Three days to deadline

This is a very normal time for me to start working, so I'm not panicking. Nope, not at all. Well, not about this assignment, certainly. Things that are more likely to strike panic in my heart (well, until tomorrow night, when I will, in fact, start panicking about this assignment) might include:

The importance of being earnest

Third year is now in full swing and I'm starting to realize that I actually care about my degree. More clearly put, I've always cared about my degree in that I've always cared about having some new credentials after showing up and jumping through hoops for four years. Now I'm really starting to love what I'm studying.

For instance: I'm far more engaged in what I'm reading, I follow up on suggested background reading; I even took out a book that was mentioned in the most recent chapter of my textbook. Considering I've coasted for the better part of the past 14 years of my education, this is quite something. It's refreshing and it's created a drive like I haven't had since the last time I left a project until 24h before the deadline (a frequent occurrence). Motivation is certainly something I've been missing out on.

On a far less lame note, I've picked up a few linguistics-related blogs which I'm quite enjoying and tonight I'm stopping by the Linguistics Society meeting to see what that's all about. Looking forward to my first ever attempt at extra-curricular involvement. It's at a bar, which helps the fact that was actually on a far more lame note. I'm catching up on some reading they're discussing as we speak; I'll probably not contribute much as most of these people probably do a lot more extra-curricular reading than I do. Hopefully it's as not-dry as the email led me to believe it would be ... some Facebook stalking suggests fellow members are socially competent and fun.

Well isn't today just a day full of goals being set (and, shockingly, met) and terrible food. Regardless of that second item, this is promising! Follow the jump for an entirely unrelated quip.

Onto another year of lackluster involvement.

Or so I thought! Thankfully, I scored a EUSA Societies' Guide (I'm as unsure about that apostrophe as you may be, rest assured, but it's on the cover) and have managed to find a number of things that look interesting. Anything with meeting schedules posted, I've plunked into my Google calendar and will hopefully make myself go to them. All others have received a brief and surely awkward email poking around for more info as to how to get involved.  More on this after the jump.

Things you will be pleased to hear about:

Well, you being pleased about these things assumes that you are actually me and your week seems to have taken a delightful turn for the better with (in some cases) lasting results. Or that you are looking for a great latte.

And so it begins...

First day of class today (for me at least). And oh, what a day it was. Started out innocently enough with my alarm at 7:30, getting up at 7:50, showering, making coffee, getting (more or less) pretty for the day and running to class at 8:51. Thankfully it is under 6 minutes to the building I was looking for. End summer vacation.

First class was two hours of corpus linguistics, which is something I have looked at for all of 45 minutes in fall semester last year. It was horribly presented, poorly explained, and altogether miserable. This was excellent though. The prof is Irish and went on to describe the common collocation of the intensifier "fucking" and kept saying "cunning linguists" and chuckling to herself. But really knows her stuff and is quite accomplished at it too, which is reassuring. It's a lab class, and we are graded on two assignments, worth 40% and 60%. Wonderful.

Break for lunch, a quick clean up, failure to open a bank account and some textbook shopping. Then it's off to Syntactical Theory and English Syntax. Which just so happens to be taught by the guy who basically invented syntax as far as the English-speaking world is concerned. His CV is 19 pages long and can be found here: I have too much time on my hands. He would be much easier to resent if he wasn't actually very funny. But he is. Nerds. Anyways, he sort of jumped into the whole subject balls deep, instructing us to read about a hundred extra pages in this book or that if we're feeling lost. (Lost, me? Pssshht...) And of course he wrote the textbook. Not in that "Oh buy my book" way, but in that "Oh every reliable book on the subject was written by me" way. Eff.

SO. Looks like I'll be reading a bit tonight. No matter, there's free wifi and two-pound pints next door. Happy days!