Breakdown of Chem 114

Conversation I had with my suitemate that I wanted to remember, for the stereotypes

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Everyone's there for a reason. There are the premeds. They take notes, even when Schmutty repeats himself. Maybe he's doing it for a reason, after all. Premeds make up most of the chem majors and MCDB (molecular, cellular, and developmental biology) majors.

Pure chem and MCDB makors do exist. They generally hate premeds. But chances are, a pure chem major is goign to come into college at a level above genchem, like how I skipped over the lowest level of writing seminars.

One step away are the EEB (ecological, environmental, and behavioral biology) Majors. They're hard sceince people of a different breed, who take chemistry so they can work with chyrogenics at the Peabody, or determine the effects of a chemical spill on a swamp biospere. Some EVST majors are like this, but then they might as well be EEB for the BS.

Then there are the environmental studies majors. They're all like "I'm gonna wear flannel and not pay attention." That used to be me.

Now there is the me who is probably going to drop chem, becasue I'm just taking it for my own personal life education.

HAIKU FAIL

After giving blood, I trip,
somehow catch myself.
Going out tonight, I skip.

...this is what happens when I am really tired and don't feel like going to bed because WTF NO ONE IS IN OUR SUITE.

Might be extend-able though, into, shoot, what was it, senryu? Something that just had random 5 and 7 lines however you wanted them. Clearly I need my CWII daybook up in this place.

Smud ist eine Pirate (aka, corrected German emo poetry!)

Kristina Mendicino, my beloved German instructor, has been drafted to TA a literature class this semester. Well, it IS her area of study... Our new teacher, Lukas Mühlethaler, seems luckily to be a good replacement. But Kristina asked us to keep in touch, so I requested that she correct my poems. Here is what she sent back:


Ok, the problem with the last one, is that "bis" functions her as a conjunction, and not a preposition: "I think until you come" is different from "I think until three o'clock," since "until" in the first case introduces a whole clause with a subject and a verb, whereas in the second case, it works as a preposition with the object "three o'clock" (without introducing a new clause with its own verb). So the sentence you wrote should be "Ich denke bis du ankommst," ("du", as the subject of the verb "ankommen," has to be nominative), and an example of "bis" as an accusative preposition would be "Ich lese dieses Buch bis morgen Abend," or "Ich denke bis drei Uhr." (Also important to notice:when "bis" works, not as a preposition, but as a conjunction, it is a subordinating conjunction that kicks the verb to the end of the clause).

Neue Akkusativ

Ich warte für dich.
Ich warte ohne dich.
Ich gehe durch das Tor.
Ich gehe um das Standbild.
Ich denke gegen mich.
Ich denke bis dich ankommst
...
Ich warte bis null Uhr.

Dativ

Er steigt aus dem auto;
außer ihr, liebt er es überall.
Er geht heute abend zu ihr
mit einem tollen Geschenk.
Er liebt sie seit drei jahreN [SEIT takes the present, not past tense. Whereas in English we would use a past construction, "He has loved her since/ for three years," German uses the present, "He loves her since three years." The object of love is in the accusative, so it's "sie" and not "ihr." Also, dative plural nouns take an "N" at the end, if htey don't already have one, so it would be "seit drei Jahren" instead of "seit drei Jahre." )
und ißt jeder wochenende bei ihr.
Heute spricht er vom herz,
und sie bleiben nach [dem] AbenDessen zusammen.

Neue Dativ

Er steigt aus dem auto;
außer ihr, liebt er es überall.
Er geht heute abend zu ihr
mit einem tollen Geschenk.
Er liebt sie seit drei jahren
und ißt jeder wochenende bei ihr.
Heute spricht er vom herz;
sie bleiben nach dem Abendessen zusammen.

She also recommended Peter Handke (esp. Kaspar and Selbstbezichtigung!) as a writer who works with repetition and the implications of grammatical structures.

Smud ist ein Pirat

This is exactly the reason I made this blog. I leave my first EEB section feeling like I fail at everything, tell Nikki (among other things) that I'm going to stay up late and do nothing constructive while walking her to the Tory Party debate, then come back, and by way of studying for german, write emo poetry to help myself distinguish accusative from dative prepositions because that frekaing killed me last week. Now.

