a week in the life of an english major

foreign [Music] hi welcome to the week in the life of an english major i'm about to head out to class today is my first class of the week it's monday and my first class is renaissance literature where we will be starting this beastly boy the fairy queen have i done my readings i'm not gonna lie i have not i didn't have time because i was working on an assignment and then i was working on another essay and sometimes you just don't have time to read i'm gonna try and get there a little bit early read the section before class today we're just talking about book one and i need to go so let's go [Music] all right so the first hour is done i'm on break i literally just wrote a test last week for this class but we already went over one for next week it's a very nice october day and i'm gonna go sit on a pile of logs there it is i'm gonna sit right here [Music] the crying a little bit [Music] all right i just got in from class it's very windy and cold um but it's that kind of monday where it kicks you in the face and makes you realize just exactly how much work you have so i actually have a lot of things to do so first things first we're going to create a to-do list because um i just all of a sudden feel like i have so many assignments readings essays tests um that's a bit it's a bit crazy [Music] all right so first thing i have to do is read the whole book uh the whole book one of the fairy queen which i said that i basically hadn't really got on with i got a little bit of the way through before class but what i'm gonna do is split it up because it is actually quite long especially because it's in these really long pages so it's about 153 pages so i'm gonna split this up over the next week or so since we have a test on it on monday among other things so i'm gonna read 20 pages of this a day i also have another assignment where i'm supposed to keep track of these four words um to study them over history to write down every time they come up and basically just to see like what their meaning is how their meaning changes how that relates to the context of the work and you can bet animal beast and creature have already come up so many times in here so i'm gonna have to kind of go back to the start um and pick it up from there and then start that assignment so that is the first thing this week is also the perfect stressful week because i have to pick my essay topics for both of my classes and one of them i started to devise last night i also have to get the professor's permission to do it since like it's your own essay topic so i'm going to go in early on wednesday and talk to them about it and hopefully get it cleared i'm sure it will be what i want to do is talk about utopian literature as restoring the body of animals both in like the sense of language and a metaphorical sense of restoring the body of an animal but also in the way that for example in utopia there is a lot of hesitation even towards eating animals which is really interesting especially during that time period and then what i want to do is kind of compare that to like courtly love poems love sonnets because they use animals so much they basically just kind of mutilate animals bodies and take out whatever metaphor they want from it to place onto other people usually women and just see like what's going on there which is really interesting and i know there's a lot there's like some work done on animals in the renaissance so what i want to do is look at different works of like utopian literature we studied utopia by thomas more in class but there's also other ones like the happy city which is a piece of italian renaissance utopian literature um and a couple other ones which i do need to read and see if they mention animals at all and also how animals are used to like construct our identity like metaphorically but also literally when they are consumed by humans so and then i still have literally no idea what i want to do for my other course so we gotta figure that out i think literally by tonight oh all right so i just finished reading my 22 pages of the fair queen and there were already so many different mentions of the word creature actually was the only word it came up like four times so i'll also make a note of that for a separate assignment and analyze that um at the moment i think i'm gonna turn to reading paradise lost this is for my class tomorrow so i'm gonna read 10 pages of it maybe a little bit more we're only reading book nine right now with paradise lost um and for the furry queen we're also only reading book one we're definitely not reading both of these big epics actually but it's really hard trying to read two epics at the same time but i thought that i should maybe just give you guys a little idea of what the fairy queen or paradise lost what they're about to give you a little flavor of what we are actually reading in english classes so the fairy queen is split into six books and essentially this huge epic by edmund spencer focuses on different nights six different nights and their quest so for example in book one we follow the red cross knights and his virtue that he's trying to achieve um and embody is holiness or faithfulness there are other knights who are trying to embody other virtues like temperance basically this is just a wild ride very heavily influenced by virgil and avid there are a lot of weird wacky things we're in fairyland as well which is this like weird space where you're never sure where you are it's kind of like a dreamscape and things just happen um for example our red cross knight just got into a battle with error error personified um which was a snake