"and they think they are free to overlook this sadness"

Some part of me still isn't sure that I'm really in school again. The result of this is that the work I'm supposed to do for my classes seems at best random and unimportant and at worst (worst for my getting it done and doing a good job, that is) random and optional. I'm also wishing that each prof's standards for good academic work were more clearly articulated. I think people take it for granted that their own intuitive sense of what a work of criticism should do is universally understood and shared--I can be guilty of that at times myself. But as far as I can tell the answer to these questions is pretty much up for grabs; the few people who have the patience to really consider them don't agree. When I use my own most natural approach, I know what I'm trying to accomplish, but if I'm going to try to meet other people's standards I'd like to know what they think is the point of the whole enterprise. And I would not like to suspect that they're not sure what the point is, or if it even has one. Or that they think it's okay not to ask themselves these questions.

So with way too little time left in the day, I'm putting together my presentation on Wordsworth's guidebook, highlights of which include a multi-page rant against the larch. If only we had travel grants here, I would so be all over a killer Lake District proposal. I really want to go ramble around the lakes.

Party report: people sat on my couch (and admired your craftsmanship, Gillmar!) so that was nice. But it wasn't one of my best hosting efforts. Sometimes I can feel a party getting away from me; I start to lose faith that it will be transcendently fun, and once that faith is lost, I'm just going through the motions. The landlord/housemates' friends were nice but they are *all* married, and there's something about sitting on a couch next to a primly knee-touching couple that is just not as good a time as a roomful of free agents.

Things I appreciated today: the gym, my apartment, Trader Joe and his low-priced avocados, rain, and my local coffee shop (meaning the one 45 seconds from my house, rather than the 10 or so within a five-minute radius) at which I'm becoming a regular and getting to know the main barista (who used to live in Cambridge), the owner, and the owner's huge, 3-legged, dreadlocked sheepdog. It's a funny place; they don't have drip coffee (they have to make a whole French press for you, which I never have time to wait for in the morning), and I once ordered a cup of tea there and it took the barista literally ten minutes to make it, but that's all part of the homey charm.