Spring? Is in the air?

Yeah. That's what I said. So the last week of everything was great, we both finished our classes well, and I think Mike got a 4.0 this semester. Fantastic. And, I was wearing capris and short sleeves all week, practically sweating my face off because it was so warm and summer-y. 

And then it snowed. Weird, huh? I can't really complain about it because it's back to being yummy outside. 

And then school started again. Ugh. Mike's been rubbing it in my face, reading fun books like the Count of Monte Cristo and making me feel all...studious...ugh. 

But I guess it's not so  bad. The lovely thing about spring semester is that I have three (okay, so really two and a half) classes which is 6.5 credit hours, and I only have to go to one class a day (the half a class is HEPE, which is the basic GE Health credit and it's only half a credit and it's entirely online). So really, I'm totally relaxed now, too. And my classes are great!

My first class this term was English 345, Literature and Film. Yes, it's as awesome as it sounds. We're going to read Turn of the Screw by Henry James, Pinnochio, Shane by Jack Schaeffer, Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate Dicamillo, and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseinni and watch the film adaptations of them. It's focused on how film has become a medium that is overpowering that of books, and especially how when you adapt a text into a film, you use different modes of capturing your audience. For example, in Pride and Prejudice, you are taught in the novel to hate Mr. Darcy and think him incredibly proud and snotty through the first half of the book, and then it's a wonderful revelation to think you were wrong, whereas you can't hate Colin Firth. It's just not in you. He's just too cute. So the filmmakers have to think of different ways to make him interesting. In that particular version, you see a lot more of his side of the story than you do in the book, which can be good or bad. 

My other class is French 202, which is hard because our teacher is an actual French woman and her French sounds like French and isn't slow and American enough to pick apart, but it's fun because we're studying actual French literature and history instead of just conjugating verbs. I'm excited :)

That's what I'm doing. Oh yeah, and I've been deathly ill the last couple of days. Yesterday I had a fever of 101. But now I'm fine. And that's all it was, a fever and headache. Mike made me stay home from work again today because I was still kind of achy this morning, but I don't have a fever anymore and my headache is mostly gone. It came and went really fast. Weird. 

WHY DO I KEEP GETTING SICK THIS YEAR?!?!?!!?!? It's minorly frustrating. 

But it's springtime, and there are flowers outside, and everything is beautiful and warm and my neck is sunburned, and the little Asian boys get to play baseball outside for five hours a day without their mother yelling at them to wear a jacket (they've played baseball all day, every day since the snow melted mid-january.) I'm happy. 

When Semester Ends...

Yes, I'm talking about that totally morose Greenday song. The one my dad liked for a lot of years. 

Anyways...

We're making cupcakes because the semester's over. I helped host an open house for all the grads from the Dept. of Statistics today. Everyone's done. But not me. 

School starts on tuesday. 

Alas. 

At least it's spring. 

Just Kidding!

I'm not actually done. I came to work today at 8 because it's finals week and everyone's schedules are crazy, but I'm the only one here all morning until 2. And I've only been here for a little over an hour and I'm already really bored. Kathi's fun, but she's in her office doing busy things, and I'm out here at the front desk and the entire building is empty...nobody's on campus anymore...
But finals week is going well. Mike and I both took our religion finals on Friday (we're in the same class) and he scored higher than me (of course!) by one question. I'm not complaining, I got a 94%, and he got 96%. I was surprised at our test. I thought it would be harder. But that's what I loved about that class. It was technically called LDS Marriage and Family, but Br. Brooks understood that in order to have a good marriage and family, we need to simply have a deeper understanding of gospel principles. So we talked about all kinds of different things, not just the Family Proclamation, foreordained roles of women and men, parenthood, and dating and such. The test was really testing how well we had understood the gospel principles that were taught. It was awesome.
I only have three more things to do for this semester. I have my CHUM portfolio due on Wednesday, (see Mac Lab entry :) and then my French 201 final is on Wednesday (the last day of finals) from 8-11 pm (we'll be there even later than the testing center--they close at 10). So my French final will be the very last of all finals on campus. i'm being serious. My Brit Lit final isn't due until friday, but that's because it's a take home essay final, not very huge, and he wanted us to have the most time possible. And grades aren't due until next week, so we have until Friday. I'm perfectly okay with that.
Mike's finals are stressing him out like crazy. He's doing pretty well so far, having gotten 96 in religion, as I said, and on Saturday he went and took his Physics 105 final and came back grinning, saying that something happened that had never happened for him at BYU before. He completely aced it. 100% in Physics 105. Gross. What did I think I was doing, marrying a genius ? ;) He's going to take Nutrition today, which he's a little nervous for, so it's a good thing I'm working for six hours so he'll have time to study his bum off before he goes. But he'll be great. I know he will be. He just finds this strange kind of masochistic pleasure in making himself unnecessarily anxious over everything.
I don't know what else to write about. My life is kind of boring for the next week. Friday I'll be here at 8 again to help with the Graduation open house for the department. Other than that, I'm just working, writing stuff, etc. Nothing huge.
Maybe I'll make a pie. Mmmmm...

