Anyway...how's my life been going? Okay, although it looks to be getting busier this coming week, with a first quiz and, yes, another layout assignment (hopefully one which won't take forever to finish like the assignments I had in Editing & Layout last semester).
Good news on the senior thesis front: I finally put together a decent outline for the project off of which to work. Hopefully I can get started writing soon. My thesis adviser alerted me to this fascinating book by Robert Stam entitled Reflexivity in Film and Literature
which is all about the ways some novels and films---Tristram Shandy
or Don Quixote being examples of the former, nearly any Jean-Luc Godard film (thus my personal interest in it) or Fellini's 8 1/2 examples of the latter---flaunt their own, uh, novel- or movie-ness in trying to expose the inherent artificiality of fiction, get us to think about our reactions to them, and---in typical scholarly terms---"lay bare the device." It's been very instrumental in giving me a focus point for my thesis, which in part examines reflexivity in terms of the cinema of both Godard and Quentin Tarantino, and what each filmmaker's version of reflexivity means to both. I hope to get started actually writing the damn thing soon---kinda have to, since it's due by the end of the semester! (I don't expect mine to be too lengthy: the Livingston College Honors Program minimum is 25 pages, and that's what I've been instructed by my thesis adviser to shoot for.)It might be hard to get started right away, considering I'm in the midst of working on a rather hefty feature story for my Desktop Publishing class. My Desktop Publishing class is in charge of putting together AlumKnights, the journalism and media studies department alumni newsletter, and I---perhaps stupidly, in hindsight---decided to tackle probably the most involved story assignment offered by the professor: I have to interview about four or five Rutgers alums who are currently working at the Wall Street Journal and put all their information together into one big story. Most other students only need to make contact with one or two people for their stories; not me. Aren't I lucky? Anyway, I think I've made decent progress so far: I was able to interview two people so far (both were very nice to me in addition to sounding fairly attractive over the phone---yes, I'm talking about females, not males), got in contact with two others (one of whom I'm not sure I'm going to interview anyway, since I'd say four people is enough for any story), and still need to track down one more. This is due in about two weeks, so I can't really afford to slack off. (Of course, this is probably going to cut down a little bit on my ability to make serious headway on my thesis in time for my next scheduled meeting with my adviser in two weeks...)
Not much else really. I'm probably going to try like heck to get stuff done early next week just so I can settle in on Valentine's Day with my great love: movies! How about a romantic Wong Kar-Wai/Hou Hsiao-hsien double bill? Chungking Express
followed by Three Times? Two excellent films, both on the subject of love. Hey, I think it's worth waiting for, don't you?
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