Grad School

I have negative time to post about Penn/grad school/Philly because I'm already behind on the reading schedule I've set up for myself. But I will fill in with a few details until I can devote a really awesome post (sometime. eventually. probably by the time I graduate).

I've been here exactly a week. My apartment is fantastic, very cozy, I'm finally unpacked and will post pictures once I've actually taken some. I currently do not have internet which is a long and vexing situation that better be fixed by Thursday. so I am utilizing both the library's WiFi and someone's wireless in my building in the meantime. shhh.

My classes this semester are The Nature of Sex (feminist/gender/sexuality theory), 20th Century US History, and a foundations sort of course on theory and methods in history which I have for the whole year. Haven't been to the 20th Century one yet because its on Mondays so will check it out tomorrow. I'm really not quite sure what to make of things yet. The reading is daunting but it seems like that is all I will be doing. The Nature of Sex class is heavy reading with only 2 3-page response papers and the foundations thing is like one big paper similar to my senior thesis and that 30-pager isn't due until April. Neither of those classes is straight up history, its all theory and analyzing frameworks and methods and things that I don't understand yet. We had to read a book for the first class for one of them and I seriously could not understand what people were saying in discussion. People name drop historians and Diderot and talk about deconstruction and basically make me wonder at what point in my academic career I was supposed to have picked up on a lot of this. I'm really ready for the adjustment period to be over as quickly as possible so I can be right along with everyone making interesting points.

ANYWAYS. The other first-years are very nice and I've made some friends. There was a history grad student happy hour on Friday so I ventured across town on the subway to Old City. It was nice getting to meet other people in the department and be more social with people that I do have classes with. Figured out the bus system to ride back because apparently its not safe to ride the subway alone at night. So that was fine. I hung out with CJ for a long while on Saturday night. He is just done with his first week in law school and seems to be doing fine and reading a lot, we caught up on the last 3 years since Hume pretty much and then went exploring my neighborhood. Ended up at The Greek Lady for dinner. Really good lamb gyro.
Then I went to a picnic today for the department as a back to school thing. Gorgeous weather, nice and sunny and got to meet even more people.

more on Penn and Philly to come....