Hartwick and SUNY Oneonta Fencing Match

Today was one of the coolest days I've had in a long time. Actually, scratch that--it's quite warm under all that fencing gear.

As I am told happens most springs, Hartwick's and SUNY Oneonta (SUCO)'s fencing clubs met today. We fenced all three weapons, foil, sabre, and épée. Let me clarify that "weapon" is just what it's called in the sport. As you can imagine, it was a bit tiring, but fun. For each tournament, we split into two groups and did round-robins in each. The first fencer to score 5 points won. The points a fencer scored minus the points scored on the fencer gave us a number of points that decided the seed we were in the bracket, in which the victor is declared at 15 points. We all fenced in the same bracket, of course; splitting in to two groups for the round robins was far faster. It's true that the point totals would have been different if we had been in different groups in the beginning, but who knows whose favour that would have worked in.

The first up was the weapon I use the most, foil. I didn't win a single round-robin bout, but still wasn't the last seed, which was nice. I lost in the first round of the brackets, though. I was very disappointed with my performance, and I don't think I was being aggressive enough. My friend, Carson (also the club's secretary) won the tournament.

Next we had épée. Before today, I'm not sure if I had even ever picked up an épée. I won two out of the three round-robin bouts. I believe I was then the third seed in épée, and lost that match to the Hartwick club president 14-15. In the end, Carson won--again!! I was really impressed at how well I did with épée, especially considering it was my first time, and I was kind of like, "how do I hold this?" It was nice to do so well after such an upset for me in foil.

In foil, the target area is the torso, no arms or legs. In épée, if you hit the person, you get a point, even if you hit each other at the same time. In foil, there is something called right-of-way. This means if both fencers hit each other at the same time, the one who is advancing gets awarded the point. The only caveat to épée is that the point of the weapon has to touch, and the same is true for foil.

The last weapon we did was sabre. In this, you can hit with any part of the blade, from the waist up, including the head. I had used sabre back in jTerm and again last Saturday, so I don't have much experience with it. I did pretty okay with it. Alex won the brackets.

It was really nice that all the people who won the brackets were from Hartwick. There were only three people from SUCO. That is only a fraction of the team, and two of those people were faculty/staff of SUCO and only one student. Apparently the teams liked it enough that we will be holding joint practices once a week. It will definitely be interesting to see their styles of fencing, as there was a very palpable difference between the two club's forms going into the matches.

Acting in the Face of Judgements

In the sixth grade, I picked up Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None after something about it had been brought up in class (I honestly don't remember what exactly). The teacher took one look at me reading that and said "Hailey, I don't think you can handle that book." My reaction? Of course, keep reading that book, and write a B+ essay on it. Bam.

Although that was eight years ago, that trend still follows me.

I wanted to sign up for the Victorian Literature course for this coming fall semester, so I did. A few days after I registered for it, my academic advisor said that she needed to meet with me. Earlier today, when we met, she told me that the professor of the class thought that I could not handle the class. Technically, she could not bar me from taking the course as although it is a 300-level course there are no prerequisites for the class.

Where did this come from? The one time I had met the professor--almost two years ago--I was very anxious about a plethora of different thing. It was incoming students day, and we were meeting with advisors about course scheduling for the fall, etc., and I had to meet with the person who coordinates services for students with disabilities at the same time as this session. It was a new setup to have advisors meet with a group of students, and I was in a new place with new people and, honestly, a little scared about missing that other appointment. Long story short, we both left that meeting with negative views of each other.

When I saw that this same professor was offering a course on Victorian Literature, and it was a course that would satisfy the writing level graduation requirement, I was conflicted. On one hand, I really wanted to take this course. On the other, it was with her. But, I decided to put that behind me and sign up anyway.

I can't say I was overly surprised when the professor wanted to meet with me before this course. What I was surprised about was how well this meeting went. In fact, I'm not exactly sure it could have gone any better.

I came in with my tail between my legs. She started to talk about the course, in a way that seemed like she was trying to scare me out of taking the course, but it actually made me want to take the course even more. She asked what kind of literary background I had, so I told her about how I had been published with UAL last fall. On learning that it was about Doctor Who, she insisted that I meet a colleague of hers who was also a Whovian after we were done talking.

Just before we finished talking, I brought up that first circumstance under which we had met. I apologised. Her response was that she thought it was a "mature and professional" thing to do. I explained that I had a lot of extraneous stress, and that sealed the deal. There was a look of surprise on her face when I said "extraneous".

While introducing me to this colleague, the department chair came by. She introduced me to her, as well, although we had already met as the Theatre Arts and English departments are the same department. She said, "this is Ley. She will be taking my Victorian Lit course in the fall."


I think there is still some reservations that she has on me. I know that I will have to work very, very hard on this course to prove that I can handle it.

We shall see...