I figured I would fill in the space between the last post and Aaron's upcoming one. Our friend Eddie visited last week and I'm sure he'll want to tell you all about that, but to make up for the time he didn't work while he was hanging around and pretending to be a tourist, he's been putting in some extra hours this week. And, I'm sorry to report, that I have given him the cold I had last week, and now he's feeling under the weather. Don't worry, I'm taking good care of him! Hopefully tomorrow he will have the day off to rest and recuperate. Until then, it's daily doses of lemsip and going to bed early. (Can you believe that we both went to sleep at 9:45 the other night?? What happened to us?!) We are obviously ready to become responsible adults. Going to bed early is one thing, but we've also gotten into a nasty habit of waking up before 8!
Part of that is Aaron's work schedule, but another part is the workload that I'm currently facing in school. March is absolutely ridiculous. Now that reading week is over, I'm in the last quarter of my time at Trinity and I am on reading/writing/research overload! We only have 3 weeks left of class!! I'm definitely going to cry at the end of it but right now all the work I need to do is a good distraction. It's hard to be so close to the end of the time when I'm going to have to leave all the wonderful friends we've made in Ireland, and to have so much to do. I just want to spend as much time with them all as possible but this reading-for-a-masters thing is really cutting in on my socializing.
Sir Terry Pratchett, the best-selling author of the Discworld series of fantasy novels (among many others) revisited us this past week for a class on his books. We were asked to read three of his novels: Guards! Guards!, Night Watch, and Thud! I'm personally a big fan of how two out of three of those have exclamation marks in their names. I found Thud! in cd form at the library, so I was able to listen to the story about trolls, dwarves, and the civil servants of this fantastic city in the varying and talented voices of a charming British actor. I should be getting my masters in audiobooks, really, not so much reading :) Sir Pratchett began his talk with a discussion on the character development of his favorite character that he's ever written, Sam Vimes, who, in the three books we read, goes from being an alcoholic in the gutter to a responsible, loving husband and father, and a very professional and assertive commander of the city police force. Character development indeed!
It was an eventual discussion. I had brought several talking points with me but they didn't really come up. Finally, I was thinking one of them needed to be phrased as a question to get Sir Terry to talk about it but I couldn't figure the right way to word it. Then my friend Ian "asked" his question--I put it in quotes because it was then that I realized that I didn't need to have it in question form, I just needed to begin a topic and the author would interrupt me and talk about what he wanted to! And after stopping a couple of my sentences, he did get around to talking about what I wanted to know, and I was very proud of myself afterwards for having a miniature discussion with a millionaire author. When my classmate brought up a point about two characters that he really liked, he got so excited about it he stood up and said "I think I could kiss you!" then ordered the head of our English department to give her all the gold stars, then said "I think I WILL kiss you!" And he did! At the end of it, I got my photo taken with him all on my own this time (he said "I don't understand this fan girl stuff!") and he signed my copy of Guards!Guards! which made it worth whatever I spent on it at Barnes and Noble which I hadn't wanted to spend at the time. Then he asked me and my friends how many pairs of shoes we owned and discussed with us the complexity of women's fashion. After that, his entourage announced he had another engagement and that was the end of all I will probably see of Sir Terry Pratchett in person.
It's been a really exciting and interesting opportunity that Trinity has given me, to not only read popular literature, but to chat with someone who has actually spent their life writing and making millions on it, and on his philosophy on fantasy in general. The last session was a big group of people, but this seemed a lot smaller. I believe it was only my program, a few of our professors, and a couple PhD students. Maybe 25 people, and that was it! A really neat experience all around, but I have to say, trolls and dwarves just may not be my cup of tea.
Our friend Stephen is arriving on Wednesday afternoon to stay with us for about a week, in between some jet setting that's going to be doing around Europe for the most awesome vacation ever. Speaking of awesome vacations, Aaron and I have booked our trips! We'll be spending four amazing days in Rome starting April 2nd, then on the 12th-14th we'll be in London with my class, wandering around the British museums and talking about how cool those Victorians were. Tentatively, it looks like we'll be home before April 30th... on that day, I'd have to take the Praxis test in order to have my results in by the end of May, and I need to be applying for jobs with those test results! It's kind of a big deal. Like I said, this date is tentative, but we're about 89% sure. We're waiting to be 100% before we buy the big tickets and start packing our stuff.
We're looking forward to seeing Arkansas and all of you again! We hope you're all doing well, and we can't wait to hear from you :)
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
March: Irish Awareness Month
So... not many posts for February were there? :( I've been reading all these amazing blogs for the past two years and have always wanted to start one, but now that I've actually had one for some time I realize how hard it is to keep up with it! Things happen and I think "ooo I need to write a blog post about that", and I always forget when I sit down to the computer. But right now... I'm on spring break! And it is the busiest spring break of my life!