Once upon a time...

There was a sweet, innocent, totally well-intentioned young girl in a married ward, who happened to have taken many years of piano lessons. Because of this, the kind-hearted bishop thought she would also want to learn to play the organ. This was a very controversial bet to take.
But she was whole-hearted into accepting callings, so she learned to play the organ.
And switching into present-day reality, yesterday was the first day that she played all the hymns in sacrament meeting, with the pedals, all by herself. "I'll Go Where You Want Me to Go," "Tis Sweet to Sing the Matchless Love," and "The Time is Far Spent." Not too horrible.
It was very traumatic. She messed up a lot. But all the people in her ward--whom she knew were all musically inclined and probably were wincing at her every key stroke--encouraged and applauded her for massacring the hymns. Except they said she did a good job. She just thinks she massacred them.
But then she went home and made tuna-noodle casserole for her husband, played the cello for a while, and then went to work at 8 the next morning, and it was all better.
The end.

I almost forgot!

ps- I've been meaning to put this up. This is the cutest little French girl ever telling a story. My teacher showed this video to us, and now I'm in love with Capucine!

http://vimeo.com/2113477

Hmmmm, Mac Lab....hmmm....

So, in taking my CHUM 230 class, (for anyone who doesn't know...okay, so nobody really knows...I just found this out myself...It's "computers and the humanities") I spent a BILLION hours in the Mac Lab on campus so I could use InDesign, Photoshop, Quark, etc. And I am continuing to do so during finals week in order that I might finish my horrid portfolio (really, it's just taking all the assignments and publication designs we've already made, printing them out again, making a cover page, and turning it in). So I been thinkin'. 

I want a mac. That's not a secret. I only have my lovely (cough cough) hp laptop because my accountant father and engineer grandfather picked it out without me. Not that I'm complaining-it would be a lot more painful if I had to do ALL my homework on campus-and it's a really nice laptop-I just really wish that they'd let me get a mac. I don't really need all the excel and math programs and whatever. I only use this one for word and the internet. So I can blog and reach out to all you lovely people. And occasionally do boring stuff like register for classes and check my grades. I'm totally kidding. 

But I realized today, that if I end up becoming an editor (which is the whole plan with the whole English major and editing minor thing) and taking jobs at home (which is also the goal--so I can be a mom and put my husband through med school at the same time) then I would need a mac to do all my editing and publishing stuff. And it's fine, Mike already promised me that when one of our computers dies our next one can be a mac.

Problem: my teacher said that if we wanted to get the adobe suite (all the publishing programs that are good) then it's a LOT cheaper (we're talking hundreds of dollars) to get it when we're students. 

HMMMMMMMMMMM....

