My Sociology of Women class has gone off the rails. We wasted the first half of this week on idle nonsense. The professor has lost control and the old lady up front won't shut up. But, on the bright side, she actually seems to be listening to and giving creedence to my input. I think maybe I was just out of the swing of things the first couple of weeks; I didn't take summer classes this year and I'm pretty sure I lost my mojo classwise over the summer. Though some of these classes are killing me. (I just lost the game.) I couldn't stay awake in my first class this morning. It's Dr. Pagano, and I like the dude, I have him for the film class and I think he's a good teacher, surprisingly funny actually, but I just can't care about early American literature anymore. The Puritains were so freaking boring. And yeah, he's bringing out some things about the rhetoric of their argument and the wordplay and all and some of it is pretty fascinating, but I just can't stay awake for it. Older writing is so hard to get through, mainly because they were writing with the intent of killing time. There weren't any radios or televisions or Ipods or porno theaters, people had a lot of time and nothing to do, so they would sit around and read stories. It was a good thing then that a story would drag on and they wouldn't elide anything, but now it's like, man, I've got other shit to do. I get it, you love God, great. Now tell me the one that doesn't suck. On an unrelated yet somewhate correlational note, I've noticed a lot of people tell me I'm smart, like that's the major compliment I get, aside from people being amazed with my ability to make any situation awkward.  Like just before that awful Sociology of Women class I was sitting in the halway reading Beloved for my Women Writers class-I love chicks, what?-and Ms. Thomas, a professor I've had for a couple classes who's a super lady, stopped and talked with me about it. I told her I was really enjoying it and she said that she had seen the movie but didn't really get it. I told her I'd heard from people who've read the book that the movie wasn't very good. She asks, "So you're getting it then?" and I reply yeah, I think so and she say, "Well, you're really smart, so it wouldn't be a problem for you." I mean that's just a completely unsollicited compliment that was really nice. And I thought about it and I hear that a lot. I'm not saying this to brag-Ok, I sort of am-but it's pretty gratifiying to think that I'm presenting myself in a way that people would classify as intelligent. It's nice to think that I just go through my day, doing what I do, and think that people would say, "He's smart." It just nice that that's the image of myself I give off; it's good to be seen that way.