"Are you in turmoil? Yes, well, good."

Can you tell that I'm in the midst of my course?  Sounds like I've gone off the deep end a bit, but apparently according to my advisor I'm right where I'm supposed to be.  The above is a quote from him which was followed by "I would be worried if you had it all figured out."  Then later today he asked me if I was at all where I thought I would be when I began this course.  My response was a definite no.  His next question, "Are you okay with that?"  Am I okay with that?  My whole concept of what I had imagined my life would be for the next year has been totally disrupted.  I'm writing outlines for papers examining contemporary archaeology (a discipline that even some archaeologists aren't sure exists).  Am I okay with that?  How do I feel?  Uhhh... I'm not quite sure.  Some evenings after classes are over I walk home on "Cloud Nine" reveling in the excitement of all this uncertainty.  And other nights well lets just say I lay awake wondering what the heck I'm doing.  An earlier post this month was titled "What is Archaeology?".  I wish I could say that after several weeks of crash courses in archaeology I know, but I seriously still have no earthly idea.  I feel a bit like my computer when its trying to load a complex web page (my internet connection is super slow in my flat).  My brain, aka server, is whirling the information around attempting to load, but in the end I just get a message "webpage unavailable because server is not responding."  

In the midst of it all I am adding some awesome random trivia to my mind. Ah ha, maybe the purpose of reading an MA in HistArch is to prepare me to win big on Jeopardy! [smile] Here's a look at what my new collection of wisdom includes:  

• "Little Jack Horner" (you know from the nursery rhyme) was a real person.
• The word "instead" is derived from Old English words that essentially meant house-stead or church-stead.  "-stead" literally means a place where something is and usually had the connotation of being the word to describe where something once was hence "instead" means in place of.  (I have to say after our lecture on Old English derivations of place names I totally want to learn to speak and read Old English.  Our lecturer read some passages in it and I found it quite lyrical... maybe my next adventure.)
• The Inca used the monthly cycle of women set apart as the Sun God's Sacred Virgins as one method of marking time.  
• Georgian English nobility built medieval ruins on their estates to proclaim their wealth and elite status.  (Kinda reminds me of my senior thesis on the use of Gothic architecture in American universities.)

Before I close I do want to say in full disclosure I'm entering my crazy busy time in the academic session and hopefully most of my writing in November will be toward essays.  I'll try to keep fairly up to day on my blog, but as sort of a concession to myself I'm making no promises about regular posts.  Because of this I've decided to add the option of RSS feed to my blog so that any "dedicated readers" out there in cyberspace won't be burdened with having to visit my site without the promise of a new post.  

Just, Margaret