You said, "I'll see you in September"

it's weird to not be at unh today.

something about airplanes

this is my mother & i. we frequently wear the exact same color combinations, though not on purpose.

On September 15 we are flying from Boston to London to Glasgow!

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

Sometimes I get really freaked out over moving to a new country. It's not like I will be a state or two away from home.

But then I remember that the ocean is a state
and a country is a state
and when you look at it that way

I really will be only a few states away.

---
I'm bad at change and this is a big one.

I have the pre-college jitters again. Only this time they are simultaneously pre- and post-college jitters. I know what I am doing. I know what academia is like, I know what I am studying and how to study it. But I don't know what happens next.

Nobody moves transatlantically by themselves to a new country for five years immediately out of college... right? I mean, I guess if you are in the peace corps or if you are one of my friends teaching English in a third-world country you are in the same boat as me. But you have a timeline, and then you come back home. I am pretty much moving to a new country semi-permanently; I don't know if I will ever be moving back to the States, which is terrifying in the present tense. I don't know anyone there, I'm going alone. It's not like a study abroad program where there's a whole crowd of people - I'm going by myself.

Right now, five years feels very permanent - even though I am going to be fine in the long run. People move all the time, and besides, you have to move sometime. You don't want to stay in one place for too long anyway. Everything is always fine once you get settled.

But in the meantime, everyone wants me to be excited about Scotland. And I am, I promise. I worked really hard to get into this program. It's just that right now I feel like I'm treading water while holding a toaster above my head.

incredible things are happening in the world

YOU GUYS GUESS WHAT CAME TODAY.

My visa! Yes! Apparently the consulate decided to take pity on me after all of this purgatory AND GRANTED ME MY VISA. I am very, very pleased, as this saves me several more weeks of anguish and stress. Conveniently, they UPSed it to me - I am glad that somebody involved still trusts UPS. But this is great news! I can get on with my life! Time to buy a plane ticket!

Also, I got my first paycheck from The Examiner today. This means I am a real writer... right? It only took 47 articles before I reached their payout level, but this is still exciting!

quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock

In case you were curious, the Tour De La Bibliothèques is still ongoing. Here is an illustrated guide to my life as a professional reader.

This is what I am researching, explained with dinosaurs and probably much more helpful than my previous post about it:
(from dinosaur comics by ryan north)


I go to Widener every week or so to get copies of articles to read. I look at an on-line catalog, request items, wait for them to arrive, make photocopies of them, return the items, and repeat. Here I am making sure I have all the pages of one article.
If I want to borrow a book, I have to get Dr. Green to sign it out for me. Then I bring all of this home with me.

During the rest of the week, I come to Wheaton College's library, where I sit in the basement with the history books to read and take notes on my computer. Today I am reading about lying.
Because I am super-nearsighted, I have to wear my glasses when I read. Even though I wear contacts in my daily life, my lenses hypercorrect for distance and then I can't read. As you can imagine, this is counterproductive.

That's it! This is what I do every day instead of having an actual job. There's not much to say about being a research assistant. I don't have to get dressed up or anything; I just sort of sit somewhere, listen to music, and read. It's pretty self-explanatory, but I figured it was time to talk about something other than mail fails.

i can't see the future but i know it has big plans for me

A month from today I will be in Scotland, moving into my flat, and about to start my first semester of grad school.

I am terrified, but I know it's where I should be, need to be, and want to be.

Things I Do Not Have III: Revenge of the UPS Guy

(I am sure you are tired of this. I'm sorry. I know I am, especially because I am fairly certain this title series is not getting any funnier. But this blog is about grad school and all things related...and this is certainly related. So here we are. If, somehow, you are missing part 1 and 2, scroll down a bit and start there.)

1. My computer
You guys, I would like to introduce you to someone. I'm writing this on my new computer! It arrived yesterday, which was alarming on the basis that at least UPS can do something right. We got to play the Remember All Your Passwords game for a while, and then we set forth on the arduous task of moving stuff between computers.

