On the last day of classes for the fall semester of my Master's degree program, having stayed up all night working on a paper and presentation for subjects in which I never thought I'd find myself involved, something in me switched on.

Over the course of the semester I've been growing more and more apprehensive about my decision to enroll in grad school. I spent half of the time wondering why I bothered with classes at all. It's not that I didn't feel engaged on a certain level with the material. I liked my classes, but consistently felt puzzled as to why I was spending so much time analyzing how a book was made 200 years ago, how tonal combinations indicate an opera character's motivations, what a young boy's experiences in Communist Ethiopia had to do with Canadian identity, and the syntagmatic paradigms of filmic narrative language.

This wasn't what I was expecting. Last fall I sat down in my apartment on O'Connor Street in Ottawa and wrote to organizations and universities about why they should accept me and pay me money to keep studying. I wouldn't set foot in a library for months to come, but I was able to articulate my ambitions based on lingering ideas left over from theses I wrote, arguments that were born from things I felt passionate about in everyday life. Literature. Canadian writing. Film. Multidisciplinary approaches to art and instruction.

Since my first year of University I had my heart and mind set on becoming a professor. It was my plan over the entirety of my undergraduate career, and it was derailed in the year I spent apart from a classroom. I lost the feeling in being away from it. I began to see the potential in other opportunities and even as I accepted U of T's offer and moved to Toronto to continue my education there was a part of me that doubted the direction I had established for myself. Most of the time I engaged only superficially with the material, rarely speaking in class, sharing only brief pleasantries with the people I began seeing on a regular basis because I knew that in a few months time I'd be back in Ottawa, working, doing something else unrelated to the realm of education. In the meantime I would repeatedly stress over what I was actually going to be able to accomplish once I'd achieved my degree and no longer had to think about it. I hadn't fully discounted the idea of going for my PhD, but with my interest in all things academia flagging I didn't see it as something I'd likely pursue in the near future.

This line of thinking led to a disappointment in myself that I didn't immediately recognize - I had decided on some level to abandon what I'd been working so hard at accomplishing for the past few years. My experiences at U of T existed as nothing more than formalities. More than that, they led to a doubt I began to foster in myself about my own abilities, thinking that everyone around me was far more brilliant, more self-assured, and more prepared to see their education through. Without realizing it, I lost faith in myself, and though I've been completing my assignments I haven't been expecting them to garner results that are of any importance to me.

Recently I made the decision to sit down and talk with two people about this problem while I still had the time and my status as one of their students. Last week I talked with George Elliott Clarke about all things CanLit, an opportunity I haven't taken with anyone since I started back at school. Today I sat down with Linda Hutcheon and told her that the Master's program really wasn't what I had been expecting. I told her that I had been a Canadianist and took her course because of the importance of her work in the field. For the first time all semester I was able to hear her talk about CanLit. I asked her about the ramifications of becoming a professor, and whether she had ever experienced doubts. She told me that she'd had doubts right up until she'd actually started the job, and that the job market for professors is going to be very lucrative over the next few years for those who are willing to go where the work takes them.

She assured me that I would get to make the most of my interests at the PhD level. I told her about the declaration of interest and thesis proposal I'd written to get funding for the program, and she told me to bring it in with me after the break so that we could talk about it, outside of the context of a classroom.

Now, I had a feeling she'd say these things. Professor Hutcheon has routinely been a nice woman and great teacher (and I hope this will translate to the pity she takes on the paper I polished off at 6:30 AM). But after I left the office, I had felt that things were different, that I was starting to make my experience at University something personal again. I had started reaffirming my faith in myself. For the first time in months I held the honest opinion that there are real, attainable possibilities in front of me rather than a smattering of vague interests I won't ultimately pursue. I still haven't decided about continuing grad school, but I'm now under the impression that if I ultimately do it won't be out of the desire to retreat to some old pattern of thinking from which I've been disconnected. I'll do it because I've rediscovered that I really want to.

Time will tell. Right now I feel as though I can do anything I set my mind to. I can go anywhere and do anything. It's going to make my next semester so much more rewarding. And when my time in Toronto comes to a close I know I'll have picked my next step carefully and correctly.

As I mentioned, today was the last day of classes. Paul and I knocked our editorial presentation out of the park during a four-hour Bibliography seminar. I spoke up at length in Opera class after a semester of relative silence. My group ended up with a split grade of A/A+ on our presentation. After the meeting with Professor Hutcheon, I returned some books and walked home from Keele station deep in thought.

Updated To-Do List:

Friday, December 14th: Final project - Touch of Evil
Friday, December 21st: Critical reflection paper - Bibliography
Monday, January 7th: Final research paper (max. 14 pages) - African-Canadian Lit

Christmas is only TWO WEEKS away. I need to get to a shopping mall.

Jay hung a picture of a kitten sitting beside a saxophone in the bathroom. Hmm.

