I had a conversation last night, wherein I discovered perhaps the best name for a narrative of life at Beloit College, but I can't remember now. Whatever. Today is Sunday, my day for updating the world about my status. Phone calls will occur later this afternoon (after my cell phone charges) and of course the requisite TealArt entry.
My classes are going well: nothing difficult yet. I have my first paper (feminisms) due in a couple of weeks, and I don't think I'll get the assignment for that until Thursday (maybe,) and it promises to be dead simple. In a fun and exciting sort of way. I have an "assessment" (psych) on Monday, which looks to be simple enough to complete in my sleep, which is really convenient given the time slot of that class. There's another test-like thing in the Sociology class at the end of the week or the beginning of the next, which is the only thing I have to do actual work to prepare for, (other than general reading and stuff like that). So the school-work progresses much as I expected it, which is a very good thing indeed.
I have four friends who speak Russian in some degree. One is an exchange student, another immigrated as a child: so speaks it with her parents, and her (flawless) English is occasionally peppered with Russian. The last guy, did an intensive summer emersion program, and has taken a number of classes. The surprising thing is that I understand a surprising amount of what gets said. I have the vocabulary of an 18 month old, but I can kind of translate the important parts. It's interesting, because I don't think I've ever been in situations where my language skills have been semi-useful. Which when you consider the last time I had a Russian class was six years ago, is kind of good. On another linguistic level, my Spanish is also a lot better than I think it is, and I could probably Tutor people in first year Spanish. For all the faults of the last four years of my Spanish experience, my teacher did know the language really well, and her explanations have stuck. Maybe it wasn't all for nothing.
I've become a little discouraged about the gay boy situation here. Fiveish in my class at last count: that works out to somewhere between a percent and a percent and a half of the class. I don't think Kinsey was that far off. From what I can tell the percentages for the other classes aren't appreciably higher, at this point. Now either there are people that I don't see/can't find (a distinct possibility), this place isn't nearly as hippie/"liberal"/open as people claim it is (a certain truth, but I don't think that's it either,) or Kinsey misplaced a decimal. The perhaps more interesting observation is somewhere near half of them are "very-much attached" which strikes me as really uncommon and strange. Anyway.
Not to babble too much about this kind of thing but here goes another line of observation. I've been in the situation where I've had to kind of "come out" again. It's really just a part of that continual coming out process, but it feels like "again" sometimes. I've not had problems or anything, but it's weird. The "exciting" sigh of relief that I used to love so much, has mostly been replaced by anxiety and annoyance. I really want the gay thing to be a complete non-issue, but it doesn't feel like a non-issue to me, and sometimes I feel like a one song-singer because I think about it a lot. There's a lot more to be than this gay thing, but it's still fairly important, and my position with myself is that heterosexuality is a bigger deal for straight folks than they/we think it is, but perhaps that's part of the benefit of normativization (if that isn't a word, it should be/is now.) It means walking a lot of fine lines, but there's not much I can do really. In other news, I think I'm going to join the Breakdance club. It's a pretty big time commitment. No, it's a huge time commitment. But it's not too much, there's a very slight possibility of getting some credit for it, but I would do it anyway. It looks so fun, it'll be good exercise, and just like Morris and International, I have a great desire to know how to do it. I haven't given up on the idea of a Morris team, but I'm fairly convinced that I'll need at least one other person whose familiar with the ways of Morris before I jump into that.
The other really exciting thing that's happened of late is that I wrote up a proposal for the Affinity Story Project, I have to do some revisions, which I'll probably get to sometime this week. I have the time it's more about getting distance from the work so that I can make better revisions. Then I just have to get an example of a story or two (probably one from Chris and whatever I put in to it,) write a cover letter, and send it out to publishers. I'll start looking for stories after that. This is quickly becoming real, and I think it's really exciting.
On that note, I'll leave you for now. See you later in the week!