The mid-term Language & Mediality essay
Jun. 4th, 2020 09:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguist"Would it help to think out loud about one or more of the essays here?" radiantfracture asked me and I don't know but let's try.
One of them I actually finished today. It was three-quarters done before quarantine. I debated asking for an extension for it at all, I thought I could just power through it and finish it off for the deadline at the end of my first week of quarantine (the week before the whole country had to do it). Andrew encouraged me to apply for mitigating circumstances, and I did when opening my laptop and trying to pick up where I left off had me bursting into tears.
I was grieving because I was still so close to that other leg of the trousers of time, the one where I'd written these words, the one where I was maybe still going to Lib Dem conference over the weekend and my parents would be visiting in the summer, after I was done with uni.
After forgetting was too difficult, though, remembering was too difficult. Pretty soon I didn't understand how I could've written these words at all. When I looked at a sentence it made sense -- my academic writing is pretty clear and easy to follow if I do say so myself -- it wasn't that, it was that I didn't remember being the person who'd had these thoughts and arranged them in this way. And I was sad because I knew this would happen: I knew it was a coping mechanism my brain would put in place like it did the last time I was grieving and my life changed so much, when my brother died and I moved to a country where I only knew one person. I didn't want that to happen. I understood it was my brain trying to protect itself but I just didn't want to be in a state where it needed to do this.
Having, however unintentionally, put that notional distance between me-now and me-then, I couldn't help but both dislike and envy that person. I wanted his* life. I wanted him to save me from this somehow, and I hated him because he hadn't, because he didn't imagine I could ever need saving from it, and therefore I hate him because I will never be that person again. Now I'll always be someone who knows what lockdown does to my mental health, I'll always be someone who went to uni for the last time without any idea that it was the last time, I'll always be someone who had this miserable year.
You'll notice I've drifted pretty far from my essay by this point. This was the problem I was having. I was way over here, marooned in my grief and loneliness and existential thoughts and my self-pity, with no path back to where I needed to be. I couldn't think about anything as small as an essay; all my thoughts were too big. I felt like I was being asked to get an elephant into a refrigerator.
I'd been having so much fun with that essay before, i got to analyze an email newsletter that a friend of mine writes about shitty Lifetime movies, and now I hated the essay and I couldn't bear to even think about it because I couldn't think about it, I could only think these big thoughts.
So today I handed in something that I know only covered some of the points I wanted to make and is a bit light on word-count and doesn't have a proper conclusion but I was suddenly frantic to have it done, suddenly I was holding my breath and I thought it might help if I just sprinted and finished even if it meant flopping down in the dust right after, hours after all the other runners had gone home.
When I submitted it, electronically like everything else, I didn't look at the submission date next to the big blue button I had to press but I did notice the date we were could expect our grades for this essay was early in April. I pressed the button quickly to get away from the hateful parallel universe where I finished this race when the others did.
I don't know if the sprint helped me feel any better or not. There's no sense of relief or accomplishment, just as there wasn't when I finally submitted that open-book exam that was due yesterday. I don't feel any closer to being done, I don't feel like I'm getting any better at thinking my uni thoughts or going back to my uni habits. I don't feel that I'm finishing the last chapter of my time at uni. I don't feel any different at all.
So. One essay down, three to go.
* For whatever reason, when I think of this me from a couple months ago, "he" is the pronoun I'm associating with the character. This is really out of the blue: I still don't think any pronoun is better-suited for me than any other, and I don't remember having any such affinity for he/him before now, but I'm just going to roll with it for the duration of this entry. It's by far the least-used set of pronouns for me of the Big Three, and I wonder if that's why I'm leaning toward it now, because it's helping put this distance between me-now and me-then that I'm talking about here. Who knows. I don't have the energy or the inclination to ruminate or speculate on this right now.
radiantfracture asked me and I don't know but let's try.One of them I actually finished today. It was three-quarters done before quarantine. I debated asking for an extension for it at all, I thought I could just power through it and finish it off for the deadline at the end of my first week of quarantine (the week before the whole country had to do it). Andrew encouraged me to apply for mitigating circumstances, and I did when opening my laptop and trying to pick up where I left off had me bursting into tears.
