Stranger in a Strange Land

Before I left for Scotland, everyone was telling me how very brave they thought I was - going so far away to a place I had never been, without knowing anybody there. And I appreciated that, but I never really thought of myself as being brave. I was doing what I had to do - the guy who essentially invented what I do is here, there's a lot of linguistics stuff happening here (sometime in the next few weeks I am meeting with someone who is working on the Oxford English Thesaurus!). It just made sense to come to Glasgow.

It turns out it was a brave thing to do.

I've been here a little over a week and things are going really well. Don't get me wrong - it's terrifying to be in a new city, let alone a new country by yourself! There are good days and bad days, good hours and bad hours, but it's really about little victories. I rode the tube by myself to go somewhere new and I didn't get lost! I went to the pub by myself and read some newspapers for a couple of hours. I asked someone to lunch and we talked for a while. I just got back from meeting another grad student who is also an American - we met up with a couple of her friends from her church, who were amazing and helpful and very kind.

Luckily everyone speaks English and everyone is very friendly. (This is the friendliest city I've ever been in!). The other students in my program are very nice and very helpful but I'm trying to not depend on them for everything, you know? I send them emails asking what I should do on a weekend, and they were all great, giving me some pubs to check out, and suggestions for theatres to go to.

But, it's hard when you don't know anybody. How do you make friends in a city? I'm trying to push my boundaries a little bit, be open to anything, and attend anything I am invited to. Do you have any ideas, dear readers?

leaving on a jet plane

I've been flying on planes since I was a baby. I really love flying; it makes me feel really safe. I realize I am probably in the minority of people who feel this way. I guess I really just love condensed spaces. I love airports, too; I love sitting at a gate watching the planes come and go. The whole experience is just really comforting to me.

I have flown a lot of times in my life, often internationally (to Canada, mind you, which is in fact a different country, though I assure you this only a mere technicality).

Tonight I am getting on a plane that will take me to London. Tomorrow morning I am getting on a second plane to Glasgow.
I do not know anybody in Scotland.
I am in the program that I have been dreaming about for years.
This is really happening. I am really doing this. I am so nervous and excited.

(I should warn you that I will probably not have internet access for a few days, and I am going to be super busy in the first week or so. However, I will be back on here as soon as possible.)

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

it's weird to not be at unh today.

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.

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.

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.

Two things today

1. this is my 100th post! I was actually planning on having yesterday's post be up for tomorrow, but I mixed up my dates. Oops. Happy 100 posts, blogotron fans!

2.

YOU GUYS I AM ON THE FRONT PAGE OF A WEBSITE click here to see it larger

Cash Rules Everything Around Me

Once upon a time I had a job at a bagel place in my hometown. I worked for exactly four days. I was let go on my first full shift.

I had been hired to replace a girl who was going to school in Providence in the fall after working for Bagels for 3 years. By training me over the summer, I would be capable of doing everything she did. Disregarding the fact I was planning on leaving them high and dry come September - brb, going to scotland - this was reasonable. Kerri was still around - she was training me - but announced yesterday morning that she was having a hard time finding a job in Providence and she had decided to drive back every weekend to work her usual weekend shift.

As (Irrelevant) New Kerri, I was let go after my first week of work yesterday. I'm not amused. Because she's still there, they won't need me. But I'm not even really entirely terminated! I'm now permanently on-call, meaning (despite the fact that I never finished training - I can't use the cash register still) they can call me and be like "oh hey, want to work today? So-and-so called out." Fuck that!

At least my boss paid me in cash for my past few shifts, and told me that I can "totally use her as a reference". HA - yeah right.

But this presents some new problems, namely that
a) I don't have a job
b) I am not going to be able to get a job for only a little less than two months
c) It took me nearly a month and a half to get THIS job

So now it's back to the drawing board. I've been emailing English and linguistics professors at local colleges, offering my services as an unpaid research assistant (read: Academic Slave Labor). I have the resume for it, at least. I pleasantly discovered while writing a cover letter that from my majors and minor, I have backgrounds in literary theory, history of language - specifically that of English, word-formation, issues of syntax and grammar, as well as gender theory and queer theory. I am literate in Old English as well as some rudimentary French literacy. If that's not qualification enough to do academica, well, you can go fuck yourself.