woman who throws up other little snakes and it's just insane stuff like that i love talking about the fairy queen in class like i really really love the lectures however the process of actually reading this thick boy is not really enjoyable he employs a very archaic english which i don't love having to deal with if i'm being honest so probably not something i'm going to choose to use in my essay that i was talking about but i do really love studying it because just like those weird things like this woman vomiting toads i'm so into and then paradise lost as you can imagine like having another foot in another epic this is by john milton and this is basically just the bible or bible fan fiction if you will so book nine is about i believe um eve and adam so paradise lost goes over everything from satan's fall from heaven to humanity's fall um and it's just really really wonderful i much prefer reading paradise lost i'm gonna sit down release 10 pages and then i think we're gonna have to figure out and cement my essay for wednesday like my proposal [Music] me so that's right [Music] [Music] okay good morning welcome to tuesday it's almost 10 o'clock um i got up early this morning i read my paradise lost and now i'm going to do some essay research because i might i'm going to try to go to the library either today or thursday to pick up some books and stuff like that for my essay some research so i'm going to see what i can find now through some databases like secondary sources articles on animals in the renaissance um specifically like in utopian literature and in like court sonnet literature i guess poems so that's what we're about to do just a morning of research [Music] [Music] so the essay one of the essays that um i want to read are ways this whole book i don't know it's called the renaissance transformation of animal meaning um because i think a lot of like our like the symbolism of animals the metaphors they're now used for the connotations um we attach to you know animals like snakes or pigs and stuff myuni doesn't have a copy of this book or essay and so i'm literally gonna put in a request for it to get shipped to my university from another ontario university you do what you gotta do but then i can go pick it up for my library so that is what i did i am super tired of doing research so i made myself a smoothie for breakfast and yeah i thought i could i don't know maybe i could talk a little bit i find it really interesting how different every single english class is but especially the way that um like the differences in these two essays are and it's just cool how you have to kind of learn how to adapt with like your writing your research your technique or whatever to what specifically they're asking of you because both classes and professors are asking very different things for two english essays before the renaissance one that this is the one i've been researching all morning that i'm trying to write about utopian literature animals animals in use in metaphor in the renaissance versus like real animals in utopian societies because there's a lot of utopian renaissance literature but for this one and this class the renaissance class it is so focused on history it is all focused on the renaissance so that makes sense but it is super super focused on like historical context um very very much so and for this essay like he really wants us to engage with secondary sources and scholarly articles and like really make sure to have that um scholarship in your essay and like to argue against or for and to really interact with people who have done essays and written stuff about the topic that you're writing about before to include them um and just to interact with them in your arguments whereas in my other course which is just about crisis now literature of crisis um and trauma and stuff like that he's like please absolutely hardly use any secondary sources which is actually a challenge for me um and that class like that essay he just wants your own thoughts completely which is a bit daunting because the literature of crisis class is a bit more it's just more abstract it's so interesting to me but it's a lot harder for me to write an essay i think where like it's just me and this idea where i have to pick one work that we've studied whereas in the renaissance course you can pick whatever one it doesn't have to be anything you study at all you can pick absolutely anything to do your essay on and of course like i am picking a few that we've studied but in this crisis class you just pick the one work that we've looked at in class and then just talk about something with that one work with no scholarship with no secondary sources just you and your own ideas and unraveling them and to me it's just a bit more like kind of floating um and i don't have a concrete idea of what i want to talk about yet i think i would like to do an essay on paradise lost which i'm also currently reading so that's nice but i literally have no idea what i'm gonna talk about in paradise lost um what idea i'm gonna try to flush out yeah it's just really really two different approaches which is cool it makes you learn a lot it makes you work in different ways which i find very like a very important skill to be able to adapt anyway i am totally done researching my eyes are very tired from reading so many different things but i did find a couple of books and essays actually i think i found three that we're gonna try and get today my university has so many different libraries but these three are all at one library so we're gonna go there either before or after class i haven't really decided yet and i'll get to take you guys to