So about a month ago, I realized I could, in fact, apply for the Javits. I sent the packet off today via Fedex. In the meantime, I learned:
- While it’s not hard to get professors to agree to write me letters, it’s hard to be able to stay on them about getting them out to me when I’m in Texas and they’re in California, especially when they go off-grid for large chunks of time and don’t respond to emails or phone calls. I had to get the letter scanned, emailed to me, print it out and sign for my professor, as well procure an alternate letter that definitely isn’t as good just in case that doesn’t fly, but it happened.
- I actually do have a research topic and a project, not just a collection of things I like that I’ve made to sound like a project
- Based on comments I received about my statement of purpose, I am apparently actually a pretty good scholar. I don’t always feel that way, so it’s nice to know. So many other medievalists on the net talk a lot about medieval stuff and their projects, and I don’t, so I felt like maybe I wasn’t.
I should know in a couple of weeks if everything was copacetic with my application, and then find out if I won in March. I think what could mess me up, as usual, are my shitty undergraduate grades. Am I correct in thinking that jobs just want the grad school grades? I’d hate to think that stuff from when I was stupid and 18 would effect me on the market.
Also, does anyone have a good suggestion for a college-level English grammar? California, when I was in high school, never bothered to teach us grammar (beyond the noun, verb, adjective crap), so I don’t have a very firm grounding in predicate indicatives and the like. I’ve picked some stuff up from Latin and bit from Old English, but it’s starting to hurt my ability to explain why things are a particular way in a text and I’d like a reference I can check rather than just looking it up on the internet all the time.
So it’s been about six weeks since we moved in to this house and we’re still in a state of flux, with boxes everywhere. Part of the problem, of course, is that our stuff didn’t actually get here until about four weeks ago–which was right when the semester was starting. So all the time I set aside for unpacking pretty much went to waste.
There have been some improvements, however. I ended up buying this bookcase, and this bookcase/file cabinet combo for the office/library. I will buy more bookcases next week as time permits. I’m a little upset by the unit–I would have liked something other than a paperboard back on it–but I figure it takes about 9-10 bookcases of this width and height to get all the books I have, so as I’ve always said real furniture is going to have to wait in that regard.
We still need a couch, a TV stand, and a dresser, so we went furniture shopping today just to get a sense of what’s out there. I’ve come to the conclusion that what I really want for the couch, at least, doesn’t seem available and I’m not really happy spending several hundred dollars to settle on something. As for the others, well other than it having at least four bays for electronics and some way to preferably hold both the TV and a record player I’m kind of open on the TV stand, and the dresser is more Kara’s thing than mine.
Basically, I think the issue is that I want large, architectural-feeling pieces that don’t go well with the poor grad student life I lead, or the lifelessness of how this house is constructed and painted.
That said, classes go well. I continue to stress–I’ve got to put together my application packet for the Javits early next week, and I still haven’t heard from one of my recommenders with confirmation that the letter is being sent to me for inclusion. The feeling that perhaps I’ve bitten off more than I can chew hasn’t really abated, but the thing is it’s not really classes that are rough. It’s being transplanted out here and trying to make it all work. I’m worried I’ll screw up somehow and then we’ll be stuck out here and I’ll have no prospects.
So, for those of you who know me in person, you know I tend to drink a lot of soda. I realize this isn’t good for me, but I need caffiene and coffee tends to spike in my system, causing me to become hyper, then crash. Soda is a slow delivery system. Also, ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
silversunshadow can regale you with tales of the elaborate bonding rituals revolving around soda in my folks’ household. But that’s not really part of the story, per se. More like background.
The real story is what happened when we went to Target yesterday, my reaction, and the bigger picture.
You see, my preferred size of soda is the Double Gulp. That’s right, the size (or maybe a size bigger) made popular by the poster to the film Baby Mama. Moreover, being cheap, I tend to refill a cup a few times, rather than buy a new cup each time I buy a new soda — a habit I got from my frugal parents. So I’m sure you can imagine my chagrin when I found out that not only do convenience stories in Texas not generally carry the Double Gulp size, they don’t have plastic cups. Instead, there’s styrofoam. Styrofoam, Styrofoam everywhere.
Having had one of my plastic cups turned into an impromptu watering bucket for orchids, and the other one lost while trying to get a book swapped at the campus bookstore, I was looking pretty sad.
