A very long afternoon and some worries...
Once I finally got out of the house today (around 1:30pm), I actually got some shit done.
First, I went and spent $30 on a 128mb memory card for my digital camera. I can now take 128 HUGE pictures or 256 normal-sized ones.
Second, I went to the Hays County Tax Assessor's Office. I sweet-talked the female clerks and dropped the words "graduate student" and "master's thesis" a few times. The result was that I was left alone in this dank vault full of the tax records of Hays County from around 1860 to around 1993. I spent about two hours documenting and photographing the Tax Roll Statements for the county from 1957 to 1967. Tomorrow I'm going to go back and look at 1942 to 1956...maybe. I mean, I'm definitely going to go back there tomorrow, but I might not look at 14 freaking years. Oh, and fun fact: Tax Rolls weigh at least 25 pounds. And starting in 1966 they start printing them with some sort of computer and only on the front side, doubling their size and weight. On top of all that, the tax rolls are bound in giant leather tomes about 2x3 feet. The ones from the 1920s are bound in metal for some reason. After transferring tax rolls from one high shelf to a lower shelf and then back to another high shelf (I took it upon myself to tidy up their really messy records vault), I'm honestly in pain and exhausted.
Third, I went to the Hays County Courthouse Office of the County Clerk - Felonies Division. I spent what little time I had left before they closed (about 45 minutes) going through the court dockets from 1940 to 1970. I only documented the years from 1952 to 1967. The major problems here are 1) they won't let me bring a camera into the courthouse, 2) there is no summary like with the tax rolls, so I just have to read through hundreds of huge pages of messy handwriting, counting the felonies, and 3) sometime between tomorrow morning and a week from tomorrow a scanning service is going to take those records and won't be returning them for months. SO, I'm going to hopefully show up at the office when it opens at 8am tomorrow and finish documenting the felonies for those years (I only got up to H {it goes by last name}).
Fourth, I got some shopping done. I only needed a few items, but I really needed some of them, so it was good that I finally got around to it.
Fifth, I eventually did get started on some grading, but I only graded three exams. But at least I managed to do that.
Sixth, I took all of the pictures I had taken and saved them on my office computer. I also printed the pictures and they came out beautifully, as if I had photocopied them. I'm really happy with that because I would've spent nearly as much money photocoping those tax rolls as I did buying the much-needed memory upgrade (well, maybe not, but I think it was still a good investment and also much more convenient than trying to photocopy those things...especially when you consider how much they weigh).
Something else I did tonight was start practicing riding my skateboard (I have this kooky idea about riding it to school, but the nearly vertical fucking hill at my apartment complex is giving me second thoughts...I could die!). I tried it outdoors on campus and then indoors in the basement of the history building. I quit after I sent the skateboard flying out from under me and landed squarely on my hip and elbow with very bruising force :(
I have some grading to do, now. I'm going to try to grade for at least one hour before going home.
Oh yeah, so something else on my mind before I sign off. I've been very stressed out lately about my present and my future. I procrastinated as usual this semester, but now the deadline for a chapter (25ish pages) of my thesis (120ish pages) is looming, and that deadline is only maybe two weeks after the deadline for the rough draft of my Civil War paper (20ish pages). I've done very little and now that I'm scrambling to get work done on my thesis chapter before we check in with my research class in less than five days, I'm realizing that I have very little to work with. I'm pretty stressed about that and it's making me stress out about graduating in December. I started stressing today about it and thought about how if I don't graduate in December then I might not be able to continue with my subsidized financial aid or my job the following Spring semester. And I just got really anxious and worried. On top of that, lately I've just been burned out by school and with my TA job and I've very vaguely and fleetingly considered dropping out of graduate school.
So anyway, I had dinner with my friend Amanda (Kelsea's old roomate who after going through AA is now a really awesome person and has become a real friend of mine, not just someone I know through Kelsea) this evening by total coincidence (except that I don't believe in coincidence). I was having dinner on the outside veranda of the All-Nighter Diner and she walked by and I invited her to join me. Anyway, she's a great listener and listened to what I had to say and then told me "Hey, if you graduate semester late it's not the end of the world." Such incredibly simple and obvious advice and yet it was exactly what I needed to hear. So, the point of those two long rambling paragraphs is that I'm feeling better.
So, anyway...I'm going to plot some tax data on a spreadsheet/graph and then get down to some grading. Thanks for reading.