the library today so it's gonna be a good day so yeah the library's under construction i'm about to climb 10 million flights of stairs [Music] [Music] okay i'm just gonna keep going up levels [Music] [Music] [Music] hey buddy what are you jumping on what are you doing what are you guys doing [Music] all right hi i'm back from class and you know what that means more reading [Music] [Music] [Music] so it's now 9 30. i am exhausted but i actually ended up reading way more of the fairy queen tonight than i was anticipating because the prof posted some discussion questions for tomorrow's class since this class is more of a like seminar discussion um very like participation heavy and the questions he posted that i should be like come to class with prepared and ready to talk and answer um were questions that were like much further ahead in the text than i was so i had to read so so much more so i'm actually now on kanto six of the fairy queen um of book one which is halfway through book one which is actually quite far so i also managed to get done my essay proposal for tomorrow so i'm going to go in again early tomorrow and talk to him and just get that cemented and then i will also make a visit to a different library which will be fun so i will see you guys tomorrow good morning welcome to today um i am just sit down and do even more reading of the fairy queen which is now the vein of my existence at this point um it's actually really good it is actually really good it just takes a while to read and it did actually provide me some ideas for my essay on the place of animals and utopian literature versus renaissance literature in general but right after i finish a bit more reading i really just realized that i need to get my other essay together because i don't even have like my thesis or really any idea yet what i wanted to be on and i realized my second essay is due a lot earlier than my renaissance essays that's what we're gonna do after i finish reading is literally just sit down and pick like what i'm gonna be writing on so yeah and you guys saw last night i did get a new laptop my laptop came in the mail last night um i got the air the macbook air um i've been contemplating getting a new laptop for a while mine broke like it stopped working the battery died and it was having some other problems so i think what i'm gonna do is we're gonna replace the battery in that one and i'm gonna give my old macbook pro to my mom so i just decided to get a new one and bite the bullet i didn't really want to but it is extremely useful to have at school obviously i can't bring my pc with me to class and i don't really use my laptop in class i more use it on breaks and stuff like that when i'm writing my essay when i'm doing essay research and this will just be really really nice to take to cafes and stuff like that so i made my background dark green but we're going to change that this is what i'm going to use to write my essay on and yeah it has like that new capitalist smell you know now i'm going to sit down with paradise lost scour book nine because i think paradise lost is what i want to write my uh oh my god what is this class crisis uh essay on so yeah okay just staring at this cover of paradise lost and i realized this platypus looking thing is reading a book in like the water what sir what are you doing what is that cover is wild okay so i think actually what i've decided to do for paradise lost is to write it on one of the essay questions which i hardly ever do but one of them is about lacall who is a very famous i would say like a psychoanalyst and he writes a bunch of stuff but he writes that desire is the desire of the other um which means that your individual desires what you want what you want out of life they never come from within you they're always exterior to you they always belong to someone else before they ever belong to you um which means that you're never in control of what you desire which is scary according to la calm this essay question is just examine the logic and economy of desire in one text we have studied um paying careful attention to the colin's idea that desire is always exterior to the desiring self and obviously in paradise lost book nine there's so much about like what eve wants what satan wants what adam wants um and the whole like leading up to eve eating the fruit from the tree um there's just so many scenes of like desire of what she wants of what satan wants to get out of it so i think that's what i'm gonna do i'm just gonna pick that essay question because it seems pretty applicable to me it's a book nine of paradise lost so this one's gonna take a lot of work because i've written essays with lacau in it before based on a lot or some stuff that lacal has said and he's quite he can be quite difficult at times to um read that's what we're gonna do it's cemented that's good it's 11 15 so i'm gonna have to leave in a little bit but until then i think i'm gonna get together my bibliography for my renaissance essay since that's actually due next week so today's a this is a busy week this is a busy busy week these are so funny to me this this essay is called the milton knox directly underneath it is one called milton did not not a response to that author oh my gosh it's like youtube drama video alright so we're heading out in a few minutes stop number one is to a different library today to pick up one book and then the next stop after that is my professor's office hours to get my essay proposal and thesis approved and then the next stop after that is my renaissance class itself so yes another busy day um i currently there's pasta going on the stove my roommate's making