Luckily, silversunshadow needed to go to Austin1 to pick up some orchid supplies, and I went along to stop at Frys. Austin, unlike College Station, has 7-11’s. That said, there were styrofoam cups for every size but 64 oz. But I got what I was looking for.
When Sunday rolled around, we went to Target to pick up supplies to get the library organized and pick up some cards after lunch. I had picked up a soda after lunch, which I still had as we arrived. I set it in the shopping cart when I went to look at cards, and when I came back, the cart was gone.
Now this isn’t that big a deal, really; ordinarily I would just go to the store and get a new one. But here, the new one was in Austin. And at this point my mind just clouded over. I was tired of it. Too much strangeness had happened over the last month. The house had been shit, I feel lonely and a bit removed outside of class, I want to do something to help silversunshadow with her work stuff and I don’t know what to do about it, and now I didn’t even have my soda.
It turned out that the soda cart had been co-opted by one of the workers, and I got my cup back, but it brought up to me that I’m kind of unhappy right now. It’s not the classes or the program. It’s just the cultural shift. I need to get used to it, because I do like the program and my classes, for the most part (although I’m still a bit leery of the first-year seminar course). So anyway, I thought this would be longer, but that’s where I’m at.
I also wrote my SOP for the Javits. Anyone want to read it? I think it’s really really rambly, unfortunately.
1Rabswom, if I realized we were going for sure, I would have let you know and tried to meet up. I’ll let you know next time silversunshadow is talking about going.
I’m currently sitting in the Flag Room in the Memorial Student Union at Texas A&M. Kara is going to do a trip report discussing our drive out and (I think) the attendent issues we found with our new place, so I’ll probably just make comments from the peanut gallery on her posts and link to them here for people who don’t read her journal. She also started her new job today on the campus, so I got up early and went with her to help find the building, do the reading for the reading group meeting I’m going to tonight, and kind of get a feel where things are.
My first thoughts are that it definitely has a sense of history that is a bit foreign for those of you who went to school out in California (unless you were at Berkeley or UCLA, that is). Some of the buildings have neat architecture, and there are plaques put up by some group of students or another all over the place. It’s actually a feel something akin to Arizona, but without the red brick as a unifying theme. There is a lot of brick, but not on all the buildings, and if I had to guess at a color I would say a sort of tan tends to predominate. The buildings are a mix of that institutional victorian/edwardian style that predominates up until World War II, the 50’s/60’s type of university architecture we’d be familiar with out in California, and more modern buildings here and there. It’s not really jarring, but it does give a sense of the different stages of development of the campus. In addition, there are a lot of buildings you can see in pictures that aren’t around anymore, some of which looked really pretty. The version of Old Main here burned down in the early 20th century, for example, but the building itself was larger than the one at Arizona, with two towers.
Moving from the architecture to campus life (at least as much of it as I’ve experienced), my first thought is that the students wear a lot of maroon. I mean a lot. School spirit, at least in the outward form, is here in a way that is entirely foreign to anyone who went to UCI or CSULB. I remember seeing it at Arizona, but not at this level. Moreover the entire town seems to be the same way — every clothing store I went to that was geared in any way towards people of college age had a section of aggie t-shirts, sweatshirts, and other clothing items.
The town itself seems to be almost schizophrenic in some ways. At dinner with my old advisor from Long Beach last night (that’s something else I’ll have to get used to — talking/seeing my professors in a social situation. I’ll also have to come up with nicknames to protect the innocent), he mentioned that the campus and the area was in a bit of flux — the old guard sees students who aren’t like them, triggering their rural, reactionary discomfort, but who are Aggies, triggering the sense of togetherness that they feel they should have with their fellow Aggies. I do know the political climate is quite different judging by the books for sale in one of the local bookstores. That said, there’s an informal poll based on books purchased in the profit arm of the student bookstore on campus (the memorabilia/non-textbook section of the store is run by Barnes and Noble, although you can’t tell beyond the periodic sign you’d recognize if you frequent them enough) that suggests that more people are buying books about Obama/critical of McCain than otherwise. I don’t know if that’s a know thy enemy sort of thing, or if it’s a sign of things to come. I also bought my books, which came out to a little over $200. For the number of books, that’s not so bad, but I’d gotten used to it being about $70 less over the last few years. Of course, I’m taking one more course this semester than I typically took in a semester at Long Beach so that’s to be expected.
