first is always your best

Queens' May Ball was magical*!
and i survived until 6 AM... ...probably the latest i've been up, ever.
it was an insanely extravagant party, as all Cambridge May Balls are. four course dinner (the sea bass and duck were scrumptious!) followed by free flow alcohol and snacks throughout the night. live performances (jazz, oh yeah), DANCING, silent disco, bumper car ride hahaha okay that was rather exhilarating at 3 AM in the morning on college grounds!,
oh and fireworks by the river...

too much fun. and i get to do it all over again at Pembroke May Ball tonight but i will probably be half asleep by midnight. Pembroke's theme is Moonlight Masquerade. intriguing!

sorry about the chopping writing. i am rather exhuasted and will have to jump into the shower soon because we get kicked out of Pembroke in the afternoon so they can finish setting up.

i will post photos soon!

what's this, i'm freeee, you say?! :)

i woke up as usual at 8:30 AM even after having fallen into bed five hours ago. it is the first morning in goodness knows how long (er, two solid months?) that i wake knowing there is not ONE OUNCE of reading, writing or studying that awaits my attention today. nor will there be for the next four months.

i am done with Cambridge academics!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (i survived!!!)

note, the number of exclamation marks cannot fully capture my happiness and relief. even though exams did not go ideally, at least the dissertation went well :). "Henry James's Metaphors of Fixedness and Mobility in The Ambassadors", a mind-blowingly fascinating topic, if i may say so myself.


so what now? :) it is 9 AM on a saturday morning and the possibilities are endless..!

oh no! but oh well

i completely misread the Tennyson poem for yesterday's paper. i totally made up some Christian allusion which isn't actually used! Pilate, not Pilot! yikes. so i wrote stuff on resurrection which i don't think Tennyson was even thinking of! sigh i hope they award marks for creativity...

"i'm hopelessly flawed"

i really admire those people who have the courage to surrender themselves to their hearts: to doing and saying exactly what they want to.

i guess i'm not as brave as i thought i am. i have so much learning to do.

two weeks 'til paper 6

and can i answer a single section B past paper question?
no!!!

how is this possible? i stare at the TWELVE past paper questions on Function of Criticism, and none of them seem do-able. (i've been doing readings, believe me) yes, i realize that answering Tripos questions often requires a bit of creativity, but how am i supposed to answer for instance,

"Are universities likely to be good or bad places for the functioning of criticism?"
or "What is the function of the adjective in the phrase "literary criticism"?"
or worse yet,

" 'The replacement of a hermeneutic by a semiotic model, of interpretation by decoding, would represent, in view of the baffling historical instability of textual meanings, a considerable progress. Much of the hesitation associated with "reading' could thus be dispelled.' Discuss."

what the WHAT?!?!