If you look to the right, you can see that I've fiddled with our blog a little bit and I've added book progress meters! Now I'll also be able to update what I'm reading for class and how far I am with it. I think I'm addicted to actually seeing progress made. Whenever I was little, my mom would give my sisters and I personalized lists with our chores for the weekend. Each list was specific to us, for what we were capable of doing. I was always a little jealous looking at Jackie's list (she's four years younger than me) because her things were always so much smaller. "Pick up stuffed animals off the floor. Dust the window seat." While my list included the dreaded vacuuming. Mary (three years older than me) always had something more advanced and harder to do, so I could always look to hers feel better about my own! Without the list I would wander around the house not really knowing what to do--my initiative developed later--but with the list, I got stuff DONE. I loved checking things off and looking at the crumply piece of paper at the end of the day that was covered in scratches: my work was complete. A finished list always meant freedom; each scratched off task was closer and closer to getting to play guilt free! (Of course, let's face it, a finished list for me was a rarity. Like I said, the initiative came along later...)
Up through high school I was incredibly disorganized. I always lost papers, turned things in late, and unfortunately had very forgiving teachers so I didn't feel any pressure to get anything together. In college, I found that pressure, rediscovered the list, and became the organized student I was meant to be! I have carried the practice over to grad school and it is so helpful. I've learned that I need boundaries and rules, and most importantly a list of things to do--otherwise I will wander around, flip through books, write something that doesn't make sense, and feel unprepared in class. The progress bars on the side are a sort of "list" for my books. As much as I love to see things checked off I love to see where I am on those progress meters!
If you notice, after this reading week is over, we'll dive into young adult fiction with Harry Potter and Twilight. Very exciting, and I think it will be a very polarized week. Most people will talk about how much they just loooove Harry Potter; Thursday, we will all hate on Twilight! For my Lost Worlds options class, I'm reading Pharos the Egyptian, because the Victorians were obsessed with ancient Egypt! And finally, the exciting news: Terry Pratchett is returning to have a special class with us. In order to have this class and discuss fantasy with him, he wants us to read three of his books first (clever marketing strategy if you ask me!) from his Discworld series. Incidently, whenever I've typed Discworld, it always seems to turn into Disco world.
Aaron and I are both busy putting together resumes, applying to jobs, trying to make as many connections as possible for being on the other side of the world in order to be able to further our careers when we get back home. Prayers are definitely appreciated on this front. I think I have paper topics figured out, which was a huge burden on my shoulders--I've been worried lately that I wouldn't be able to find a dissertation topic with enough time to research it while we're here, but the past few days a couple ideas have been rolling around in my brain and I think they fit together really well. I may or may not be doing a dissertation on the dime novels of the American west. How fun would that be??
For the next blog post, you'll hear from Aaron. I've sort of taken over this responsibility and I don't know how that happened! I'm not even very good at it (see February) ;) Love you all!
If you look to the right, you can see that I've fiddled with our blog a little bit and I've added book progress meters! Now I'll also be able to update what I'm reading for class and how far I am with it. I think I'm addicted to actually seeing progress made. Whenever I was little, my mom would give my sisters and I personalized lists with our chores for the weekend. Each list was specific to us, for what we were capable of doing. I was always a little jealous looking at Jackie's list (she's four years younger than me) because her things were always so much smaller. "Pick up stuffed animals off the floor. Dust the window seat." While my list included the dreaded vacuuming. Mary (three years older than me) always had something more advanced and harder to do, so I could always look to hers feel better about my own! Without the list I would wander around the house not really knowing what to do--my initiative developed later--but with the list, I got stuff DONE. I loved checking things off and looking at the crumply piece of paper at the end of the day that was covered in scratches: my work was complete. A finished list always meant freedom; each scratched off task was closer and closer to getting to play guilt free! (Of course, let's face it, a finished list for me was a rarity. Like I said, the initiative came along later...)
Up through high school I was incredibly disorganized. I always lost papers, turned things in late, and unfortunately had very forgiving teachers so I didn't feel any pressure to get anything together. In college, I found that pressure, rediscovered the list, and became the organized student I was meant to be! I have carried the practice over to grad school and it is so helpful. I've learned that I need boundaries and rules, and most importantly a list of things to do--otherwise I will wander around, flip through books, write something that doesn't make sense, and feel unprepared in class. The progress bars on the side are a sort of "list" for my books. As much as I love to see things checked off I love to see where I am on those progress meters!
If you notice, after this reading week is over, we'll dive into young adult fiction with Harry Potter and Twilight. Very exciting, and I think it will be a very polarized week. Most people will talk about how much they just loooove Harry Potter; Thursday, we will all hate on Twilight! For my Lost Worlds options class, I'm reading Pharos the Egyptian, because the Victorians were obsessed with ancient Egypt! And finally, the exciting news: Terry Pratchett is returning to have a special class with us. In order to have this class and discuss fantasy with him, he wants us to read three of his books first (clever marketing strategy if you ask me!) from his Discworld series. Incidently, whenever I've typed Discworld, it always seems to turn into Disco world.
Aaron and I are both busy putting together resumes, applying to jobs, trying to make as many connections as possible for being on the other side of the world in order to be able to further our careers when we get back home. Prayers are definitely appreciated on this front. I think I have paper topics figured out, which was a huge burden on my shoulders--I've been worried lately that I wouldn't be able to find a dissertation topic with enough time to research it while we're here, but the past few days a couple ideas have been rolling around in my brain and I think they fit together really well. I may or may not be doing a dissertation on the dime novels of the American west. How fun would that be??
For the next blog post, you'll hear from Aaron. I've sort of taken over this responsibility and I don't know how that happened! I'm not even very good at it (see February) ;) Love you all!
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