From proto-Sanskrit Minoans to Porto-centric Lisboans, Greek Cypriots and and hobbisots who hang around in quotes a lot

So I write a column for The Examiner about linguistics. (you might have heard about it.) It's a lot of fun, there's a lot of freedom to write about whatever you want as long as it's relevant to your topic. However, next to nothing happens linguistically on a day to day basis, and rarely does anything especially "local" happens in my field - sometimes it's a bit of a stretch to come up with stuff to talk about! As a result, a lot of my columns are mostly extravagant concessions on my part.

Much like this blog, I have no idea who is reading my columns. I'm not really promoting this page at all, so it's often like shouting into the void. Writing for the Examiner is similar in that I'm still kind of shouting into the void, but I'm also putting all of my articles on StumbleUpon and sending a few people my articles. I'm trying a little harder. I have garnered some readership, and unlike this blog, I have some analytics available for The Examiner. I usually get about 60-90 page hits on days that I write. This baffles me, because I don't think I could think of 60-90 people who would want to hear what I have to say. Other than the people I've bullied into reading (thanks, if you're reading; I do really appreciate it, and I'm sorry if it's annoying) and a few people in my family who are sort of required to read my articles (ahem, Mom & Dad) I don't think I could come up with 60-90 people off the top of my head!

But for the first time since I started writing for The Examiner, something linguistically newsworthy happened and I wrote about it for yesterday's article. I then went to Boston for a day and a half to dog-sit with my friend KA. Upon coming back, I found out that I was on the front of the Society & Culture page and had been on the front page of the Boston Examiner yesterday, leading to my highest readership ever - just from one article! I am currently the third-most read Society & Culture Examiner behind the New York Charities Examiner. I am floored!

1,413 people were interested in what I had to say yesterday. That's pretty cool. If you've been reading all along - thanks so much.

my country tis of thee

Around Thanksgiving 2009, I started to realize that I will be moving permanently to the UK for the next five years...and maybe even longer than that! As each holiday passes, it is my Last One In The States, and I grow more and more conscious of this fact. Something will rear its inherently American head... and I'm reminded that I'm Leaving Soon.

Few things say AMERICA! as loudly as the Fourth of July. I don't always love America but I have never really seen myself as an ex-patriot. I hope I will be back one day!

This is a little story about the best birthday present I have received in a long time

Yesterday was my birthday! Aside from a few books that I've been looking forward to reading, I didn't get anything especially exciting until later in the afternoon.

While sitting around the other night, I went to check my assorted Career-Finding-Website newsletters. Presumably if you have used one of these Find-A-Career Dot-Coms, you are familiar with these e-mails. One of them listed that The Examiner was looking for some columnists for their Society & Culture section. Familiar with The Examiner, I quickly skim the list of available Examiner titles: Linguistics Examiner.

"That's me!" I thought. "I could do that!"

So at 11:30 at night, I throw together a quick article about Twitterspeak and a little blurb about why they should hire me as the Boston-Area Linguist.

I receive one of those "we are now processing your information FOR EVER" e-mails. I don't really think too much about it. The next afternoon - on my birthday - I discover they want to give me the linguistics column! And I will get paid per article! (spoiler alert: probably very little.) AND it'll be a legitimate thing (ahem, Beer Summer.)

To recap: I get to write articles about things I already think about. These articles are then published! With my name attached! Other people will read them (maybe!) And then, I will (presumably) get paid for it. What's up, relevant resume expierence. I don't care any more, really, if I don't have a "real job". I am actually using my degree directly out of college! Not only am I going be a freelance writer, which is every English major's dream, I get to read about linguistics and think about language and THEN I GET TO OPEN THIS DISCUSSION FOR OTHER PEOPLE. I, for one, am excited. I hope you are too.

how to not get a job

step one: discover that you have your phone number incorrect on your resume. 8047, not 0843.

Congratulations, You Did It!

