Housekeeping

[raven]

The house smells wonderfully of incense. It's very soothing, and I am curled up on my bed ostensibly reading Plato but mostly appreciating the scent drifting up and the warmth of the light. Plato can be very inspiring indeed, but not when he's threatening to throw the poets out of the Republic, so he can just sit on the floor face down for a while. Outside, it's cold. No snow, because of the nearness of the water, but everything is bright and clear.

This is my last week here in a while. A good thing, in many ways - much as I adore my parents, I can't live here for too long; I don't get much done, and the landscape is beautiful but that's all there is, I don't have any ties holding me here beyond it, and isn't that a wonderful realisation to come to weeks before my last term at Oxford - but not in others. Because, you see, I am going to London at the end of this week for reasons of actual, conventional, am-respectable-member-of-society employment. The job is a two-week internship with a vaguely notable City law firm. There are two problems with this, as far as I can see:

-Timing. Oh, timing. Finals are very important. Yes, they are, and I really need the time to revise in. After much agonising on this point, I have decided to do this anyway. The logic is, well, I would regret it if I didn't, and after my Finals, I really need to think about what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. I am currently on three of four law school rejections, and while this is what I expected, certainly, and I had been making contingency plans - as well as retaking-the-LSAT plans, wow, there's a depressing thought - I do need to seriously consider other things. And an internship of this type is a very useful thing to have done. It makes me feel very uncomfortable, but I'm trying to tell myself it's ten days - two lots of Monday to Friday - devoted to a very good cause, and although it will be exceedingly tiring, I may have to do some work in the evenings anyway. If my brain is too fried for actual revision, then, I don't know, typing up notes or re-reading primary texts, both of which would have had to be done anyway. So there we are. And on the bright side, I will be back down south and in visiting distance of Oxford.

-The second problem, though, is rather different, and more concerned with the, er, um, what? thing. Law firm internship? Me? No, you must be getting confused with someone else. My mental image of myself is of a peaceable geek with far too much hair who occasionally applies for things on a whim. I'm telling myself, on this point, that the last time I accidentally got a job and went into it with this amount of trepidation, I ended up having a stressful but ultimately delightful fortnight working for BBC Current Affairs. We shall see.

In any case, that's where I'm going to be. On April 11th, chiasmata and I are going to see KT Tunstall, which should be fun, and after that I'm back in Oxford and everything here will be all Finals all the time, cue lots of panic, etc., etc. On that note, it is probably time to retrieve Plato.

(Also speaking of which. Vienna Teng in London. Please to be telling me I am crazy for even considering this.)

Comments

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

Wow, am in awe of you for being able to handle that internship. Much love xxx

ETA: Ooo! You must visit next weekend (5th-6th) because that is when Doctor Who starts again. Even if it MAY be rubbish, is Doctor Who and that is what matters.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Laura, why do I do these things, why. *loves you*

But, yes, Doctor Who! Unless I have to work weekends - am unsure on this point - will come, yes!

[shimgray.livejournal.com]

That's not next weekend, that's weekend after next...

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

But isn't the 29th-30th this weekend?

[shimgray.livejournal.com]

I, er, seem to have thought this was still Sunday.

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

*pats* It's okay, you're on holiday, every day is Sunday.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

...it worries me, how identical our thought processes are.

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

Ahaha! Classic.

[shimgray.livejournal.com]

This is the problem with bank holiday weekends...

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

*pets* (http://www.sendspace.com/file/cyu7no)

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

Yay internship! I can see why you'd be concerned about balancing work and revision--it sounds like you'll have a lot on your plate--but if anyone can do it, you can.

Question: are you not required to actually be at Oxford again until Finals? This blows my mind.

Law firm internship? Me? No, you must be getting confused with someone else.

Oh god, I KNOW EXACTLY HOW YOU FEEL. Luckily, chances are that your law firm is less morally unpardonable than the one I worked at; i.e., they are probably not all Republicans who spend their lives making money for enormous awful corporate entities.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for your faith, dear. :) I'm really unsure about this, but I figure I just have to do it, somehow.

Question: are you not required to actually be at Oxford again until Finals? This blows my mind.

