works. Meno, Gorgias, Apology, Crito, are fairly short dialogues but The Republic is twelve books (or chapters) long and it has metaphors within metaphors making it easy to get confused. I still have six Platonic works to go before the end of the year and a good portion of Aristotle that we'll continue next year. But it's nicely broken up with the plays including the Oedipus cycle and more history. It's terribly interesting most of the time, a little boring at others, and a lot of hard work. But it's a blast.

The day after my don rag I will be coming home for Thanksgiving with a couple of friends as well! I'm very excited as this is the first big Thanksgiving my family has had in several years. The guest list is coming out to ten people, maybe twelve instead of four or five. My mother has been giving me regular updates of all the work she and my father are doing to clean the house, the yard, and get cars ready. They've been working very hard for over two weeks now and I'm quite proud of them and how our house is going to look. It's rather ridiculous how much I miss my mother's cooking and I'll get to taste some of her best work in just a few days. And I have the pleasure of distributing presents too for even though I'm trying to be miserly with my own wants I find it very difficult to resist buying things for other people.

Nothing earth shattering to report in my own social life other than settling into a comfortable pattern with some of the nicest people I've had the privilege to know. There is the Christmas celebration we're planning even though we won't be spending Christmas time together. One friend suggested that we have a gift exchange on December 6th which is St. Nicholas Day. St. Nicholas Day is when the French used to have their own feasts and gift exchanges since Christmas was a religious holiday. I already have a person who I'm supposed to get something for but I have no idea what to get him/her. Hopefully a thought will occur. I have been introduced to Pablo Neruda recently so I'm having fun getting acquainted with his poems and maybe other Latin American poets later. I'm starting to know Santa Fe and the area around it better but I'm looking forward to further exploration.

I can't wait to see all of you at home, some over Thanksgiving, others over Christmas but it'll be wonderful to see you! If only I could bring home all of my friends from college to meet all of you and then what a party we would have!

The Novelty of November

My seminar essay is done! November is here, Thanksgiving is just a few weeks away! Of course, don rags, a math essay, a lab essay, and a Greek essay are also just a few weeks away but I will be able to enjoy my Thanksgiving in relative peace. I can't wait for the food, the family, the realization that I'll be home in just a couple of weeks for Christmas break! Yes. November is good even if there's a lot of school still to be done.

Here's an update on the plans I alluded to last time:

Unfortunately I did not get to any Day of the Dead celebrations. Not for lack of trying, I just misread the webpage and the place I went to had no celebrations going on. I still got Day of the Dead souvenirs though because they're so beautifully and hilariously morbid. No pumpkin carving happened either because seminar essays were due Halloween day and no one had time or energy to carve, least of all me. However I still did celebrate Halloween in some small ways. I dressed up for seminar as Jekyll and Hyde and afterwards some dorm mates and I went on the college student version of trick or treating: vending machines. We watched It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown! while we ate our Snickers and Butterfingers.

We have officially begun meetings of the Offbeat Domestics, an organization dedicated to all the things we would have loved if any of us had taken home ec classes: knitting, crocheting, baking, and possibly fermentation (yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi.) Our main purposes meeting currently are to read Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot mystery, Death on the Nile, out loud while the others knit and crochet. As you might guess most members are female but men are welcome. We're especially motivated to knit and crochet now since the weather has finally taken a turn to the brisk (we had a lovely snow this morning) and we're all thinking of hats and scarves. It's one of my favorite things to do now, not just because Death on the Nile is a masterfully crafted novel, but I get to spend time with some of my favorite people.

I've avoided mentioning this in the fear of jinxing it even though I alluded to it last post but I'm going to be brave: I'm planning on going to Spain next summer to walk the Camino de Santiago or The Way of St. James. I'll be walking it with a college friend's family and some other friends as well. The Camino de Santiago is one of Christianity's most famous pilgrimages, comparable to the pilgrimage to Jerusalem and Francigena to Rome. We'll be taking the French Way, starting in a tiny town in France and walking across the border into Spain. Our final destination is Santiago de Compostela, home to the cathedral that houses the remains of St. James, patron saint of Spain and one of the original twelve disciples. People have been walking the 500 miles through Basque country in order to do penance or receive a miracle or to find themselves for over a thousand years. Martin Sheen just starred in a movie called the Way that tells the story of a father estranged from his son who died before he could be reconciled with him. The son was walking the Camino de Santiago but he died before he could finish so Martin Sheen decides to walk the Camino in honor of his son. Here's a link for the trailer: http://theway-themovie.com/. I've been wanting to go on pilgrimage ever since I read The Sacred Journey. I'm not completely sure what I'm in for but it could be amazing, terrible, or amazingly terrible. It's worth the risk.

I hope all of you have a great week. I know I'm planning on it!