"Decide that you like college. In your dorm you meet many nice people. Some are smarter than you. And some, you notice, are dumber than you. You will continue, unfortunately, to view the world in exactly these terms for the rest of your life."
-- Lorrie Moore
After this ridiculously crazy no-sleep, no-social-life, all-work thesis process I can't help but wonder why I have signed up for five to seven more years of masochism. And then I think about how rewarding of a process it is, but how truly frustrating it can be. It takes so much self control to not punch people in the face sometimes.
I think everyone should have to write a thesis / do some sort of equivalent senior capstone project in whatever discipline they choose to study -- way too many people float through college. Show me that you actually learned something while you were here rather than drank yourself to death every weekend. And take some goddamn pride in your work!
I am almost done with my thesis. I have a few minor things to tweak, but I'm very close.
28 April 2010
26 April 2010
come on skinny love, just last the year
In incredibly sad news, my dear friend Jacko's mum died on Saturday night after a very long battle with liver disease and kidney failure almost 18 years to the minute after giving birth to her first son. So, I'm taking a brief pause later this week from thesising to head home for the wake/funeral on Thursday.
Jacko is one of the strongest people I have ever met. Her dad died in a car crash when she was 16 and she has had custody of her now-16-year-old sister for the past few months. When I called her on Sunday to see how she's doing, she told me that her whole family was sitting around watching Jerseylicious. She and her aunts were trying to figure out what to do with the remains - though there was speak of cremation, she knew that would end poorly. Someone would accidentally knock her mum over and spill her everywhere, so that was out of the question. Love love love -- These are all fairly normal responses I would expect from her, so if these are the responses I get, I shouldn't be too worried or concerned. Her life really is some sort of black comedy, but she's given up and is just embracing it.
(Jacko joked that she made it through my thesis presentations to make sure I could do it. I did it, Maureen! I'm sorry you won't get to hear how it went.)
Rest in peace, Milly- i miss you.
Jacko is one of the strongest people I have ever met. Her dad died in a car crash when she was 16 and she has had custody of her now-16-year-old sister for the past few months. When I called her on Sunday to see how she's doing, she told me that her whole family was sitting around watching Jerseylicious. She and her aunts were trying to figure out what to do with the remains - though there was speak of cremation, she knew that would end poorly. Someone would accidentally knock her mum over and spill her everywhere, so that was out of the question. Love love love -- These are all fairly normal responses I would expect from her, so if these are the responses I get, I shouldn't be too worried or concerned. Her life really is some sort of black comedy, but she's given up and is just embracing it.
(Jacko joked that she made it through my thesis presentations to make sure I could do it. I did it, Maureen! I'm sorry you won't get to hear how it went.)
Rest in peace, Milly- i miss you.
24 April 2010
Hey everybody, come check out how great I am!
My presentations yesterday went really well. (This is a blog about my thesis right? Guess what - you get to hear more about it!) Unfortunately, my project is not the most self-explanatory thing ever, so even though I had a sweet 32x40 semi-shiny sheet of paper, I usually had to walk people through it. This is fine unless more people show up halfway through my spiel, but I'm not complaining - a lot of my friends dropped by the poster presentation and a whole bunch of people came to my presentation to the English department. Thanks for checking out my work!
My parents The Scientists came up for the day, which provided almost unending entertainment. Some background: My dad is a PhD chemist and my mother is a biochemist who did some early work on the human genome project in Canada. These days they are writing manuals for scientific instruments, but the liberal arts are not their thing. Watching them try not to kill themselves during the four hours of the English Department Honors Conference was hilarious - the better a presentation was, the more they looked like they were going to put hot forks through their eyes. They are very intelligent people, but this is quite simply not what they do.
HIGHLIGHTS:
- Mom and Dad sitting next to Dennis Britton at the English department thesis reading, who is prone to flailing when he gets excited about things - especially the analysis of female and male sexuality in Spencer's The Faerie Queen
(to be honest, that was the longest amount of time I had ever seen Dennis sit still)
- Sarah Sherman, interim honors director for the English department, who was just so over this whole situation. "This is blah blah and they like this. their thesis is about this. sadly, there are still eight more presentation after this." (Not a direct quote, but close.)
- Mary Clark sitting behind me, having a grand time: "Hmmm. I don't think so. hmmm."
- the look on the English department's collective face when I introduced an equation to their lives. HILARIOUS. Luckily, we switched back to words quickly. (Meanwhile, Mom and Dad were celebrating the fact they finally understood something happening.)
- Mom and Dad finally meeting Shelly. Shelly and my mom could possibly be the same person - they have the same mannerisms.
Here is a very picture of me explaining my research to one of my many advisors (left) and my friend Kallie (right)
My parents The Scientists came up for the day, which provided almost unending entertainment. Some background: My dad is a PhD chemist and my mother is a biochemist who did some early work on the human genome project in Canada. These days they are writing manuals for scientific instruments, but the liberal arts are not their thing. Watching them try not to kill themselves during the four hours of the English Department Honors Conference was hilarious - the better a presentation was, the more they looked like they were going to put hot forks through their eyes. They are very intelligent people, but this is quite simply not what they do.
