more detailed update

i am officially done with my swarthmore career. i want to run around, point at random people and scream "bullshit!" it's a strange urge; i'm trying to keep it under control.

ben is here. fortunate. he gives me someone to yell "bullshit!" at, because he'll forgive me. also, we're watching lots and lots of movies and taking long walks and realizing, for the first time, for certain, that we will be in new york together next year. not just in the same city -- at the same SCHOOL.

speaking of skool: bullshit! hee. i never have to think theory again. jameson on postmodernism? balazs on close-ups? zizek on looking awry? bullshit! instead, i can devote my time to thinking about things i'm actually good at, like whether a given individual could be a model.

one of my favorite quotes from the recent week was from claire. i was heading up to my third oral exam and she was wishing me luck.

she: wait, what's this exam for?
me: film theory.
she (perplexed): but you HATE theory.

exactly! bullshit!
although the exam itself went fine. all my exams, in point of fact, went as well as they could have gone. i got to meet the lovely and talented diana son AND the lovely and talented anna mccarthy, with whom i could take classes in the coming year (!)
my favorite examiner, though, was definitely this gruff, skeptical history woman with whom i had a passionate debate about whether or not victoria woodhull was personally responsible for deep-sixing feminism. she was the person whose respect i felt most that i had to earn, and earning people's respect through arguing with them is invigorating. i think she liked me too. not "will give me high honors" liked me, necessarily, but liked me. and weirdly, to me, that matters more.

so, yeah, in retrospect -- BLAH! -- it was a good experience. i am absolutely ecstatic that i will never have to do it again.