--Lily Tomlin

Oh, I can't believe I'm still awake.

As I type this, it's just past 1 AM on Wednesday night. I got about two hours of sleep on Tuesday night, three at the most. I've been a zombie all day. And now? I can't sleep. This is ridiculous.

Why do I doubt the person in question wanted information on jungle cats?

If I were being conscientious, I'd now go on to a deeply self-revealing trip into the world of my id, but I think I'd just as soon not. That being the case, I should probably delete these two paragraphs, but being partially asleep, I'm inclined to let them stand. See the last section of this entry if you really want more.

Here's the deal. At the end of this semester, I'll have thirty credits to go before I graduate. I could theoretically finish in two more semesters and a summer, but it seems more likely I'll stick around for a total of three semesters after this one.

(This is something I'd better be certain about, because the honors exam in English is supposed to be taken in your last Spring semester before you graduate. So if I don't stay for three more semesters, I'll need to take it in Spring 2000, rather than Spring 2001. It won't do me much good to realize this after the exam's over...)

Anyway. This means that the clock's running out, and I only have a small handful of courses left to take before I leave. A much smaller handful, in fact, than the number of courses I still want to take.

So, what are my options?

Let's start with the givens: I'll need to take Geology 101 somewhere down the line, which is going to play hell with my schedule in the semester in which I take it, which is why I've been avoiding it until now. I'll also need a Social Sciences course, and the dreaded Physical Education course. Finally, I'll need to take one more literature course to finish the requirements for my major in English.

Assuming, for the sake of the argument, that I'll continue to take four courses a semester for the next three semesters (leaving me six credits over the minimum required to graduate, but there are worse fates), that leaves me with a whopping total of eight more courses. If I go the accelerated route and take the final two courses next summer, I end up with only six more.

The Women's Studies minor would require six more courses, pretty much comprising everything else I take until I graduate.

This, in itself, is not a bad thing. After all, if I weren't deeply interested in the subject material, I wouldn't want to minor in this in the first place. The problem is... the problem is in the road that wouldn't be taken. Specifically, there's still a heaping handful of English electives that I really want to take. Essay Writing. Aspects of Literary Criticism. Comedy and Satire. The English Language. I want these courses.

But I want the others, too.

Decisions, decisions...

The upshot of this is that if I don't mind indenturing myself for some time after I graduate, I should be able to borrow enough to bridge the gap between my income and my expenses. Including my rent. The catch is that, as an English major, I'm not exactly likely to be rolling in dough after I graduate.

Nevertheless, I plan to go for it. What choice do I have? What's certain is that, for the sake of my mental health, I do need to keep my apartment, and I'm not going to be able to make enough money right now to pay for it; I'm a bit overextended as it is, and I haven't even started my work for the American Studies Department yet. I'd need at least one more job on top of that, and I can't really see that happening unless I drop some classes, which I'm ruling out. So if this is my only viable option, which it appears to be, I'll be grabbing it with both hands. I'll worry about the future when it arrives.

Well, no; actually, I'll be worrying about the future the whole way through. I'll just deal with the future when it arrives.

Not that I'm certain how much I'll care, given that I haven't much liked the overwhelming majority of the poems turned in by my classmates. But there were four or five that suggested the presence of some writing ability, so I suppose there'll be some comments worth hearing. And some people are better readers than writers. (And vice-versa, but hush.) I'm mostly waiting for the professor's reaction, though.

Fortunately, I've had more to go on than that, having shown it to a few other English professors. It's gotten a pretty positive reception so far, along with a couple of suggestions for improvement. So that much is nice.

Oh, and finally... I'm sorry I haven't responded to the message I got on gender-neutral pronouns, but you might want to check out this site, which traces the historical development of English pronouns, and makes for interesting -- and enlightening -- reading. If only we could return "man" to true generic status and bring back "waepman" for males, matters would be much improved, I think. If only.