Week 10: Famous Last Words

Hopefully this is my hump week of the semester. (Is that a thing? I think in college life "hump week" is a useful concept. Also maybe "hump month." Sometimes things just really don't lighten up for several weeks. Or all semester.) Post-spring break, I'm finding it difficult to stay focus and work on class stuff when I have the time to do it. As my approaching-paper-deadlines stress gradually increases, it's not helping that I, erm, haven't really been doing that much research for them even if I have the spare time. If this is the only week (well, I guess the last week) I have this issue, it would be great.

I'm enjoying this course, of course, and reading Divakaruni's novel. It's getting a bit depressing, though, so I'm looking forward to moving on to Breaking the Bow (how often do you get to read science fiction for class??!!). I'm still holding out hope that I can forge on ahead a bit and finish the course early. While I like the subject material and assignments, it will also be nice to have one less thing to worry about towards the end of the semester.

The second story of the Storybook...not my best. I liked the character the first took on, but the second seems dry to me. I think a major part of it was not being familiar with the story as much as with Sita's, not having seen all of the nuance that people read into/take out of it. Also, I was trying to squeeze in a lot of cultural information at the same time, because with this festival there was actually a lot of detailed info online.

The pookalam flower carpets for Onam are my favorite festival tradition so far. 

(Wikipedia)

Hopefully the third story will go better. I think I'll have to use a comic book or graphic novel from the library as a main source, so that should be fun! I haven't yet ventured out to see what's on reserve for the Epics class -- I really prefer reading longer novels and such -- but I should definitely take at least some advantage of the resources pooled there. :)