This is actually a really good question. I imagine that in theory, the usual rules hold - we have to be in residence Thursday of noughth week, which in this case would be April 17th - but in practice, I don't think anyone would actually notice if I wasn't in residence until my exams actually start in May.

Luckily, chances are that your law firm is less morally unpardonable than the one I worked at; i.e., they are probably not all Republicans who spend their lives making money for enormous awful corporate entities.

They'd have a hard time being Republicans, but I'm hoping I may not be the only bleeding-heart liberal around! Was that the law firm that used to bury you in documents and mail every summer? I remember being very much in awe of your Real Job at the time... :)

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see. I'm always amazed by how much more freedom you guys have, even in university.

That was indeed the same law firm. However, disgust is probably a better response than awe. :) Aside from the paycheck (which, granted, is a big "Aside from"), it was a terrible, terrible job.

[absinthe-shadow.livejournal.com]

not when he's threatening to throw the poets out of the Republic

WE DID THIS TOO! Despite being the worst, as opposed to the next worst subject, we Actually Did This. Because it is a bit related to all the utopian stuff we were doing at the beginning of Michaelmas. Am ridiculously thrilled by this overlap between our Working Lives (IF they can be so called).

I simply can't wait to see you. Visiting distance is GOOD!

[absinthe-shadow.livejournal.com]

Um, um, I mean we studied the bit. NOT that we threw poets out of the Republic. Because then I'd have to SELF-THROW. Which would be beyond my capability in every way, methinks.

P.S. I'm going to re-watch seasons two and three of S&A with my mother this week! Yay!

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

*laughs* Yes! I did, in fact, immediately misunderstand you as having thrown yourself out of your own utopia, which is perhaps indicative of how much time I've spent reading Plato.

A lot of this paper seems to overlap with stuff you've done, I think - Aristotle's Poetics is my next stop, and I think you did that too? (And, ahahahah, yes, we're only the SECOND worst subject. This gives me indordinate joy.)

Can't wait to see you either, my dear! I've missed you. We should watch season three of S&A at some point, too. (Did your mum like season one?)

[absinthe-shadow.livejournal.com]

We did indeed do the Poetics. I would NEVER have survived Aristotle without your notes!

My mother adores it - this is our second time round for the latter two series, as we already re-watched season one at Christmas. I'm trying to poke her into writing fic. She actually wouldn't let us start watching it in the week before Austria, because she didn't want to watch one episode in isolation but rather The Whole Lot. (I'll make her fannish yet...)

I think our re-watch of S&A 3 should be added to The List in your kitchen. ALSO, I have another suggested addition which I thought of earlier today, for you and you alone (although the others could try if they wanted to). Anyway, it is thus: I challenge you to write pre-breakdown S&A fic in which Geoffrey plays Aeneas. I don't know who would have written the translation. I don't know where Oliver would have taken the production. I suspect Geoffrey would hate the part. (I may, however, be entirely wrong about all of this!)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I actually have those notes balanced on my knee as we speak. Yes, open to the page that says "it is not appropriate for a woman to be SO MANLY OR CLEVER OMG OMG". It may turn out to be one of those nights, revision-wise.

Hurrah! Oh, hurrah! I do like hearing about S&A converts. And our re-watch definitely ought to go on the List! We still have to show it to Jon and Lizzie.

I challenge you to write pre-breakdown S&A fic in which Geoffrey plays Aeneas.

...whoa. You just broke my brain. Um. Okay, let's think. Oh, lord, he would hate it. Pious Aeneas, let's see, let's see - and he would read it, and re-read it, and declaim it, and be it, and he'd start declaiming things in ordinary life as well, and seeing oracles in his breakfast cereal, and Ellen would throw him out on his ear as usual, and they'd finish in a blaze of glory as he kills Turnus and rips up the script over Oliver's head.

You remember I wanted to write a fic at one point that had Theatre Sans Argent putting on KIng John and Angels in America at the same time? I still want to do this... bloody Finals, get in the way of everything.

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

You remember I wanted to write a fic at one point that had Theatre Sans Argent putting on KIng John and Angels in America at the same time?

