Another Semester Older, Another Semester Wiser. ...Well, One Out of Two Ain't Bad.

Some semesters feel like Hemingway short stories: sparse, with a lot of pointless dialogue, and when you're done it almost feels like nothing's happened while it also feels like too much has happened to have fit in that short a period, and it makes you want to go back and see what you missed. This semester didn't feel that way. This one felt like a Dickens novel, with incident crowding upon incident and character upon character almost too rapidly to keep track of; some parts went too fast, while others went far too slowly; and story arcs that should have taken weeks or months to resolve only lasted a few days.

I fear I am being far too abstract. It was a good semester, yes, but my most trying so far. I have a general policy of trying not to regret the past, of seeing the lessons my mistakes have taught me, and were I to do it again there is very little about this semester I would change (an incident, perhaps, a stray word or two). So I am glad and thankful for this semester. I am just not sorry to see it go.

Fairly soon after getting home, I got (I thought) sick. My symptoms were:

1. Chills
2. Headache
3. Muscle Pain
4. Grogginess/tiredness
5. Irritability (though it's debatable whether this is unusual)

I figured I'd sleep it off, but then a bright idea occurred to me. I realized I had coffee, or tea, or Mt. Dew at almost every meal at school, and since coming home I'd had very little in the way of caffeinated beverages. I went online to look up the symptoms of caffeine withdrawal, and discovered that they included:

1. Chills
2. Headache
3. Muscle Pain
4. Grogginess/tiredness
5. Irritability

Hmm.

Otherwise, not a whole lot to report. In order to not get bored, I decided to launch a self-study course in film history, mainly watching a lot of the keystone films in various movements, etc. I emailed a couple film profs, and got a recommended list, and ran that by my mom who saved me (or tried to) from Italian Neo-realism. We'll see how this 'course' pans out; I watched Battleship Potemkin today (USSR, 1925) and, well... ugh. Hopefully other films have better results.