Hongkong trip was fun (as I have been harping on about) Wish I could stay in Macau longer though. Where to next? With every travel, comes a new experience and inevitably lessons to be learnt. The next trip will be a better-planned one, in all aspects of the word :D
I'm doing my 6-module stint this sem, comprising of 5 psych mods (Cognitive Psych, Bio Psych, Adolescent Psych, Health Psych and Stats II) and as mentioned before the lit mod, Romanticism. Started my readings earlier compared to last sem in the hopes of being ahead of the lecturer (trust me, it is necessary given my current state and context AND environment). Also cos I wanna be consistent. The fact that I'm taking six modules really leaves me feeling unsettled and despite me being on the ball in terms of preparatory work, I still feel stressed occasionally (ok, another understatement) whenever I think about my workload and my CAP score.
But my spirits were slightly uplifted today when I heard that a friend of mine (who is taking the same course as me in the same school) is in the same predicament as me. Not that I'm rejoicing about the fact that she's not doing well but that she said that the reason why we might not be doing as well as we hoped was partly due to the fact that our course is very highly-subscribed in the faculty and that would influence the bell-shape curve considerably. And in comparison, she did very well for one of her Soci modules when she didn't even study for it as hard as she did for Psych.
Of course, this justification shouldn't give me reason to slack but it sorta ups my self-confidence a lil' (given the downward spiral it seems to be heading due to my academic status). As such, it'll be full steam ahead for me already: gone will be the days when I wake up during lunchtime and I made a promise to myself to cut down on online-time.
Lit lecturer this sem is really nice, very bubbly and chatty. She's really passionate about lit to the extent that she can quote whole lines from Shakespeare's sonnets and that from obscure writers. It's like everything is there at her fingertips! And she's gonna bring us to watch "Bright Star" which is gonna be out in cinemas soon and she's gonna treat us (read: all the students taking this module) to popcorn and drinks, how nice can a lecturer get? XD
Since we're on the topic of lit, I've been thinking about one of the poems by Wordsworth which we did in class recently. Usually, I tend to prefer prose more than poetry, when it comes to lit, cos I feel that I wouldn't really need to second-guess what the protagonists/persona(s) is thinking/feeling but I really liked Wordsworth's choice of words for this particular poem (quite a well-known one actually) and the imagery it conjures.
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company!
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
I like the way he could use simple words to conjure up powerful images and make the ordinary (daffodils) extraordinary, which links to the point about how powerful the mind really is and how perspective really plays a strong role in influencing our subjective response to an object/situation, or even a person. Reading the poem again really makes me feel happy, for some reason..heh heh...
HAVE A GOOD WEEK, FOLKS! :D
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company!
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
I like the way he could use simple words to conjure up powerful images and make the ordinary (daffodils) extraordinary, which links to the point about how powerful the mind really is and how perspective really plays a strong role in influencing our subjective response to an object/situation, or even a person. Reading the poem again really makes me feel happy, for some reason..heh heh...
HAVE A GOOD WEEK, FOLKS! :D
