This week...

- Starting Little Dorrit (Dickens)
- Tennyson's In Memorium
- Newman's Apologia
- Kingsley's Yeast
- Movies to watch: Top Hat (Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers), Rebecca & The Lady Vanishes (both Hitchcock movies)

I have been developing this list in my head (I'm a list person) of the things I want to change in my life to get that little step closer to being who I want to be... I guess what made me think about it is something Chris said on Tuesday. We went out to Buckland Manor (very English, eh?) for a cream tea (again...) for Dad's birthday. Chris is over from Canada for a week for Dad's birthday and his Mum's, armed with a shopping list from Mary full of British things to take back to Newfoundland for their new house, which he's still building. It was great to see him. It's strange how quickly he has become my brother. When I first met him I knew he was my brother, but there's a difference between knowing a fact and feeling it as a reality. I'm so comfortable around both him and Phil. I don't think Chris could have known how many lives he would change for the better when he found Dad on FriendsReunited.

Anyway, back to what Chris was saying... We were sitting around the fire eating scones and clotted cream and talking about winning the lottery (an understandable topic when you're seated in the lap of luxury and thinking 'this is the life I could lead...'). You dream about what you would do with the money. I'd give money to my family, pay of Lori's loans, build Tracy a new house with a huge kitchen and then set off around the world - Prague, Egypt, Australia, Japan, St Petersburg... all those places I'd love to see. Perhaps I'd buy flats in Paris and New England with huge libraries full of books. I could do a giant road trip around the U.S. See the world, in style of course. Anyway, amidst all this dreaming around the fire, Chris declared that he didn't want to win that much money. He said he'd be afraid of what it would do to his life; that he would have so many responsabilities along with it, and that there was nothing in his life that he would change for the better if he did have that much money.

And I thought then that that was what life was all about: trying to get to that point that Chris has already reached, where there isn't anything you would want to change in your life. I doubt many people get to that point. And I suppose he doesn't necessarily mean that he wouldn't find good uses for the money - you can always see a use for money, even if it has nothing to do with you personally (helping friends, family, donating to charity, etc.) But I so often think of things I wish I could change about myself and my life. It made me determined to make all those little changes that I think about every now and then. Nothing drastic; the drastic wishes seem to run into dreams of success and talent that are out of my reach right now. Even without those dreams, though, I think I could make some immediate changes if I really put my mind to it.

So when Lori and I made our "to do" list today, we decided to schedule a time to change our lives :-)

Here are some things on my list...

I want to go to the gym. If my mother read that she would never let me live it down. She's always getting at Dave to go to the gym, get fit, go running, biking, etc. I think she might see me as a bit of a lost cause when it comes to keeping fit. To be honest, I don't think I'm unfit. I walk a lot and I'm not overweight or unhealthy. But I really should go to the gym or get some more exercise, especially since my work-life at the moment involves not much more than sitting on the sofa reading. Not too good for the respiratory system, I suppose. But it's more than just wanting to get fit; it's more about that feeling you get when you've been working out. You feel healthier and happier. Horse riding this summer was exhilerating. It's a pitty that costs so much. Although... I wonder how much joining a gym would cost... hmm...

I want to make time for things. We have so much reading to do at the moment that it seems to eat up so much of the day. We push everything else aside and read haphazardly, wasting time on silly things as our only form of procrastination. So part of the new plan involves scheduling.

I want to work on Destination Elsewhere. Actually, that's wrong. I want to have worked on Destination Elsewhere. There's a significant difference. The longer I put it off, though, the less chance there is that I'm going to actually do it. Sometimes just thinking about how much I have pushed it to bottom of the list (and sometimes off there altogether) just makes my stomach turn...

I want to write more. Not just blogging, which comes out as stream-of-consciousness babble that is totally unstructured and has no depth to it. I was starting to get things published and now that I'm not writing for the Printz it seems as though writing has taken a back seat to everything else in life.

I want to stop praying last thing at night when I'm tired out of my brain and can hardly focus on anything except how comfortable my pillow would be. I think this might come in to the scheduling element, although there seems to be something sacreligious in scheduling a fixed time for prayer. "Oh, got to stop now; it's time to read our Dickens quota" is hardly devoted Christianity, now, is it?

I want to make time for reading that doesn't come under the "required" heading.

I want to cook a meal I've never had once every week.

I want to stay in touch with people. I'm so bad at replying to emails and writing to friends. I need to stop that. My friends are so important to me. The fault lies in my procrastination and inability to reply to something right away rather than in my lack of desire to keep in touch. But I need to change that.

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Sometimes I wonder why on earth I didn't keep this blog properly while I was living in America. It makes me angry with myself, really, because I was having so many new experiences and I wish I had some sort of record of them. Lori is being much more impressive than I ever was. She has blogged quite often since she arrived here, and she's diligently recording the days both for her own enjoyment and to save her from having to write to everyone in her enormous family who will be dying to know how she's doing. I suppose that's the difference, really. I seriously doubt my family would have been interested in reading my random online ramblings.

