123 tag!

Lucia tagged me, and, well, I think I've only been tagged maybe twice before...so here we are, with the Book Challenge. Rules:

Pick up the nearest book.
Open on page 123.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post the next three sentences.
Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

Now, *nearest* book is something of a problem. I'm sitting in one room of my house which is almost entirely devoted to books, and some careful measurement may be in order. It looks like the stack on the floor near my foot is closest, and the book on top is Edward Said's Orientalism. The three sentences are:

To reconstruct a dead or lost Oriental language meant ultimately to reconstruct a dead or lost Orient; it also meant that reconstructive precision, science, even imagination could prepare the way for what armies, administrations, and bureaucracies would later do on the ground, in the Orient. In a sense, the vindication of Orientalism was not only its intellectual or artistic successes but its later effectiveness, its usefulness, its authority. Surely it deserves serious attention on all those counts.

Lucia is of course my tagger; and yes, the book is something to do with Japanese history, in fact, since I haven't completely cleared away the rubble of my coursework. Who to tag, now? FIVE?? Eek. Okay, um, taggees are Lorena, Mel (who won't have time to do this for some while owing to a certain happy event), farm witch, Lynne (who's really a good sport about these things), and Anna-Karin.

There! It's fun, really, I swear. You guys narrowly missed being treated (if that's the word) to a selection out of Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry, in its marvelously expensive new Feb. 2008 edition.

In other news (because this post just isn't long enough), I've settled on what I'll take this fall. I think. It's awful trying to decide. There are a couple of courses I really, really want to take, and some that are basically spinach (ahem, gen chem and physics, cough cough). Things are offered at the same time as each other, and when they aren't, they have required sections that cause a schedule conflict even if the actual main course times fit together. This is driving me crazy.

The things I really really want to take are biology of neurodegenerative diseases, which is on Thursdays in the fall (& I think I've now amassed enough preparatory material that I'll be allowed in), and fundamentals of neuropsych, which is on Tuesdays in the spring. The spinach courses are physics, on Tuesdays (and all other waking hours), and gen chem, on Thursdays (ditto), both for the full year. So I can either do physics and take neurodegenerative diseases, or chem and wait patiently (NOT) and do neuropsych. It is almost physically painful.

I spent most of the day agonizing over it yesterday, and also figuring out my grade point average (yay! it's still high enough to declare a field of study! and probably to apply for special student status! whoo hoo!). I've settled on Tuesday physics (sigh), Wed. the new course on stem cells (WHEEEEEE!), and Thursday neurodegenerative diseases. Assuming I'm allowed into neurodegenerative (note to self: email professor and ask). Plus possible additions of whatever writing intensive I can find, or maybe abnormal psychology. At that point I will have nearly exhausted all conceivable neuroscience options within the Extension School. I can also do a reading and research project - other schools call this independent study. I don't particularly want to be doing the whole med school prep thing, but after looking again, most of the PhD programs I'm interested in expect a list of stuff that's effectively... med school prep. Sigh.

I can take gen chem in summer school, but physics is *never* offered in summer. So physics this coming year, gen chem next summer, and orgo in my final year - I'll have enough credits to graduate after fall 2009-2010, but graduation only happens once and I might as well do something substantive while I'm waiting for June, and I'll have to take organic chemistry eventually. The undergrad versions of courses are cheaper, too, even if it's the same course. It's all a big puzzle that I'm mostly having fun trying to fit together. When I'm not in agony over schedule conflicts.

Oh: it is impossible to read biochemistry when a certain dog decides to make her squeaky beachball noise incessantly all afternoon.

I'm just saying.

EDIT: Lucia is quite correct; I forgot how to count. Sentence number three, added; enjoy!