tonight, tonight...and a meme
Tonight is Bones night. I will earn my right to drool by working hard until then! Right after this eensy teensy nap...
Yesterday was long but satisfying. I love visiting an experienced teacher's class -- I learned so much from watching LM lead a discussion. TWO students came to office hours! I LOVE them (but not in an unprofessional way ;) )! Class could have gone better, but was not bad. I talked too much, as is my wont, but not my preference. Tomorrow will be better, I think, since we will be discussing a selection from Frederick Douglass' autobiography, which illustrates the challenge of writing with passion about one's personal experiences without being self indulgent.
I also met my dissertation chair to discuss my progress and plans yesterday. She is a remarkable woman -- as brilliant as she is wise, as exacting as she is generous, as funny as she is pragmatic. She is a mother, a cancer survivor, a beautiful woman (especially when she laughs and tosses her head back), and a superb scholar. Being her student is the best thing about my graduate school experience, and I wouldn't trade our relationship for the world. I would like to be the kind of mentor to others that she has been to several generations of film and media scholars.
The only small problem is that my chair likes to enjoy a glass of wine during these meetings, and I have the alcohol tolerance of a two-year-old (Okay, I am basing that image on conjecture, NOT experimental data!). I was sentient enough to enjoy a wonderful dinner with AS (we love eating together, and do it often enough that it's like we're really a family), but not quite enough to do heavy-duty writing. I did remodel parts of my website for an application (check http://vmeng.bol.ucla.edu, center link) and grade all my students' papers. I couldn't do much more, since my entire life lives on my laptop and its power cord had burnt out and the battery was drained. Silver lining: bedtime at 10:30!
This morning I replaced my cord, changed watch batteries for AS, and ran some more errands for myself. Now I'm finally nearly caught up to all the internet stuff I've missed during my "life without laptop" day, and might really actually maybe get some work done!
But -- I asked
enigmaticblues to tag me; here are the 7 interests she picked:
cinema studies: I didn't grow up a film buff, and was as surprised as everyone else when I decided to major in film-making in college. To me, this experience proved that I don't have to understand a decision to enjoy it ;) . Making films was fun -- I made experimental narratives, documentaries, and animated shorts -- but I wanted to know more about the medium from a critical perspective. Part of me will always love the tinkering -- the way that I love to fix things around the house myself -- but the most demanding part of me wanted to know: why do I love some films and hate others? What are the differences between film, tv, and other motion-pictures media, and how did they get to be this way? As products of artistry, business, popular culture and technology, do films prove to be too complex for the kinds of analyses I have learned to apply to other creative media? I have managed to learn some things in 6.5 years of graduate study, and even though I don't yet know what I will do with this knowledge, I suspect it will somehow help me to pay the rent eventually...
turtles: I have one, a female red-ear slider, probably 5-6 years old. When I moved into my current apartment 2 years ago, the previous tenant asked me whether I was willing to take her turtle. I had been wanting a pet, and so said yes. Soon I realized that the unnamed thing had been living off too little food and light in too small a tank, and gave it a name and a deluxe apartment. She repaid me by becoming very big and bold :) . Oh -- and I first named her "Ernest" because I thought she was a he (the previous owner, when pressed, called her "the tiny little dude"), and it is important to be Ernest ;) . But now she is my darling Ernestine.
astronomy: Isn't the universe wonderful? Isn't astronomy an amazing way to learn about just how wonderful it is? Doesn't learning about black holes and sun spots and red shifts and gas giants make reading science fiction more fun? Aren't the stars pretty?
genetics: My sixth grade science project was a movable model of a DNA, made from wire and construction paper. I used it to demonstrate how the double helix structure of a strand of DNA allowed its code to be transfered to mRNA, tRNA, and finally amino acids to build proteins. It was really cool -- zipped and unzipped and twisted to form 3d structures, and all hand made! Between eighth and ninth grades I spent a summer at the Iowa State University of Science and Technology in Ames -- the camp was called "Molecular Biology Enrichment for Youth," and I can unequivocally say that it was the best summer of my life. In college I audited a graduate level Molecular Cell Biology course where I learned about stem cells, morphogenesis, hedgehog signally pathways, and other fun and useful stuff. I hope that I'll always know enough about contemporary developments to stay this excited...
Chinese poetry: Traditional Chinese poetry is like very fine clothing -- perfectly luxurious, perfectly comfortable, perfectly flattering, perfect for every occasion. My sister and I are lucky to have grown up in families that encouraged us to recite poetry as soon as we learned to speak. If I ever have kids, they will get the benefits of Chinese poetry, too.
Avenue Q: My favorite musical right now, even beats out Once More with Feeling, and that's saying something. With a cast of Sesame Street-style puppets (plus "Gary Coleman") and numbers like "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist," "The Internet is for Porn," "The More You Ruv Someone (the More You Want to Kill Them)," and "Schadenfreude," how could I not capitulate?
cooking: I am not yet as good as my mother, but someday, I will be.
