I have high hopes for this semester. Although it's going to be another difficult one for the first 6 weeks because of 14th Amendment (similar to last semester's Comparative Human Rights class), I am really (really!) excited about all my classes. Everyone is a class that I wanted to take.
Having said that, I am constantly reminded how smart the people are around me and how I wish I had had a background in ... I don't know, philosophy, or psychology, or something that would have trained my brain better than sleeping through my accounting and business classes did.
Right now, I am reading an excerpt from Judith Butler's "Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity" for my Sexual Orientation and the Law course. I think I like it. I think I agree with what she's saying so far. But, I have to be honest here. This is difficult reading. Take the following sentence for example:
As a result, gender is not to culture as sex is to nature; gender is also the discursive/cultural means by which "sexed nature" or "a natural sex" is produced and established as "prediscursive," prior to culture, a politically neutral surface on which culture acts.
What the hell does prediscursive mean? I think I agree with this sentence. But, I had to read it 5 times! This excerpt is 20 single-spaced pages long; and, that is but one of 5 assignments for tomorrow's class! If I have to read everything multiple times to understand it, I'll never keep up. I want to learn this stuff. I really do. I don't want to just skim it and wing my way through class as I have most of my life (and most of law school to this point). But, I'm really frustrated right now.