11/28/2001:

This strip was believe it or not not so much influenced by the Onion's Ask a High School Student Who Didn't Do the Required Reading as by the discussion in my Asian American Lit class today.

Today was my last Asian American lit class. My first (and probably last) English class in university. And my verdict is... hm. Perhaps I should hold off on judgement until I get my grade. Based on how I'm doing up until this point, I'm having a hard time believing that Englsih majors deserve industry jobs in these tough economic times.

<Kip braces for the hail of critical emails headed his way, then brightens as he realizes how well written they are.>

OK, OK, I was mostly kidding. I did do a lot of work in this class, but I feel that a lot of the analysis that was done was either incredibly high level or the opposite extreme. Not much room in the middle. I spent most of the class saying relatively obvious things, since I didn't have enough confidence in my insights to share them with such a large class. I'd have something good in my head, raise my hand, get called on, and proceed to babble through an observation that it seemed that everyone else had, but didn't bother to voice, in order to not waste class time.

At the end of class today, everyone clapped for the prof. No one does that in engineering classes, except for extensions, or major partial credit.

Speaking of partial credit, I got a parallel computing midterm back yesterday that was truly blessed by the minor deity of half assed work. I scored 3 points below the highest grade in the class, not hard when the teacher gave out an insane number of points just for putting graphite to paper on the last question. but hey, I'm not complaining, and I think compared to the others in the class I'm doing about 3 points below the high score.

So, I've got one last paper to write (As-Am lit) and one final to do, and then this quarter is over. I know I'm not quite done yet, so I'm not in totaly relaxation mode, but it's so hard to stay motivated right up until the end. I'm going to try to bash out this paper as soon as possible tomorrow so that I can enjoy the rest of the week.

This girl who went ot bar night with us tonight remarked that we talk about many many girls. In response, I'll leave you with this bit of wisdom from Gabriel García Márquez, from Love in the Time of Cholera which I'm rereading. "...Florentino Ariza learned what he had already experienced many times without realizing it: that one can be in love with several people at the same time, feel the same sorrow with each, and not betray any of them."

-kip