Midterms, Fall 2005
Midterms have come and gone, and I am left in the eye of the hurricane that is a semester in graduate school. The classical Japanese midterm that haunted my dreams with feverish visions of maddening ambiguity is now in my past. It felt easier than I expected it to, but this could indeed be because I was so drastically under-prepared that I knew so little as to be that unable to gauge my own performance.
I swear on my mother’s bible’s grave that this is not humility or self-deprecation. Classical Japanese grammar is that hard.
That said, I do enjoy it.
The linguistics take-home midterm was not particularly difficult, but perhaps in response to my facility with its questions, the content of the class itself has upped the ante significantly. “I’ll see your understanding of morphology,” it said with a sneer, “and raise you the syntax of causatives.” Turns out causatives in Japans are pretty subtle. Crawling ninja-like through the Japanese grammar, sometimes they are merely indirect, and others they are adversative, and how are the two forms related? Subtlely.
Meanwhile, I can dial 611 for the latest information on fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Rumor has it I’ll be writing a 15-page paper on poetic honesty, Jikkan, and Yosano Akiko, while simultaneously translating passages from Mushanokoji Saneatsu’s “Yuujou” and Natsume Soseki’s “Sorekara.” While riding a unicycle, on a tightrope stretched across Vallis Marineris.
Ladies and Gentlemen, it is on.