Once again I have begun my per-semester journey into the realms of academia. In other words, I've begun my fourth and hopefully final year at Brock University, pursuing a degree in English and Professional Writing. I say "hopefully" because fourth year classes are tough, demanding eaters of free time, and guess what I have 3 of this semster? Oh well. Class is actually going really well so far, and I have a good feeling about this semester. Let's hope it lasts.

The starring lineup is:

ENGL 2P19 - Chaucer.

An entire course devoted to the Canturbury Tales. This is, believe it or not, my "fun" course for this semester, in that its only requirements are seminar participation, two short essays, and a take home exam (take homes may suck, but at least they're fairly easy). Yes, reading Middle English, which has more in common with German than modern-day English, is something I actually consider fun. (I'm a geek)

WRIT 3P18 - Literary Journalism.

In this class, I have to write a 2500 word magazine or newspaper feature article, as well as a traditional essay. For the feature, I thought of doing a local spin on fan fiction, interviewing people from my school who write it, and marketing the story to the Brock Press. It's going to be a lot of work, assuming I'm not the only nerd at my school who writes fanfiction, but I hope it will be a fun project. I'm a little nervous though; this is actually my second time taking the course. I flunked last time because I hated writing about reality, I knew next to nothing about journalism and I couldn't come up with an idea for my article. This time I'm a little more prepared, so hopefully I'll do better (i.e. pass).

ENGL 4V04 - Early Modern Textual Collections.

The first of the fourth year classes, this one's supposed to be about how people wrote and collected texts in the 16th and 17th centuries, but I'm actually finding it to have quite a few similarities with modern communications concerns and trends. For example, the transition from handwritten manuscripts to printed books back then has a lot of parallels with concerns over books being posted on the internet today. It's a seminar class, so there's always a lot of discussion. I have to hand in a written response to the readings for every class, but so far, that's actually been a fun assignment to do. I like non-formal writing.

ENGL 4P40 - Contemporary Theoretical Approaches

The second fourth year class I'm taking this semester, the timing for this one sucks. It's on at 8am on Wednesdays (which means I have to be up at 6am) and goes for 3 hours. However, once everyone has enough Tim Hortons in them to be awake, it's actually a very interesting, engaging class. I have to admire the only guy in my class today, who managed to take the extremely dull reading we had to do and turn it into a vibrant class discussion during his seminar presentation. Basically, it's a literary theory class, where we study how different people have thought about literature and culture. It might sound boring, but it's extrememly interesting once you get into it. As an aspiring editor, I love theory! However, the essay for this class is a whooping 5000 words! That's definately something I can't just pull an all-nighter on.

and finally,

WRIT 4P20 - Rhetoric and Cultural Studies

I can't seem to take a semster now without studying rhetoric in one form or another, nor can I read anything these days without thinking about how it functions rhetorically. This is another fourth year seminar class, with a focus on how texts interact with the world around them - how writing, in other words, affects and is affected by reality. Like ENGL 4V04, I have to write short responses to our class readings, but in this case, I have to write them 2 days before class and post them on Sakai, Brock's academic assignment website. A bit of a pain when I'd rather be spending my increasingly rare free time playing World of Warcraft, but it could be worse. At least the essay for this class is only 1500 words, so I get a bit of a break there. Besides, like the other two fourth year classes, seminars are quite fun in this course.

On top of that, Fencing has started up for the year once again, and I'm the only returning Women's Epee team member! All the other girls who were on the team last year fence Foil, so I'm stuck practicing with the guys again. It's exhausting getting back into it after a summer of sitting on my butt - my entire body feels like jello after practice, but at the same time, it feels good to hold an actual sword again, not just a virtual one in WoW. I just wish all my teammates hadn't graduated though!

Anyway, with all that going on, plus my weekend job at Pet Valu, I'll probably be getting little to no of my own creative writing done until Christmas Break, and now you know why. I'm sorry guys, I really am, but my schoolwork must come first. I didn't invest $5500 a year in tuition and years of my life to *not* do wel. Please don't be too disappointed if you don't see another chapter of "Vapour Trails" for quite some time. I'm sure, however, that everyone I know here on devart will be as understanding and supportive as they usually are

Wish me luck!