Congratulations Mr. Ghetia!

Andrew Ghetia managed to make an oral about Dmitri Karamazov funny. Congratulations, Ghetia! (For those not completely immersed in my culture, an hour-long oral administered by three tutors follows completion of the senior essay: mine is sometime after spring break and Ben's is next week). Ghetia's essay was called, "How is such a man alive?": Dmitri Karamazov's Three Suicides. I may have messed up that wording, but it's something very near to that. I have a bunch of pictures of Ghetia dressed up for his oral and everything, but I think I like this one better:



Sorry I'm not posting very much. I'm pretty busy and am really enjoying these last couple months of university liberty. News: I'm going to Ohio for a few days in March during spring break. Grandma and Grandpa Callahan are back from Brazil and any phone calls from their grandchildren would make them soooo happy. This year is Grandpa's birthday as well as their 60th anniversary. I am now completely confident answering the question, "So, are you going to get married?" with a firm: "No." (Followed by my own disarming nervous laughter at my bold answer) The St. John's administration has become increasingly LAME in their responses to student parties, gatherings, signs, pretty much everything. If someone like ME is getting pissed off at their evil legislating-for-virtue tactics, then it must be REALLY bad. In protest, I am getting rid of my spring cleaning leftovers by holding a rummage sale this weekend and breaking the rule against making a profit on campus. (I think this rule is funny because I make $35 an hour using the school's lab supplies to tutor my boys) This whole rummage sale could blow up in my face... but here's hoping it doesn't!!!

House in Santa Fe

To see a few more photos of it (Mandy), go to Kokopelli real estate and find Canyon Road Historic Adobe. It is in a great location so we can walk to downtown places instead of struggling to find a place to park, but it only has two bedrooms and a sleeper sofa, so my brothers will have to share. Man, am I getting chubby these days. That was a non sequitur. Another non-sequitur: Faulker is soooooo great. Another non-sequitur: Ben's oral is on March 6. Yay!

Invite

I am, of course, finished with senior essay and am now enjoying...not a well-deserved decrease in work, but a bizarrely unreasonable quantity of work: 60-pg. Darwin readings (which are AWESOME, everyone should read Darwin), 50-pg. Faulkner readings (which are also AWESOME), and then 55-pg. Marx readings for seminar. A secret: 100 pages of Darwin goes by twice as fast as 50 pages of Marx= Marx is four times as boring as Darwin. Maybe more, really. I do not understand how such boring, Hegel-like writing inspired people to inspire the masses. The best part about my Marx seminars has been watching people argue about capitalism and communism. The uber-capitalist in my class, who always seemed perfectly nice before, is actually evil...something I only realized because of his cruel, heartless, arguments in favor of increased production. Scary. On the other side is this crazy girl who thinks that an argument for communism consists in giving examples of people who have been hurt real-bad by capitalism (like we don't all (except for the crazy capitalist) feel bad for the factory workers!) and then asks questions like, "wouldn't it just be so much better if (insert haughty, superior tone, ironically, here) we all just rose to a state of species-being and really partook in our community and weren't estranged from our products anymore?" And then people are like, "You know, Ms. Greer lived in a commune in India for like, thirty years, and so it must work." And then the next day in class, Ms. Greer, my language tutor is like, "Ummm...yeah it worked pretty well because we all gave up our ideals to survive and turned a blind eye to the lady in the dairy who was stealing milk from the community so that her baby wouldn't be malnurished." So. Marx. Not so impressed, I have to say.

Any-whooo. Santa Fe.



How GREAT IS IT? I just wanted to extend one final invite to all of ya'll for my graduation, which is on May 19th. Dad is going to be in Santa Fe in a house (a nice house) from May 17th-22nd. So far I have commitments from Ben K, Mandy, and Brad. Anyone else interested? I know Ben I and Jaime are interested, but Ben's quarter doesn't end until an uncivilized date sometime in June, so they are excused. Any and all are welcome. I guarantee really good food, a silly speech by the president of St. John's, a great game of senior-staff softball, a view of my receipt of a diploma, and any extent of relaxing/invigorating recreational activities.

So close!

Wow...only ten hours left. I have never lived a week so full of the same boring and exhausting shit. My essay is well-written but tragically short on substance, I feel. Alas. Alas. I spent four hours (it took four hours!) to copy-edit Ben's essay last night, which was 40 pages long and is now only 35. My essay is a modest 23 pages long. We keep getting notes through campus mail telling us about our choreographed evening tonight...one of the problems with tradition is that you get notes that say, "Get dressed up and come to the president's house. Then walk in the door, at the left you'll see a closet. Turn right. A man will be there to take you're oeuvre (it actually says that!) and will ring a gong. Stand there and he will announce your name and your essay title. You will then be greeted by the dean, the president, etc." I've, of course, lost my note and don't really remember what to do except that there will be a gong. I will try really hard to take amusing pictures of the whole thing. This is really one of the moments when I wish I'd bought that video camera. A gong!

Still Going Crazy

It's Sunday. The end is near (next Saturday at midnight...but not near enough. Ugh. Oy. Bluh. One treat: I'm going to Ten Thousand Waves tonight for a private bath. This sucks.