I promised that I would update with news of progress on my novel (which we'll call Tales for short) and with anecdotes from everyday life. As for the first, I am into chapter four, around page 50. Though I haven't had the opportunity to write since coming down to Champaign, I hope to form a more regimented schedule once I get a feel for my classes' workloads.
As for the second, I have this to share: I have not showered today. Mind you, this is not by choice; rather, I have been forced into it because of an unspecified "work" being done to the pipes in my building. And though the water was supposed to be usable this morning, when I turned on my shower, I was greeted with the heavy smell of dirt and sawdust and small brown chunks came out of the faucet. Thankfully, it's a rainy day. This means that no one will notice I look awful because everyone will look awful. It's what traipsing about to class in soggy jeans will do to you.
I must admit, however, that the thing most dominant in my mind at present has little to do with my writing or my faulty shower-faucet: it has to do with my life's vocational ambition. Forever a lover of the Humanities, I hoped to one day teach them-- to be an arbiter of information, impressing on younger generations the need to know the accomplishments and horrors of those who came before us. Yet I have been deterred in this pursuit by the very people who should champion it: my professors. In the three English classes I have taken at the U of I, all three professors have made statements to the effect of "The study of literature (or the humanities) is a dying field. There is no hope for it." This disquiets me for a number of reasons, which I will post in a (hopefully) synoptic form on this blog in the coming days. Until then...
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