pasta i think i'm gonna miss it i'm so sad because i think the bus is coming but anyway i'm gonna maybe bring a snack or buy something there so let's go find some books [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay we are off now to office hours every single place i go is a big trick so i just got back from office hours my proposal wasn't necessarily rejected but he said to move it on to next semester's essay and combine it with one of my assignments that i'm doing about animals so i was like okay i'll do that and it'll be this big huge essay about animals um which doesn't make the research i've done so far meaningless it just means i can't use it right now someone sedate me now i need to find a new essay topic it might be on the fairy queen it might be on the fairy queen i have class in about 20 minutes so i'm gonna eat a few clementines [Music] thank you i'm so good dude yeah oh my god this is bomb i've been dreaming about coming home to this pasta all day it kept me alive so i am back from class now and i've actually been doing more research on a new topic for my essay which is completely fine because i think it actually works out better this way so i was going through the fairy queen like today right before class and i was like what could i write on and i think i actually want to discuss motherhood in book one of the fairy queen the way that it's treated the way that it's looked at and i think the negative way that it's viewed actually because there's a lot of different mothers in book one of the fairy queen and a lot of them are either like explicit deadly sins or monsters or just like really nasty images of motherhood and i think i want to look at how that relates to queen elizabeth as like the virgin mother um the virgin queen or the mother of england as well because she never married she never had children i kind of want to see what is going on like why are there so many images of both women's well i mean i guess that's kind of obvious that motherhood and woman's reproductive um sphere in general looking at quite a monstrous shoe in the very queen so i think that's really interesting too and i guess that was kind of a good thing so i'm excited about that but i also met a subscriber today on campus it was just the loveliest thing ever like it made my day sophie if you are watching this thank you so much for coming up to me and saying hi like it just made my whole gosh darn day and that was the first time i got to talk to one of you guys in person so that was really really nice um so it's almost 5 30. i think i want to have a shower and just wash today off of me then i'm going to read a little bit of paradise lost i also want to go on a walk tonight just to take some time for myself i love to paint my nails do some gel nails and then also read some of paradise lost for tomorrow as well as kind of start cementing my this essay proposal the new one um and see how that goes so that's the plan i also have a lot of reading to do and there's also a lot of like other reading i want to do in general so kind of tight on time but we'll see what happens good morning welcome to another day it's actually now the weekend because i got so busy over the last couple of days but essentially um what i have on the docket today is reading more of the fairy queen um i read 22 pages already this morning but i need to read a lot more because i think i've mentioned that i have a test on monday and for that i need to have read the whole of the fairy queen so i have i don't know how much longer i have but definitely have a long way and then as you can see i've been keeping track in green of my word tracking assignment that i also hope to turn into an essay so anytime there's a mention of the words animal beast brute or creature um i keep track of that i see like what contacts are being used in blah blah and then in blue i have started tabbing some uh oh not that one and blue is the parts for my essay on um motherhood in the fairy queen and what's going on and there's been a lot of really disturbing parts especially involving like people who are mothers but as well like women's anatomy um and the anatomy of like motherhood essentially and the representation of that and what is going on like it's so disturbing so yeah i'm very happy that essay topic got approved i don't know if i mentioned that um and i'm actually really really excited really looking forward to it as well as revise everything we've covered from the last test up until the second test because this is already our second test um last test was to write an essay along with some short answers and this one is more about the fairy queen i believe and writing like probably mini essays on it and stuff so i need to finish fairy queen review it um and then go through all the material that we've covered but um as for the essay focus i really need to work on my paradise lost essay which i've devised a whole new topic for which i can't remember if i actually talked about so that's what we're going to be doing today and i guess i'll take you through it [Music] huh [Music] i also had a very exciting delivery today because a swedish company that does wireless headphones and earbuds and stuff like that reached out to me and sent me a pair of theirs which is so exciting so i got the very nice beautiful pink um these are called the air one zen and i've already been using them and they are amazing honestly so i always get really self-conscious like on the bus thinking that people can hear my music when i'm playing it but thankfully these ones like i blasted the music almost all the way up to full volume and there's like nothing so that's amazing so