A New Semester

Well, it’s been a good long time since I’ve really updated. This past week has been quite busy, but still more relaxing than most of last semester. I’ve been shopping classes, and I’ve got my final schedule:

• Turkish A: Still. It’s a full year course.
• Linguistics 98b: One on one tutorial with a professor. I’m with Andrew Nevins and I’m going to be doing lexical access experiments dealing with morphology.
• The English Revolution: This is a history core with Phyllis’s thesis advisor, Mark Kishlansky. He’s an excellent lecturer, and I’m looking forward to getting into some of the topics that Phyllis explored.

But that’s only three, right? And a normal load at Harvard is four courses. Well, I was content to leave it at three (I took five courses my sophomore fall and so had the leeway to do so), but then, Tuesday afternoon as I was in Million Year Picnic, my favorite comic book store, I overheard someone say, “That’s not on the syllabus.” My ears perked up. Something on a syllabus? In the comics shop? I looked to see who it was, and it was a guy in my year who’s in VES (our art department, essentially). I asked him if there was a course in comics at Harvard, and he said no, but that he was taking one down at MIT. Well, Harvard students can cross-register, and so, in less than 24 hours after that, not only had I contacted the professor and learned more about the course, but I had also attended class, cross registered, and bought the books. I’ve been waiting for a class like this my entire time at Harvard. It’s very exciting. So, that brings up the rear:

• 21L.715 Media in Cultural Context: Comics, Cartoons, and Graphic Storytelling

Also, all this week has been Common Casting for the show I’m producing, Princess Ida. It’s gone well, and it’s been a lot of fun. I really like hanging out with the senior staff; Celia, Jess, Charlie, and Ben are a fun crowd.

And Sam is living on my sofa till Monday, and I’m enjoying having him around before he’s off this semester to Serbia. Tonight, he, Uroš, Mihalis, and I are going to go see The Far Side of the Moon at the A.R.T., and then tomorrow and Sunday I’ll be in callbacks all day.