No Limits

Heh, couldn’t help but love this after a friend posted it on Facebook. Now that I’ve made a big ole to-do list, it’s funny to see which tasks actually get accomplished so that I can avoid others.

Pour moi:

So Close, Yet So Far

LOL, Oh Grad School

It’s after 10 pm, and as I begin a huge assignment that’s due tomorrow, I have just come across a paper that I wrote for a class in the first two weeks of the grad program I am suddenly two weeks from completing. It’s sort of sad but funny to see just how far I have not come.

Rekindling the (Writing) Flame

In describing my relationship to writing, there are too many possible ways to begin; we share a passionate yet tumultuous history. I suppose I should skip the part where my first grade teacher allowed me to sit out during class lessons, encouraging me instead to cultivate my poetry and short stories. That I won first place in a local contest with the story of a princess who befriends her hero rather than marrying him doesn’t belong in a graduate level paper concerning academic writing. Yet I’d like to linger there a bit longer, savoring the memory of young love, when writing was fun, relaxed, and fulfilling, our bond not yet strained by the weight of high expectations, personal shortcomings, or outsiders seeking to control the terms of our relationship. Suffice to say somewhere along the way, those obstacles—those normal aspects of the education system—emerged, things cooled down, and the relationship became on-again, off-again, at times more serious than others but also never truly over. There’s been blogging, two years of consulting at the writing center, and a devastating failed honors thesis. Today, as a graduate student, I realize that it’s time we work out our differences and commit for the long run. That, or call it quits.

A Year

As I struggle to finish the written component of my Master’s project (which I’m doing in lieu of a thesis), why not take a look back at what I was doing a year ago, in March 2010?

Ah, I was eating delicious food from the farmer’s market that I can no longer go to because it only happens once a week while I’m in class.

Admiring my pretty new opal ring that is still one of my favorite pieces of jewelry. I was not wearing nail polish then, but I hadn’t sworn it off yet. (Yes, I’ve sworn off nail polish.)

No words. Just oohing and awwing.

Oh hey, my house was cleaner than it’s been since last summer.

Aw, and I went to St. Augustine. I’m glad I got to spend the day there while my friend looked at wedding venues over this spring break, because I realize I’ve been to St. Augustine every March for years and that’s a tradition I’d hate to break. It’s so lovely.

A month. I have less than a month left of classes and then a little longer after that to finish up writing (and grading) some papers. And then I graduate! Assuming I pull off this Master’s project, that is. Which reminds me. Better get back to it.

The Art of Distraction

You know how the internet is addicting because there’s so much interesting stuff out there? Like, an endless amount? And one awesome website will link to another, and it can go on forever? And you get into a really bad habit of keeping TONS of tabs open for days? I mean, a ridiculous number that should probably make your computer crash? Tab after tab, beckoning to you, waiting to be looked at, until you nearly suffer a panic attack and close them all out at once? No? Oh, maybe that’s just me.

You probably have some idea of how the first week of my spring semester went: The same as usual. The most productive thing I’ve done is look into summer jobs. Note – This doesn’t help me get my homework done (though I did come across an amazing opportunity that I’m convinced is my destiny). How have I come this far in school? What kind of grad student AM I?

I’ve been hoarding photos from Christmas vacation, since I knew I wouldn’t have time to take as many now that I’m back in school, let alone edit, upload, and post them. Going even further back in time than my previous post, these are from the drive to Ft. Lauderdale, when I had my whole break ahead of me. Nothing to do but watch the sky change color. This is me forlorn.

PS – Thanks to my friend Ashley for telling me she reads this blog, it helped motivate me to update :)

Bears, Books, Battlestar Galactica

Aw, Herman’s usually tearing this guy up, but today they’re cuddling. Lil cutie.

I made a vital, must-do, to-do list today, and did not to-do any of it. Except take a shower. That was quite an accomplishment, and I’m glad to have checked it off, officially, in ink. Now I’m sorta-kinda browsing writing center literature that addresses feminist pedagogy. It is interesting, but my mind wanders so much. Patrick and I just went to Barnes & Noble where I got a huge journal I’d been lusting after for years, and he bought White Like Me, which I’m (not so) secretly hoping to steal for myself before night’s end…

The journal, by the way, is huge. Did I say that already? Humongous. Horribly intimidating. The cashier told me she bought the same one for her brother, who wrote in it from Iraq and several other countries. I told her a beautiful gigantic journal like that deserves to travel. I partially got it for myself because it beckons me to travel and have great adventures. I think I’m going to make a real effort to write in it without judging myself, and without falling into the trap of hyper-self-consciously writing about the process of my hyper-self-conscious writing.