Well, the fall quarter is over and much has happened in the last few months. From school to, well, more school, to my stack of review books getting taller and taller, it’s been a busy three months! So, to keep you all up to date (under the delusion or assumption that you all actually care), here is a quick wrap-up of Fall 2008: School started and ended. Took three courses (two upper division and one grad course): LTEL 160 — Postcolonial Writing, LTPR 131 — Love and Madness in Medieval Literature, and LTMO 219 — Feminist and Queer Theory. Grades:LTEL 160 — ALTPR 131 — B+LTMO 219 — A- How do I feel about those grades?I’m happy with the A, generally happy with the A-, and not surprised by the B+. I’m not a medieval literature person, so the fact that I got a B+ and not a standard B is probably a good thing. I find analyzing older texts rather tedious and pointless. That’s why I’m a modern literature major and not a classics major. I’ve heard most of the arguments about medieval literature before. The A- was actually not bad considering that it was a graduate school course rather than a standard course. I did remarkably well and learned a few things both for my writing and for my brain. Plus, my professor for that course was awesome. Took the GRE (Graduate Record Exam, or the test you have to take in America if you want to go to an American graduate school!). The results?Quantitative — 650Verbal — 550Analytical — Not AvailableMy reaction?Well, I killed on the quantitative and did well enough on the verbal. Overall I was pleased with my score. Humanities Undergraduate Research Award won! $500 coming my way to spend the next six months or so doing research for a paper. I’m hesitant to say it will have a definite length primarily because the more I think about this project, the more I am aware that it won’t fit into anything shorter than a full-length book of literary criticism. So be it! I suspect that that pretty much covers everything. Anything I’m missing that I failed to mention?

Over the course of the last few weeks I have been considering a number of new writing project ideas (and old ones, for that matter). Part of my reasoning for considering new projects is due to my complete lack of writing in the last few months brought on by the overwhelming stress of applying for graduate school (and school itself). So, here are some things I’m thinking of doing: Picture StoriesI was looking at one of my avatars (one drawn by a friend that I’ve used for a while now, and recently changed) and thought about what a neat idea it would be to do stories based on artwork by people I know. The friend who drew that avatar, which you see to the left there, agreed to the idea and I’m thinking of talking to some other folks I know who draw. I expect the stories to be flash fiction pieces and they’d end up here. Some would be quirky, some would be serious. It all depends on the art. WISB StoriesBasically, short stories set in the world of Traea (the world that The World in the Satin Bag is set in). Part of this is to get me back into the world. I’m having a lot of issues with the sequel, partly because I’m in school and it’s sucking up so much of my time and partly because of some plotting issues, that it might be a good idea to try this. Part of it might also work within the picture idea. Who knows. Collaborative ProjectThis is just a basic idea. I don’t have any clue who I would do this with or what kind of collaborative project it would be, but I think it would be interesting to do some sort of collab with someone who has similar literary tastes. Maybe it would be some sort of back and forth involving connected, but separate stories. Or perhaps it would be a joint world building effort using the same concept. Cross-Blog DialoguesThis is an idea I’ve been tossing around with one of my blogging friends. The idea behind it is to have a sort of back and forth dialogue on some genre-related subject. It could work a lot of different ways, but it would be interesting to put a few people in direct dialogue with one another. If you are particularly into this idea, feel free to let me know! Those are just a few ideas that I’m tossing around in my head. What do you think? Do you have any ideas? Comments welcome!