so i will leave a link and also a discount code down below if you're interested but thank you so much these are from happy plugs if i didn't already say that so thank you so much these are so cute as well [Music] [Music] okay hi guys so it's a little bit later in the day i changed into even warmer clothes because it is actually so cold like i'm freezing and i can't get warm um so oh i have just not been feeling any motivation today to study at all to do anything to work on my essays to do anything productive at all so um to get my butt into action i just tried to create a very nice desk space i put on like three asmr rooms there's like a halloween lo-fi playlist a rainy library atmosphere and the great hall from harry potter and i also made myself some english breakfast tea to hopefully warm me up um because i wasn't in the mood to make more coffee shocking and i also have some strawberries here so i think what i'm gonna do this is like the coziest little setup i have like a candle burning and i'm just really loving it i'm gonna really quickly decorate my room with some postcards and stickers and other stuff that you guys sent me um that i opened in probably my last reading blog if it's up and then i'm gonna finish reading through paradise lost this is just really like this is what's making me not motivated because i would rather work on my fairy queen essay because i feel like i have a more concrete idea what i'm doing in that but in paradise lost i kind of don't yet which we'll talk about when i'm done decorating and that's kind of why like just the process of figuring out like how you want to talk about something what you want to talk about for me i find the most the most frustrating and the hardest so anyway we're going to take a nice little break decorate it in here a little bit with some stickers and postcards and then we're going to get down to work [Music] so [Music] [Music] do [Music] so [Music] okay so i just finished finally going through um and pulling out all the quotes that i think i need or will possibly use in my essay which is what i like to do first um and as well i completed the paradise lost book readings for in class since we only had to read book nine um but i ended up reading a lot more than book nine for the essay i dipped from like book four all the way a little bit into book ten so that was actually quite a lot um but i have my material now i feel a lot better because basically what i want this essay to talk about is eve's identity i want to do the identity question which was an option to talk about some facet of human identity in a text um and i wanted to kind of argue and look at how eve's identity is pretty much indistinguishable from the garden itself and from the plants and flora and fauna and all of that stuff like um the way she's described the way that she thinks of herself she really has no conception of who she is and so much of the reason that she eats the fruit is because she wants to know she wants that knowledge she wants to know who she is um and she doesn't feel herself equal to adam at all it's actually really sad when you read this one part and you're like oh that is so so sad she eats and then she says this will be the more to draw his love and render me more equal and perhaps a thing not undesirable sometimes superior for inferior who is free so that's pretty much all she knows about herself is that she's just kind of under the subjugation of adam who's under the subjugation of god so it's just this like double layer of suggest subjection um and when she first comes into paradise like she can't even distinguish herself from um the water like she looks into a pond and sees her own reflection and doesn't realize that it's herself she thinks it's another being um and throughout the whole thing she is just so tied to the plants and the garden the physical garden itself um and i'm going to argue that like satan uses that to convince her to eat the tree because the language that he uses to talk about her he then transfers onto the tree which she identifies with and begins to identify as part of herself and how is it you know a sin to partake in yourself i guess so yeah i'm done that reading thankfully and now i want to take a break i'm tired i think what i'm gonna do is switch it up and start studying for my test on monday since i only have today and tomorrow to study for it i'm not too worried about that really because the first test i think went really well so i know what to expect too but that's what we're gonna do [Music] can we all start using the word uglsum again can we please [Music] okay well me and the crows uh the crows and i thank you very much for watching it's now been one full week in the uni life english life and i am about to head out to class to write the tests that i spent all weekend studying for so yeah i hope you found this entertaining or informative or something like that um if you'd like to see more of these i don't know english major life studying academic stuff videos please let me know because this honestly gave me a lot of motivation to do my work i'm about to head out into the rainstorm to go write the test on the fairy queen and then when i come back get started on all the rest so i might start another vlog right after maybe not but regardless if you have any questions please leave them down below and thank you so much for watching i hope you're doing super duper duper well and i will see you very soon so ciao [Music] you

Channel: * e m m i e *

Views: 81,097

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Id: MeG1vKgOLVU

Length: 42min 20sec (2540 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 21 2021