Talking to thin air

Apparently I use this solely as a procrastination technique, so that when I have a lot to do but am not completely crushed, I write something; and when I am either crushed or bored, I don't.

Okay. So. Many. Things. Have. Happened.

1. I finished my thesis, which involved a poster (which was surprisingly difficult), a presentation (which was petrifying, but ultimately went all right), and a long, drawn-out process of editing. But I survived, barely, and the Roommate and I watched Korra in celebration. Yay!

2. I finished all of my classes ... barely. I had two final papers (for biogeography and intonational phonology), both of which I finished late. But I passed both classes, so apparently the professors didn't mind too much. (And in all fairness, they weren't that late, only half an hour for the one and 10 minutes for the other.)

3. My brother got stomach flu; I didn't realize it was contagious, so I promptly got stomach flu. It was actually kind of amazing how much it flattened me. Also, I lost ten pounds of water; and I only regained about half of that back, which is probably the result of basically not eating for five days. Oh well.

4. Senior week! It was surprisingly fun: we didn't do hardly any of the normal activities. The Magician and Fortitude and I went to laser tag, where we happened to run into Other Me; then, on Monday and Tuesday (May 20 and 21) we all (me, the Roommate, the Magician, Fortitude, and the Tower) went to Block Island. It was AMAZING. My pictures are crappy because my camera didn't handle the mist well, so 1) I am going to get a new camera, and 2) I will have to steal pictures from everyone else. But! We walked around a lot and saw a giant cemetery, and then biked to the south lighthouse (where I almost passed out for some reason that I'm not sure about). Then we biked to the north lighthouse, which was great fun. There was a 9/11 memorial there, too, which seemed a bit out of place. Also, the sea gulls were nesting, and became very angry if we got within a few feet, but they still refused to move off their nests. It was really cool, over all.

5. Graduation! I did it. It is over. It was kind of fun, considering all the tromping around we did in cap-and-gown. I got sunburned on half of my face, which was fun. Also, because we have departmental ceremonies instead of the president reading off everyone's name (thank God!), they had one person from each degree category go up to accept their degree symbolically for the whole of the class. I didn't realize how it worked, however, so I stood up when they called bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and dual degree folks. It was exciting, especially since they didn't really tell us dual-degreers to stand up or sit down ... we kind of just did whatever ...

6. North Carolina! I went home, and I cleaned my WHOLE ROOM. Actually, not quite, but almost. You can actually see the floor! I also met with a lawyer, who spent about ten minutes talking about clothes and clearly wanted to eke as much money out of us as possible. Oh well. I am going to have a living will, yay?

7. I returned to Providence! My room is kind of strange, it is basically a second common room that is convertible to a bedroom if needed. That means it has many windows and is very light in the morning, has no closet, and is huge. In some ways it's great: the Hermit came and visited this week, and there is a couch-like object in my room that can serve as a guest bed; and Fortitude is going to stay here on Sunday night, so it has already gotten a fair amount of use. Unfortunately, the doors have very little noise control, but so far this hasn't been much of a problem.

8. I ... finally decided to apply for a Fulbright to Ecuador! I found something to get excited about: volunteering at biological stations across the whole country! I started writing a letter to this guy there whose research looks interesting, but I haven't finished yet. I will finish by Monday, though ... I have to if I actually want someone's sponsorship. :( But I also found some programs for teaching English in various countries across the world, so I am starting to feel like I will actually manage to make this thing work—next year at the Smithsonian, the following year abroad, then graduate school. Yay!

8.b. On the topic of grad school, I went to visit my cousin at Harvard on Wednesday, and saw the Harvard OEB building. It is BEAUTIFUL, at least on the outside and in the corridors. I wish they had research there that is closer to what I want to do; I will probably end up applying, but it really isn't the best school for my area. Oh well ...

9. Newport! I am about to go to Newport with Fortitude and the Tower to visit the Roommate and do Cliffwalk and visit the mansions and things. Yay! I want to buy a new camera, so I wish I had gotten around to this before leaving for Newport, but oh well. Hopefully the Roommate will take lots of pictures.

That's about it. I should go get ready.

I am supposed to go talk to my plants professor in a couple of hours about doing an independent study with her on the plant fossil record, but I am really not sure I want to do it. It seems like it will just be a lot of hassle, and since she doesn't know much about the topic I would pretty much be learning and reading and writing a ton by myself. That isn't necessarily a problem, but while I have the opportunity to take classes with great professors I feel like I might as well take advantage of that.

So ... I am going to be enrolled in my thesis class, intonational phonology, biogeography, sociology (deviance, crime, and social control), and my thesis advisor's graduate seminar. That's five, yes, but I will probably drop either biogeography or the grad seminar; the grad seminar might not even run if there aren't enough students, so then I won't have a problem.