I was grieving because I was still so close to that other leg of the trousers of time, the one where I'd written these words, the one where I was maybe still going to Lib Dem conference over the weekend and my parents would be visiting in the summer, after I was done with uni.
After forgetting was too difficult, though, remembering was too difficult. Pretty soon I didn't understand how I could've written these words at all. When I looked at a sentence it made sense -- my academic writing is pretty clear and easy to follow if I do say so myself -- it wasn't that, it was that I didn't remember being the person who'd had these thoughts and arranged them in this way. And I was sad because I knew this would happen: I knew it was a coping mechanism my brain would put in place like it did the last time I was grieving and my life changed so much, when my brother died and I moved to a country where I only knew one person. I didn't want that to happen. I understood it was my brain trying to protect itself but I just didn't want to be in a state where it needed to do this.
Having, however unintentionally, put that notional distance between me-now and me-then, I couldn't help but both dislike and envy that person. I wanted his* life. I wanted him to save me from this somehow, and I hated him because he hadn't, because he didn't imagine I could ever need saving from it, and therefore I hate him because I will never be that person again. Now I'll always be someone who knows what lockdown does to my mental health, I'll always be someone who went to uni for the last time without any idea that it was the last time, I'll always be someone who had this miserable year.
You'll notice I've drifted pretty far from my essay by this point. This was the problem I was having. I was way over here, marooned in my grief and loneliness and existential thoughts and my self-pity, with no path back to where I needed to be. I couldn't think about anything as small as an essay; all my thoughts were too big. I felt like I was being asked to get an elephant into a refrigerator.
I'd been having so much fun with that essay before, i got to analyze an email newsletter that a friend of mine writes about shitty Lifetime movies, and now I hated the essay and I couldn't bear to even think about it because I couldn't think about it, I could only think these big thoughts.
So today I handed in something that I know only covered some of the points I wanted to make and is a bit light on word-count and doesn't have a proper conclusion but I was suddenly frantic to have it done, suddenly I was holding my breath and I thought it might help if I just sprinted and finished even if it meant flopping down in the dust right after, hours after all the other runners had gone home.
When I submitted it, electronically like everything else, I didn't look at the submission date next to the big blue button I had to press but I did notice the date we were could expect our grades for this essay was early in April. I pressed the button quickly to get away from the hateful parallel universe where I finished this race when the others did.
I don't know if the sprint helped me feel any better or not. There's no sense of relief or accomplishment, just as there wasn't when I finally submitted that open-book exam that was due yesterday. I don't feel any closer to being done, I don't feel like I'm getting any better at thinking my uni thoughts or going back to my uni habits. I don't feel that I'm finishing the last chapter of my time at uni. I don't feel any different at all.
So. One essay down, three to go.
* For whatever reason, when I think of this me from a couple months ago, "he" is the pronoun I'm associating with the character. This is really out of the blue: I still don't think any pronoun is better-suited for me than any other, and I don't remember having any such affinity for he/him before now, but I'm just going to roll with it for the duration of this entry. It's by far the least-used set of pronouns for me of the Big Three, and I wonder if that's why I'm leaning toward it now, because it's helping put this distance between me-now and me-then that I'm talking about here. Who knows. I don't have the energy or the inclination to ruminate or speculate on this right now.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-04 09:43 pm (UTC)Sending love and tea!
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-05 12:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-04 10:27 pm (UTC)I'm glad you were able to at least poke at the grief and loneliness and all the other emotional crap that this crisis has left you. And know you're not alone in feeling those feelings. <3
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-05 12:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-05 10:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-05 12:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-05 12:24 pm (UTC)But yeah, I know what you mean. It's good not to have it hanging over my head now.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-05 01:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-05 06:27 pm (UTC)And <3 on the feelings - that sounds really hard.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-05 07:03 pm (UTC)And thank you for that too. I do feel better for writing this out.
Tea?
Date: 2020-06-05 07:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-05 10:07 pm (UTC)Here and witnessing the difficulties of the world that was compared to the world that is.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-05 10:14 pm (UTC)