Pat's Summer in Asia

Today I got a nice long sleep and then woke up a couple hours before the USC football game. We won 69-0. Yeah... 

After the game, I had to spend a few hours in the library writing a paper that is due Monday for my Arts and Letters class. I was busy trying to finish up other assignments this week, so I'm a little behind where I'd like to be as far as the paper goes. Writing a paper is not the most ideal way to spend a Saturday afternoon, but as far as the class goes I've enjoyed it so far. The name of the class is Masterpieces of the Russian Short Story, and we've been reading Russian short stories from the 1790s onward. For my paper, I'm comparing "A Nervous Breakdown" by Anton Chekhov and Notes From Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky (Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov is my all time favorite, and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to tackle the 800 pages). This past Wednesday, a friend of my professor's, who was visiting from Russia, came in to speak to our class. With Russia occupying the news a few months ago, it was very interesting to hear one Russian's perspective on the place of Russia in the world - Russian society has historically struggled with the question of whether it is "western" or "eastern." As a prominent writer in Russia, our guest said that this tension is often reflected in Russian literature. His talk gave me a much broader perspective on my studies in that class.

Anyway, off to dinner... 

Till next time,

- PJV