I've spent the last fifteen minutes trailing randomly through other blogs. That little "next blog" button at the top of the page is so tempting - it opens a window into another world for a moment. Some blogs are written as typical diaries, others are random thoughts piled together, sometimes in verse, others are picture scrapbooks or political commentaries or high-tech newsletters. Almost half of them are in other languages; some look made up. I wonder if anyone accidentally lands on my blog. Do they stay and read a sentence or two? It's very rare that I stay for more than a few minutes.

Did you know Rosie O'Donnell has a blog on eBlogger?

We started Little Dorrit today. I never enjoy beginning a Dickens novel as much as other Victorian writers. I think it's because it requires so much of your attention to keep track of who's speaking, who is linked to whom, and generally what is going on. Ironically, Bleak House started on the BBC tonight, so that's two Dickens novels started in one day. I wonder why they've decided to show it like a soap opera, with two half-hour segments each week... Perhaps because it mirrors the serialization of the original novel.

I feel as though all we have been doing for four weeks is reading. Part of me can't believe that this Master's programme has so many similarities to a book club! I know the essays will begin soon, and I have mixed feelings about them. Part of me is looking forward to getting stuck into the "real" work and making some progress on the course, and the other half of me is nervous, as usual, about the outcome. It's the dissertation I'm really looking forward to. I loved getting so absorbed by a topic with my undergrad thesis. I hope this one is so successful. I'll have to rein myself in a bit, though. I've got a 20,000 word limit. My thesis was 38,000...

I sometimes wonder who I'm talking to...

So I've been trying to think about what I might write about for each of the modules. The Making Progress module will be by far the easiest, since Victorian literature is something I've much more experience with. I'm thinking about the image of the web: the interdependence of individuals and the relationship between individual and group (society). But perhaps far more likely is a gender-based study, perhaps investigating power dynamics in North & South. The transatlantic class is more tricky. I had thought about doing something with patriotism or modernism v. Americanism, but I'm not sure quite what to go on. And all I could think in today's seminar was that the link Bob was trying to make between Top Hat and Orwell's Coming Up For Air was no sturdier than frayed thread.

And all the while I can't help wondering whether the seminars we had with Anne Wallace weren't more... in depth? Is that what I mean? I can feel that I have grown, critically speaking and perhaps analytically too, since then, but there are times step back from the discussion and feel that there is something missing; that we're not going quite far enough. I have a feeling that Anne would have pushed us further. She always seemed to be trying to lead us somewhere, but not in the explicit way that John uses ("I'm looking for a word that means..."); she would talk around the point until suddenly the idea would burst upon you as if it were your own. Perhaps it's just a difference in teaching styles all mixed up with my own respect for Anne. I think that, when it comes to graduate study, a lot of the progress you make has to be mapped out on your own.

Anne Fadiman has been signing and reading from her new book on the east coast - Boston Public Library and New York. I do so wish I could go. She's the resident writer at Yale at the moment. Can you imagine being so successful (without even a graduate degree, mind you) that you are invited to be the resident writer at Yale? She has a life I could only dream about. And I respect her for it. Every time I pick up Ex Libris I feel that warm, excited feeling of self-justification and connection. The new book's called Rereadings; she's the editor and it focuses on authors' memories and associations with pivotal books in their reading and writing careers. It's not out here yet, but I think I might have to give in and order it from Amazon. Unfortunately my Amazon wish list seems to procreate at a much more impressive rate than my bookshelves.

Speaking of books, I'm so glad we put the bookshelves in the living room. I might have mentioned that before. It's such an inspiration. Each little collection of pages, bound up between cardboard covers, is a little world waiting to be stepped into. When I stare at the shelves I feel like Alice in a room full of mirrors. Only there are so many mirrors I haven't even stepped foot through. I try to look on that in a positive way: look how many worlds are still waiting to be explored.

So the DVD set I bought from eBay arrived. As I suspected, it's an illegal copy. I'm so angry. I put it in the player just to see whether it was even a copy of the set (I suppose I shouldn't have done that, but I feel better about it because I had no intention of actually watching them) and they are not even genuine copies (if that's not a negation in terms); they were copied from the NBC shows. The quality is terrible and the sound isn't even in sync with the picture. Anyway, I've written to the guy to demand a refund and I've reported it to eBay. But the guy sold over 80 copies of this.

Don't I sound like such a preacher? It's not that I'm such a saint; I just feel ripped off.

This is getting too long...

Why is it that little things can get you so incredible annoyed? Just those little annoyances in a day can bring the clouds in over a sunshiney mood. I've been having a few of those lately. I suppose that's an exaggeration. There are only two, but they're annoying nonetheless, and since I have nothing else to write about they get stuck on here.

