Monastic Life
Saturday, 16 April, 2005
We're back from our break! Oh, I didn't tell you we went away, did I. Probably a good thing; people have been saying this blog reveals way too much about myself.
Anyways, we went down to Jamberoo for five days. I didn't get my essay done on time but I was kind of resigned to that fact when it wasn't completed by the time we went to dinner with Duncan and Matt (who wishes to be named). The plan was to drop it in to Moore on Tuesday morning before going on to MM. Instead, I went to Moore to renew library books and rocked up to MM at about 9:30 and did about 6.5 hours for them. Guan lent me a couple of George R.R. Martin books which I will get to as soon as I've devoured the nine Robin Hobbs that Panther lent me. (I've already finished one.) He also lent me Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud which, funny enough, is written in comic form. I'm up to Chapter 4 and it is starting to make me want to write comics (just need a partner-in-crime who can draw ...) I've already got an idea for one.
Ben and I fled south absurdly late because I came home later than expected. We had a very simple but ghastly (by my account) dinner and stayed up watching taped episodes of Law and Order (one day I will blog about Law and Order ... I just think it's so interesting that a show like that is so popular given the current climate of our age).
I finished my essay the next day but I have to say it was really hard—much harder than any essay I ever did at Uni and certainly harder than my Honours thesis. I think it's because:
- There's 2,000 years (or more) of thinking/criticism which you cannot possibly cover thoroughly with the time you have;
- Depending on your topic, there can be a wide range of different thinking which has to be combed through and sorted out. For example, Pete chose to do question 8 (“How does Paul explain Israel's unbelief despite being recipients of promise in chapters 9–11?”) and came up against the brick wall of the New Perspective material which, he told us quite frankly, he didn't understand and didn't have time to wade through. Not that it wasn't worthwhile writing the essay but these sorts of things make it harder;
- Theology, being “queen” of the humanities (as it was once described), encompasses more than just history, more than just literature, more than just philosophy, more than just law, etc. It is all of those things and more. You cannot just wear your “English Lit” hat while you're writing a theological essay, just as you cannot just wear your “History” hat;
- The truth matters because there is a truth. At Uni, I could write utter rubbish as long as I could prove it (and, in most cases, there wasn't really a right or wrong; there was just what I thought and how well I could make a case for it). At Bible college, I am worried about accidentally saying something heretical which might have implications for other doctrines which I haven't thought about;
- Moore College's referencing system is completely different to what I'm used to using (see the student handbook for details). In addition, they have a few other oddities in their house style, e.g. using “e.g.” instead of “eg.” and single quote marks instead of double quote marks for everything;
- The word count, for which there is leeway of 10% variation, does not include:
- the title page;
- any quotes (Biblical or otherwise);
- any references (so take out all the Mark 1:1's and D.A. Carson et. al Introduction to the New Testament);
- the bibliography;
- the synopsis; and
- all footnotes (but it includes any comments made in the footnotes).
With the essay out of the way, I spent the rest of our holiday away reading, watching movies, knitting, going for the occasional (very occasional) walk and doing a lot of sleeping. It was divine. As Ben said, it was much like going monastic (without the self-denial and being single).
We arrived home this afternoon to find the Continuum 3 preliminary program in my inbox (some of the topics look rather amusing, e.g. “ Alien Sheep in Science Fiction. As presented by Bruce Gillespie and some friends who dobbed him in for this one ...” [I sincerely hope Murakami gets a mention], “Beat the crap out of someone ... What does a real fight with weapons and armour etc actually involve. Experts in the field take on each other in combat. *** dependent on a suitable venue being available” and “Do Vampires get rigor mortis? Forensics in SF, horror and fantasy”) as well as a letter from Australian Baptist World Aid telling me that the girl I sponsor in the Philippines has now graduated from the program and would I like to sponsor another little girl? I have stacks to say about this but I'll start a new post to do it.
Current:
Bible: Isaiah (ESV) 28/09/2010
seen: Tropic Thunder 26/09/2010
seen: The Life of Mammals 24/09/2010
seen: What a Girl Wants 19/09/2010
seen: Jerry Maguire 19/09/2010
seen: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 06/09/2010
seen: Tomorrow Never Dies 05/09/2010
seen: Nanny McPhee 28/08/2010
read: Mercury (Hope Larson) 27/08/2010
read: Spellcheckers Vol 1 (Jamie S Rich, Nicolas Hitori de, Joelle Jones) 16/08/2010
read: Solipsistic Pop Vol 2 (Solipsistic Pop) 16/08/2010
read: Chiggers (Hope Larson) 15/08/2010
seen: Josie and the Pussycats 14/08/2010
seen: Mr & Mrs Smith 14/08/2010
seen: Step Up 2 13/08/2010
Blinks:
How to recalibrate the home button on your iPhone.
Unsolicited manuscripts accepted by Pan Macmillan with certain conditions.
Thought Balloon is a group blog in which the writers tackle a new theme every week? month? with one-page scripts. This URL is for their Phonogram ones.
How to sew a zipper on a knitted garment.
Issues organised by tale.
Online magazine that publishes fairy tales that are not reworkings of old tales.
Journal that publishes fairy tale writing.
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Other comments
what software do you use for your essay writing? There’s probably some way of getting a word-count out of it that ignores everything that you need to ignore… some kind of macro or something, perhaps.
I dunno, that doesn’t sound very monastic at all too me. More delightfully self-indulgent, rather - as all breaks should be, of course.
Dave: I’m using Microsoft Word 2002 and if you could give me any pointers on some sort of macro to use, me and the rest of my Moore collegians would be so grateful!
Deb: I guess Ben was referring to “monastic” in the sense that we don’t have to see anyone from the outside world.
A friend was showing me her travel pics of Europe today and there were a couple of very nice-looking monasteries there. I thought it ironic that the monks, who practise asceticism and self-denial for spiritual growth, should surround themselves which such architectural beauty.
Probably more for the surrounding populous; such things were typical of church architecture, I think.
Would love to hear you blog about Law and Order
My sister loves that show, as do I but I don’t get to watch it as often as I used to (which is probably a good thing since its on at least three times in one week!).
Four times now - yippee!
The key is probably to use word-styles for the different parts of the essay; quotes would get their own style…
You could then make a copy of the whole document, paste it into a new document, and do a find-replace of anything that matches the styles that don’t matter to the word count… match ‘any character’, replace with nothing.
This lets you delete the things you don’t have to count, and then you can use the normal word-count feature on the new document.
That probably doesn’t make as much sense as I’d like it to… let me know.