It actually wasn't that bad - when we got Beverly back, the nice folks at the computer repair place had taken the liberty of putting my hard drive in an external hard drive casing, so I could access all my files without any difficulty. (Beverly, that dear old gal, was very opinionated. If she decided she did not like what I was doing she would shut down. I bet she would have been jealous of this whole situation.) Obviously I nicknamed that hard drive "Beverly". (For the record I have not named this new computer yet, and it most certainly is not going to be Beverly II. That's just unfairly dooming it.) But I was pleased when I got the following message:
I mean, this was just too good. Even from The Great Hard Drive In The Sky, Beverly managed to make things difficult.

(Yes, I just anthropomorphized my (old) computer and its assorted innards. And you loved it.)

2. My Visa
I mean, we knew this was coming, right? Like, what would be the most unreasonable thing that could happen?

At 9 am yesterday we called UPS for confirmation that transcript had been delivered. Of course if you know anything about situational irony and/or you follow my life very comprehensively, you know what happened: they didn't know where it was. Again.

I am not entirely certain they ever had any idea where it was in the first place - how do you lose a piece of mail TWICE? I called the UK consulate for a flat rate of 3 US dollars per minute and listened to a British robot inform me that "all of our agents are currently assisting other customers" and that "we will answer your call in a few moments" for half an hour. I then e-mailed them (again), and faxed them a letter with everything my emails have said.

So now we are fucked, because in the very eloquent words of the UK Consulate:
If these documents [my UNH transcript] are not received by 13 August 2010 your application will be refused. In addition, if you fail to provide the correct documents as described above, we will assess your application based on what you have provided.
It is now 17 August 2010, which is decidedly not 13 August 2010. Hmm. That's not quite right, is it? I took my extra transcript that I had ordered to keep on file, which was no longer in its sealed envelope because I wanted to make sure it was right before we submitted it - and went down to the post office to express mail it, because it's all we have. Because UPS fucking lost my official sealed transcript, and now I will probably have to reapply, get my transcripts (again, though at least I know for this time), get my biometrics taken again and then we just might be driving ourselves over to the UK consulate in NYC to personally hand all of this to them so it will be filed all before September 18, which is the date that I am moving into my flat in Scotland, come hell or high water. Or bureaucracy parades.


As I am sure you can imagine, I was very proud of myself for not punching the UPS guy in the face when he showed up to deliver my computer later in the day.

3. Plane Tickets
We are not discussing this.


I give up. Here's a picture of the saddest kitten in the world.

I understand, buddy.


EDIT 8/17 1:40 PM!
Guess what came today! That's right, my original UPS shipment from Thursday! Apparently they couldn't read my handwriting, so it was deemed undeliverable. Um. If you insist - this doesn't account for the part where you don't know where it went for three days. Either way I suppose this whole debacle is technically my fault. I know I have terrible handwriting, but this is absurd.

Things I Do Not Have, Redux

1. My computer
Beverly is back! Well, kind of.

As I predicted, she had few problems with her logic board. On macs at least, the video card is part of the logic board. (I might not know everything about computers, like how to program them and build them, but I can recognize what parts are attached to other parts.) Basically the cost of an entirely new logic board + new hard drive as previously installed + LABOR = 1 new computer.

Since computers age in fruit fly years, Beverly was approximately 46821 years old (rough estimate. a fruit fly lifepsan is 10 human days, but then there was division and multiplication, so I made up a number). Rather than pay all that money for repair work on an ancient machine we bought a new computer. Beverly came back to me, a sad pile of metal and wires, soon to be retired forever. RIP Beverly! Have fun crashing in Mac Heaven!

2. My Visa
I mentioned that I needed to get my transcript from UNH to New York City in 7 days in my last post. Remember that I am a generally calm person.

