Personal pronouns and adjectives are a fruitful nuisance in this language, and should have been left out. For instance, the same sound, SIE, means YOU, and it means SHE, and it means HER, and it means IT, and it means THEY, and it means THEM. Think of the ragged poverty of a language which has to make one word do the work of six–and a poor little weak thing of only three letters at that. But mainly, think of the exasperation of never knowing which of these meanings the speaker is trying to convey. This explains why, whenever a person says SIE to me, I generally try to kill him, if a stranger.

if i’m going to be serious about this graduate school stuff i’m going to have to suck it up and take some german classess, and i’m going to have to get my application into the jackson school as well. it’s now august, and i have four months to get things resolved. oh that i had undertaken all this back in june.

graduate school to-do list:

• tuition-exempt 2nd year german fall, winter, spring
• gre test, i suppose
• application for the comparative religion program, jackson school
• buckle down and take 3rd year german next summer
• start grad school in fall of 2006, tuition exempt
• pick another language and get 1st year reading comprehension in it – japanese again perhaps?
• have a masters in comparative religion in 2009.

that’s not all that bad, but i need to do it if it’s going to happen.