I bought a DVD set on eBay--The West Wing Season 6 if you're curious--for £6.99. I suppose I should have known at the time that the price was too good to be true. But anyhow, I bought it and checked my mail eagerly each morning waiting for it to arrive. Of course it didn't, and my emails to the seller hit brick walls. Yesterday I found out that the seller's username is no longer in use and the 80 or so copies of this DVD he sold were still to be sent. I contacted a few of the other buyers and found that no one had received the DVD. Ebay have now sent an email saying they have removed the rest of the items since they believe they are against 'intellectual property rights', which I presume means they are illegal copies. So there we go.

Such a little thing, but annoying.

And then there is the parking permit. We live a couple of miles from campus (in hilly Exeter a couple of miles is a long way) and one of the first things I did when we got here was buy a parking permit from the university. Well, I got an email from the parking people last week telling me I was in violation of their rules because I live within 1.5 miles of the campus. Obviously they measure in a straight line, completely ignoring the hills and twists and turns that make up the extra half a mile. They apologised curtly, but told me that they had given me the permit by mistake since my street is a new one and wasn't on their list of forbidden areas. So I have to take this permit back to them tomorrow and I have no idea how we're going to manage trekking four miles (hiking might be a better description) up and down the hills to get to a two-hour seminar (one hour on Mondays). I'm tempted into a great deal of uneloquent protest: grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. I shall go there tomorrow armed with maps pointing out their error and determination not to give in without a fight. Even if I loose the battle I shall be slightly less disappointed in myself on those wet and freezing January mornings when we are puffing and panting up the hill to class lugging bags of library books and seminar notes.

I suppose I shouldn't expect special treatment as a grad student, but I still retain the right to be antsy about the lack of it.

So there, I have complained enough about my petty annoyances and I'll try and move on.

Oh, but there is one more. I missed a lecture by my personal tutor on Pride & Prejudice on Thursday lunchtime because I didn't check my email on Wednesday.

Okay, now I'm done.

I think I'll go bake a cake.

I sometimes wonder why I seem to be incapable of short posts. I put off writing on here for so long because I can’t seem to find anything important to write about, and yet when I do make myself write the words seem to pour forth with no direction and no promise of stopping. So just to prove to myself that I can write a short blog, here I go.

Perhaps from now on I will aim for short, more frequent posts.

And that’s that.

I’m finally doing my Master’s degree.

You see there. It’s already “my” Master’s degree. I have claimed it as my own already, as a cherished possession I am working for. In reality, a degree is a piece of paper that you stick in a drawer or, if, you’re a certain type of person, in a frame above a desk. I always imagined that when I got my Bachelor’s degree I would frame it with pride. When I was little the small downstairs spare room at Greenways was my “music room” and the wall above the electric piano was covered with certificates: piano and violin grade exams, speech and drama certificates, etc. They were arrayed on the wall like trophies of excellence, all in plastic black frames with gilded gold plastic trimming. I felt so proud when my eyes scanned the wall during piano lessons in that room. Those certificates seemed to be the very objects I had strived for. They didn’t just represent an accomplishment; they were an accomplishment.

My BA certificate is in a drawer somewhere in its dark blue engraved folder. Somewhere in my old room at Greenways I think. The certificate is only a representative piece of paper for three and a half years of experiences. That certificate is not an accomplishment in itself.

So now I’m doing my Master’s degree.

I don’t really know how I got here. Up until the very last days, I was still so unsure of where my life was going to lead. I was in an abyss of indecision, where every day’s delay seemed only to push me closer to uncertainty. Now that I am here, I can look back on the last few months as a whirlwind of confusion and realise that there was really never a doubt where I was heading. Some things are meant to be, and I know that this is one of those things. Perhaps one day I will look back and wonder how my life would have turned out had I taken a different path – applied for jobs, drawn a pay check. But I like to hope that will just be a passing thought, a “what if” instead of an “if only.” If there is anything I have learnt over these last few months, it has been that life never presents a clear path. Sometimes you have to beat a track through the jungle before you find your way again. I’m back on my road for a while and feel that I have time to breathe now, to look around me and take in my surroundings. They are calm and peaceful surroundings. I am comfortable when I’m studying, learning, reading, analysing. I feel at home surrounded by books, with my head in another world of thought and ideas that seems to transcend the monotonous nature of modern experience and the rush of questions that my life—our lives—demand.