Just some thoughts for the day. It hasn't been really that exciting. Except that it's Super-Sexy Friday. See, all the professor that I work with and most other people dress up during the week and then get to be casual on fridays. Well, Mike and I wear jeans and sneakers all the time. So we decided that Fridays would be dress-up days for us. So I actually did my hair, and Mike wore slacks and a dress polo and stuff. And we looked really good, but it makes Mike look way old. It's weird. :)

A Tribute to Dr. Brandie R. Siegfried, OR, An English Major's Reflections on Growing Up

In 2006, when I was a senior in high school, I was in AP English with Ms. Sue Norton. My class was composed of the same people as inhabited every single one of my other classes. It didn't mean much that it was English--we were AP everything students--so we didn't expect to get anything else out of it. Ms. Norton was this sweet old lady who smiled a lot and had a very soft voice. We expected it to be a breeze.
The first thing she showed us was a template for a research paper. You know what I'm talking about. The intro paragraph has intro sentence, intro sentence, intro sentence, thesis. And every other paragraph had topic sentence, concrete detail, commentary commentary, etc. You've all seen it. And she told us that if we tried to emulate it at all in her class, we would fail on our papers. I was excited.
Through the course of the year, we learned not only to write with our own voices (or to utilize the voices we had already had without knowing we had them) but also to teach ourselves. Instead of lecturing on her own ideas about the literature (like so many teachers used to preach theories passionately over our heads) she gave us background and set us loose. We read plays in a circle and stopped to discuss. We had to have real opinions and ideas. We learned to truly think.
And then I came to school at a huge university, where everyone--and everything--was smarter than I was. My English professors were so varied, I didn't know what to expect. But I followed the prompts, I analyzed poems based on word meaning and whatever theory that professor preached, and I spit out papers that followed all the guidelines. I learned to speed read so fast I finished Frankenstein in three days. I forgot what it was like to get sucked into a book and to actually feel sadness when it finished and there was nothing more to analyze. Reading became work, and I couldn't get through a story or poem without thinking of how the women related to the men, how the power structure played out, what the story said about the personal experience of the author, etc...
And then I jumped into this semester, taking English 292 and 382. In 382, Shakespeare with Dr. Siegfried, I was really nervous the first day. She had all these strict beliefs and requirements which made at least half the class disappear after the first day. The class got down to 11 people before she announced that it was about the size she liked, and she became more personable. The fear I had had the first day immediately evaporated, and this class became the one that proved I was in the right major. I actually got excited about all of my papers, because when she asked us a question, she expected a real answer. Not just a spewed out knowledge of what she had told us the day before, but a real answer. So these papers involved what I actually thought and felt, and I began to grow as a person, not just remaining static in my studies and telling people I was an English major. Now I'm a critic. A real one.
And then, the last two weeks of the semester, there were a couple of things that happened that have changed me permanently. First, was the final research paper. When Dr. Siegfried told us about it, she said she wanted us to produce something that was an actual contribution to the literary scene--something real, that we could submit for a contest, an undergrad journal, a conference, etc. So we began thinking real thoughts, making real hypotheses, and and putting real thoughts and feelings down on paper. I'm not going to say that my 11-page monster written on how Portia from The Merchant of Venice is a reflection of Elizabeth I just as much as Shylock becomes a prototype for Rodrigo Lopez, her Portuguese Jewish doctor whom she executed for a suspected murder plot. It's pretty genius. And it's all my own. And I couldn't find many people who even suggested things like that before, so maybe it'll be worth something.
But then, we were also reading a book called Mama Day. And suddenly, I'm re-learning how to read for pleasure. I can't remember the last time I did that. It's so refreshing.
So now comes the conclusion, as every good English major knows. Ms. Norton taught us to write with a voice, but Dr. Siegfried taught me to write the things I actually think. I'm not trying to argue somebody else's point, I'm arguing mine. I'm not trying to spew out information to prove that I've learned something, I'm telling her how I feel and what I think and I'm making all the work that everyone groans at when they hear I'm an English major mean something to me.
Okay, I lied. That was not the conclusion. The reason I've written this big long sermon/personal history/whatever-you-call-it, is because this morning I turned in my paper. And attended the very last class of Shakespeare 382. And I've never felt sad about finishing a class before. You can think I'm cheesy, make fun of my nostalgia and sentimentality; I don't care. I never thought it could actually create a space in the room of my mind that is full of things that I genuinely care about. But somehow it has. And now it's over.

I have WAY too much influence over my husband.

Tonight I'm finishing my Shakespeare paper. As many of you know, I'm quite a feminist, and this paper is dealing with how Portia is a reflection of Elizabeth I's effect on Britain as a female monarch. Okay, fine, I told you. 

