Sorry to be so melodramatic lately, but I have been going through quite a few major things recently. I’d rather not discuss them here, but I could really use a lot of prayer. Especially with wisdom. Sometimes I really want to say things, and it’s just a lot better for me to keep my mouth shut. Keeping my mouth shut lately has been hard.

I will mention the good part of my bittersweet day though. I passed the general comprehensive finals for my Master’s degree. I didn’t really have a whole lot of confidence going into it on Tuesday, and I kind of took some of the frustration from my personal life into the test. That prompted me to put as an answer to a question:

“Ahab, from Melville’s Moby Dick, which by the way is NOT on our reading list, like many other things on this test, captained the Pequod.”

My major advisor said that was her main tip off to many on the graduate faculty grading the test that this was my test because I am the only one insane enough to smart off on M.A. comps. Fortunately, it started a discussion about revising the reading list. I was saddened because some friends didn’t pass. Only three of us passed. Another girl and I passed unanimously. The third passed with a majority vote. I still have to take my concentration exam tomorrow, but that shouldn’t be too hard. The general exam is more difficult because it’s very broad and since I was the only one taking the test that concentrated in British lit, they geared it toward American literature. I was suprised, yet pleased that I passed, much less with a unanimous vote.

I did an explication of a passage of Hamlet. After the test I called up my major advisor and complained about how porrly I did, especially on the explication. She had already seen my test and just laughed and told me that she thought I passed. I was a bit hesitant to explicate Hamlet because the teacher that taught Hamlet and I didn’t really get along that well. Well, we got along the second half of the semester, but she had a habit of bringing in pictures of women with bridles with crosses on them everyday and saying, “See? This is what Christians are like.” When she found out I was a presbyterian, she forwarded the class a copy of John Knox’s The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women

Her husband also writes letters to the editor often talking about the foolishness of believing in God. Anyway, I wanted to avoid every question about Shakespeare on the test but actually ended up writing two essays on Hamlet and one on Othello. The teacher I feared the most stood up in the grad faculty meeting and gave a speech about how great my Hamlet work was. Phew! I sure am glad those things are graded anonymously.