Biogeography looks really interesting, though it will probably stress me out a lot at various points in the semester. Nonetheless, it seems like a great capstone course to a huge amount of the material I've studied in college, so I am looking forward to it—and the discussion we had yesterday was actually pretty good. Hopefully it will continue being good.

I think I will ask my plants professor if I can work on my final project for the biogeography class with her, and/or get her input—that would be a good way to continue working with her and learning from her without forcing myself to do an independent study. I'm still a little worried about recommendations, but this seems like a decent solution.

Ugh. I might try to go talk to the deans to get their input, but it doesn't sit right with me to take a class with a professor solely so that I will have taken multiple classes with the same professor.

The last week or so has been crazy busy—what with transfer orientation wrapping up, and the first few days of classes, I am glad the weekend is here so I can spend some quality time with my books trying to figure out what to take.  Thus far, I haven't been entirely sold on any of my classes—I know I am taking my thesis and the intonational phonology course, but those are requirements I still have to fulfill.  Otherwise, I am looking for a science class, and there are four major options:  my thesis advisor's graduate seminar, an independent study with my plants professor from last term, biogeography, and a class on plant adaptations to climate change.  The last of these I doubt I will take, if only because biogeography is slightly more interesting and, to be honest, less work—I've already read half of the textbook, so I have already done about a third of the reading.  To be fair, though, I've probably done the easiest third.  Hopefully I will get to do an independent study, which will make my decision a lot easier (and my workload a lot more manageable).

I've also been looking into a sociology class on deviance, crime, and social control.  The social control bit is a little less interesting, but most of the topics seem fascinating given that I wish the class were on psychology and the law; I suppose I could talk to one of the professors in psych to ask about maybe doing an independent study on psychology and the law, but two independent studies, a thesis, and one class that actually meets probably wouldn't be good for me to actually get things done.  Maybe if either of my independent studies had other people, but I don't think it would be good for me to do them alone.

Anyway, the sociology class looks interesting, even if it isn't quite what I was looking for.  It does look like it'll be a lot of work, and I am trying very, very hard not to crush myself with work this term; so, I will definitely be taking it pass fail if I take it.

Otherwise ... transfer orientation went well, not too many students panicking and registration was a lot easier than normal because there were no other new students to compete with the transfers.

Lastly, I have been consumed by Criminal Minds.  I really, really like some of the characters, and I think they do a decent job on the plots, though by now I have seen enough that it's fairly predictable.  Nonetheless, it's fun to watch because if they mention anything about psych I can 1) look it up, or 2) already know what it is.  They actually did a good job of explaining capgras syndrome, as well as on diatoms; but otherwise, I haven't known enough about many of the topics to actually say how accurate it is.  I ... possibly have a thing for Reid's drug addiction, I wish they had made that a larger subplot rather than just a few mentions here and there, one shot of him about to take Dilaudid, and then suddenly he's at an AA (equivalent) meeting saying he's been clean for 10 months.  But that's okay ...

Okay, off to run errands.

I have a ridiculous amount of work, but instead I am watching Warehouse 13 and writing here. :P Mostly, I am attempting to procrastinate; but since I discovered the Chrome extension that lets me block websites, Dominion is currently off-limits until 9pm tonight ... sadly, I haven't yet figured out how to make it block Netflix, which is why I am still watching Warehouse 13. Nonetheless, I have been getting some done.

I have a take-home midterm due tomorrow at midnight, which is great because I have an essay due tomorrow that I haven't started. Yeah ... I was totally supposed to read this book for my anthro class, but I haven't, which is pretty much the definition of being behind. I haven't exactly done any of the reading for this class, so it's pretty amazing that I am passing it—but alas. I should really go work on that instead of watching Warehouse 13 ...

It is practically a miracle. I had to finish my paper on the Santalales for my plant evolution class, and just barely got it done. The actual paper is definitely not my best; I should have done more background research on other groups, rather than limiting it to the Santalales. Hopefully it is coherent, though. At the very least, I got to learn how to use LaTeX, which I have been wanting to do for a while! It is really easy, actually, once you get the hang of it. And it's a lot easier to not get bugs, so that's good.

Otherwise ... I am so far behind on NaNo, but I am close enough that I can practically taste victory!!! I got my NaNo poster today, and am now vaguely inspired to go off and write my remaining 9,000 words.

I really should clean up my room, though. It looks like a hurricane swept through it, and I don't really have anywhere to walk.

I'm not sure if I've ever had such a long weekend in college. Monday (yesterday, a.k.a. Halloween) didn't feel like class; it seems like the week just started today.

I went to the observatory Halloween party last night—it was fairly fun, with lots of ghosts and dead bodies and decapitated heads and things like that everywhere. Unfortunately, they didn't do liquid nitrogen ice cream this year, which they did two years ago and which was awesome; that was a bit of a disappointment. And also unfortunately, it was cloudy, so we didn't get to look at any stars or planets or things. So ... basically it was a haunted house for lots of children, which was kind of fun but not as much fun as two years ago.

