What I learned at the student-staff colloquium

I don’t want to be an academic historian. Whatever else.

I am supposed to be revising

It’s funny how I tend to blog around exam time. Displacement activities ftw.

Anyway, so far what I have learned about Imperial Russia (exam on Thursday)?

1. Catherine the great did not, probably, as rumored have sex with horses.
2. Potemkin did not, as alleged, actually have fake villages made to impress the Empress on her tour of new territories (forgot which ones) down some river (forgot which one).
3. Peter the Great did not start the whole “westernisation” crap, he just personified the trend in some creepy hegelian volksgeisty way. It was actually started by trendy Ukrainians at the Kiev Academy.
4. According to a journal article I was reading which was mostly about Emil Cioran and certainly wasn’t being read for school Russians have idolised Pushkin and if people try and claim that there was anything bad about him from the perspective of anyone in Russia, then they will smash you over the head with a (naturally empty) bottle of vodka. This means that Russians cannot ironically understand their very own poet-idol, who actually was a foppish overrated romanticist rogue anyway. I don’t actually myself know anything about Pushkin though.
5. A bunch of stuff about hesychasm and Optina which won’t be on the exam.

Alongside that everytime I try and actually read about any of the political boringness that I am supposed to know my brain in an attempt to punish me for inflicting such inane trivia upon it refuses to set down any memories and just for good measure gives me a blinding headache.

So all in all, does not bode well for the exam. And the devil on my shoulder suggests it is futile to study if all it does is give me a headache, so instead I should perhaps look for amusing youtube videos…

Of all the Russian monarchs and claimants during this period the only one I have any interest in is Ivan VI Antonovich.

Genuinely frightened

I just saw an advert which made it seem as if having fashionable bags was something significant in the character of the adverts life. It used this fact to try and sell a magazine which was giving away a free bag.

…now for this advert to successfully sell that magazine, there must be women who a) relate however slightly to the character, or at least want to feel as though they relate (perhaps they like the image of being a person who has lots of fashionable bags…) and b) (and this is the important one) do not feel physically sick at the shallowness being promoted by this advert.

I feel sick…

Ahh what a lovely day.

The sun is out, the sky is blue, the sea is clear. Butterflies crowd around the flowers along the road. The leaves blow gracefully in the warm breeze. Birds are singing, daisies are crying out to be made into chains.

What a beautiful day… to be stuck in a grey cube shaped building with tiny windows and harsh florescent lighting doing an exam.