Dreams

This month's Scientiae Carnival asks, "What do you think a better, more equitable society should look like? What are your dreams for your life? For the lives of others? How close are you to living the life of your dreams? What would make you able to live that life?"

I'm going to answer the last part of this question, as it relates to things I have been thinking about lately. I recently kind of hit rock bottom in my feelings about my dissertation and things I have feared would happen with it happened. Despite that and the fact that I am in a new city and missing old friends and also that I insanely took on a huge teaching load, I have been really happy. I think I am really happy for two reasons. 1) We know we will be here for awhile. R will be in his PhD program for 5,6,7 or more years. After I graduate and he finishes classes I might get a tenure track job elsewhere, and we might spend time in between two cities, but he will be at this school for the foreseeable future. It gives us some stability we have not had for a long time. 2) I realized that if I spent all my days like I did now with the addition of more money and a PhD, I would really be exactly where I want to be. I really love teaching, and this semester I am teaching some upper level classes which are giving me more of a taste of what I might get to do in a full time job someday. I also think I'll be teaching at these schools for more than 2 semesters, so I'll finally get to see what it is like to settle in a little somewhere, learn the student culture, know where to eat lunch, etc. I have been striving so long for the goal of a PhD, I think I forgot a little what I wanted it for. I wanted it so I could teach and research, and I am teaching and researching (or at least writing up research) right now. I already have my dream job in a way, and if I keep doing it, the diploma will come.

So I am so so close to living the life of my dreams. It is pretty awesome. And what do I want for others? I would really love if everyone could have the space to figure out what they want and then the opportunity to try it out and see how that kind of life fits them. I have so many students who have interests in one area, but feel compelled for financial reasons to follow a path they are less interested in. I wish they could follow their dreams for awhile, to see if those are their real dreams. I know how lucky I have been to end up where I am now, to be encouraged to get into a profession that is not at all 'normal' and that is risky in someways, and I wish everyone could have the encouragement and support I have had.

scientiae-carnival

books!

6. Patty Jane's House of Curl by Lorna Landvik
I was given this book for free, and it is kind of just standard "women are strong and survivor's" fluff. Think of Steel Magnolias set in Minnesota. It was a fun read and the characters were engaging.

New Year

I have made some New Year's resolutions. They are mostly about exercising, but here they are:
*run at least 2x a week
*run in at least two races
*yoga or pilates 2x a week
*be more social and get out of the house more
*don't stress so much

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And since it is already Jan 17, here is how I have been doing. I have been doing great on the running. I got a Nike+ (Santa got me an ipod Nano for Christmas) which is a huuuuuuge motivator for me. R laughs at me, but knowing the Nike+ is watching me makes me push myself harder. Also, I love graphs! So I am on track for my running. We'll have to see about the races, but I have a whole year ahead of me. I have only done yoga twice and I still need to figure that out. Basically, I need to get over being embarrassed to do yoga with R in the house. I am not home enough when he is gone to get two half hour practices in a week. I am still trying though.

We have done great on the social front! I am so happy about it. We went out two nights last weekend, had people over during the week, and are going out two nights this weekend. woo! Go us!

Finally, I have been having serious issues with my dissertation which I cannot share here. BUT I have learned an important lesson which is that I need to go easier on myself, and stop beating myself for not reaching expectations I had that were ridiculous to begin with. To this end, I dropped my spring hours which means I definitely cannot graduate in May. That is ok. I am approaching the dissertation more as a journey. I work on it, and one day it will be done. I do not know when that day is. From now on, when people ask when I am going to be done my answer will simply be, "when I am done." I have lots of things I would probably do differently if I could go back and do grad school over, but one of the biggest is that I would not be so fixated on getting out fast. I was too obsessed with finishing and that made me get so upset when I missed deadlines and therefore caused me to procrastinate more. So I am working more on enjoying the day to day. And the lack of pressure has not made me work less, but actually more, as it is less of a chore now.

books!

I read about 87 books in 2008. I petered out keeping track at the end, so I am not sure of the exact number. I've already read 7 books in 2009! Here's the first set:

1. People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
This is the story of an Australian book conservator who works on the Sarajevo Haggadah. The haggadah is the text used at Passover and the Sarajevo Haggadah is an actual illuminated manuscript. This book tells the fictional story of what the conservator finds, and how the book intersected different people's lives over its long history. I really enjoyed this book.

