At some point in class last week, squirming in shame over my failure to get my shit sufficiently together to accomplish even something as simple as the first assigned blog post, I scribbled a couple lines to myself at the top of my notes, the concluding couplet of a soliloquy which some of my friends will have tired of hearing by now but which endures anyway as the definitive procrastinator’s credo: “I’ll so offend to make offense a skill, redeeming time when men think least I will.” Hal, that most princely hypocrite, is something other than an admirable figure, but he is one with whom I feel a profound – and disquieting – kinship. And it’s not surprising that I would be clinging to these words at this early point in the semester, when I traditionally must struggle with myself not to daff the world – that is, schoolwork – aside and bid it pass. Prince Hal does not mean the same thing when he speaks these words that I perceive when I apply them to my own life, of course. After all, he will do exactly as he professes, and his speech is a revelation of chilly pragmatism rather than an exercise in rationalization. But that is the miracle of Shakespeare: the fact that 16^th century words imagined in the mouth of a 15^th century prince offer the gift of self-understanding to a 21^st century college student. This kind of eternal resonance, this power of language to open avenues of reflection on my own life and perhaps to expand the horizons of my own nature, to help me become a better person by giving words to my faults, is a large part of what I seek in literature, and why I’m an English major. I find it in abundance in Shakespeare, of course. Right now I’m finding it in Dr. Jackson’s class, in The Sound and the Fury, albeit with much intellectual frustration along the way. I find it in countless films, as well (my other major), and admittedly my junkie-like movie-watching habits have much to do with my mediocrity as a student. Though there are worse ways to procrastinate. I’m a kind of student of modernism, which is essentially what drew me to this class. I understand that the trauma of World War I was so shattering that it demanded new forms of literary expression, precipitating much of what we think of as modernism: new ways of conceiving narrative, technology, history, selfhood, memory – and time. Dr. Latham used to say that modernity was about “redeeming time.” Prince Hal had the same idea, and so did the Bible – “Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” That was the project of World War I literature, I guess. I still haven’t learned how to redeem my own time, to make the passage of hours and days meaningful. Else I wouldn’t be up at this hour, muddling through this post. I already feel thoroughly embarrassed to submit it, even without having to admit that I’m not quite done playing catch-up in this class (or others) yet. I also know that Lauren will read it and remind me of how pretentious she thinks I am. Oh, well. As an “intellectual introduction,” and a kind of apology, I hope that it will serve okay, for the moment.