What a frustrating week! I’m outside a lot, that’s great. It was 78˚ today, which is absurd, but Battell Beach (the “quad” behind my dorm) resembled central park: people in bathing suits soaking up the sun, frisbee, soccer, whiffle ball, field hockey, hookah, lacrosse. It was like a paradise! I played some frisbee and really enjoyed it, but the whole time I had this cloud of work hanging over my head. This has been the theme of the week.

All week, I’ve watched many papers / presentations chilling on the horizon: a paper due tomorrow, a presentation due next thursday, and a presentation and a paper due next friday. This week, I’ve had very little immediate work, so why not get started with the heavy stuff? There’s plenty of research and reading to be done, after all. And yet, I couldn’t bring myself to start. I would sit down at the computer and then just listen to and play music for two hours, and then kick myself. Perhaps I need pressure to get things done? I never thought I did, but it’s possible. Even as I write this, I’m taking a break from writing tomorrow’s paper. Ugh, very frustrating.

In addition to all of next week’s work, I’m hosting a second prospie on Tuesday. Hopefully he’s as cool as Tom was, and worth the trouble.

The latest “major” tangent: self-designed linguistics major. I’ve been asking around about this “Self-designed” thing and mostly I’ve heard “it’s a bitch, not worth it, don’t do it.” Also, I’m sure how I feel about paying a premium for a crazy college if I’ll be holed up in a library poring over books in independent study and calling it a “top level education.” However, the “Linguistics Major” is a much-precedented self-designed major. I sent an email to a senior who I was told is doing it, and am awaiting a reply. Also, I have a meeting with my adviser tomorrow to discuss life, the universe, and everything. ALSO, my Arabic professor (who got his masters in linguistics at UMaryland) teaches two linguistics courses “Intro to” and “The Unity and Diversity of Human Language” (more an etymological study about emergences / extinctions, language families, other REALLY EXCITING things!!!). Neither was offered this year and the former won’t be offered next year, but I’m planning on taking the latter next spring. At any rate, I just sent alustaad Usama (Usama Soltan) an email asking basically the same question I asked the senior: “What can you tell me about a self-designed linguistics major?”

So I’m hoping they’ll all tell me that because it’s so well-precedented, the linguistics major is actually quite enjoyable to do, studying in Egypt for a year will fit perfectly with it, you can save the world with this major but if you change your mind regarding your career it also works really well in almost every facet of your life, and in fact they wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a real major by my graduation in 2011. We’ll see…

There, I’ve now managed to throw away the 45 minutes I had between Mamajamas’s dinner and The Office, so I guess I’ll have to really do my paper at 9:30. I hate to wish away the last few weeks of freshman year, but I’ll be glad when all these assignments are done. (Those I mentioned are just the first round – finals are close on their heels!)