2. Once Upon a Time in the North by Phillip Pullman
Another book by the author of the Golden Compass. This one is in the same universe as those books but set earlier in time. I really enjoyed this short, adventure-filled book.

3. The Second Summer of the Sisterhood and
4. Girls in Pants by Ann Brashares
These are the 2nd and 3rd books in the Traveling Pants series. I read the first books years ago and feel like I was kind of 'meh' about it, but I really enjoyed these two. The writing is good and the characters are really interesting and I think pretty true to life descriptions of teenage girls. I am definitely going to read the 4th book.

5. Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank
A novel about a small town in Central Florida after a nuclear holocaust. This book was written in 1959 and holds up pretty well. It is very interesting and was fascinating to see what someone in 1959 imagined about living after a nuclear war. I also really liked the Central Florida setting. If you like end of the world novels, this one is really good.

Ack.

OK, I went temporarily mad last year and signed up to teach 3 classes and 3 labs this quarter. The money blinded me. Anyway, to do this I have to get up at 7 am, which is exceedingly early for me. I know all you guys get up at like 4 am and all that, and have no sympathy, but this is hard for me! I just finished my first week of just one class and some meetings and I was sooooo tired.

This is to say that I am not sure how much I will blog through mid-March. We will see. But I felt guilty about not blogging, and one of my new things is not thinking about things that make me feel guilty. Also, I dropped my 3 credits for the Spring so I will definitely not be graduating in May. I am working hard this quarter/semester on not stressing, not thinking about deadlines, just doing my work and letting things happen as they happen. We'll see how it goes. But since I will exhausted from my crack of dawn wake up time, I may blog less than we all wish. We will all survive though, and emerge at the end of March with more money and a stronger character. :)

Fun is over

Alas. The fun is over for me. I have not done anything work-like since December 22. It was amazing. It was maybe a little toooo long of a vacation and I am now finding it hard to give up my life of leisure. After 7 days I was a little wanting to work, but I got past that and now I don't want to work ever again at all. Oh well.

R and I rented a car and drove to Iowa and Missouri to see family. It was a good time, although in the future I might not choose to drive 8 hours, wait one day, then drive another 8 hours. I think a 2 day rest is needed between 8 hour drives. In St. Louis we got to see Laura and Shannon and Ellen at an awesomely old school pancake house where Shirley was our waitress. She looked like she'd worked there since 1961, when the place opened.

After St. Louis we came back home where I was totally slothful for a night and just watched bunches of TV and read Twilight. After a two day rest at home, R and I got on the train and set out to see Melinda et al. The train trip was awesome and easy, and we had a great time in Melinda's town watching Movies Where "People" are Saved in and Awesome Way, playing Rock Bands I and II, and teaching Cletus the Former Fetus to sing, "Flash! Aaaaah Ahhhh!" We were sad to leave and return home, where no Wii or singing toddlers awaited us. But we are soldiering on. I rewrote my monkey class syllabus today and went for a run, and R went to the library. Alas. Back to the grind for us.

2009!

Happy 2009, all! I am returned from my excellent holiday travels. I will post more about them later, but we went to two adjacent states, saw lots of family and some friends and ate a lot of junk food. In the meantime, here are the first posts of each month of 2008:

January: Hello! Happy New Year!
February: The description is nice, but any day I am up that early is a bad bad day.
March: Well, that title might be a little too cheery, but lately I've felt like everything is falling into place for me.
April: It's a metaphor.
May: Look at this awesome necklace I got from this Etsy shop.
June: Sorry for the lack of posting.
July: 50. The Last Colony by John Scalzi
August: I am alive, R is alive, the cats are alive.
September: R and I had an awesome time in Minnesota.
October: You know you all know the words.
November: So, I already missed a day, but I am going to try and post every day in November.
December: So I had a hold on my university record.

Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas!
Happy Solstice!
Happy Hanukkah!

Happy anything else!

Tomorrow (when it is very cold and very early) R and I are departing for our annual tour of the midwest. As we now live in driving distance, we've cut it down to 2 states: Iowa and Missouri. Sweet! Unfortunately we have to go to parts of Iowa and Missouri that are quite far from one another.

Anyway, I will most likely not post again until after the 29th, or maybe not even until after the New Year, which we are spending with the lovely Melinda and her family. I am taking a vacation until January 3 -- no dissertating, no prepping of classes, NOTHING to do with work. I hope to come back recharged and ready to teach awesomely and dissertate awesomely in 2009.

In the meantime, my holiday gift to you is a baby polar bear chewing on someone's leg.