HIGHLIGHTS:
- Mom and Dad sitting next to Dennis Britton at the English department thesis reading, who is prone to flailing when he gets excited about things - especially the analysis of female and male sexuality in Spencer's The Faerie Queen
(to be honest, that was the longest amount of time I had ever seen Dennis sit still)
- Sarah Sherman, interim honors director for the English department, who was just so over this whole situation. "This is blah blah and they like this. their thesis is about this. sadly, there are still eight more presentation after this." (Not a direct quote, but close.)
- Mary Clark sitting behind me, having a grand time: "Hmmm. I don't think so. hmmm."
- the look on the English department's collective face when I introduced an equation to their lives. HILARIOUS. Luckily, we switched back to words quickly. (Meanwhile, Mom and Dad were celebrating the fact they finally understood something happening.)
- Mom and Dad finally meeting Shelly. Shelly and my mom could possibly be the same person - they have the same mannerisms.
Here is a very picture of me explaining my research to one of my many advisors (left) and my friend Kallie (right)
22 April 2010
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!?
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!?
19 April 2010
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.
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.
18 April 2010
legs to make us longer
I took a thesis vacation yesterday evening.
Basically, I'm trying to drink less. Due to this one-month-ish time constraint (my thesis is due on May 10), I can't afford to go out drinking mostly because of the time commitment. I have things to do, and I can't be hungover while doing them - it's a miserable experience. And, I'd rather not do this very serious, important work while drunk. So I have generally been showing up at parties kind of late, trying not to stick around for an exceptionally long time, and am limiting myself to no more than three beers, and especially No Being Drunk. I have been to a lot of parties and bars soberly these days, just to take a bit of a break from thesising. Look at me, being responsible!
So my choices last night were to go to a Joint Birthday Party, as two of my friends are turning 21-and-12-months this upcoming week, to go to a bunch of bars with another friend, or to see Kaki King in Boston.
Friends: I love you, you know this. But I took the Kaki King option. Even though a group of my friends are seeing her in Portland on 4/20 (ahem...) it was in my best interest not to do that. I have work to do, and I can't afford to lose all that time. I'd feel much better if it was on a weekend... so I went down to Boston with my friend Nicole.
And you know what? it was totally worth it. I ended up in front row, three feet away from her. She's this tiny, hot, ferocious woman (totally unexpected, by the way) who can fucking rock. I've liked her for a long time; I went to this concert to see her reproduce her albums' beauty. I left this concert with an intellectual and musical boner for her. Holy shit. opening with this song - disregard the Jimmy Fallon bit, sorry about that -
This happened too. No big deal or anything...
She ended her set by turning Jessica - a soft, light song, into a 7+ minute rock out. AMAZING. and then closed her encore with a dance-party version of Gay Sons of Lesbian Mothers. So, I'm in awe and stuff. And I only see awesome concerts.
Basically, I'm trying to drink less. Due to this one-month-ish time constraint (my thesis is due on May 10), I can't afford to go out drinking mostly because of the time commitment. I have things to do, and I can't be hungover while doing them - it's a miserable experience. And, I'd rather not do this very serious, important work while drunk. So I have generally been showing up at parties kind of late, trying not to stick around for an exceptionally long time, and am limiting myself to no more than three beers, and especially No Being Drunk. I have been to a lot of parties and bars soberly these days, just to take a bit of a break from thesising. Look at me, being responsible!
So my choices last night were to go to a Joint Birthday Party, as two of my friends are turning 21-and-12-months this upcoming week, to go to a bunch of bars with another friend, or to see Kaki King in Boston.
Friends: I love you, you know this. But I took the Kaki King option. Even though a group of my friends are seeing her in Portland on 4/20 (ahem...) it was in my best interest not to do that. I have work to do, and I can't afford to lose all that time. I'd feel much better if it was on a weekend... so I went down to Boston with my friend Nicole.
And you know what? it was totally worth it. I ended up in front row, three feet away from her. She's this tiny, hot, ferocious woman (totally unexpected, by the way) who can fucking rock. I've liked her for a long time; I went to this concert to see her reproduce her albums' beauty. I left this concert with an intellectual and musical boner for her. Holy shit. opening with this song - disregard the Jimmy Fallon bit, sorry about that -
This happened too. No big deal or anything...
She ended her set by turning Jessica - a soft, light song, into a 7+ minute rock out. AMAZING. and then closed her encore with a dance-party version of Gay Sons of Lesbian Mothers. So, I'm in awe and stuff. And I only see awesome concerts.
15 April 2010
my thesis beard has been coming in nicely
this has been the best twenty-nine cents i have spent in a long time.