One last thing I have to talk about — the weather. It is incredibly humid here. So much so that I can’t really imagine walking around/biking everywhere like I did in Tucson. I have a feeling I’m going to quickly develop a set routine that keeps me in the maximum number of buildings and stick to it. For this semester, at least, I don’t every have to leave the floor the department is on except for going to and from the house and to get food, so that should help. Luckily we have Kara’s car, so it’s not like I’m going to be limited to the area just around the campus.
Ok, we’re heading out Sunday for Texas. The plan is to stay the night in Tucson on the 10th, Fort Stockton Texas on the 11th, and arrive in College Station on the 12th. Folks who are in Tucson–we’ll be staying at the La Quinta (Kara has the address). I know you guys offered to put us up, but I think that it’d be easier with the cats to go ahead and get a hotel room. We do want to see you guys, though, if you’re available. Dinner on Sunday?
Fair warning — this post is likely to be boring.
Our new place is going to have three bedrooms, rather than two. In the last place, we used one as our bedroom and one as my library/office/media room (Kara tended to haunt the living room — that was sort of ‘her’ area, although my old and valuable volumes were out there in her barrister bookcase). I was figuring that the third room was going to somehow be Kara’s for whatever purpose she’d want for it, but she mentioned that we could put the speakers and stereo in there — which would make the library more of a library and less of a jumbled mess.
I’m thinking if we put a daybed in there, instead of a second couch (assuming we get a new dedicated couch for the living room) we can use it as a guest room. I was looking at getting this daybed – I like the archwork. It’s evocative of gothic arches while not requiring the rest of the room to be super-fancy to fit. For either the library or the living room, I’d like to get this bookstand. I could then display my 1678 copy of Spenser’s Complete Works. It’s in decent condition, but not great (its missing the frontispiece). That said it is the oldest book I have and I love it for that and the fact it’s Spenser. I’m not sure what I’d put on the three shelves, but I like the height as a means to be able to display the book without giving the cats a platform to rest on. Maybe these as accent pieces, too? That would have to wait a while though since they’re not furniture.
I’d also like to get a library table, but I haven’t found one I think I can afford and like. If I found one I could use the flat bookstand I have, or maybe set up the chess sets on it and place it in the center of the room with a chair or two. I tend to like my library/office to be chock-a-block with shelves around the walls, which means I’ll have to go with cheap shelves. The ones I had before are only available now at Walmart though, and I won’t shop there. I’ll have to figure something out there and I’d like to get something close to ceiling height. Any ideas? I’ll also need to buy a filing cabinet, but non-built in shelving tends to not quite fit walls exactly, so I figure there will be an open space I can fit it into. Maybe a two-drawer unit under the light switch.
With all of that said, I also need to buy or build a shadow or display box to put my grandfather’s chaps and holsters in, and figure out a way to properly display them. I’m thinking that can go in the media room — the daybed, if we get it, has the archwork but also looks modern enough that it would fit in an eclectic a room as that one would likely turn out to be.
So this weekend I need to get everything out of my car and replace the stereo with the stock stereo in preparation for selling it. It’s pretty much toast, so I’m just going to try to sell it to an auto wrecker or a pick-your-part, if I can find one in south Orange County. If I can’t, then I’ll have to go to Santa Ana or its environs. That needs to happen not this week, but the next, so I can see Tom before I take off. Then pack up everything that I think needs to be packed up more soundly over the course of the next week, and get ready to go.
With that in mind, I need to figure out someone who isn’t going to screw me in selling the car. I mean, I’m not looking to make a mint, but I want to get whatever the thing is worth. Then cancel the insurance and get ready to go.
So I have received not one, but two emails asking me to join fraternities. They’re both written as though they’re geared towards Freshmen (which I’m sure they are) and at least one is for an engineering, architecture, and science fraternity (and is written with lots of grammatical issues).
Now I’m curious how many more of these I’ll get, and what would happen if one actually struck my fancy and I tried to join. I’m not keen on spending extra money I don’t have to spend, but it’s amusing to think about.
This is a question for the academic folks–I received a departmental award when I got my Masters. It didn’t come with any sort of monetary award, and it wasn’t one of the highest awards in the department, but I was one of only two people who received it. Is it padding to add that to the CV? If not, do you keep awards like that on the CV forever, or do you eventually leave them off?
