In Search of MORE Time

So I hoped to avoid exclusively posting complaints about my life as a po', overworked grad student, but I guess I can't deny what I am...

Still, in this post I'm going to be expressing more of a positive feeling of frustration than I did in the last. For class today, we were assigned to read several bits of Proust chosen from Swann's Way and The Fugitive, two parts of the multi-volume epic In Search of Lost Time. Even in English (perhaps more so in English because of the limitations of translation), Proust is a little mind-bending. But for some reason, he spoke to me in some odd way while I was doing this reading. And class today (all 3 hours of it) seemed to go by rather quickly. (I hesitate to say it flew by because hey, it was still a 3-hour-long discussion of Proust.)

The other time-gobbler I'm wrestling with is my inability to read more than 20 pages an hour in French. I've begun to stop translating word-for-word as I read, but I'm still so darn slow. Even when I'm engrossed in the reading, I run out of energy before I get tired of the story itself. There are things that become more pressing, like moving my body or eating.

While I am indeed thankful that I'm feeling excited by what I'm studying, I'm also learning that just because it's interesting doesn't mean it gets any easier or goes any faster. I suppose these are the kind of problems I should thank my lucky stars to be having.