Akkusativ

Ich warte für dich.
Ich warte ohne dich.
Ich gehe durch das Tor.
Ich gehe um die Standbild.
Ich denke gegen mich.
Ich denke bis dich ankommen.

Dativ

Er steigt aus dem auto;
außer ihr, liebt er es überall.
Er geht heute abend zu ihr
mit einem tollen Geschenk.
Er hat seit drei jahre ihr lieben
und ißt jeder wochenende bei ihr.
Heute spricht er vom herz,
und sie bleiben nach Abenessen zusammen.

nun ankommen...wexel?

*bonus points if you get the title reference

For Nikki, Part I

So when I said "Machiavellian," then raised my eyebrows while repeating "eh?" what I meant was that Maximillian is a rather Machiavellian name. Because, you know, Machiavellian people had it. I think. AP Euro was a while ago.* One May argue that this adjective cannot be used to describe anything other than characteristics, but I think there is something to be said for the sound of things. Maximillian sounds like a liege who would rather be feared than loved. That is all.

---Coming soon in this series:
Title explanation for "By The Horns," the revived Trumbull College litmag!
A whole lot of emo/angst poetry, just to remind you why we're not printing much
Breakfast in Trumbull, Pt 1? Hm, this might be too public a sphere for that...

*On that note, I wonder if there are any possibilities in the Famous Historians Club as far as this blog is concerned.
-There is the possibility of incorporating info from my seminar last semester for a next installment
-Vignettes? Would probably wind up being too dialogue-heavy.
-Perhaps a biography of Sarah Virgina Stalin. S/he had a lot of good lines.
-Or a guide on how to draw all the mustaches of '30s dictators without looking like a gay French pirate. Wait. We never did figure that out.

Triolet!

I'm not even doing this on the last possible day! Yay!

So of all the form poems we learned in CWII, I found the triolet easiest to, er, use...
I started this on Sunday, upon hearing my first carillon concert this semester, by writing the first line, which I initially intended to be the last.
In the process of making this post, I changed "hang" in the sixth line from an active verb (ie, the tones were hanging something) to a descriptor, and now it has a totally different feel. The former sixth line was far too trite, but I liked "hang" as an action. So I'll look back and come up with an alternative at some point. For now we have what follows:

Behind closed eyes, I hear the bells.
The tones leave trails of bygone days
traced in watercolor swells.
Behind closed eyes, I hear the bells;
both sprightly hues and deathly knells
hang hued and humbled in a haze.
Behind closed eyes, I hear the bells.
The tones leave trails of bygone days.

Really, this is what we do.

We start new blogs under the pretense of committing to something. On occasion, that commitment is kept. Let's hope this is one of those occasions.

We make our blog titles in German because we think it makes things more interesting. Also, because we think we know German. Then, 18 months later, we go take a placement test and Yale tells us we don't...but everything happens for a reason.

We realize, partway through November, that we are not writing novels, and feel like a part of our lives is missing. And I knew, last year, that my NaNoing days were doomed to suspension because, if I could barely hit 50,000 with 80 minutes dedicated to writing every other day, there was no way I was doing it my first semester of college. And sure I was proud of all the new CWIIIers hitting their marks, but I missed being a part of the action. I still got emails from my ML, and weekly pep talks from Neil Gaiman, among others, and I felt like such a poser, especially becasue I never did finish that mangled mess that started out as me yearlong last year, despite actually working in class about 2/3 of the time.

We keep so much inside that, when it comes time to earn our keep by our trade, suddenly it all comes gushing out in a manner completely different from that of the milk on the multigrain cheerios you put in the sink the day you left, four months ago, that is is still there because it makes me think of you.

We conclude that we need writing as a creative outlet in our lives. Out of my life, I need words to make. (Syntax is the doctor of the suitcase!) So my commitment is this: I will post to this blog. I'm not going to say every week, but I don't want more than two weeks to go by in between times. My posts will be, as the title suggests, poems and things. And I'm not ruling out drafts as new posts. Drafting is what we do. Because drafting is the only way anything good will ever come of this.