Constantly talking does not equal communication

Sorry for the long silence; I haven't had the energy of late to write in this space.  Just like the pizza worker whose last thought is eating pizza at the end of the day, sometimes writing feels too much like work.  I have actually been experience eye-strain from reading and sitting in front of the laptop for too many hours a day.  

My frustration with being at DU now has reached a fever pitch; I can actually feel the weight of gravity as I approach the campus now, and the dream where your feet are heavy or slogging through wet cement when zombies are pursuing you becomes reality as I climb the stairs to the fourth floor of Sturm Hall.  It's as if even the universe wants to prevent me from going there.  It's not so much that I hate it, but that I'm over it.  There are people I enjoy seeing there - Andrew, Tor, Anne, Scott, Ashley, Vicki - but everyone else I want to see I see independently, so my reasons for going there grow smaller each day and the bottom line is: I'm just over it.  

Case and point: I'm sitting in a fiction theory course on Monday afternoon and I should preface this by saying I love the professor and if it were just he and I in the class, I'd love it entirely.  Graduate students - for reasons unbeknownst to me - are almost always require to give a presentation each class, each term.  As a concept, of course, this makes sense since most of us wish to teach and the easiest way to tell who's got it and who's an idiot is the public speaking route; however, nearly every person in this program is under the impression that the class presentation (at the doctoral level, I may remind you) is to hand out a 4-5 page, single-spaced annotated bibliography/collected nonsense full of typos and grammatical errors.  No wonder the future is grim for English departments if the creme de la creme cannot function appropriately.  The person who hands out this kind of document will then, typically, proceed to read every word on the page to the class as we follow along.  Little commentary, little insight, and by the end we all collectively sigh that we can dispense with the kindergarten format of reading along whilst someone drones on.  On Monday, this was again the case, and it was all I could do to not just lose it - to not hand back the handout and ask why in the hell we put ourselves through this process?  When it came time for me to present, I passed round a brief outline of my talk and a quote I wanted to discuss at some length.  It was one page and I did all of the talking.  I didn't read one single word off that page.  I even brought artwork to pass round for further discussion.  The only person who got it at all was Eric (the prof) and he liked it.  So my presentation ended up being a stimulating conversation with Eric in front of a live studio audience.  

I just keep telling myself, a few more weeks to go.  A few more weeks to go.  A. Few. More. Weeks. To. Go.  Sigh.