My recent habit, newly established while here at my new school, of procrastinating things til the LAST POSSIBLE SECOND, has yet again been reinforced. I got a 92 on the 9-page paper that I wrote in less than 7 hours, over a period of 18 hours. I give all the credit for the great language score to my dear Venom-ous friend who did such a marvelous job of teaching me Portuguese! :-) The rest of it, I can only guess, is the result of this being the 150th (give or take :-) big paper that I've written in the course of my education. I'm sort of torn...I hate that I'm buying into this "do what it takes to get by" mentality, but I'm also enjoying being able to do things like go to the park with BeeBoo, watch movies with Ben, visit family...etc. Balance is nice, except that it makes me feel like a slacker.
There are a few other things I've wanted to rant about...I'm going to steal AL's subdividing idea so that you can skip what you want. :-)
HOME
I went home last weekend. BeeBoo hunted Easter eggs and had her portrait taken (through the generosity of her Granny-Great!), and did a marvelous job of both. The photographer really liked her, and Louie was around to make faces at her so that she smiled in a lovely way. :-)
BeeBoo didn't ever master the concept of gently putting the eggs into the basket...we ended up with lovely "CRACK!" sounds every time.
After the AWFUL week last week, going home felt like someone taking a warm blanket out of the dryer, wrapping it around my shoulders and telling me to sit on the couch watching Jane Austen film adaptations while they give me tea to drink. :-) (Like I can't think of a certain aunt who's actually done that before...)
SUMMER TEACHING
I'm not teaching in the summer. As happy as I am because of the MASS quantities of free time I'll have to paint and settle us in our new apartment, it's going to make finances hard. I've been spoiled long enough now that finding a non-teaching job is looking anything but appealing. Maybe Ben's internship will be paid (oh, hope of hopes).
CLASSES
STILL don't have my transfer credits. Which means I still don't know how long I'm going to be doing coursework. Which means my need to control my planning at least a year out is TOTALLY frustrated. Which means that I can't confidently say when this next baby will be able to come into my picture. (I've been ready for about 6 months now, which means that in all likelihood it won't matter what they say and I'll have a baby in about a year) It's just frustrating to have something as insignificant as bureaucracy affect something as important as my desire to add to our family....the only way I can sum THAT feeling up is BLEAH!
But on a good note, since I'm fulfilling one of my foreign language requirements with a graduate level Portuguese course, they're going to count it not only as language, but toward my total credit hour requirement. Small blessings, I guess. Hooray for AL and Venom convincing me that I could do it...
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Two school things
1) I'm fed up enough with my department's policy on coursework, and the fact that at the moment it looks like I'm going to be forced to do THREE YEARS of classes instead of two because they won't accept some of my MA credits, that I am seriously considering not finishing my PhD.
Rash, you say?
If I were doing it just because I'm mad, yes.
But here's the thing. If I have to do three years of coursework, I'll have to take my exams my fourth year (instead of my third) and then I'll have two options: finish my dissertation in one year, my fifth (which is impossible), or stay on beyond my funding for a sixth. I'm not willing to shell out what they charge for out-of-state tuition here. So if it's going to take me longer than they'll fund to graduate, I'm not willing to do it and may as well just quit now.
2) And on a much lighter note, yesterday at 7:30 pm I had not yet started my 9-page research paper for one of my classes. Not really a big deal, except for the fact that it's due today at 2:30. I've recently fallen into this TERRIFYING trend of procrastinating things until the last minute (I've had nightmares about two hours that I counted on to finish something ticking away in moments). But so far things have been fine, and this paper is no different. Last night by 12:30 I had 6.5 pages. I got up at 7 this morning, came in to my office, and just rounded off the ninth page about five minutes ago.
This is a good thing.
So, those are my two school things. I'll be sure to post on whether or not I can demand my way forcefully enough to get out of here in a reasonable amount of time.
Rash, you say?
If I were doing it just because I'm mad, yes.
But here's the thing. If I have to do three years of coursework, I'll have to take my exams my fourth year (instead of my third) and then I'll have two options: finish my dissertation in one year, my fifth (which is impossible), or stay on beyond my funding for a sixth. I'm not willing to shell out what they charge for out-of-state tuition here. So if it's going to take me longer than they'll fund to graduate, I'm not willing to do it and may as well just quit now.
2) And on a much lighter note, yesterday at 7:30 pm I had not yet started my 9-page research paper for one of my classes. Not really a big deal, except for the fact that it's due today at 2:30. I've recently fallen into this TERRIFYING trend of procrastinating things until the last minute (I've had nightmares about two hours that I counted on to finish something ticking away in moments). But so far things have been fine, and this paper is no different. Last night by 12:30 I had 6.5 pages. I got up at 7 this morning, came in to my office, and just rounded off the ninth page about five minutes ago.