Graduating feels a lot like juggling joy and fear and anxiety and pride and excitement and terror and worry and giddiness and loneliness and regret and satisfaction and frustration and hope and need and want and confusion and love and bafflement and sadness and happiness. It's certainly very comforting to know that this isn't my last graduation, which definitely diffused the shock of I AM DONE WITH COLLEGE FOREVER. In 5-7 years I get to do this again... and it will be more surreal then, I'm sure.


HIGHLIGHTS:

• UNH running out of chairs for the graduating class, meaning a 58-minute version of Pomp & Circumstance and a lot of people just standing around while hilarity ensued
• Collopy and I deciding that we probably could have just gone to a store that sold curtains and bought a gold cord... screw you, Honors Convocation, we'll have your 3.2 GPA if you factor in this semester
• The man who was too short for the microphone stand and as a result looked like the microphones were his eyeballs
• The lady who was convinced that the world was going to end tomorrow and it is ALL OUR FAULTS so do something about it! Or be terrorists!!! or something to that effect
• Bert Jacobs, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Optimist, Life is Good Company, throwing frisbees and being awesome (read his commencement speech)
• Not being told that campus runs on a giant fart (see also: Commencement 2009 & the "CE-Yo" of Stonyfield Yogurt)
  
• When COLA was announced, the entire back row of professors in full doctoral robes threw beach balls at us
• UNH Graduation slowly becomes the UNH Folk Festival

I have a bachelor's degree from the University of New Hampshire in English and Linguistics.
That's strange to say. I have a bachelor's degree. Who let that happen?

how did it get so late so soon?

Dear UNH,

I feel like I just arrived on your campus maybe two years ago. I'm about to go to my last day of classes in my undergraduate career. When did this happen?! Thanks for four years of academic excitement.

With love,
Heather

a time line

Presumably if you've been following my blog lately this post is a little bit unnecessary. But, whatever:


a month ago, I restarted my thesis from word one, page one.
three weeks ago, I started writing thesis 2.0
last week, I had a 17-page first draft
As of Monday afternoon, I sent my URC poster to print
As of yesterday morning, I had a URC poster
Tomorrow I'm presenting my research not once but twice!
and as of this weekend I will have a second draft.

even though the last few weeks have felt like this:

(you probably saw me wandering around campus looking like this)
I am pretty damn proud of myself for accomplishing so much in such a short period of time.

& a month from today i'll be graduating.
how does this happen!?

In my mind, the URC is like a very large-scale science fair. I hope someone brings a paper-mache volcano.

When I signed up for the Undergraduate Research Conference in March, I hadn't planned on having to restart my thesis. I also assumed that a poster presentation would be a fairly straightforward thing, which is why I decided to do a poster presentation AND a thesis reading. This may have been an error in judgment. But, there wasn't much I could do about it.

Last Thursday I very sleep-deprivingly drove to every nearby place that would print a 32x40 semi-gloss professional poster. Due to my tiny department of 35 students and three professors, I was in charge of my own poster. Conveniently, UNH offers these printing services, but they said they needed a 5-7 day turnaround time. This was the 5-7 day turnaround deadline before the URC, and I had nothing to give them. Worried, I went to Kinko's and Staples to get quotes. For the convenience of approximately a 2 hour turnaround time, I would pay nearly three times as much. I had planned on working on my poster the week I got back from spring break. I didn't even start rewriting until two weeks ago.

This weekend I started working on my poster. I sent it to print an hour ago.

To be honest, the nature of my project is that it is quite simply not accessible to everyone. There aren't a lot of pictures which are applicable to native and adopted locative prefixes. It requires a lot of very wordy explanation. There is no way to make this "user-friendly". I tried, believe me. It was a stretch to come up with two graphs.

Helpfully, the last time I used Powerpoint for ANYTHING was middle school, and we all had to make a metaslide that showed we knew how to use powerpoint. I had no idea how to make a poster using it... but there is no time for a learning curve. Luckily for me, someone compiled a How-To. Beverly, my old and rather crotchety computer, decided that this was a good time to let Powerpoint crash every 20 minutes or so. This was frustrating.

But, Shelly approved of my final poster draft while I was in class this afternoon. I ran to get it printed through UNH's copy center, which apparently is three days ahead of schedule and not costing me $92.25 for 32x40 inches of semi-shiny paper with things printed on it. So this is all going very well; much better than anticipated, really.