So, yeah, I mentioned that I'm taking notes for art history classes, right? Well, this work is for the SAIC Learning Center, and is passed off to students who have some sort of disability (usually processing) that prevents them from being able to take solid enough notes. Anyhow, this semester both the classes I'm note-taking for are part of the first-year art survey class. But one class is the first half, "Ancient to Modern," and the other is the second half, "Modern to Contemporary."

The Modern-Contemporary one is taught by Professor James Yood, who has a voice remarkably similar to that of Wallace Shawn's (who played the squeaky little genius-who-died in The Princess Bride). He's pretty awesome although he speaks at a breakneck pace I find hard to keep up with; he's not particularly funny although he has his moments, but he's willing to put his personal perspectives and appreciations out into the open when, say, talking about Munch's passion for the babe. I haven't fully decided how well my own ideas coincide with what he says, but I suppose it hardly matters since all I'm there for is to take notes, and then give them away.

Getting on, the Ancient-Modern class is taught by two grad student TA's, and here where things are getting a little weird.

Last semester, I took notes for this same class, but that one was taught by Dan Merkle, who I think is actually more affiliated with the film department. He's an odd choice for a AH-Survey lecturer, and does a fairly broad spread that emphasizes some fairly inexplicable (or incomplete?) choices, although I have to admit he's utterly hilarious and all-out-there. One example of his odd choices was how, in his lecture on Greek art, he neglected to even mention Plato at all... bizarre considering how Plato's theories helped to create a basis for art criticism for a very very very long time (mimesis). Anyhow, at the time, I decided to add a few of my own comments into the notes I was taking, probably naughty, but it's hard for me not to sometimes. Other times, when I take notes, I miss things and put in ellipses, or of course shorten up ideas so I can pack them all in, and I always end up using a few little quirks of my own writing: hmmmmm, and so on, somewhat, etc. Not to mention the fact that sometimes I really make some mistakes.

At the end of last semester, the TA who is now teaching the class I'm taking notes for asked me if he could get copies of my Merkle notes, as he was feeling panicked over having one month to come up with fifteen 3-hour lectures on a massive spread of Art History. He offered to bribe me with alcohol at the bar he runs with his boyfriend, and who am I turn that down? (I would have given them anyway.)

But this Thursday was the first note-taking overlap, since I started three weeks into the Merkle lecture... and it was the other TA giving the lecture, and suddenly I was having an acute sense of deja vu. Not just a little deja vu, but an embarrassed kind of deja vu. I flicked over to my old notes, and realized that the TA was reading my notes verbatim. At one point in this lecture, I had shortened up a part of Merkle's lecture by typing (it was an accurate paraphrase): "...and then Cronos cut off his dick." The TA read this exactly from my notes. And then blushed and said, "I'm just reading Merkle's notes here."

noooooooooooooo.

So here's the thought of the week: what happens when you take notes based off your own notes?

Plato would spit on my shoes.