College Student Writer's Union: Life on campus the fan-fiction way!

Popping in to say that, because I'm in college, I'd might not be heard from again for a while....

 

Awww, we miss you. Or at least I do!

 

We read books 1, 9, and 10 of the Iliad... I rather liked it, but the Odyssey is better.

 

I like the Odyssey towards the end, but I like the entire Iliad.

 

The Odyssey is MUCH better. I could read TO all day, but the Illiand is a different story. I like it, for sure, but it doesn't keep me as entertained as the Odyssey.

 

The Odyssey is definitely meant more for the entertainment than the historical context. It's like comparing Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the Memoirs of Robert E. Lee.

 

I'm applying there! I want to go to a Florida college to be close to family and that's on my list! How was it?

 

I had to read the Iliad and Odyssey last quarter. AGAIN.

I think the hardest thing I've had to read so far for class was the Tanakh. And it wasn't even for a bible/religion class! Pretty interesting read though.

Back to packing; I move back to campus tomorrow. Yay. *waves tiny flag*

 

I love the Tanakh--I read it on my own because it was a gift from a friend who convinced me to learn Hebrew. I think the most agonizing thing I ever had to do was read Dante's Inferno three years in a row. I didn't like it the first time!

 

So today I had my first experience fixing a bicycle. My college has this great thing called the "Bike Co-op," and what happens is you pay $6 to join, you get full use of the tools and supplies, and then you can walk in and fix up whatever bikes they happen to have. So I find this nifty old vintage-y Schwinn, and it's missing a seat. Great, I go over to the big box of seats, find one that has a nice long bar on it and matches the character of the bike, and I get the replacement bolt to bolt it in. I also replace a couple of other bolts, and it was fantastimous. Well, as it turned out, the brake system needed replacing (so I dug through the big box of brakes and learned how to rewire a front brake), the tires were nearly shot (so I went through the pile of tires and I learned how to put a new tire/air tube on a wheel). I also had to clean all the oil and grease off the chain (which was super-nasty). Right now, I have about half the work done. But hey, when I'm finished, I'll have a super-awesome bike.

I'm totally going to incorporate this experience of learning how to repair things into a fic, because it was completely awesome. And I had grease all over me, so I had to seriously clean up before I went to dinner and cooked dessert.

 

Gainesville is a po' dunk town. Unless you like football and nightclubs, which they have a plethora of.

The University is pretty good, though, and the company...there is a good gaming community down here, plenty of star wars freaks.

You are going to learn the rules of football, though. By osmosis, if nothing else. And parking spaces are nonexistent - I've had to use fun rules like 'you can't tow in an ally' to find a parking space.

That's what I can come up with off the top of my head as far as University of Florida goes...

 

That Bike Co-op thing is so cool!

 

I have to agree...that bike program does sound pretty awesome. Not a bad way to get some mechanic-type experience either.

 

Okay, by the number of people who say they were required to read it, The Iliad is beinging to sound like literature's "Citizen Kane".

I believe I was forced to watch that movie at least three times. And I wasn't even technically a film major.


Never read the Iliad. Saw the movie though. Did Achilles have a crazy WWE-style finishing move in Homer's version, by any chance? I doubt it, but I wouldn't put it past the guy either. I also doubt that Brad Pitt bothered to read either story.

It's the same deal with The Odyssey: Never read it, but saw "O Brother Where Art Thou" which, by the way, was directed by the Coen Brothers, who also never read The Odyssey. So it all worked out in the end.

Orson Welles, on the other hand, probably did read The Odyssey.



OH, also: "fantastimous" - Officially the Made Up Word of the Day.

 

Brad Pitt was actually a shockingly decent Achilles, despite the fact that they completely butchered the storyline, stole my favorite symphony for Achilles' theme and never mentioned Shostakovich as the source... O Brother Where Art Thou kept me laughing because it did have all those kickbacks to the Odyssey.

And I had to see Citizen Kane twice in the same high school. I really didn't like that movie.

 

Gainesville is a po' dunk town. Unless you like football and nightclubs, which they have a plethora of.


I used to live there! And I completely agree with you on that. Unless your willing and able to drink, there's not much to do.

 

I was about to go into a rendition of 'it's a small world' in response to your post, VM, but it reminded of, well...

I move around a lot, so have learned to say my goodbyes and never expect to hear from people again. Now, by a funny twist of fate, I signed up for an acting class my second college semester. I walk in, and take a seat...across the room from someone I knew from a three week summer camp in North Carolina. She has got to be the one person from every camp I've been to, that I remember the name of.

So we do the double-take 'thats cool...and weird...' and talk a bit. Turns out she is living in the same dorm I am, a floor below me. More strangeness. So...I go over to visit with her and meet her roommate, yadda yadda. A guy walks in through the door (co-ed dorm), and...I know him. From middle school in North Carolina. He sat next to me in band class. Needless to say, I'm a bit...shocked, having learned that two people I haven't seen or talked to in 9 years are living a floor below me.

And then, about a month later, they get engaged.



I dare someone to top that 'it's a small world' experience. I DARE you.

Oh, and for the record, I've lived in four different states - California, North Carolina, Virginia, and now Florida.

 

That sounds like my dad, who was very good friends with a guy when they were missionaries in Spain and this guy's wife always thought she knew my Dad from somewhere. One day, they were going through his college yearbook and laughing at a picture of him looking very grouchy. Well, next to him, lo and behold, was his friend's wife. He had not known her, just took that seat that day and for years, she'd been asked who that handsome guy next to her in that picture was.

 

Ummm...I go to uni, that's kind of the same thing, right?

One of my lecturers (film) finds some way of relating everything back to Citizen Kane. I liked it, but after watching the "marriage in six acts" scene a dozen times in succession to examine the mise-en-scene? Yeah - tiresome.

 

I just discovered that I share an apartment with a Luke fangirl.

And my homework and writing are so gonna suffer this week, for I have a new precious (well, technically, preciouses). <hand hovers protectively over remote>

Read Fagles version of Homer freshman year and this year. Personally, I prefer The Odyssey and the wonder that is Beowulf. Haven't had much chance to read fiction in my language classes, and I'd prefer to never relive my experience with the Aeneid (try reading it with only basic Latin skills and half a year between you and your last Latin class). Lucretius' De Rerum Natura is pretty cool though, for a scientific text.

 

I love De Rerum Natura. We read it in the original in my 9th-grade history class. The Aeneid is very florid latin, I admit, but it has some great lines, like "forsan et haec olim meminesse iuvabit" or "quidquid id est, timeo danaos et dona ferentes."

 

So I'm currently in my first paper late nighter. Its due at 1 tomorrow. I have from 9-11:30am to work on it. I just cannot write tonight. I'm too irritated.

 

I have a problem set due tomorrow. I could've gotten a lot more done on it earlier, but I already detailed it in the Falcon's Lounge.

Now I find myself working on it alone in my room, which rocks for my concentration... but I don't have my calculator. I haven't brought it to school in forever because I have a TI-89 and the math department was stupid and wouldn't ever let me use it.

So now I have need of it, the CS department doesn't care what model calculator I use, it's somewhere in Michigan, and I'm glued to my computer desk.

Urgh. Someone just gouge my eyes out with a microprocessor.

 

Uhoh, to be lost in michigan, few things are as terrifying.

 

Meanwhile, I have class in the morning, just sated a fic bunny, and am watching ESB again because I just had to check on one of Yoda's lines. Dud I mention it's two something in the morning here?