(no subject)

[dchenes]

Today is better. Last night I had the theory exam, and I think I did decently. I really do hate blue books, though. Anyway, after the exam, I caught one of my classmates who finished before I did coming back upstairs as I was coming down, and we proceeded to stand out in the parking lot for the next hour and then some talking about the program in general and the theory class in particular. He's in the Russian program, and some of the differences in what's being taught are really interesting. Apparently the French program translates more varied things than the Russian one, and we got to choose our own final translation projects, but we had to do translation journals along with the translation and the Russians didn't.

The semiotics exam is mostly done. I'm not terribly happy with it, mostly because I don't know where my brain was when I was taking notes about Barthes. I have two pages of notes, and they don't address the question I'm supposed to be answering. I'm usually good about lecture notes. My theory is "write it down if you think it might possibly be relevant by any stretch of the imagination". I don't remember falling off that bandwagon. Maybe it was the lecture that wasn't any help. Anyway, this exam is coming out shorter than the last one, which leads me to believe that I'm not doing it justice, but I'm running out of things to say.

If I had three wishes right now, one of them would be for clean laundry. I haven't had the time for it since the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.

Comments

[enochs-fable.livejournal.com]

So what did you think of Barthes?

[dchenes.livejournal.com]

Do I have to think of Barthes? Eco is more interesting and Derrida is more fun.

[enochs-fable.livejournal.com]

Why?

[dchenes.livejournal.com]

Because I like Eco's arguments about codes, and because Derrida goes around turning everything inside out just to prove that he can. He proved that speech is secondary to writing, even though speech came first. For some reason that amuses me.

I'm not going to haul them all on an airplane, but I might just mail you all the various readings we got from this class if you want them.