Today was a pretty good one, lack of sleep aside. I powered through a Starbucks coffee as I waited for the final Touch of Evil class to start - I'm pretty much always the first to arrive because of my travel schedule. I got the laptop set up, and it didn't stutter at all during my presentation on my final project. It couldn't have gone better. I apologized for not filling the full 13 minutes I was allotted, but I was assured that it was okay. I think Professor Columpar really digs the idea because it conforms so closely to what she intended for the course as a whole. I got some feedback about putting the site live, which I'd like to do despite the trouble I'd probably get into with Universal (they wouldn't take kindly to me chopping up the movie like that for a non-paying audience to see).

After class I had lunch with Tony and Eileen. I'll miss that about the semester. They're my outlets for getting out concerns about my potential academic career, plus we're all pretty well-versed in movies.

I set up shop in the EJ Pratt library for awhile to send out some emails and grab some material for an essay. I emailed Professor Hutcheon about meeting with her, which I'm going to do after class next week. After that I attended the final African-Canadian Literature class. We watched a film called Another Planet, apparently the first movie to be directed and written by an African-Canadian woman. I received feedback on my Oni presentation, along with a split grade of A-/A. I'm supposed to meet with Professor Clarke tomorrow, but I'm waiting on a final confirmation.

I ran into a couple of other folks from film class in the Bay Street subway station, Drew and Alicia, and ended up talking with Alicia for a bit since we were both heading the same way. After I got back I made dinner and watched Minority Report.

The marks are starting to come in, and the verdict so far is positive. Knock on wood.

Updated To-Do List:

Monday, December 10th: Final research paper (max. 15 pages) - Opera
Monday, December 10th: Editorial exercise - Bibliography
Friday, December 14th: Final project - Touch of Evil
Friday, December 21st: Critical reflection paper - Bibliography
Monday, January 7th: Final research paper (max. 14 pages) - African-Canadian Lit

I watched Michael Bay's Transformers today for the first time, and was a little non-plussed about it until the last 20 minutes or so. Bay's movies are so easy to spot, containing, as they do: shallow characters, soundtracks packed with infinite trumpets, and of course, people running in slow motion toward the camera. I was watching the film and said to Jay: "you can tell this is a Michael Bay film. All it needs is people running in slow motion." And sure enough, ten minutes later, the last piece of the formula was in place.

Now, I wasn't the biggest fan of Transformers when I was a kid (I actually found the cartoon rather dull). But it was still really cool that they tapped Peter Cullen for the voice of Optimus Prime, and there were some equally cool throwbacks to the era. That said, for the love of god, I want to see transforming robots beating the hell out of each other, not endless scenes cushioned with lame dialogue attempting to bring humanity to characters in a movie about transforming robots. You know what they should have done? They should have done the first half of the movie on Cybertron, and the second half on Earth, dropping all of the inane human backstories. Maybe they'll smarten up for the inevitable sequel.

I also watched Dr. Strangelove with Jay, and worked a bit on my Opera presentation using Google Docs. My group has been using the document manager to hash out a script that we can table-read on Wednesday. So far it's coming together fairly well.

Updated To-Do List:

Friday, November 30th: Bibliographical description exercise - Bibliography
Monday, December 3rd: Presentation on Death in Venice - Opera
Tuesday, December 4th: Presentation on final project - Touch of Evil
Monday, December 10th: Final research paper (max. 15 pages) - Opera
Monday, December 10th: Editorial exercise - Bibliography
Monday, December 10th: Critical reflection paper - Bibliography
Friday, December 14th: Final project - Touch of Evil
Monday, January 7th: Final research paper (max. 14 pages) - African-Canadian Lit

To-Due List:

Tuesday, November 20th: Presentation on Ghettostocracy - African-Canadian Lit
Friday, November 23rd: Bibliographical description exercise - Bibliography
Tuesday, November 27th: Presentation on final project - Touch of Evil
Friday, November 30th: CCA grant proposal
Monday, December 3rd: Presentation on Death in Venice - Opera
Monday, December 10th: Final research paper (max. 15 pages) - Opera
Monday, December 10th: Editorial exercise - Bibliography
Monday, December 10th: Critical reflection paper - Bibliography
Friday, December 14th: Final project - Touch of Evil
Monday, January 7th: Final research paper (max. 14 pages) - African-Canadian Lit

It makes me feel a bit better laying it all out like that. I've been feeling a little overwhelmed tonight.

After Opera class I walked home from Keele station and watched a making-of featurette on The Sound of Music while eating dinner. I almost finished my film readings, taking a break to crack open Scrubs Season 6. Lots of material on castration anxiety, fetishistic scopophilia and the female lack (in the readings, not on Scrubs). Tomorrow I'll be working on all things Thomas Mann.

I'm missing Ottawa today. Winter is coming. I love those deep winter nights when the sky is pitch black and the streets are lit up with lamps reflecting off freshly fallen snow. The world is enveloped in near silence as no one is out braving the roads. You breathe in and the air is so cold it forms a taste in the back of your throat and hurls itself down into your lungs. You take a step and the ground tightens. The feeling overcomes you that miles away there is something running in your direction, but it will never catch up, and you will never look it in the eye. There is only the quiet and the clouds that exit your mouth and hang for a moment before disappearing completely.