Horrible day

Awful day.

Comps sucked beyond telling (but of course, I will try anyway).

I didn't know any of the professors, so there wasn't a nice good credit thing, where they knew something like, "Oh, Oyce. Yeah, she writes good papers, has a pretty solid grasp." So I felt like there was just no leeway given at all. Then, seriously, I think no amount of studying would have really helped. The questions started out as extremely broad, then each professor would just completely pick at everything. Um, how am I supposed to know when Japanese prostitution became outlawed? The one professor who didn't seem out to get me was half an hour late (comps are an hour), and the other two just seemed like bitches. Even though they're guys. The Chinese lit. one didn't fricking ask me about Chinese lit!! The hell?! No, instead he wanted me to compare Chinese poetry of the Tang Dynasty (which I DO know about) to Japanese waka (which I DON'T know about and told him multiple times previously that I hadn't taken any Japanese literature courses). Hate him so much. So I just got increasingly flustered and scared as they kept gunning at me, and in the end, one of the scary ones asked me a question, I gave the answer that I had gotten in another class, he brushed it off and told me to have another answer. Well, I couldn't think of one so there was complete silence for a few minutes. Felt like forever before the kind of nice professor finally said something like, maybe we should move on.

I don't know. I just felt so screwed over because I've never taken a class with any of these professors. They don't know me. Obviously, from yesterday's wonderful email, they don't seem to care that much about my comps. I felt like they were extremely annoyed to be there at nine in the morning and just hated me or something because my area of expertise wasn't there's. Sorry if the stupid department doesn't have comps in the area of modern Japanese popular culture. Sheesh. Then they were just mean. It was totally different from thesis defense. It seemed as though they weren't there to see if I had a good overview of trends in these things. Chinese lit. guy just kept picking at the weirdest points that made no sense to me -- wanted me to "prove" that nanshoku/male-male love was in existence in Tokugawa Japan instead of just literature. I was just like, huh? Beats me. That's what all the criticism says. Did he somehow expect me to pull out Tokugawa law about this or something? Just, so many stupid nit-picky questions disguised as "broad." And all the nice professors that I do know (and like me) are on leave or left for another university!! The hell? Versus the Chinese side, which is stock full. And it was like they weren't even listening to me. Like they just wanted a single, good answer, bam, and either you're right or you're wrong. Either that, or they would pick holes in everything which of course I couldn't counter because they were the experts and I've only taken a few courses on this.

Then, to top things off, I went back to bed and tried very hard not to think about it. Then I get a message from a friend that my roommate had called to say that I'd just missed thesis defense. Yup. Apparently the thesis defense that I thought was tomorrow at 10 was today. I am an idiot. The stupid thing was, I didn't even sleep through it or anything. Nope. Instead, I misread the comps/defense schedule at least ten times, walked right past my thesis defense room as soon as comps finished and went to bed. I called the dept. secretary and it was rescheduled to two today.

I think my sensei was kind of annoyed. Luckily, I know him and have been taking Japanese for four years now with him and other teachers and they all like me. And I'm usually very punctual for class and do my work, so he knew this was an oddity. And I feel my thesis advisor likes me and understands too. I bet if I had done this with comps, they just would have cut my head off or something. After apologizing profusely for my profound stupidity, I did thesis defense. Which, luckily wasn't that difficult, because I was going to study and practice Japanese (ten minutes of it is in Japanese) today. Ugh.

Thankfully, the thesis has actually been about 5 years in the making, ever since I really got interested in anime and manga, and I think I've at least thought about most things. Also, neither professor specializes in manga or has actually read the criticism, so I was the expert there. That was nice. And mostly they talked and asked me good questions that were pretty easy because I realized I had thought of most of them before. And the entire atmosphere was different. I felt like they were there not to attack my thesis and rip it to shreds, but just to figure out why I did some things in there, to point out things I might have missed. It felt like constructive criticism as opposed to being flamed. And apparently, I can still speak Japanese. Had a few problems with conjugations that I had briefly forgotten, but it's nice to know that one semester of not speaking the language does not negate the other three and a half years of classes.

And now, I will go to work, watch the Matrix, then go to AMC and watch Matrix Reloaded. At least there's a happy end to today.