I should go see Stephen about my homework this afternoon. I've finished it, but I have to make sure he can see it and that it actually did get finished. I'm paranoid, but he said we'd be dropped from the class if we didn't turn in this first homework. I love this class too much to leave it!
I guess I'll go to the poetry thing tonight. As I said, I have nothing to do. (I know it sounds like I'm only going to go because I have nothing to do, but that's not the case. I like listening to people reading good poetry.)
I was reading the Aeneid out loud in Latin last night. It was really awkward because I haven't read Latin out loud very often, let alone that much. I mean, it's not like they teach us to speak a dead language--which is rather unfortunate. It sounded so beautiful when I read it in Latin, so I tried in English. The translation didn't sound as good. I remember reading a few translated Catullus poems, particularly XVI, the one they always omit from the AP syllabus for its content :) The translation that I read for this one was REALLY good--it rhymed, had meter, everything. It wasn't just a prose translation of the poem.
That makes me think of being back in high school, where the tech guys had to take down the computer filters so that I could do my coursework. We were assigned to look at some pictures, which included photos of nude statues, and the computer told me that it was pornography. I was absolutely offended, mostly because I don't see how the human body is offensive. It was artwork! I think the filters also had a lot of problems with the profanity and sexual content in some of the Catullus translations (Er...XVI again?), which also irritated me.
I was also tagging some photos that Drew and I took in the hallway in our last year of high school. In the background of my favorite photo was...you guessed it, a security camera. I promptly tagged that portion of the photo with "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING."
I really didn't notice how oppressive all of that stuff was until I got here. There aren't filters on the computers. I haven't seen a single security camera on the campus. The academic buildings aren't locked at night, at least in the late hours that I've gone to traverse through them. Professors say whatever they want. Clubs can say things on their posters that would have gotten someone in serious trouble in high school (Example: Today I saw a poster in the dining hall that incorporated the acronym "WTF?"). GALL exists on campus and is pretty much free to do anything. Until the other day--you heard my sob story in a previous post--students were free to spray paint whatever they wanted on the wooden wall. There is just so much freedom here, and it's just not like high school.
I love this place.
I'm sorry you had to read through that entire rant, but I was just thinking about that earlier. It made me very happy.
I'm going to go for a walk, I think.
(I didn't help with GALL yesterday. I got back from riding late, I was cold, I was sore, I was hungry, and I really didn't want to see the animal rights club and have to explain why I've stopped coming. Oh well.)
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