Procrastination times ten

It's 3 AM and I have an assignment due in my Accounting class tomorrow, so of course this seems like the perfect opportunity for procastination to update my blog. I'm taking four classes this quarter, which is more than the three recommended due to the fact that quarters are only 10 weeks long and much faster-paced than semesters. But, since I found myself with way too much free time on my hands during the fall quarter, I decided to throw caution to the wind and not only take four courses, but also select two of the most difficult courses available in the English department: Critical Theory and Canterbury Tales (all of which is read in the original Middle English). Hopefully this little experiment doesn't go too awry and I'm not headed for a major meltdown. So far, I've been handling it pretty well. I'm mostly attributing this to the fact that I'm used to taking a full load of classes while working at least part-time, if not full-time, and leading or participating in various clubs and volunteer efforts. There's nothing like attending community college while working to support yourself to give you an insane inferiority complex that causes you to severely overcompensate. In other words, even taking more than the recommended amount of classes in a fast-paced quarter system feels like a freaking vacation every single day.

I'm pretty confident that I aced my first quiz on translating Middle English in my Canterbury Tales class, today. I was somewhat intimidated when I first signed up for the class, and even more so when I arrived to the first class session to find that my professor was an Oxford-educated medievalist who seemed to have some sort of hyperactive attention deficit disorder that caused him to be easily distracted by so much as a cricket chirping outside of the window. Mostly, I was worried that reading Middle English would be like learning an entirely new language, and that I would end up struggling desperately to keep up. However, I found reading Chaucer in the original Middle English pretty fascinating, and dare I say... fun? Yes I know, groan and roll your eyes at me if you so choose. I happen to really enjoy learning different languages for whatever reason, and since Middle English is somewhat related to French, I suppose I have had a bit of an unfair advantage. Mind you, my spoken French is pretty mediocre, but I'm fairly fluent in written French. And what good does it do anyone to be good at reading a language, but not at speaking it, except in the rare case that one might take a Canterbury Tales class?

The Ellesmere Manuscript, one of the most famous copies of Canterbury Tales in existence, at the Huntington Library in Pasadena, Feb. 2012

 

	Whan that Aprill, with hise shoures soote, The droghte of March hath perced to the roote And bathed every veyne in swich licour, Of which vertu engendered is the flour; Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne, And smale foweles maken melodye. That slepen al the nyghte with open eye- (So priketh hem Nature in hir corages); Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgramages And Palmeres for to seken straunge strondes To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes; And specially from every shires ende Of Engelond, to Canterbury they wende, The hooly blisful martir for to seke, That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.