But here's the funny part. 

Michael, while I pore over feminist literature and write mind-bogglingly brilliant sentences, is dying of boredom, not having me to entertain him. So he ate some Easter chocolate, prepared his lesson for Sunday School tomorrow (he's teaching a class about teaching...) and still was left Brittany-less. Thus, he turns to the cheapy games that came on his laptop, such as Solitaire and the Penguin game. 

But tonight he's playing something different. It's some weird game where you dress up funny and fight skeletons with your pet unicorn. And you can make your character look like John Lennon. It's awesome. 

Guess what Mike named his character when he started playing tonight? That's right. Portia the Glorious. And the unicorn's name is Bassanio, the wimpy. Seriously. The unicorn runs away when you start fighting stuff. Very appropriate. 

TO CLARIFY: Michael is not becoming a video game junky. That was his past life. This is more like a mode of keeping him entertained so I can finish my paper in a timely and intelligent manner without his comments. Just thought I'd make sure you knew that. 

I just love how much influence I have over him. Muaha. 

I TOTALLY AM A GENIUS! THIS BLOG DOES NOT LIE!

Yeah, I just had the most genius idea that I've ever had in my entire life. And it's for my giant Shakespeare paper. I thought I had a genius idea before, and that's what I've been working on....and then I discovered a paper that was basically exactly what I had wanted to write...

So now I've had an even more genius idea!!! And it's going to be really good. But I'm not telling anybody what it is until after I've written the paper and gotten a grade, so nobody sees it and steals it or thinks it's dumb or anything. :) MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

HAMBURGER MADNESS!

I taught Mike how to make hamburgers tonight. Apparently, he had no idea previous to this that one could add anything to the meat to make it tastier...

So he made some hamburgers all by himself (sort of) and they were really tasty! And they satisfied my serious craving for red meat! I feel so...nourished! :)

Holy Cow! Elder Anderson is the new apostle!

He was totally here just a couple months ago for stake conference in our stake when they called President Runya! I feel all famous now! 

So, conference is really awesome. I totally love it. Not to mention that we had orange julius...es... while we were watching it this afternoon. They were yummy. Orange julius and living prophets = awesome saturday! Huzzah!

It was the Best of Times, it was the Worst of Times...but mostly the Best.

Okay, so, I'm home sick AGAIN. I swear, getting married made my one-time fabulous immune system go flush itself down the toilet. Very un-fabulous. 

So I've been lying in bed not knowing whether I'm going to throw up or not, thinking about all the millions of things that I will have to accomplish in the next three weeks, and realizing that four-hundred-thirty-two hours is NOT enough time for it to be accomplished and still leave room for eating, sleeping, and talking to my husband. (Because he needs to be talked to on occasion. :) I love you, Michael ). In summary, having a very intensified, stress-inducing pity-party. 

So then I decided to read some more Mama Day. It's a novel by Gloria Naylor--who is a fabulous author, might I say--wow, I'm really into the word fabulous today--which is kind of a rewrite of several of Shakespeare's plays together, though primarily the Tempest. We're reading it for my Shakespeare class because she sets the story on this little island in the Georgia sea that isn't a part of any state and is owned by a bunch of people whose ancestors had been slaves there. The idea is that we're learning about connections between Shakespeare and modern culture, but we're experiencing pleasure in reading. Very important. I'd almost forgotten what that was like. My Brit Lit professor even said just this last week that the English major was designed to make you hate reading. He was only mostly joking. 

So imagine my surprise when I totally got sucked in. I haven't done that in a billion billion years. Ask my mother--I used to be the girl that would pick up a book, any book, and you wouldnt' be able to even get her attention for an hour. I could be sitting on the couch in the room that everyone in my family frequents the most, and if I had a book that I loved, you could ask me who was home and I would have NO idea. Time used to be completely irrelevant to me, and now it's so regulated that I only read what I have to write a paper on, and it's always with some sort of question, like how does Prospero's control of Caliban reflect in today's post-colonial view of English empiricism? Or how does James Joyce's Gabriel from the Dubliners personify the turn-of-the-century modernist point of view of being tired of the Victorian purpose of "progress"? It's okay, even I don't completely understand those questions. 