The Roommate, the Juggler, and I also went to the midnight organ concert. It was AWESOME, except for the part about it being midnight. He played roughly eight different songs in the space of an hour, which was so much easier to sit through than the chorus or orchestra thirty-minute pieces; two of them I really, really liked. I forget what they were called, but I have the program so I will hopefully look them up later. He also played a Harry Potter song, which was cool, but it was more cool because he was playing it than because the song was actually nice. (Also, it wasn't awkward, which was an extra bonus!)

I talked to the Tower for a long time at dinner yesterday, which was fun. I almost convinced him to come to the observatory party and/or the midnight organ concert, but alas, I evidently failed. Also, I heard at the House meeting last night that ... er, we may or may not have done some pranking in one of his classes, so hopefully I will see him again before I forget to ask him what happened!

This morning I FINALLY got to sample one of my sediment cores, so I should be starting processing this week, and will hopefully finish processing for both cores before Thanksgiving. Yay! Except that I spilled one of the samples ... luckily, all we had to do was take another sample, but still. Care and precision are NOT my strong suits.

NaNo started today, and I successfully did NOT start last night after the organ concert. I am currently 348 words in, and I have a pretty good idea where I want to go for the next set of chapters; I'm sort of leaving the overall plot to the winds, but I know the broad outline. I just haven't picked all of the specifics yet, which is bad, because those specifics are the ones that are going to make it difficult. The broad outline is easy. But I really like where this year is going!

And on a completely unrelated note, my plants professor likes my research topic! And I do too! It's a win-win!

I always forget how quickly October comes upon us. And I always forget to do homework over Columbus Day weekend. :P It was fun, but now I am panicking.

I have to download Mesquite and relearn how to use it. I have to find word lists for two languages for my phonetics project. I have to find out information about my consultants, because I completely forgot to do this ahead of time. Unfortunately, the finding of word lists is difficult, because the book I need isn't online, and doesn't seem to be in the library, either. (HOW COULD IT POSSIBLY NOT BE IN THE LIBRARY?) And the Journal of the IPA doesn't seem to have any indices or anything like that.

And, I have to write up two proposals for the two languages before tomorrow. In the mean time, I have lab this afternoon, then class until 4; tomorrow, I have class at 9, and then a meeting at 10, and another meeting at 11. Then I have to turn in the proposals by 2 tomorrow.

UGH. I AM DOOMED.

This was possibly the weirdest episode of Doctor Who I've ever seen.  ( Spoilers, of course. )

I'm glad that we have Doctor Who Sunday this afternoon, so that I can watch it again and hopefully get a better handle on what happened. There was so much switching back and forth in time that it was very confusing.

In other news, last night (yes, SATURDAY NIGHT!) I think I started to partially repair my relationship with one of my geo professors. We had a bit of a difficult time when I was in her class, because I like to ask questions and she thought my questions were stupid; whether they were or not I have no idea. But anyway, she came into the undergrad geo room to get ice cream, and I was there reading for Human Evolution, and we started talking. I explained about how I had started working on my thesis 1.0, and how I'd learned a lot about what kind of lab work I definitely don't want to do, but how I'd also figured out about how much I like doing research. It's all about the most tedious part of the job—if I can handle the most tedious part, it'll be fine. Anyway, it was good to know that not everyone in every department hates me. (Yes, I know, "hate" is a bit of a strong term; more, like they think I'm too much trouble. Which I probably am, but that's okay.)

Well, at least I know of a few professors who like me, and are willing to write me good recommendations. At a certain point, with all the switching around through departments that I've done, that's the most important thing.

I basically decided that 1) my favorite science is evolution, 2) I should take classes that are fun, and 3) there are classes on evolution this term.  Hence, I am going to take two classes that are evolutionary in nature—Human Evolution (in anthropology) and Evolution of Plant Diversity (in biology).  Since I am literally the last person on the waitlist for the GIS class, there's basically no way I am going to get in.  I will probably keep shopping it, because it will be more useful in actually getting me a job at some point in my life, but at least the other two look fun.  So that means I am taking my thesis, Human Evolution, Plant Evolution, Japanese, and Sounds of the World's Languages.  Human Evolution might end up being an audit class, but otherwise I'm really excited about all of them.  For once in my life, I have actually picked my classes before the end of shopping period!!!

Unfortunately, that means I can't study underwater archaeology.  Very, very, very sad face.  But the professor achieved a degree of repetitiveness that I have never before experienced in class, so although I would probably learn something, it wouldn't be anywhere close to what I could be learning.  It just doesn't seem worth the time, sadly; it has so much potential that is going unfulfilled!

And I went to Juggling Club this afternoon, which was fun, though I didn't get to stay very long.  I am determined to learn how to juggle before I graduate college!