This seemed doable. Okay! TIMELINE TIME.
FRIDAY 08/06 Notification arrives! Request 2 transcripts from UNH; one for my records and one for the British consulate. Remember that the weekend is coming up and the Registrar will probably not deal with it until Monday.
MONDAY 08/09 They have seen my request. If the registrar prints them and puts them in the mail today, they will arrive by Wednesday! It only takes two days for mail to get from MA > NH and NH > MA. Perfect!
WEDNESDAY 08/11 NO TRANSCRIPTS IN THE MAIL; commence panicking (see below). Anticipate the mail being hours late on Thursday, and then still not receiving transcripts. Anticipate not being able to fulfill British Government's demands. Request transcripts for pickup through Blackboard for Thursday.
THURSDAY 08/12: Nervously check the mail every 15 minutes from 9 am onward. (Feel like Dad.) Prepare to drive up to UNH if mail does not arrive by 11 am. Mail arrives at 10:55, with my transcripts; calm the fuck down. Sign envelope, write my application # on it, bring to UPS store to have it overnighted to NYC by Friday 08/13 as requested. Stop worrying! Call off impromptu trip to NH, go to Wheaton to work on research project.
FRIDAY 08/13 Resume panicking! No sign of delivery from UPS. Call UPS, find out they have no idea where my transcript is. They lost track of it somewhere after Shrewsbury, MA. Find out all of this at 4:30 PM! Offices close at 5! UPS guy says he will call back within the hour, as he is going to call ALL OF THE NEW YORK CITY DRIVERS UNTIL HE FINDS IT. UPS guy calls back - it is found but not yet delivered! Hastily e-mail the consulate explaining situation at hand and how it is not my fault.
MONDAY 08/16 UPS promises to have my transcript at British Consulate General by 9 am.

OK! I think we see a problem here. Namely that Monday August 16th is not Friday August 13th. So now I am back to worrying about my visa, because WHAT IF THEY TURN ME DOWN BECAUSE I DID NOT SEND THEM ENOUGH PAPER IN THE FIRST PLACE OH MY GOD. And by the way, it is their fault that I did not send my visa application in earlier. Oh, The Bureaucracy Parade, you are lots of fun!

3. Plane Tickets
As I think you have figured out by now, I still do not have plane tickets, as I am not allowed to buy those without a visa. If I try to do move to Scotland without one, I will eventually become an illegal alien in the UK, and that is generally frowned upon. I am only leaving in FIVE WEEKS. (Plane tickets are already expensive...they are going to be way more expensive than necessary at the rate we are going!)

Things I Do Not Have, A List

1. My computer
I've had my computer for four years (or 438475 years in computer-years). I've had a couple problems with it - but I was also one of the macbook pro early adopters. Macbooks came out in 2006, which is when I was looking to buy a computer for college. So, I have an early model which probably doesn't have all the kinks ironed out. In the past six months, my mac would freeze or black out randomly in the middle of whatever I was doing. I nicknamed my computer Beverly, as she was old and crochety, with a mind of her own. (Plus it made me feel better to yell at something semi-animate: "God dammit, Beverly!") If she decided she didn't like what I was doing, she would shut down on me. It was frustrating, but something I could generally work around. I knew I had to get it fixed before I left for Scotland, but it's not the worst thing. I figured I had a video card problem, based on extensive Google searching.

Finally I took it in to get repaired a little over a week ago. Their solution was to give me a larger hard drive, because I had used too much of it. Too much of my hard drive? If you don't want me to use the space provided, don't give it to me! Anyway, they installed a bigger hard drive and left Beverly alone to her own devices over the weekend to copy my files over. Beverly did not like this and seized the opportunity to freeze again. So, now the computer repair people are trying to replicate the problem organically so they can fix it.

My well-documented hatred of handheld computer things - I barely use my cell phone, don't own an iPod touch and would never dream of owning a blackberry or iphone - means that I am really, really disconnected, more so than usual. I'm using my dad's computer in the meantime. It took me three days to figure out how New Word worked so I could write my column; I still haven't figured out how to save anything. I don't have any of my bookmarks, I don't have stumbleupon, and these computers don't have sound cards so I can't watch youtube. I don't even have wikipedia to look up stuff while I do my research! You guys, I don't know what to do! It is kind of like living in 2003, only with Windows 7. Come back to me, Beverly!

2. My Visa
I submitted a small forest of paper to the UK consulate in New York about two weeks ago, and was informed that there's a 15-day turnaround time for student visas. Last Friday I recieved an email telling me that I needed to submit my UNH transcript by 13 August 2010. This is reasonable, as it was how I got into Strathclyde in the first place. I can't actually get UNH to mail it to NY, because I have to mark a couple things on the envelope so it gets sent to the correct person. I requested my transcript that afternoon, and it has not arrived yet - usually mail to/from UNH takes about two days. It is now August 11th, and I need my transcript to be in their hands by Friday. SO! tomorrow I am driving up to UNH to pick up my transcripts directly from the registrar, overnighting them to NYC, driving back home and hoping this all goes through in time.

