#...brutally downgrade u for lack of one bc that just isn't fun for anyone!' which really i kind of knew already

[aeide-thea]

guys i'm pretty sure i've forfeited the right to think anything but deeply grateful thoughts about G— ever again

i have been in SUCH an anxietyknot about this seneca paper, you don't even know, it got very badparalysisland

and today was exam day and i went off with an ache in my gut knowing i had neither prepared enough nor slept enough, plus i was theoretically supposed to finish this paper by the end of the day, when i was presumably going to have post-exam sludge brain…

and then it turned out the quote IDs weren't totally brutal after all, even though i hadn't reviewed worth a damn; and of the passages in the explication section, not just one but two of them were ones i was thoroughly familiar with and comfortable writing about; and then one of the long essay questions was stuff i'd been thinking about for my paper; and i ~managed my time~ with such success that not only did i finish all sections of the test creditably (which i very much did not do on the midterm), i actually had time to go back and read the whole thing through and make a slightly better job of the one quote ID i'd fumbled?

anyway i always have belated Doubts about whether what i had to say was sophisticated enough but i did have one line of argument i was pleased with about, like, clytemnestra being bad at assigned gender roles/relating to people, in the sense that like, when agamemnon leaves she's supposed to, like, 'keep a chaste bed as a wife and hold her widow's scepter in unsullied trust' (pudicos coniugis quondam toros / et sceptra casta vidua tutari fide), which whole notion of course she, you know, crumples up and sets on fire with the whole aegisthus thing; and then she brings up femininity but only in conjunction with deceit (femineos dolos), which like, you'd think was going to be makeup or something but in context turns out to be, uh, murder, since she cites medea (ardens impia virgo face, / Phasiaca fugiens regna Thessalica trabe), which is obviously a very, um, ideolectic understanding of femininity! and so the passage as a whole ends up being (among a whole lot of other things) a sort of loose recasting of maiden/mother/crone, substituting wife for mother both because clytemnestra has barely any maternal/familial instinct (she really shies away from using possessive pronouns for family members, which, like, i don't want to over-read, latin can be elliptical without meaning anything by it necessarily, but helen isn't soror mea but just unadorned soror, and then later she asks electra 'ubi sit natus, ubi frater tuus,' and of course you can supply the possessive from the parallel but still, i think i agree with G— that it's no coincidence natus is the connection that goes unclaimed) and because of course her daughter has been killed, though even that she doesn't seem quite to have the proper feelings about, insofar as the whole line of argument is that it 'shames and grieves her [in that order, not to mention that some texts have not dolet but piget, so like, 'irks' or 'displeases' rather than 'grieves'] that she, a tyndarid, of divine stock, was reduced to calving a lustral sacrifice for the doric fleet!' i mean the 'was reduced to' is me editorializing but like. that's the sense i get. so anyway, that was a fun line of argument to follow out and i had a good time with it. also i love clytemnestra and her proud unsympathetic unwomanly steeliness!! we stan one (1) gnc murderbot.

but so afterwards i go up to G— and i'm like, so uh, about this paper... which, you know, i do give myself credit for doing, because even though i should've come to him a week ago it's frankly Harder to angle for an extension when you're doing it inexcusably late, because you know it's inexcusable and so you have to climb over all the shame about that in addition to everything else... but anyway he made some extremely nonjudgmental inquiries abt where i was with the thing and finally was like, okay, look, i'm going to asia for two weeks, how about you have it done by the time i get back?

so, in conclusion this paper is now due june 1st, i was angling for like, a day or two at most so this is absurdly luxurious?? and as i said initially i'm pretty sure i've now forfeited the right to ever say anything but good things abt G—, because i was so stressed about this this morning/all of last week and now it's just like, the whole knot's been undone, i get to take the evening off and have a lounge and read a detective novel and start again tomorrow in a calm thoughtful way and i'm just. really lucky and desperately grateful. wishing all of you even half as much luck with salvaging yrselves & being salvaged, in whatever proportion you need. <3

#i mean also the punchline is just 'these people really don't want to fail u‚ they would much rather take a late paper than... #...brutally downgrade u for lack of one bc that just isn't fun for anyone!' which really i kind of knew already #but i just. even knowing that‚ this was very much a grace unlooked-for #anyway i have an absurd amt of time now & i feel not embarrassed abt how this exam went & i just. #this is not how i saw today going when i woke up this morning #and like‚ i saved myself from one Looming Doom & was saved from another‚ & honestly? that's a balance of earned & unearned i can live with #journaling #videbimus lumen #ktema terpnon #(...also for the record i am being—hopefully obviously—slightly facetious in characterizing C as 'gnc murderbot'?) #(if anyone needs me to elaborate on what i do & don't mean by that i can) #anyway it's floptiem thank u for ur attention 2 these obviously critical matters