Over the disseration

I am sure I have said this before, but I am so over my dissertation. It bores me. I wish it were done. I have a draft of the 4th chapter, but it really needs the discussion expanding and I am stuck stuck stuck. Blah. I am debating what to do, as I really wanted to send it to my advisor today, just so she sees how I am working AND so I could stop thinking about it for awhile. I am not good at working on one thing for a long time, and I feel I am that point with this chapter. My ideal plan was to send it to her today, spend the weekend grading, then take a real break from it all over Christmas/New Years. I want to start chapter 5 in January, then come back to 4 again and bounce between the two for a bit until going back to 1, 2, 3 and fiddling with them a little more. Argh. I think I will send it is as it is complete, there are just parts that need to be expanded on and I really don't have the energy for that. Also, I have 40 final exams to grade. I think I have convinced myself to send it.

Here is a deeper philosophical question that lurks behind it all. When do you send drafts of writing to an advisor/collaborator? I feel like I can send stuff when the logical flow is intact, but some of the details may be missing. Then they can comment on the big picture of it, and help me fill in the details. Someone else I was talking to, though, said they thought something should be in final draft form before sending it. I don't feel it needs to be that filled out, but what do you guys do?

before my battery dies

I did not die of my cold. I have promised my mom, however, that if I do die, I will post it here so she does not worry. :) I somehow think she will still worry.

I have spend the morning working in my new favorite spot -- the cafe of an art museum. It is very well lit, and quiet, and I think the art makes me smarter. However there are no outlets, so I have to use up my battery. So sad. I have actually not written anything this morning, but have read much on tourist satisfaction, which should hopefully help me write more later. Did you know that tourist satisfaction is based on multiple variables? It is! I would like to know more about what tourists look for in wildlife encounters, but so far I have read about white-water rafting and trips to the Boundary Waters with all woman groups.

I am now off to do some errands and then eat lunch and start the crock pot. After lunch I shall learn all about what tourists want from wildlife encounters and then hopefully write a brilliant conclusion to my fourth chapter. Maybe I will even make some tables for that chapter. Or I will clean the bathroom.

Just droppin' in

I don't really have anything to say. I have submitted grades for one of my classes and the other class merely awaits some exam takin'. Aw yeah. I am hoping to dedicate the rest of my time to crazy dissertatin'. I wanted to have Chapter 4 done (by which I mean have it in a state for R to read) by Sunday, but I have been felled by a sickness. It was really bad yesterday -- a cold PLUS nausea (not cool, people. Not cool.) But today I feel better with each hour that does by. Maybe I can get some crazy work done over the weekend.

Other to-dos before Christmas are go to the Lincoln Park Zoo and go to an allegedly authentic German Christmas Market. We shall see.

Fake Scientiae

I am sooooo sad I missed this month's Scientiae as the theme was "My Science is Hotter Than Dr. Isis's Naughty Monkeys". For Dr. Isis, these Naughty Monkeys are shoes, but... my science is hot because it is ABOUT Naughty Monkeys! Here is a photographic representation about the hotness of my science:







(First two photos from cliff1066 on flickr, the rest by me.

Woo! Party!

Tomorrow I am getting on a train to visit the fabulous Melinda! Although we lived together in a small apartment in DC, many years ago, geography has cruelly kept us separated since. Now she is in reach of a very reasonably priced train trip so we may proceed to the having of awesome times. woo!

So that I can leave here with a clean conscience, I must now go do dishes and read a little for my anthro class.

Hold

So I had a hold on my university record. They make it really hard to find out why one has holds, but they did tell me it was financial services, so I called them. I gave the not-friendly woman my id number and she muttered "exiti'lltransfer" and I got to listen to some really really bad hold music. I really think it is not a whole song, just like 4 bars repeated over and over. Anyway, it turns out that yet again, they think I have graduated. It is sad that at an institution granting many PhDs, the computer doesn't seem to understand that it takes a freakin' long time. Each of the last two semesters I have had a hold because they thought I graduated, and then some voice on the phone asked if I was "graduating late"! There is no late graduation possible! No matter when I graduate, it will be on time.

I would like to convince them to just give me the diploma, but they have not fallen for that yet. Maybe soon.

In other news, look how I beat my goal this week! Yay me!

InaDWriMo 2008 and moving on

I failed miserably at InaDWriMo. I got to 16% of my goal which is sad sad. I probably should not have chosen to participate in a month which included Thanksgiving and a 4 day conference. Oh well.