Write this. Write this PLEEEEEASE.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Oh, you know I want to! I really, really do! *plots*

At the moment I just want to finish that McCoy-goes-crazy story - about a thousand words left for that, why I haven't written them, I DO NOT KNOW - and Remix. Oh, Remix, why do I fail at you so much.

[chiasmata]

Oh no, crazy would be flying to Kaiserslautern to see her play... Go, go! I saw the Divine Comedy during my finals.

xxx

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

...come with me? :)

[chiasmata]

(Aaaargh, I quit Mail by accident and only just saw this!)

I caaaaaaaan't! I just checked my flights, and I'm only just back from Australia then! By about two hours or something mad! I have to go home and sleep like the dead and go to work at 9am the next morning! Booooooooo!

[outintherain.livejournal.com]

Vienna Teng... um.. now *I'm* tempted...

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

so tempted. *agonises*

[sunlightdances.livejournal.com]

KT TUNSTALL? Oh, you lucky, lucky thing. Goodness. I am envious. Have a wonderful time! :D

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

*grins* I'd forgotten about it until very recently, too. She's marvellous.

[sir-rosealot.livejournal.com]

Just a question- what do you call real revision? I've never properly revised before and I'd be interested to know how! I was classing re-reading primary texts as my revision... is it doing past papers?

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Me neither! I have no idea if I'm doing it "right", so to speak.

Basically, what I'm doing to revise is re-reading - and typing up, more often than not - the notes that I made for tutorial essays, reading the odd fresh article or book chapter, and then practising making the arguments myself, quickly. I mean, not memorising per se, but thinking, oh, Mackie's argument from relativity, here's how I would explain this in two paragraphs in my own words, etc. And I look at past papers - when I'm sure they won't depress me - and think vaguely what sequence of arguments I would use to attack the questions.

About primary texts: they aren't very very important for my subject. It's quite handy to have read Hume and Locke and Berkeley a few times, just because a lot of the questions they ask embed various key quotes, so it's good to have a vague idea of their context. So when I say I'm just reading them, I really am just skimming them, because I have read them before and I don't need to know them in line-by-line detail.

How do you revise, dear? :) I really want to collect opinions on this!

[clubhopper15.livejournal.com]

I love KT Tunstall! Very cool.
Hope the internship's fun. Do you definitely want to practice law or are you doing the internship to try figure that out?

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Bit of both, to be honest. I'm never sure, with this sort of thing!

[mi-guida.livejournal.com]

I suspect I will know the law firm, being a corporate whore layer-to-be. Even if I don't - I have done such internships, and know many others who have at different firms. If you want to drop me a line and have a real person's view on what it'll be like, then please feel free - first.last @ gmail.com (with my name, obv) will work. Don't feel you have to, but jsut felt I'd chuck the offer out there.

Revision - argh. Just re-writing everything I need to know, reading, highlighting, writing in condensed form, reading, and when I can face it I will look at past papers. Problem questions, learning the strategies to attack them. Essays, trying to learn structures I know get the right stuff in but which can be tweaked to fit the question.

Vienna Teng - gah, would love to, but fear it would be Finals suicide, and mine don't start 'til 6th week.

I should be revising now :s

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I suspect you will, too! Thank you so much for this - you may well get frantic "Hannah, what do I WEAR" emails in the next couple of days. :)

Am beginning to reach the same conclusion re: Vienna Teng, but, urgh, such a missed opportunity. Sigh.

[mi-guida.livejournal.com]

Please feel free! As far as I can tell, no question is too stupid. Actually, for a feel of the sort of thing you'll end up doing, would you like a digital copy of the guide I Was sent for my one in the summer? It was very pretentious and full of horrific proof reading errors (written by the previous year's scheme, we produced one too) but it might give you a feel for it (has advice on clothes too, though verypretentious!). The schemes are all much of a muchness, really.

It would be awesome, but, alas... Next year. Next year, I will be in London, and can do things like this. And not mope about not being in Oxford.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, please! Email is on profile. I'm actually kind of terrified about this; what if I can't cope, what if - actually, what when - everyone is much cooler and more together than me, etc., etc.

[mi-guida.livejournal.com]

Sent - hope it helps!