MSS St. Louis

Well, spring break came and went. After a weekend at my mom's house (and beating the pants off of her in scrabble), and a few days bumming around my house at school (and beating the pants off one of my housemates in scrabble, playing a LOT of pokemon white, and watching a couple seasons of LOST), I went with 6 fellow students and professor to St. Louis for a sociology conference.

I had a lot of fun! The ten hour drive through Iowa was kind of boring, but I couldn't sleep. A few of us just talked and I played more Pokemon. We stayed at the Millennium Hotel right downtown, a couple blocks from the hotel the conference was in. It snowed almost the whole time, so the short walk was really cold and uncomfortable. Our hotel was being used by the National Conference of Black Engineers, so it was fun to see all the southern kids who hadn't seen snow very much if at all.

The conference itself was cool. I stayed in my women's studies comfort zone and went to sessions that focused on gender and sexuality issues. Topics ranged from the feelings of loss of transmen and their partners to rural lesbian identity frames. It was really interesting to see what everyone was researching. There were hundreds of sessions with 3 or 4 papers discussed in each session. Crazy to see how many sociologists are studying in the Midwest.

Our own presentation was good. Not well attended, but we did well. Our small audience turned into a really interesting discussion of what students need out of sociology programs, classes and teachers. Probably haven't mentioned it here yet, but we studied how students feel about the post-graduation planning process. We found that the earlier students begin planning, they also have higher levels of self-efficacy (confidence they'll be able to achieve their post-college career goals) and most positive attitudes (less anxious, more excited). Other groups studied transferable skills, social networks, career resource use, etc. We focused on attitudes, beliefs and plans.

Now, it's back to school. 2 months before I graduate! Ahh! So excited! Now I just have to find a place to live and work and time to finish everything I need to finish by then.

Deadlines

I hate being on time. I need to be early. Why didn't I do anything last week? Why did I only turn in my distinction application a day before it was due? Why can't I set deadlines for myself?

Sleep, for example. I finished my homework (due tomorrow!) at 11:40. "Great!" I thought, "I can be asleep by 12. It's good. I've been shorting myself on sleep lately."

It's now 12:45. *facepalm* Am I just magically incapable of closing my laptop if I don't have someone else to be accountable to? I do need to be able to do my assignment tomorrow (due friday!) which will require a lot of thinking, considering I haven't started it yet.

Spring break is soon. That'll be a good time to work on self-regulating deadlines. Especially since I'm starting my Pokemon White on Friday afternoon, and I have to read a book and write a review over break, as well as practice my speech for the conference where I'm presenting in a week, and work on Vagina Monologues planning, Day of Silence planning, MN AIDS Walk planning, transcribe another interview, write a couple interview analyses and work on my curriculum for my women's studies seminar. Oh, and find a job and a place to live and people to live with after graduation...

It'll be good practice. I'll probably bring homework with me to St. Louis as well. I'll give myself this weekend to have Spring Break, then get started.

Help Save Planned Parenthood

I recently watched this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaxBR1AiFS4 by Wesleyan students in support of Planned Parenthood.

I love it! I love Planned Parenthood and I am so sad/mad/irritated that their small funding pie (none of which actually goes to abortion services) is being cut, while the Air Force gets to keep their NASCAR advertising. While the richest of the rich get more tax breaks. While huge corporations threaten to take even more jobs overseas if they don't get more tax breaks.

Maybe we should just let them leave! Let's start buying in companies that won't hold our deficit hostage if they don't get even more of our money. Buy local. Buy smart! Support the companies that support you! I'm not the biggest Lady Gaga fan in the world, but what she did this week was powerful! Imagine if everyone did that!

Also, Walker and the Wisconsin GOP legislators are cowards.

2D Theory

I have been given the most difficult assignment of my life thus far. I am to analyze the last three books we've read in my soc/antho seminar by creating an annotated map. The books have been A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid, Cosmopolitanism by Kwame Anthony Appiah, and Remotely Global by Charles Piot. All relate to colonialism somehow, but all are very different books. Kincaid's book is about the small island of Antigua, how the British slavers and now tourists have fucked it up and should stay home. Appiah's book is a philosophy book that uses stories about Ghana/England to show there are universal values. Piot's book is an ethnography of the Kabre in Togo, particularly their relational social structures and gift-giving practices.

How exactly am I supposed to map this? I am not particularly artistic nor creative. I think I'm just going to put little pictures of the countries, and lines to show what is moving between the countries (people, ideas, identity, money), and annotate to tell exactly what that means (ex: Antiguan identity was shaped by England to be oppressed and enslaved, whereas Antigua helped shape England's identity as a colonizer and master, roles which are still continued in todays tourism models). Not the most beautiful or profound, but it beats writing a paper. :)

Trudging

Well, back in the swing of things. Meeting, meeting, class, meeting, work, meeting, class, work, work, cram homework in before I can't think anymore. I enjoy it, but I just wish I had extended periods of downtime. I look forward to the weekends because I'll actually have enough time to get my homework done, and maybe pick up an extra shift of work.

At least since I quit my third job, I actually have time for homework on the weekends! I wonder if this is something that I do to myself, or if I'll actually have time to do things like make a fancy dinner on the weekday, or just hang out at a friends house on the weekends after I graduate. I'll probably over-commit myself, but will I have time to not have to work? I like being busy, but I also like watching TV and playing video games, too. Hopefully, college is just a place where there are so many opportunities to do things that I can't stop, and it'll calm down when I'm not on every mailing list or see every opportunity on a poster by the post office.

In other news, here's a picture of me from Thailand that the photographer on the trip took. She's wonderful! Alyssa Lund Photography!

It's the Final Countdown!

So, final semester has started. I'm really excited. I'm taking 3 senior seminars and a history of political theory class. My polisci seminar is a seminar on immigration and citizenship, and we'll be interviewing the immigrant population in a nearby city. My soc/anthro seminar isn't focusing on something in particular, but is synthesizes a lot of the themes from the soc/anthro major. My third class is a history of modern political thought, which covers a lot of writers like Machiavelli and Locke. My other class is a Women's Studies seminar. We get to choose the topics, and have to choose readings and discuss them as a class. Should be fun.

I'm also really excited to graduate. No jobs found yet, but I'm done writing papers and reading obnoxiously long books and dense academic short papers.

Upon Returning

Well, I landed around 11am the day before yesterday. The flight home was surprisingly short, with only 20 hours of travel, as opposed to 36 hours on the way there. The food was worse, but I finally finished watching 3 Idiots, the movie I tried to watch several times on the way to Bangkok from Tokyo. We even had time to breathe in Tokyo airport, but not enough time to look around. A couple students changed money to buy a bottle of water. Or what looked like a can of lemon sparkling water, which turned out to be beer. Good times.

Anyway, after I landed at 11am, I went to my dads house (Mom was still in Ecuador, so Dad picked me up). He brought me out to lunch, then back to his house. I tried to stay up, but I decided to take an hour nap around 2:30. I woke up around 11:30pm, and played around on the internet until 4:30, when I went back to bed. I couldn't sleep past 8, though, and decided to just have a long day. I gave Dad and his wife their souvenirs, then Dad brought me to Mom's house, where she had just returned from her trip.

After exchanging pictures and souvenirs, we had dinner with my brother, and I went to bed at 7ish. I woke up around 2:30, but stayed in bed until 5:30, then gave up trying to sleep. My body is very confused. I'm used to the opposite time of day and the opposite season (err, rather, what I know feels like the opposite season, but is actually winter).

All my pics are in the process of uploading to facebook, so you can view them there. You can even see pics of me that other people took. Like me on an elephant!