Yikes, and Phew

It's quite impossible to grasp how I managed through my Bachelor degree other than with some amount of tears and even more grace. I'm sure I didn't know just what I was in for when I first signed up. The other day, I was turning papers over to cull, when I found some past essay questions.

I read it now, two years on, and my heart still shudders at having to choose. In one case it was between:

Toni Morrison believes that the majority of American fiction has been concerned with 'the architecture of a new white man.' Does Tender is the Night explore the historical collapse of this figure?

and

Can Tender is the Night be read as a plea for understanding made by a writer who felt he had squandered his artistic potential?

I think, by that point, I was over the moon to be given:

Write an essay on the detective as semiotician (one who studies signs) with reference to the Sherlock Holmes stories.

Thankfully, I had long been hooked on Holmes. Although impressing your tutor is a whole different thing, and a critical part in determining grade.

To be honest, I don't know if those parts of toil was worth my now being able to say I was a pupil of American Liberals and Moderns (yuk) and Victorian Crime Writing (much less yuk).

And today, I realise I'm still taking on things of which the real challenge I don't really know. Ah, well. What doesn't kill you, hey?

(maybe the correct order is more Phew, and Yikes)