(to see a picture of me where i look exactly like my father, please click here).
14 April 2010
I can't stop, that's why I'm hot
One of the side effects of thesis-writing is a sheer and utter disregard for things happening outside your little thesis cave... which is how i almost forgot about the commencement fair yesterday.
Incidentally, I had also forgotten that I'm graduating in a relatively short period of time. (Another side-effect of thesising is that you get so engrossed in your work you don't have time to worry about anything other than your thesis.) This is very convenient in that you don't have time to freak out about graduation or allow senoritis to kick in.
Though I am very sad I did not personally take this picture, I did stand next to this woman while waiting in line to get my cap and gown at the commencement fair. The Alumni Association really wanted us to go on a "Last Hurrah Lobster Bake". And by "wanted us to go" I really mean they had found middle-aged ladies to wear lobster hats and run around screaming excitedly about eating lobsters with your BEST FRIENDS FOREVER for the last time. Also it was $10. Obviously I am not attending.
And, despite my insistence that everyone should stop inviting me to everything ever, I consistently find myself alternating between linguisticking and Social Identity Awarenessing. I've decided I'm not attending anything unless I personally gain something from it. This vague "something" can be personal edification or food, saving me a food-journey. It turns out many social justice-oriented events also feature food, and my ideal event/linguisticking break involves both personal edification AND food, so if you are hoping to get me somewhere anytime soon, you should probably look into combining the two.
Which is how I found myself at the LGBTQ pancake breakfast this morning.. Despite my sheer dislike for Gay (adj.) + {Noun or Verb} to make a noun or verb phrase (Gay Marriage, Gay Lunch, Gay Parking My Car -- credit to Liz Feldman), I definitely attended Gay Breakfast today rather than sleeping. Free food > sleeping, and by waking up early/napping (far more realistically, this is what I've been doing) I have more time to work. Right?
For those of us keeping track at home, I have written eleven pages of my thesis from Saturday into Tuesday. This morning I've been editing my thesis as a whole, in preparation for Judgement Day With Shelly tomorrow, and I'm sort of amazed at what I've produced. In approximately three weeks I have not only restarted my thesis from word one, page one but synthesized four different theories into a working understanding of linguistic productivity, wrote a total of 17 pages out of my expected ~20 pages (one word and a period on page 17 totally counts) and have been loving every second of it. Despite my sometimes-vocal claims that this is exhausting and I can't wait for it to be over, I really do love this. Either I am delusional - probably from too much coffee, not enough sleep, or some combination of the two - or I have a very successful academic career ahead of me.
Incidentally, I had also forgotten that I'm graduating in a relatively short period of time. (Another side-effect of thesising is that you get so engrossed in your work you don't have time to worry about anything other than your thesis.) This is very convenient in that you don't have time to freak out about graduation or allow senoritis to kick in.
Though I am very sad I did not personally take this picture, I did stand next to this woman while waiting in line to get my cap and gown at the commencement fair. The Alumni Association really wanted us to go on a "Last Hurrah Lobster Bake". And by "wanted us to go" I really mean they had found middle-aged ladies to wear lobster hats and run around screaming excitedly about eating lobsters with your BEST FRIENDS FOREVER for the last time. Also it was $10. Obviously I am not attending.And, despite my insistence that everyone should stop inviting me to everything ever, I consistently find myself alternating between linguisticking and Social Identity Awarenessing. I've decided I'm not attending anything unless I personally gain something from it. This vague "something" can be personal edification or food, saving me a food-journey. It turns out many social justice-oriented events also feature food, and my ideal event/linguisticking break involves both personal edification AND food, so if you are hoping to get me somewhere anytime soon, you should probably look into combining the two.
Which is how I found myself at the LGBTQ pancake breakfast this morning.. Despite my sheer dislike for Gay (adj.) + {Noun or Verb} to make a noun or verb phrase (Gay Marriage, Gay Lunch, Gay Parking My Car -- credit to Liz Feldman), I definitely attended Gay Breakfast today rather than sleeping. Free food > sleeping, and by waking up early/napping (far more realistically, this is what I've been doing) I have more time to work. Right?
For those of us keeping track at home, I have written eleven pages of my thesis from Saturday into Tuesday. This morning I've been editing my thesis as a whole, in preparation for Judgement Day With Shelly tomorrow, and I'm sort of amazed at what I've produced. In approximately three weeks I have not only restarted my thesis from word one, page one but synthesized four different theories into a working understanding of linguistic productivity, wrote a total of 17 pages out of my expected ~20 pages (one word and a period on page 17 totally counts) and have been loving every second of it. Despite my sometimes-vocal claims that this is exhausting and I can't wait for it to be over, I really do love this. Either I am delusional - probably from too much coffee, not enough sleep, or some combination of the two - or I have a very successful academic career ahead of me.
12 April 2010
story of my life.
PhD comics = academic truth. Sometimes I feel like a grad student already, albeit with infinitely less work.
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