Here is my new plan -- small, achievable, weekly goals. I hope I will actually reach these goals, which will build my confidence and make me write more. The conference gave me some great ideas, and I just made a new outline of my whole dissertation which I hope will give it more coherence. Since I love those status bars, there is now one for this week's goal: 1000 more words on Chapter 4.

books

84. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
A Classic. I found it at the library and decided to read it. It was ok, but not amazing. Basically, it is a book about World War I, and filled with all the crappiness about being in a war. I didn't feel it added anything to my understanding of the badness of war, but it was well-written.

85. Take the Cannoli by Sarah Vowell
Essays about America/American history by Sarah Vowell of This American Life. Also a good book. I really like Vowell's voice and she is great at presenting her nerdiness about certain things in a fun way. The only other Vowell book I've read was Radio On, which was ok, but her voice kind of grated on me after awhile. I liked this book much better.

86. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman
I am the last person to read this book -- especially the last anthropologist and am so sad I did not read it earlier. It is the story of a Hmong family in California and their conflicts with the medical system over the care of their daughter who has epilepsy. The author does an excellent job of presenting the cultures of the Hmong family and the doctors, demonstrating how they cam to so many misunderstandings, and not really laying blame anywhere. I wish I would have read this earlier so I could have assigned it to my anthro class -- it really explains and demonstrates cross-cultural misunderstandings so well. Everyone should read this book.

87. Making Money by Terry Pratchett
A Discworld novel about the central bank. The fun is all in the crazy surprises so I will not say more, but this was a fun book with the usual Discworld hijinks.

Missed two days!

Alas, I have missed two days now of this daily blogging. One was post-travel craziness and then yesterday I spent the day with R, our friend Matt from college and our friend Melissa from my GradSchool. So fun! Matt arrived around noon and we braved the small children at the Museum of Science and Industry. It was pretty fun -- we saw the U Boat, some old planes, and some propaganda for both petroleum (plastic is awesome!) and industrialized farming (we keep pigs clean and protect them from predators!). Melissa joined us later and we had dinner at a new to us pizza place (Pizza Capri) which was super good. Then we sat around the house and hung out and played the Game of Life, which R won like always. Melissa did really well for not going to college, though.

It was totally worth it to not blog and hang out with awesome friends, though. Now I think I have prepped my anthro class for the week, so all I have to do is make 2 more syllabi for next semester, make a rubric for my students' presentations, and dissertate a bit.

Oh yeah. PS: we also had the most awesome stuffing on Thanksgiving, thanks to a recipe from Corbett and his mom. It made a ton, but was totally slurped up and I barely had leftovers. I might make a half batch again some day, juts for myself.

Yay! Thanksgiving!

I have always liked Thanksgiving a lot. Maybe because it is about food. And it is still low key, really. No gifts or crazy decorations. Just eating and hanging out with family and friends.

We had a bunch of international students from R's program over and we made a ton of food. R brined a turkey a la Alton Brown, and word on the street is that it was good. I made a very complex pumpkin pie from Cook's Illustrated, which was ok, but in my opinion not worth the extra work. I am still on the hunt for the perfect pumpkin pie. After we ate we played some Atari and a rousing game of Trivial Pursuit (R and I won, but it might be because the questions were biased towards Americans). Everyone just left and now we are going to do some dishes and relax.

Thanksigiving! And Conferences!

I had a great time at my conference in San Francisco. I knew more people than I realized and enjoyed seeing a little bit of SF. My poster went well -- I had some people come talk to me and my poster neighbor asked me for tips, as mine was so attractive. I have to say, I loooove conferences so much. Each year I know more and more people so it is a time to catch up with people I don't see regularly. Also, I think I am better at talking about my research than writing about it, so posters and talks are a great vehicle for me. Conferences also always inspire me to get back into my own work, which I am hoping to do soon. I did come away with a whole new way to kind of frame my diss. I think I was lost in the trees and was not seeing the forest.

The other thing going on right now is Thanksgiving! R and I are hosting a bunch of international students. We are in the midst of baking pies, and R is trying to de-frost the turkey in prep for brining. I made the most complicated pumpkin pie recipe ever. Seriously, it took me like 2 hours to just make the filling and the crust. Unless it is the most amazing pie ever, I will not be making it again. We'll see.

I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving with great people to celebrate with!

Back

Alas. I missed a day. Anyway, I have returned from SF -- I had a great time. Now I am writing exams and grading and preparing for Thanksgiving. More later!