3. Plane Tickets
Without my visa, there's no point in searching for plane tickets. I'm not supposed to have tickets until I have my visa; part of the paper forest I had to submit was a proposed itinerary (this means my itinerary has to be approved by The Government.)

I LEAVE IN FIVE WEEKS.
Can you tell that I'm stressed about all of this?

Ivy-covered professors in ivy-covered halls

I'm not at Harvard every day. I live about an hour away from Boston by train, and that just gets me into the city. Getting to Harvard once I get to Boston is another half an hour or so on the T. Doing that every day would be unnecessary and expensive. (To go to any other school in Boston is kind of equally as inefficient.) I live at the end of a commuter rail, which therefore makes me "near" Boston. In reality I live in what I call Southern Massachusetts, which is not quite South Shore but not quite central MA either, but somewhere between there. I do live very close to Rhode Island; from my house, I can get there in about 10 minutes.

But I do live near a lot of colleges. Between Providence, Worcester, and Boston there are easily around 40 colleges within an hour of me. I am very bad at working at home - I'm easily distracted and really just want to be left alone when I'm working - so I generally just go to one of these schools and use their libraries. Besides Harvard, I've been to a few other schools in the Tour De La Bibliothèques. One school is in my hometown, offering a BA only in dance; it is not very legitimate. The other is Wheaton College, which is about a half-hour drive from me and a lot more legit. I spent a couple of afternoons at BU, too. Most of the time I work at Wheaton College, because it is probably the closest to me and offers more than one Bachelor's degree.

If you spend enough time on college campuses, you quickly realize that they are all exactly the same. Did you guys go on a million college tours when you were in high school? I did - I think I visited something like 10 or 12 colleges. And at each one, someone very charming and friendly would lead you around: This is the student union. Here is our library, with many books. Here is our gym! That giant pile of construction supplies is going to be our New Science Complex! Here is a dorm, people live here. You could live here, if you come to our AWESOME SCHOOL BECAUSE WE ARE THE BEST. It's all about selling someone on what sets this one school apart from the 83 million other schools you could apply to.

In the Northeast, at least, a college campus seems to be fairly uniform. There's a bunch of brick buildings with some white trim or accent. These are neat and orderly and usually organized in a line of sorts - around a quad, perhaps. There's at least one hypermodern building that looks super out of place, with weird glass and angles. Sometime in the 1960s-1970s, every school had a lot of money to (re)build stuff, so there is a collection of fairly horrible concrete monstrosities somewhere; some of them are a mix of bricks and concrete. There might be a bunch of repurposed houses scattered around.

Does this sound like your campus? Probably. It's kind of comforting, actually, to know that the collegiate experience is pretty much the same everywhere you go. Walking around Wheaton or BU or even Harvard feels exactly the same as walking around UNH. Walking around BU this summer was strange because I felt like I had already gone there for years, even though its citiness had turned me off five years ago. I definitely love the way that UNH is set up, but I think could love the way any campus is set up.

No matter how it ends, no matter how it starts

How's research going? It's alright. I don't know very much about pragmatics, which could be accurately described as "linguistic philosophy". Linguistics is heavily based in logic - it's sort of like math, but with words. Philosophy is also - predictably - heavily based in logic. The study of pragmatics in linguistics focuses contextualizing language for both the speaker and the hearer using philosophy of language. I am basically reading about the logic of language - specifically how logical arguments construct context. As Dr. Green's research assistant, my job is to read articles and books about pragmatics and take notes on them, summarizing their arguments.

I've never taken a class on logic, which is therefore making this more difficult than it has to be. I basically failed every math class ever from algebra onwards, and therefore was not very pleased to find out I had a math requirement in college. I had the option of Finite Math or Logic. Figuring that I had at least taken Algebra variations something like 6 times, I would sign up for Finite Math and try really hard to not fail. (I scraped by with a C+. I was very proud of myself.)

