End-of-year meme

First seen at Nimue's, a reward for writing five! Five rambling pages! (and baking a large batch of peanut butter cookies, but never mind):

1. Harken back to your archives.
2. Collect the first sentence you wrote every month for the whole year.
3. Entertain us.

January: I've primarily started this blog to comment on other people's - but we'll see whether it leads anywhere. (Ergh, where has it led? Not sure...)

February: "What Derrida is really trying to get at here" = "What I, as confused grad student, am going to summarize as the meaning of this work" (said repeatedly in seminar this afternoon, not by me) (Oh, that class ended up being quite good, plus being taught by great post-doc.)

March: You'll notice there's a great big empty spot in the middle of the country. (Insert joke here.)

April: My house internet was reconnected yesterday, which I admit somewhat threw me for a loop: I had gotten somewhat used to carefully planning out computer time on campus, double-checking that I had written all necessary emails before returning home each day, etc. (boring)

May: Harvard Magazine has an astonishing interview with two former members of the Harvard Corporation, the seven-member self-perpetuating governing board that, "structurally and by custom," oversees all major decisions at the university. (I still encourage everyone to read this article, which is both illuminating and sickening.)

June: It's hard to say... (In answer to the question "Am I on vacation?")

July: My sister's blog is here. (Not anymore, actually. But she's coming back from China in a couple of weeks!)

August: I haven't decided to live at the beach, as one commenter suggested, although North Carolina provided some solid reasons to stay there... (Still feel this way. Maybe will go back this summer! Ah, summer.)

September: Twenty minutes into our last training session this morning, our program director announces that we are expected to spend 45 minutes in class the first week of classes administering a diagnostic essay to our students. (Ah, the self-righteous fury of the insecure first-time writing teacher. Not that I was wrong, mind you.)

October: Easing back into the whole blogging thing with some observations about a talk I attended today, part of an on-campus lecture series whose participants have more or less free rein as to topic, as long as the talk takes about an hour. (Yup. Those talks have been surprisingly entertaining this semester, with the exception of the one I wrote about in this post.)

November: My landlords are indeed buying the house next door. (And the sale goes through this Friday!)

December: My party is *swinging*. (Dude. What more is there to say? Let the party continue.)