I’ll admit it: I don’t think I really want to get out of school after all, but at the same time, this is what I’ve been striving for these past years.
No, that doesn’t equate to me becoming a complete nerd/geek who likes getting bombarded by papers and exams… wait, I am a geek =p
I’ve been in school for too long, way too long that I just probably don’t remember or heck, I probably just don’t know what it’s like not to constantly stay on top of readings (I never did =p), getting up bright and early for 8 or 9am classes (I was almost always late), running around chasing after execs who don’t do shit (actually, I never really had to do that, most of my execs were fantastic, amazing, awesome people), or procrastinate on papers and start begging profs for extensions (this again wasn’t something I did without a legitimate enough reason – only times would have been when I had severe skin irritation around my eyes that I had difficulty keeping my eyes open in front of my laptop and thus couldn’t get my paper done, or when 2 major paper deadlines clashed and it was just too much for me to get them both done for the same day).

I’ve been so used to saying, “Oh, I’ll be here another year to finish x” or “Oh, I have another year left because I decided I want to do y” every time we reach end of the year. But since the beginning of this school year, I’ve always said “Yes, I’m going to graduate this year, for real” – yes, it’s now becoming reality.

I have to admit it was an awkward end to the term – I went to my first class of the day, which I simply had no reason to take other than it being one of my required courses. I was happy that class was going to be over.
And then, just as I was preparing for my other class – which, by the way, was my favorite class with my favorite prof in Asian Studies, I get an email from her saying that she’s getting ill and that she has to cancel class.
To think that the morning class was my last ever undergrad lecture, it’s somewhat depressing – no, it’s just a personal opinion, and has to do with the fact that the other class was about the only class I truly wanted to take this term.

This weird sense of uneasiness went away after spending a few hours at my “nighttime job” during late morning/early afternoon hours (yes, our service get to operate in broad daylight for once) and chatting with my coworkers, and of course, having an awesome time with my club execs for dinner and drinking.
I can’t express how much I loved hanging out with them, and how much I’m going to miss them all after I depart from UBC – after sending off so many other people before me, it’s now my turn to leave with the cherished memories that I’ll most certainly treasure for life.

Even if you aren’t reading this, I just wanted to say: thank-you everyone, you guys know who you are, and you guys should know how awesome you guys have been – it’s been pleasure and an honor to have been able to spend time with you all, and I hope it was the same for you guys too. Best wishes, and good luck!

…alright, back to packing…… yay for poor time management that still hasn’t seem to have improved even after all these years in university =p

So that was my act of stupidity from yesterday, as I was scrambling through my paper.
Over the past four days, I’ve written at least 6000 words and I’m damn proud of it.
……now, all I can hope for is for the papers to have actually gotten a more-or-less decent grade that’ll get me past the passing line. Better yet, give me at least a B and I’ll be happy =p

Seems I’ve stopped caring about my academics, ever since I hit the point where I have enough credits to graduate with at least one major. Well, “stopped caring” might not be the best term to use – I just don’t care as much as I did a few years back.

It’s somewhat rare that I end up doing a paper that I can actually have some fun with – by that, I mean… talking about PMK, Gintama, and Shinsengumi! (yup, the live-action drama with awesomeness) as forms of adaptive works of a historiography – it’s not really as dry as it sounds. Heck, how can something sound *that* dry when at least a third of my paper’s based on Gintama? (read: crack)

Now, the more amusing one was probably the one for my Tale of Genji course. Again, with concent from my prof, I did a paper focusing on adaptive works. The previous paper was based on historiography of the Shinsengumi, this one’s based on the Tale of Genji.
The adaptive works I chose were the animated movie (from the 80′s), the live-action film (2001), and…… um, ZKC.
Yes, I ended up spending at least a third, if not more of the paper talking about the correlation between Zettai Karen Children, a seemingly unrelated manga, and the T of G. My discussion, in addition to the more academic stuff how ZKC can be legitimately be classified as an “adaptation” and what not,  included how the concepts of yaoi and lolicons were embedded in the manga. And I even had enough material from academic journals to back up some of the bs I came up with.
Heck, I even went off talking about how the T of G can potentially be considered a form of dojinshi – alright, let me just hope my prof isn’t going to slap me with an F for that remark……

And so the papers are done, I’m freed from school till January, and I’m outta here in less than 48 hours and will be in mangaland (commonly and officially known as Japan)!
You’ll still probably see me posting often enough, but it’s unlikely that I’ll be online as much – I’ll be busy opening boxes of random merchandise I’ve accumulated over the past year =p

I know I have a tendency to overanalyze materials a bit too much, to the extent where I end up freaking myself out, but nonetheless, this whole “overanalyzing” is something that’s somewhat necessary for artsies like myself.
And myself being such a geek, here are things I came up with for my papers (and yes, my profs have approved this):
- For my “adaptations of Japanese classics” course, I’ll be writing on adaptations of Japanese historiography seen in manga/anime/TV shows – specifically, the portrayal of the Ikedaya Incident in works of manga/anime (read: PMK and Gintama, and perhaps the live-action Shinsengumi!)
- For my Tale of Genji course, I’ll be writing on adaptive works of the T of G (read: anime version and film version of T of G)

What’s sad is the fact that I’m now considering emailing my T of G prof, asking whether if it would be possible/acceptable to focus my paper on the animated version of the T of G (which was part of my original plan) and on Zettai Karen Children.
……yes, you read it right, I did say ZKC.
Now, I’m sure some people are staring at the screen blankly going “WTF is this girl talking about? How the hell is the Tale of Genji, an epic Japanese classic from premodern times, have any correlation with ZKC?”
Heck, my friend’s first response when I told her what I’m planning on doing was, “So you’re writing a paper on loli-cons?”
Well yes and no… there’s a bit more correlation between the two, other than both stories portraying guys going nuts over girls younger than them (this comment is in no way to be taken offensively, nor should one simply interpret this as a true description/depiction of the plot, without actually reading the works)

The correlation’s actually rather simple. The main characters’ names are taken from characters in the T of G, and the character relationships in ZKC parallels some of the relationships between characters (whom the names in ZKC have been taken from) in the T of G.
Easy example: Koichi Minamoto mirroring Hikaru Genji, Taizo Kiritsubo (Minamoto’s boss) mirroring Emperor Kiritsubo (Genji’s dad).

I know I’m hitting the point where I’m just overanalyzing, but hey, if I’m supposed to do a 10-page paper, I need to overanalyze to keep myself (and my word count) going =p

Anyway.
It’s weird how every time I hit my word count, I seem to end up with a combination of consecutive numbers like 678, 765, or 789. I’m sure this probably isn’t hinting anything at me, but yeah, weird.
Nonetheless, the amount of progress I’m making on this overdue paper is disturbing – c’mon Yuuri, you’ve been working on this POC paper for the past several days now, the paper’s only 4-5 pages, and you’re still on friggin’ page 3, and the more you hold it off, the more deductions you’re getting on the friggin’ paper so F***ING GET IT OVER WITH DAMMIT!!!!

At least I should be happy Nicovid’s doing maintenance, that takes away at least one of my distractions =p