I do have a basic idea of how sets work, and I know how to read syntactical analyses and I understand how surface vs deep structures work in language, but I don't know how to read logic problems. This is, of course, a major hinderance in progress. I have been reading about propositional logic and kind of staring blankly at proofs like (this is a real example taken from one of my texts):

1)
a. Sam wants Fido.
b. What Sam wants is Fido.
c. It is Sam who wants Fido.

2)
a. Wants (Sam,Fido)
b. λx(Wants (Sam,x))(Fido)
c. λx(Wants (x,Fido))(Sam)

3) It is Fido that Sam wants.
3a) λx(Wants (Sam,x))(Fido)
4) Who wants Fido is Sam.
4a) λx(Wants (x,Fido))(Sam)

Heather wants fewer parenthesis. But I am fairly certain that I am supposed to understand that these are varieties of ways to say that "Sam wants Fido", and they are perfectly clear in every context. Something that would not be clear (comparatively speaking to Sam & Fido) is "Noam likes bats" (What kind of bats? flying bats? baseball bats? an otherwise non-defined bat? What if 'bats' is an acronym for Bad Ass Tattoos? etc etc). I am either reading about logic, ambiguity, or both. This goes on for pages. The first article I read was 30 pages about how the sentence "I love you" is perfectly contextual and logically sound as it has a subject (I), a verb (love) and a referent object (you).

In case you were curious, all of it is this ridiculous. (The pragmatists would hate that sentence.) Although context is important because it tells us what is happening in the sentence so we can go on to presuppose and imply things accordingly based on what we understand to be true, the pragmatists are champs at stretching context a little bit too far - Bad Ass Tattoos? Come on now.

For the most part though, I do get it...it just takes some time. A lot of the logical arguments I'm given look a lot like the ones above, and they are pretty straightforward. It's when you give me symbols like ¬, ∀, ⊕, and ⊢ that I have no idea what you are talking about. I can't even guess what "∀x" would mean - I have been relying heavily on Wikipedia's Basic Logic Symbols page as a reference and hoping I am kind of right in my analysis. Maybe when I finish this research I will have a basic working knowledge of logic.

in which i have feelings about prop 8

As I'm sure you know by now, Judge Vaughn Walker overturned Prop 8 yesterday afternoon. Proposition 8 was passed by voters in 2008 and effectively repealed same-sex marriage in California.

Obviously, it was a big deal to repeal same-sex marriage in one of the most stereotypically liberal places in the country. There were protests, there were rallies, there were viral video campaigns, there were celebrity speak-outs. Barack Obama had just been elected president around the same time. We - anyone who could be construed as even kind of liberal - were all certain that The World Was Going To Change For The Better. It was going to be great! "Yes we can," we had said. We did!

I remember November 5, 2008. We were all high off the announcement of President-Elect Barack Obama; we were full of joy and hope. We were proud to be Americans, Americans who had just elected our first African-American president, we were going to be Liberal Progressives and we had silenced McCain and Palin. I mostly remember being glad that the election was over so I wouldn't have to hear anything about it anymore; nobody would be chasing me across the street begging me to vote!

The next day, I remember hearing that Prop 8 had passed. I remember being kind of hurt and but still riding high from the night before. It's going to be okay, I thought. It won't be nearly as bad as the past eight years. We have Obama, not Bush. It's going to be okay. (I also remember not wanting to put all my trust for a country in one person; I remember not entirely liking Obama's LGBT policies and plans and I remember being distrustful of political promises. I knew that I was being stupid and naive, so easily deluded by our Liberal Progressiveness! But I wanted to believe, oh how I wanted to believe.)

I put Prop 8 out of my mind. California's far away, I thought. Things can change still. Other states will pass civil unions. There are 49 other states. It's scary to know that same-sex marriages can and will be repealed, but at least they had them, right? New Hampshire had just begun to talk about it. It was an exciting time. My home state of Massachusetts was the first state to legalize gay marriage, and I was hoping to see the same live-free-or-die philosophy honored in my adopted home state. New Hampshire's civil union ruling went into effect on January 1 of this year. It is exciting to be young and queer in the midst of this political process.

