Tutorials! Tutorials! (And a lesson in time management...)

At the moment, it's about noon on Wednesday, and I have just finished this week's tutorial meeting for my Modern Japanese Literature tutorial. Really, I should be reviewing kanji (Japanese writing) for my Japanese class tonight. However, I realize that it's been a week since I've updated by blog, and I certainly won't have the momentum to do it later tonight, because as soon as I get back to my room after Japanese class (around 8:00pm), I plan to get into bed and fall fast asleep for more than four consecutive hours, which is all the sleep that I've been able to get each of the past three nights.

At Jewell I am certainly no stranger to all-night study/writing sessions. They happen at least every couple weeks, and I have found that they are often the only way for me to get a good essay written. I'll spend several days reading tons and tons and tons of primary and secondary sources, and then when it comes time to write my essay, the best way for me to be productive is to sit down in the early evening (5:00ish) with all of my notes and make a commitment to not sleep until its written. I know this might seem silly and unnecessary, but it works for me for several reasons:
1.) When I try to write during the day, I never have long enough spans of time to get anything done. It is easy for me to pick up a book or critical article and read for twenty or thirty minutes when I get a break, but to write anything decent, I have to spend loads of time thinking about the material first, and frequent intermittent breaks for writing does not enable that. Therefore, I need long spans of time to devote to writing an essay.
2.) I find that I am a lot more productive at night, because there are less distractions, and also because the caffeine that I have to consume to stay awake seems to help me focus.
3.) The prize of sleep is an incredible motivator for essay writing.

*It should be noted, however, that I never do this the night before an essay is due. That type of pressure would be way too stressful for me. Generally, I stay up all night writing an essay two days before it's due. That way, if there's any major mishap, I'll have time to fix it. Also, it's never fun to go to tutorial after only a couple hours of sleep.
Unfortunately, it turns out that this flawless plan of essay writing does not work out so well when a second tutorial is added to the mix. You see, I stayed up most of the night on Sunday writing my essay that was due on Tuesday morning. However, it did not go as smoothly as planned, so I ended up having to spend all day Monday (except the two hours I attended Japanese class) and most of Monday night finishing the essay. Tuesday morning I had tutorial, and then had to finish my extensive reading assignment for my other tutorial on Wednesday morning (today). The reading took longer than I had expected (even though I had already done a lot of it), and I didn't get to sleep until after 4:00am again last night.
Clearly this cannot become a routine.

In happier news, both of my tutorials went well despite my lack of sleep, which I think I am hiding quite skillfully. My Shakespeare tutor seemed to like my essay on The Winter's Tale, and we had a really interesting discussion about the play. My Japanese Lit. tutorial today was fascinating. My tutor is brilliant, and the reading that she's having me do has all been really intriguing. At some point, I'll write a much more detailed description of the focuses of our tutorial, but essentially, we are discussing depictions of motherhood, infanticide, and mother-child suicide in Japanese literature and how they relate to issues of female subjectivity. When I asked for a course in Modern Japanese Literature, I had no idea that it would be specifically geared toward these questions (about which my tutor is currently writing a book coincidentally...), but so far it's been a really thought-provoking way to address Japanese women's writing, and it incorporates a lot of the feminist theory that I spent the summer studying. I'm very lucky to be working with this tutor, and I think I'm going to get loads out of our discussions.

Further good news (and also part of the reason that I have slept so little the past three nights): Hannah came to visit from Cambridge this weekend!
My wonderful roommate from William Jewell is studying music at Cambridge University this year, and she decided to come to Oxford for a spur-of-the-moment weekend visit.

Saturday night we met up at Karen, Jess, and Mariah's flat with several other Jewell friends so that Hannah could see everyone while she was in town. Everyone brought snacks, and we learned how to play this really fun game that Karen's mom discovered. It's called "Dominion," and it reminds me of a cross between Risk and Dungeons and Dragons, but I'm not really sure why... Anyway, I definitely recommend it!

I didn't bring my camera that night, but Karen did! And she posted some photos on her lovely blog, found here: http://tedenrice.wordpress.com/2011/10/22/an-evening-with-friends/

I hope that she won't mind if I steal a few of them to post here....

                                      

                                     

                                     

                                       

Around 9:00pm Hannah and I returned to my room at Dale, and I worked for several hours before going to sleep, although, clearly I should have done more....

The next morning, Patrick and I took Hannah to brunch, at a really neat little cafe called Giraffe, before her bus to Cambridge left at noon.

 As you know, I spent the rest of Sunday writing an essay, and then got lost in a blur of reading, writing, and tutorials over the past three days. 

A lot of other things have happened since last week, and once I have studied Japanese and caught up on some sleep, I'll try to post about them!