dimanche, avril 24, 2005
hold those horsies
I wish things were different somehow. I feel like I've just been one mess of stress for so long now that I have neither been able to relax nor appreciate much about the experience lately. I wish I still cared more about my classes. Remember how enthusiastic I was about the stuff I was learning before? My classes this semester have been equally interesting, but I just haven't been able to fully absorb the material, or get that excited about it, because I just have not had time. I don't know if it's just 'cause of the six-course workload this semester, or if I became less focussed and managed my time poorly (very possible), or if it's the lack of balance. I'm missing exercising lately - I hunker down in my shack and don't do much of anything other than face my books, and my world has become very small.
I know I keep saying this lately, but man am I tired. Every day I wake up and feel ready to get up, only once I do, I realize how exhausted I still am.
I sat in the Pub for three hours - the entire allotted time - writing that damn "North America since 1860" exam this afternoon. And I don't even know if I did that well. We learned such specific material in the lectures that turning it into long essays with broad themes is extremely challenging. I wanted to talk about the horses! But I couldn't fit them in to my rambling about liberalism, national identities and native struggles.
So I'm going to tell YOU about the horses:
Because of industrialisation, there was a lot of movement toward cities in the late 1800s. Horses were still the primary mode of transportation for all these fancy new manufactured goods. So the streets, which had formerly been social places with market stalls and children playing, now became transportation corridors. But with the tremendous amount of growth and industry going on, this meant a heck of a lot of horses (Clydesdales) on the streets. So that meant that somebody had to clean up all the horse shit. And it meant that one-third of agricultural land was used to cultivate food for these horses (I'm referring to the U.S. right now). Additionally, because of the great demands placed on these poor horsies, they lived only about four years. So that created the problem of horse carcasses to be removed, which was occurring at a rate of about 15,000 per year!
Horses. The End. | ¶ 7:55 p.m.
I know I keep saying this lately, but man am I tired. Every day I wake up and feel ready to get up, only once I do, I realize how exhausted I still am.
I sat in the Pub for three hours - the entire allotted time - writing that damn "North America since 1860" exam this afternoon. And I don't even know if I did that well. We learned such specific material in the lectures that turning it into long essays with broad themes is extremely challenging. I wanted to talk about the horses! But I couldn't fit them in to my rambling about liberalism, national identities and native struggles.
So I'm going to tell YOU about the horses:
Because of industrialisation, there was a lot of movement toward cities in the late 1800s. Horses were still the primary mode of transportation for all these fancy new manufactured goods. So the streets, which had formerly been social places with market stalls and children playing, now became transportation corridors. But with the tremendous amount of growth and industry going on, this meant a heck of a lot of horses (Clydesdales) on the streets. So that meant that somebody had to clean up all the horse shit. And it meant that one-third of agricultural land was used to cultivate food for these horses (I'm referring to the U.S. right now). Additionally, because of the great demands placed on these poor horsies, they lived only about four years. So that created the problem of horse carcasses to be removed, which was occurring at a rate of about 15,000 per year!
Horses. The End. | ¶ 7:55 p.m.