I kept pushing Prop 8 out of my head as more states started to institute civil unions. It's a frustratingly slow process; it doesn't always feel like you are moving forward. Sometimes it feels like you are moving backwards.

On the road to LGBTQ+ equality, every state that starts to think about civil unions is a baby step. Every state that passed civil unions and/or same-sex marriage is another baby step. I have friends who are not in support of marriage, calling it a heterosexist institution. But before you can overthrow an institution you need to have it securely in place. Baby steps. Gay marriage with full civil liberties will eventually become Non-Modifier Marriage. We need marriage before we can overthrow marriage.

Straight folks can get married and divorced and married and divorced; something like 50% of marriages end in divorce. Maybe you are the one ruining the institution of marriage. How does that feel? Not so good, right?

Here's the thing about being gay: you are repeatedly told that your identity is inherently wrong. Being gay is the scariest fucking thing, every single day.

This past fall, Maine was voting on legalizing civil unions. In October, I went to a concert in Portland and saw many God Hates Fags signs while I was there. Maine, twenty minutes away from me at UNH, didn't feel like a very safe place anymore.

Maine's civil unions bill didn't pass. I read the news that morning, heartbroken, and cried for a while. How could this happen? How could this happen so close to me? And then I remembered Prop 8. I remembered how many lives these rulings touch and affect. I couldn't believe I had forgotten about it.

Knowing that California has reversed their ruling makes me so, so happy because it is a huge step towards equality. Of course there are going to be appeals, and of course it's going to keep going on and on in circles for a while. But yesterday was a huge, huge victory for so many people. And not just in California - this struggle for equality is worldwide.

I can't wait to tell my kids about it one day.

i am a visitor here; i am not permanent

Monday was Day 2 of Research at Harvard! Since I do not actually go to Harvard, I have really limited access to their resources. Though I have the privilege of merely being in this building, even if it is for such a short, short time, I am not really allowed to do very much. If I want to see something, I have to request it; about two hours later someone will deliver it to me. (I like to think there are library elves involved.) I usually interact with about two library staff members maximum.

As a "visiting academic" (that's really strange to say; do I even qualify for that title?) this there are only so many things that you can expect me to know. The floor plan, for instance, is not one of them, especially when you are allowed in a room and a half. Since I don't have stacks privileges, I have no idea where the books I am requesting are. I know a lot of them are generally rather localized in one place based on their call numbers, but I don't know where this place is. It's part of the mythical, forbidden places in the building!

So you can imagine my surprise when one of the librarians came back to my desk in the reading room with two of my request slips and said "You can go get these yourself." What?! I can only be in here and in the bathroom! YOU CAN'T GIVE ME THAT SORT OF POWER.

It turns out that I'm allowed to be in a few more places than I originally suspected, including "up the stairs and in the big reading room". This room holds the most commonly accessed books and big huge mega tables for everyone to use. I guess this makes sense. Apparently everyone with access to the library has access to this room; it's in all of their publications about Widener, so I guess it's a kind of famous room. Kind of a shame, because the rest of the library is, in my opinion, way more beautiful than this one room. (The reading room I'm usually in is full of white stone and mahogany wood fixtures with stainless steel accents. We have a giant skylight above us. It is gorgeous.) But it's kind of like saying you like one palace over another... they're both gorgeous in their own way.

Just to get to this other room you have to go up a MARBLE STAIRCASE. However, nobody works in that room to help you, which is why there would be no point to me spending my time there. The library elves wouldn't be able to collect my resources for me.

Later I found out that I'm not granted access to one of the documents I requested that morning. I was sent to another room (Three rooms in one day! so exciting) and one of the librarians took pity on me. She is arranging for me to get special access to this one document! I have to wait for this request to go through, and I will probably have to bring latex gloves to make sure that I don't ruin it with fingerprints or something.

On my lunch break I half-listened to a campus tour guide brag about how she had been in Widener once. Harvard's campus tours won't bring them anywhere near the library the undergrads are allowed into, but they will bring you in front of Widener! Ha ha, kiddos, I AM ALLOWED IN WIDENER...for four more days this year!