But I was reading, and thinking a lot of things. and I've decided that even though I'm sick all the time, my job is stressful, my schoolwork is draining me beyond all reason, and I'm more stretched than I ever have been before, President Eyring was right. It gets harder, but it gets better. So now I'm going to do something incredibly cliched and make a list of the things that make me happier than I ever have been before in my life. And you're going to have to listen. :)

• Michael. 
• Being able to be in complete control of my kitchen. Even when the breakfast dishes are still there when I go to make dinner, they're MY breakfast dishes. And my husband's...but that's the same thing. 
• Michael. 
• Going into the temple and hearing, "Welcome back, Sister Morgan" from the same lovely old man who checked my recommend the week before. 
• Michael.
• Making the bed. I've always been very fond of incredibly straight sheets and hotel corners. I'm not exactly pulling out the iron every morning, but I like it when the bed doesn't have any wrinkles. And bigger beds are even more satisfying :)
• Michael. 
• Having somebody else there who's slightly braver than I am about bugs that can fly and sting you. I can handle spiders, beetles, earwigs, whatever, but when it comes to hornets, wasps, and other nasty things like that, Michael is my knight in shining white armor. And he's had plenty of occasion to do it since we have a nest of wasps right outside the pipe that leads directly into our bathroom. Yeah, it's really fun to be caught naked in the same room as a giant yellow and black creeping thing that you can just tell is staring at you, wanting to sting you...
• When Michael and I meet someone, and he says, "this is my wife, Brittany." I know, I'm sounding all cheesy and stupid, but when he says my name, it sounds pretty. I KNOW Brittany is not that pretty of a name to say  (think about it, Brittany sounds like bugs and bubbling and bombastic--fun, but not pretty), but when Mike says it, I love it. 
• My yoga mats. They don't come out of the closet very often--because this semester is so ridiculously, disgustingly, horrifically busy--but I LOVE it when I get one out and do some Pilates or something. I'm not that flexible, but I feel more so after I stretch and such. And I'm a LOT more flexible than Mike, so it's a bit boost :)
• Being with my friends from the ward. We have the greatest ward ever. Even though everyone there is at a different stage in their life and marriage (there are newlyweds like us and people who almost have their graduate degrees and have three children) I have become so close to them, and I don't even know most of them very well. But a couple nights ago, they had an activity (which I couldn't get to because I have late classes on Wednesdays) and someone heart-attacked my door, and left the sweetest notes there for me. I loved it!
• Michael, especially when he smells like baby-lotion. :) He's not a desert-baby like I am, so he always feels rough and peely and dry. So we got some lotion, the kind that's super moisturizing and healing, the kind you leave by your sink to use after you rub your hands raw washing dishes. And he uses it religiously. He loves it. But I realized after he started using it, that it smells a lot like baby lotion. So now when I'm cuddling Mike, he smells yummy like babies. :)
• Reading crazy literary criticism and understanding it. Some of you may know, but I'm kind of huge into gender theory and some forms of feminist criticism. And when I can read those articles and understand and annotate them, I know there's hope for my career as an English major yet. :)
• Coming home from the store, school, organ class, relief society, whatever, and opening the door to Mike saying "yay! you're home!" and holding me really really tight. He's so warm and sweet, and I love it when he holds me. It makes me not want to go back to school. 

Sorry I had to spend so much time doing that. I just had to get some things out of my system. But life is really good. 

You may have noticed a change to my blog.

I officially decided that I needed to take this blog a new direction. Move on, if you will. So I changed it. And I spent, like, 45 minutes deciding on the perfect background, layout, and combination of colors to optimize your "Majoring in Genius" experience. TADA!!!

It's actually kind of funny, because I totally did this all and then found out that I had picked the same background as decorates Rachel's blog, "happy girl"...so I changed it again. And now it is perfect. Majoring in Genius. I am a Genius blog-decorator. Now I think I'll go to bed because as fun as this was, it took an obsene amount of time. Okay, not really. I'm just tired. 

What do you think? :)