This is a good thing.
So, those are my two school things. I'll be sure to post on whether or not I can demand my way forcefully enough to get out of here in a reasonable amount of time.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Travel support, and other mad rantings
I got a travel grant!! YAY! That means that the department will defray the cost of my plane ticket from that conference two weeks ago. Granted, I still paid the hotel, food, and registration costs.... *sigh* It was worth it, though.
We got into the co-op housing place that we looked at. Which means that not only will we have a split-level townhouse, and a washer and dryer in the kitchen, but we'll save about $150 a month. Also a good thing.
On a not so good note, my transfer credits from BYU haven't come through yet. BLEARGH Makes life pretty hard to plan, in terms of classes in the fall, how long it will take me to finish my coursework here, if I can have a baby in May or need to plan for the next fall....yuck.
Also on the less-than stellar, they're not offering any classes that seem interesting to me. Oh well. Life goes on.
All told, once this week is over I'll be in pretty good shape. :-)
We got into the co-op housing place that we looked at. Which means that not only will we have a split-level townhouse, and a washer and dryer in the kitchen, but we'll save about $150 a month. Also a good thing.
On a not so good note, my transfer credits from BYU haven't come through yet. BLEARGH Makes life pretty hard to plan, in terms of classes in the fall, how long it will take me to finish my coursework here, if I can have a baby in May or need to plan for the next fall....yuck.
Also on the less-than stellar, they're not offering any classes that seem interesting to me. Oh well. Life goes on.
All told, once this week is over I'll be in pretty good shape. :-)
Monday, March 10, 2008
Conference
So, I haven't posted in what seems like forever. More than a week, anyway.
I went to the AHCT conference in El Paso. It's one of my favorite events...if I can help it, I'm going to make it a yearly thing. Several papers were very interesting, most of them were at least mostly interesting. :-)
Even better than the papers, we got to watch four plays...which was really fun. The company from Spain that did "El alcalde de Zalamea" was really good. Those of you that don't do Spanish Golden Age theater...there's a rape scene in the play. From the beginning of it, just because of staging and things, I thought they were going to do it on stage. They didn't (turns out they only didn't because the theater operators censored them), and I was REALLY glad. I thought their staging was the best of the week. And I LOVED their costumes (I'm kind of a costume snob...)
The best part, though, was that I got to hang out with a lot of my very favorite people in the WHOLE WORLD (like AL and my thesis advisor and her husband)! Now that they're all scattered, I feel like I don't ever see them. So that, I think, was probably the best thing over all.
Basically they only drawback was that I had to leave my BeeBoo. Some people that had been at the first conference I went to asked where she was...I mentioned that even though she slept through most of that conference, she's almost 2 now. They understood why I opted to leave her with her Daddy. When they dropped me off at the airport, BeeBoo back in her car seat took her thumb out of her mouth, said "Bye Momma, love you!" So I said "Love you, I'll miss you!" She said, "miss you!" I almost died. But I was okay.
All in all, it was a really good trip. Oh, and I learned that when I get a day that all I have to do is sit on an airplane, without worrying about a little one, I can do a week's worth of reading in less than a day. Interesting....
I went to the AHCT conference in El Paso. It's one of my favorite events...if I can help it, I'm going to make it a yearly thing. Several papers were very interesting, most of them were at least mostly interesting. :-)
Even better than the papers, we got to watch four plays...which was really fun. The company from Spain that did "El alcalde de Zalamea" was really good. Those of you that don't do Spanish Golden Age theater...there's a rape scene in the play. From the beginning of it, just because of staging and things, I thought they were going to do it on stage. They didn't (turns out they only didn't because the theater operators censored them), and I was REALLY glad. I thought their staging was the best of the week. And I LOVED their costumes (I'm kind of a costume snob...)
The best part, though, was that I got to hang out with a lot of my very favorite people in the WHOLE WORLD (like AL and my thesis advisor and her husband)! Now that they're all scattered, I feel like I don't ever see them. So that, I think, was probably the best thing over all.
Basically they only drawback was that I had to leave my BeeBoo. Some people that had been at the first conference I went to asked where she was...I mentioned that even though she slept through most of that conference, she's almost 2 now. They understood why I opted to leave her with her Daddy. When they dropped me off at the airport, BeeBoo back in her car seat took her thumb out of her mouth, said "Bye Momma, love you!" So I said "Love you, I'll miss you!" She said, "miss you!" I almost died. But I was okay.
All in all, it was a really good trip. Oh, and I learned that when I get a day that all I have to do is sit on an airplane, without worrying about a little one, I can do a week's worth of reading in less than a day. Interesting....
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