Ooo -- Ernestine is napping! She's so cute! I'm going to turtle-nap her and nap with her!
Yesterday was long but satisfying. I love visiting an experienced teacher's class -- I learned so much from watching LM lead a discussion. TWO students came to office hours! I LOVE them (but not in an unprofessional way ;) )! Class could have gone better, but was not bad. I talked too much, as is my wont, but not my preference. Tomorrow will be better, I think, since we will be discussing a selection from Frederick Douglass' autobiography, which illustrates the challenge of writing with passion about one's personal experiences without being self indulgent.
I also met my dissertation chair to discuss my progress and plans yesterday. She is a remarkable woman -- as brilliant as she is wise, as exacting as she is generous, as funny as she is pragmatic. She is a mother, a cancer survivor, a beautiful woman (especially when she laughs and tosses her head back), and a superb scholar. Being her student is the best thing about my graduate school experience, and I wouldn't trade our relationship for the world. I would like to be the kind of mentor to others that she has been to several generations of film and media scholars.
The only small problem is that my chair likes to enjoy a glass of wine during these meetings, and I have the alcohol tolerance of a two-year-old (Okay, I am basing that image on conjecture, NOT experimental data!). I was sentient enough to enjoy a wonderful dinner with AS (we love eating together, and do it often enough that it's like we're really a family), but not quite enough to do heavy-duty writing. I did remodel parts of my website for an application (check http://vmeng.bol.ucla.edu, center link) and grade all my students' papers. I couldn't do much more, since my entire life lives on my laptop and its power cord had burnt out and the battery was drained. Silver lining: bedtime at 10:30!
This morning I replaced my cord, changed watch batteries for AS, and ran some more errands for myself. Now I'm finally nearly caught up to all the internet stuff I've missed during my "life without laptop" day, and might really actually maybe get some work done!
But -- I asked
enigmaticblues to tag me; here are the 7 interests she picked:
cinema studies: I didn't grow up a film buff, and was as surprised as everyone else when I decided to major in film-making in college. To me, this experience proved that I don't have to understand a decision to enjoy it ;) . Making films was fun -- I made experimental narratives, documentaries, and animated shorts -- but I wanted to know more about the medium from a critical perspective. Part of me will always love the tinkering -- the way that I love to fix things around the house myself -- but the most demanding part of me wanted to know: why do I love some films and hate others? What are the differences between film, tv, and other motion-pictures media, and how did they get to be this way? As products of artistry, business, popular culture and technology, do films prove to be too complex for the kinds of analyses I have learned to apply to other creative media? I have managed to learn some things in 6.5 years of graduate study, and even though I don't yet know what I will do with this knowledge, I suspect it will somehow help me to pay the rent eventually...
turtles: I have one, a female red-ear slider, probably 5-6 years old. When I moved into my current apartment 2 years ago, the previous tenant asked me whether I was willing to take her turtle. I had been wanting a pet, and so said yes. Soon I realized that the unnamed thing had been living off too little food and light in too small a tank, and gave it a name and a deluxe apartment. She repaid me by becoming very big and bold :) . Oh -- and I first named her "Ernest" because I thought she was a he (the previous owner, when pressed, called her "the tiny little dude"), and it is important to be Ernest ;) . But now she is my darling Ernestine.
astronomy: Isn't the universe wonderful? Isn't astronomy an amazing way to learn about just how wonderful it is? Doesn't learning about black holes and sun spots and red shifts and gas giants make reading science fiction more fun? Aren't the stars pretty?
genetics: My sixth grade science project was a movable model of a DNA, made from wire and construction paper. I used it to demonstrate how the double helix structure of a strand of DNA allowed its code to be transfered to mRNA, tRNA, and finally amino acids to build proteins. It was really cool -- zipped and unzipped and twisted to form 3d structures, and all hand made! Between eighth and ninth grades I spent a summer at the Iowa State University of Science and Technology in Ames -- the camp was called "Molecular Biology Enrichment for Youth," and I can unequivocally say that it was the best summer of my life. In college I audited a graduate level Molecular Cell Biology course where I learned about stem cells, morphogenesis, hedgehog signally pathways, and other fun and useful stuff. I hope that I'll always know enough about contemporary developments to stay this excited...
Chinese poetry: Traditional Chinese poetry is like very fine clothing -- perfectly luxurious, perfectly comfortable, perfectly flattering, perfect for every occasion. My sister and I are lucky to have grown up in families that encouraged us to recite poetry as soon as we learned to speak. If I ever have kids, they will get the benefits of Chinese poetry, too.
Avenue Q: My favorite musical right now, even beats out Once More with Feeling, and that's saying something. With a cast of Sesame Street-style puppets (plus "Gary Coleman") and numbers like "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist," "The Internet is for Porn," "The More You Ruv Someone (the More You Want to Kill Them)," and "Schadenfreude," how could I not capitulate?
cooking: I am not yet as good as my mother, but someday, I will be.
Ooo -- Ernestine is napping! She's so cute! I'm going to turtle-nap her and nap with her!