dizzy

In the past two weeks, the following has made my brain a little dizzy:

- I seem to have become a morning person. How/why did this happen?

- A friend of mine announced she was quitting our program, found out she couldn't be reimbursed for the cost of tuition for the quarter, decided to stay in the program for a while, and changed her field of study from Medieval to Victorian literature.

- Another friend of mine broke up with his girlfriend, decided he was leaving his program and moving away in a week, signed most of the withdrawal papers, found out he would have to pay thousands of dollars to cover the remainder of his funding for the quarter, and decided he would stay.

- While meeting with a student in office hours, said student told me that I was an "elder." :?

- Justin and I saw The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler on stage last weekend. Yes, this showed what happens after she kills herself. It's difficult to describe, but the result was something like what might have happened if Samuel Beckett, Toni Morrison and Jasper Fforde all decided to write something together--it was thoroughly absurd, sometimes very sad, and generally wacky. It was interesting to watch Hedda try to become something she was not (i.e., a happy character); her temporary re-writing of the ending of her play was hilarious, as were her frequent threats of what she was going to do to Ibsen when she found him. I always think it's fascinating when writers take characters from another fictions and transplant them to a new setting, or have them interact with bizarre combinations of characters (in this case, Hedda with Medea, Hedda with Mammy from Gone with the Wind, Hedda with the protagonists of The Bird Cage . . .). It was head-spinning, but well worth getting tickets for (especially student rush tickets). ;)