And it is calm and clear and white here. These walls are sturdy and bright. The vertical blinds that at first struck me as clinical and stark are softened by the impressionistic brush of familiarity and the notion of “home.” The open living room is full of space and light. On my early trips to IKEA in search for the cheapest furniture I could find I visualised a make-shift conglomeration of styles that would give our home a somewhat muddled but rather eclectic mix of economical hominess. But partly due to IKEA’s perplexing way of charging you more for any furniture that isn’t off-white and partly due to my own dislike of dark, imposing furniture, our living room is a bright and pure and clean space. The off-white sofa, the £11 off-white coffee table that I spent hours trying to screw legs onto, the round cream-white pedestal table with the line down the middle where it splits to extend, the two rickety white chairs with their pure-white seat cushions, the white blinds and cream walls and ivory picture-frames. Nothing in here absorbs light but the books that line the light oak-stained bookshelves and the tiny television on its glass-door teak stand that I bought from eBay for a tenner in one of my thrifty moments.

When Dad and I had finished building the majority of the furniture in the living room, and when I had cleared out the boxes and wrappings, I surveyed the room with a critical eye, trying to detach myself from the satisfaction that accompanies a task completed and well done to see the room through Lori’s eyes. I thought how large and crisp the furniture made the room look and all at once I feared it would feel empty and cold. But as soon as she walked through the door I knew that the emptiness was in fact peacefulness and the light imbued the room with a clean warmth as it streaked the sandy carpet. The books play a large part in making it feel like home. Every now and then I glance up at our two bookshelves—only a half of our complete collection if you collate our separate “libraries”—and I am almost overwhelmed by the sense of possibility represented by each of those volumes. Individually, they are treasures. Together, they are a thousand windows into a thousand ideas.

We need to put some pictures on the walls to finally claim the whole apartment as ours. I have some photos that have been taken over the last few years in various locations around the world. I feel rather embarrassed at displaying them as if proudly proclaiming them as my “art.” But when I look at them all I am thrilled by the experiences I have been lucky enough to have over the last four years. Each one represents a moment in time in a place that meant something to me. The pictures from those three months in France bring back the feeling of waking up each morning to gaze over finely manicured French gardens from a window in a Benedictine abbey, letting my eyes linger on the flying buttresses that protruded into the blue sky from the window during a class discussion on expatriate writers in 1920’s Paris and almost feeling like one of them sitting at a sidewalk café with a notebook in the French capital.

So, I am doing my Master’s degree.

I feel somehow that I ought to have changed drastically from my undergraduate self now that I am in “grad school,” and perhaps I have, but to be honest I don’t feel much more intelligent or sophisticated. I suppose we each have a natural desire to look up to those one step above us on the ladder we are climbing, or would like to climb, and imagine that the view from up there must be so much more lofty and secure than that from where we stand. But to be honest, we are each of us looking up. I’m not referring to the mind-numbing euphemism of the corporate ladder, but those ladders of life that are invoked by ambition and admiration. When I was very young at Rookwood I remember downright worshipping some of the older girls in year 11. They used to humour me and suffer my adoration, even to the point of allowing me to sit with them sometimes at breaks when they would laugh at my childish manners or plait my hair with half-maternal, half-patronising fingers. My ladder has always been one of academic ambition. I adored them because I imagined that as they prepared for their GCSE’s they were so clever, so lucky to have reached that pinnacle of success. When I became Head Girl I had a vague hope that someone would look at me that way, but in reality part of me was looking ahead, and thinking how far away A-Levels seemed and how there were still those above me that I desperately wanted to catch up with. And so on it goes. At university I looked up to the postgraduates who had made that commitment to the studies they loved and who had been granted that status above the norm. A bachelor’s degree is taken for granted in the 21st century. It had always been taken for granted that I would get there. But a master’s degree is different. It’s taking a step of confidence onto a ladder that declares you are dedicated to this study.

Perhaps that’s why I’m enjoying this so much so far. It seems that those in the programme with us carry that dedication with them too. I had imagined that seminar discussions would involve a lot of one-upmanship, each of us trying to prove that we deserved to be in that room, trying to gain a status in the class as the best, the brightest, the most deserving. It seemed that way sometimes in undergraduate classes, perhaps because those of us who enjoyed the subject and excelled academically where desperate to be recognized as more than the average student. But now that we have each been accepted onto this new level it is as if we have reached the top of that one ladder and we are each in the same position now. We have each been given credit for reaching the platform we are now occupying, and for each of us there is that slight fear, I think, that we are just starting out on a new set of steps now, and we don’t quite know where they lead.

But there is a more fundamental similarity between us all than a basic feeling of acceptance and recognition. We each love this study we have committed to for at least another year. We are each taking these modules because we want to, because we’re interested, inspired, intrigued. Class discussions are more on a level (with the exception of one woman in our Victorian studies seminar who thinks she is the queen of criticism), and we are each able to add something new to the discussion with the conviction that we have valid opinions that can be voiced and recognized amongst a group of equals.

And yet, ironically, there are still those on the ladder above us. I doubt if I will keep on climbing this ladder. And yet, I wonder: if I did get to the top, would I ever turn around to look down again and realise how far I had climbed, or would I simply strive to create new rungs?