I AM DONE! I handed in my last final paper of the semester and I wrote my last exam. I could have used some more time to study for that exam, though. I'm concerned about my mark on it... But I guess we can't always write to the best of our abilities all the time. Ah, well. At least the paper I handed in for that class is pretty good!

Nice ego boost: I got a 93% on two of the four papers I had to do (one was on Medieval dream theory in the prologue to Piers Plowman and the other was on how female space is represented in Susan Glaspell's Trifles and Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun... I have yet to find out marks for my paper on the "Repression Hypothesis" chapter in Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality and Tony Kushner's Angels in America or my paper on the representation of paternity in the fifteenth cantos of Dante's Inferno and Paradiso) and a fourteen out of fifteen (yes, I know, that sounds grade schoolish) on the film critique I wrote for my Postmodernism and the Sexual Revolution class (I critiqued the film version of The Stepford Wives using the theory of ecriture feminine as espoused in Helen Cixous' "The Laugh of the Medusa" to prove that the film is, ultimately, a postmodern work of art). Hm. I'm getting exhausted just writing about all the work I've done these past few weeks!

That ego boost was much needed, though. The professor who presided (yes, presided--certainly NOT taught!) over my distance studies course this summer liked little of what I wrote. His marks were the lowest I've ever received on a paper in my life! It was quite the blow to my academic self esteem, so I've been nervous about my academic writing lately (especially since the comments this prof made about my writing far from elucidated how I could improve it!) Maybe that's why I had such a hard time settling down to write and study--nerves? I bet it is. I let my nerves get the best of me some times...

I can't tell you, though, how much fun I had by myself last night. My roommate has gone home to Vancouver for the holidays and, as much as I love her, I am LOVING EVERY MINUTE of having the apartment all to myself! Oooh! And I actually got some pleasure reading done last night! Not that I don't love Dante or Cixous, of course! But there's just something different about enjoying a book you've selected yourself than enjoying a reading you have to get through for class. Strangely, it's usually more gratifying. I think I shall do some more of that pleasure reading now...

But it's almost five a.m. So I should be asleep. I probably will be asleep within five minutes of reopening my book. I mean, I pulled an all-nighter on Thursday night and I didn't go to bed until two a.m. on Friday night (Saturday morning? at any rate, I rolled out of bed just after one p.m. this afternoon) because, though I was still tired, I didn't want to sleep, really. And why am I still up now? Only two hours ago, I got in from a party at one of my prof's houses (he throws parties for his students after classes finish. I had him for two classes this semester--the party was for students in both classes . And I get to go to one next semester, too, because I'm taking yet another one of this prof's courses--he is so brilliant!)

But I think the smart thing to do would be to go to bed now. But whoever said I was smart? There's no real proof of that, is there?