~Keroo
First, I went and spent $30 on a 128mb memory card for my digital camera. I can now take 128 HUGE pictures or 256 normal-sized ones.
Second, I went to the Hays County Tax Assessor's Office. I sweet-talked the female clerks and dropped the words "graduate student" and "master's thesis" a few times. The result was that I was left alone in this dank vault full of the tax records of Hays County from around 1860 to around 1993. I spent about two hours documenting and photographing the Tax Roll Statements for the county from 1957 to 1967. Tomorrow I'm going to go back and look at 1942 to 1956...maybe. I mean, I'm definitely going to go back there tomorrow, but I might not look at 14 freaking years. Oh, and fun fact: Tax Rolls weigh at least 25 pounds. And starting in 1966 they start printing them with some sort of computer and only on the front side, doubling their size and weight. On top of all that, the tax rolls are bound in giant leather tomes about 2x3 feet. The ones from the 1920s are bound in metal for some reason. After transferring tax rolls from one high shelf to a lower shelf and then back to another high shelf (I took it upon myself to tidy up their really messy records vault), I'm honestly in pain and exhausted.
Third, I went to the Hays County Courthouse Office of the County Clerk - Felonies Division. I spent what little time I had left before they closed (about 45 minutes) going through the court dockets from 1940 to 1970. I only documented the years from 1952 to 1967. The major problems here are 1) they won't let me bring a camera into the courthouse, 2) there is no summary like with the tax rolls, so I just have to read through hundreds of huge pages of messy handwriting, counting the felonies, and 3) sometime between tomorrow morning and a week from tomorrow a scanning service is going to take those records and won't be returning them for months. SO, I'm going to hopefully show up at the office when it opens at 8am tomorrow and finish documenting the felonies for those years (I only got up to H {it goes by last name}).
Fourth, I got some shopping done. I only needed a few items, but I really needed some of them, so it was good that I finally got around to it.
Fifth, I eventually did get started on some grading, but I only graded three exams. But at least I managed to do that.
Sixth, I took all of the pictures I had taken and saved them on my office computer. I also printed the pictures and they came out beautifully, as if I had photocopied them. I'm really happy with that because I would've spent nearly as much money photocoping those tax rolls as I did buying the much-needed memory upgrade (well, maybe not, but I think it was still a good investment and also much more convenient than trying to photocopy those things...especially when you consider how much they weigh).
Something else I did tonight was start practicing riding my skateboard (I have this kooky idea about riding it to school, but the nearly vertical fucking hill at my apartment complex is giving me second thoughts...I could die!). I tried it outdoors on campus and then indoors in the basement of the history building. I quit after I sent the skateboard flying out from under me and landed squarely on my hip and elbow with very bruising force :(
I have some grading to do, now. I'm going to try to grade for at least one hour before going home.
Oh yeah, so something else on my mind before I sign off. I've been very stressed out lately about my present and my future. I procrastinated as usual this semester, but now the deadline for a chapter (25ish pages) of my thesis (120ish pages) is looming, and that deadline is only maybe two weeks after the deadline for the rough draft of my Civil War paper (20ish pages). I've done very little and now that I'm scrambling to get work done on my thesis chapter before we check in with my research class in less than five days, I'm realizing that I have very little to work with. I'm pretty stressed about that and it's making me stress out about graduating in December. I started stressing today about it and thought about how if I don't graduate in December then I might not be able to continue with my subsidized financial aid or my job the following Spring semester. And I just got really anxious and worried. On top of that, lately I've just been burned out by school and with my TA job and I've very vaguely and fleetingly considered dropping out of graduate school.
So anyway, I had dinner with my friend Amanda (Kelsea's old roomate who after going through AA is now a really awesome person and has become a real friend of mine, not just someone I know through Kelsea) this evening by total coincidence (except that I don't believe in coincidence). I was having dinner on the outside veranda of the All-Nighter Diner and she walked by and I invited her to join me. Anyway, she's a great listener and listened to what I had to say and then told me "Hey, if you graduate semester late it's not the end of the world." Such incredibly simple and obvious advice and yet it was exactly what I needed to hear. So, the point of those two long rambling paragraphs is that I'm feeling better.
So, anyway...I'm going to plot some tax data on a spreadsheet/graph and then get down to some grading. Thanks for reading.
~Keroo