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.

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. :-)

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....