a couple of hours ago, the ideas i'd had about my religion and poltics final clicked, and it made a lot more sense. i've got three single-spaced pages written, and i'm about half done, and i haven't put in quotes or cites or cleaned it up yet. he's going to regret not putting a page limit on this. :) it's not that i'm deliberately trying to set out to write it long, and i'll try to edit it so it's as short as possible, but my writing style is chatty at the best of times, and if there's no page limit, i have less incentive to try to edit it down to really tight writing, when i know that he likes my writing well enough as is.
besides, some topics just can't be dealt with in a brief manner.
Jeff's got a few days of work this week - yay - so he's off doing that. it's nice having the house to myself - i don't get that very often. i love having him around, don't get me wrong, but the quiet is nice too.
wahoo! one of the beasts (my soc project, all wonderful 29 pages of it) is done. my abstract even hits the required word count. =p i need to let it sit for a day and then go back over it tomorrow and make sure i actually made all of the requested revisions, and that my rather rambling conclusion makes sense. but still. yippee. :)
[20:58] Ginger: lazy.
[21:00] jfclapp: yea, i hear that.
[21:01] jfclapp: unfortunately, i have questions to answer like "How would you respond to the suggestion that the formulation of Muslim societies can not be understood apart from the legacy left by colonization and the internal difficulties witness as a result of colonial subjugation? How has colonization shaped modernity in the Islamic world?"
[21:01] Ginger: ...I can't even follow the first question, let alone formulate a coherent answer.

i made flashcards for the new Islamic vocabulary (the stuff that wasn't on the mid-term). i just tested myself on them, and i can provide at least some explanation of what each other them are. i need to review for details, but the basics are there. i also need to review the mid-term vocabulary - i might make flashcards for them tomorrow. and i've gotten six of the ten essays written out. i'm pleased.
the saving grace here is that there's a lot of overlap. remembering that mutah is the kind of temporary marriage that only Shi'i do, is helpful, when both Shi'i and mutah are on the list. that's one fact for two words. remembering who Mawdudi was (a man who implemented a horrible cross-breed of the Western practice of precedent with Islamic law, leaving out the natural flexibility and analysis of Islamic law, to disasterous result, in Pakinstan) spills over into the essay question about Islamic political movements that arose in response to the failures of the modern nation-state in the Islamic world. the overlaps make it easier.
i'll stop talking about school eventually; right now, i have all these interesting facts burbling out of my brain and no one to share them with. maybe i need to start making friends in my classes.