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| Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 | | 1:47 pm |
This school has really burned my ass in the last couple weeks. A week and a half ago, I got an e-mail from a fellowship I applied to saying that two professors had never sent in recommendations. It had been due two weeks before and I'd cleared it with them long before it was sent in. I checked with both of them and they'd both simply forgotten to do it. Both of them were history professors. Now, I've gotten word from the department of problems with my honors thesis prospectus. It lacks sufficient secondary source research, which is a perfectly legitimate criticism, but my advisor, who I've met with extensively, never brought this up. Nor did he address with me the shortness of my prospectus; mine is apparently much shorter than everybody else's, and he never mentioned this. Ever. They want more research from me at a time in the semester when I really don't have spare time to read four or five more books, given that final essays are due in three and a half weeks along with my grad school applications. The History Department kinda threw me under a bus here. And I'm not very happy. Odds are, I'll step down from Honors Thesis, because the prospect of all of this additional research leaves me to question what else I can cut to make room for it. I won't risk my grades for an honors thesis that won't help my grad school apps, and I won't risk my grad school apps at all. I've already got enough reasons to be angry at this school. Burning myself out on writing this thesis and destroying my senior year is not a reason I'd like to add to the list. Current Mood:  angry |
| Thursday, November 5th, 2009 | | 7:35 am |
Why do Americans give a shit about Guy Fawkes Day? Fucking V for Vendetta. |
| Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 | | 10:18 pm |
Every time I think about wanting to quit this job, I find some resident who needs my help and who I can help. And it postpones my departure for another while. School is going well. This week has burnt me at both ends, but I survived all of my midterms and even kicked one's ass (97.5, a solid victory). An application was submitted for an Oregon Heritage Fellowship. All of my rec letters are lined up. I'm locking down monetary grants for research for other students in the history department. Grad school apps will begin so. I'm plowing through books for thesis. I'm exhausted, but you know me. I'm happiest this way. |
| Friday, August 7th, 2009 | | 10:16 pm |
Portland, here I come. In thirteen hours, I'll be back be where I belong. |
| Sunday, August 2nd, 2009 | | 12:02 am |
This is a long and rambling entry, so beware. It came up while I was thinking about the Iraq War, and then somebody mentioned V for Vendetta. And somewhere, two synapses fired. You know, the only time I ever feel myself indulging in paranoia is when I see how much everybody else likes V for Vendetta contrasted with how much I despise it. I just don't get it. Nothing about that movie is unique, or well-designed, or bold, or creative, or even fucking nuanced. The action sequences look good, I'll give them that. But the characters are so shallow; they have no depth or complexity. V is a good guy, and Evey his loyal protege, and the fascists are all bogeymen with Bush masks on. V is a fucking terrorist in the graphic novel, not fucking William Wallace; he exists in ambiguity, like the real world. And never mind the depiction of the government...it took all the depth out of portraying fascism as arising from complicated factors and reduced it to pretty fucking tenuous. What messages does that movie offer? Seriously? Let's be tolerant of gay people? Great. What a bold fucking message. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to see positive treatment of homosexuals in the media, but in 2005, we shouldn't pat a movie on the head for uttering tenets of common decency, no matter if some people refuse to accept them. That's not exactly ground-breaking material, and plenty of other movies have done a much better job with it. And of all the approaches to take...We don't want to tackle Matthew Shepard, somebody who deserves to have their story told, so let's make it safe and imaginary. Or gee, dictatorships are bad? Oppression is unpleasant? Holy shit, you're blowing my fucking mind right now! I don't think I handle all of this RADICAL information man! I was under the impression most Americans accepted this idea as being true. And for fuck's sake, I cannot stand the conflation of fascism with fucking neoconservatism! In fact, I don't necessarily like conflating all of the Bush administration with neoconservatism, because a lot of the Bush Administration was just devoted to behaving like a crook. And out of all the stupid shit from that movie, nothing pissed me off more than the stupid references to "America's War." How could this be anything other than a cheap marketing ploy to capitalize on the-then active opposition to the war? Every survey from 2005 showed half the population or more was opposed; it was convenient for them to throw it out there. There's no bravery in saying something that a majority of people will agree with and that the other side is unlikely to lynch you for. Where was this fucking movie in 2003, when opposing the war was unpopular and inconvenient, when a little bit of support might have been handy? No, there was nothing bold about its half-assed, masked opposition to the war. I think this movie has begun to stand for something else to me. It represents my anger with the entire Iraq War and all of its former supporters. I won't lie, I have a lot of anger towards people who backed the war, not only because I was forced to eat a number of shit sandwiches by a lot of different people, but because I'm angry that they missed the lies upon which it was predicated. They couldn't see the human cost and what it would do. I refuse to believe that the war ever sounded like a good idea. I just can't accept that, and I feel like I can say this because a younger, angstier me in 2003 said the same thing. This isn't directed at anybody, but damn...I'm angry. Current Mood: angry |
| Saturday, July 25th, 2009 | | 10:39 pm |
I swear to Christ, if the GRE holds me back from going to a good grad school, I will lose my fucking mind. |
| Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 | | 10:44 pm |
Looks like I'll be home on the 8th of August. |
| Saturday, June 27th, 2009 | | 8:07 am |
I've been here for over four weeks. I like it here. I like my job a lot. This week has been pretty slow, just because I've finished with my first major report, and I've been doing menial stuff in the office to kill time. This has taken the form of scanning slides and then indexing them. It's a slow business, but whatever. Next week, I start writing the Historic Structures Inventory for the cabin, and I begin my research on the refrigeration building. It's another needle in a pile of needles, but I'm excited to begin. I have time again for certain things which I haven't had time for in years, namely, reading. I've re-read Lord of the Rings while I've been here, three Raymond Chandler novels, a Jorge Luis Borges book called The Book of Sand, and I'm working on a book of Icelandic Sagas and a biography of Kemal Ataturk. I've also read three books for work. I like my routine. I hang out with friends from LC on Friday night, I hang out with the interns on Saturday night, and I pay a visit to the forty year-old virgins on Sundays to play board games. I'm glad to not be home. Don't get me wrong, I miss all of you guys and look forward to seeing all of you, but if I was home, I think I'd have started pulling my hair out a month ago. I just don't deal well with inactivity or unemployment, and from all appearances, there was no work to be had at home. I can honestly say I made the right decision. |
| Sunday, June 21st, 2009 | | 10:45 pm |
I definitely appreciated the value of Historical Materials as I was taking it, but in doing this particular job, the relevance of the class has become crystal clear. The Mudhole Smith Cabin sits outside the town of McCarthy. The airstrip was built in 1929 by the Alaska Road Commission along with a score of thers. The territorial government decided to help foster aviation in the state, especially in isolated, and built a series of $350 dollar airstrips. They were shitty, tough little airstrips that were a nightmare to land on or take off of, and those bush pilots used 'em constantly. Researching this cabin has been difficult; the Copper River Valley was never densely-populated, and as a result, the documentation for the area tends to be somewhat sparse. Bush pilots weren't guys who wrote journals, and the builders of little one-room cabins didn't feel the need to say why they did so. Trying to find the origin of this cabin, I've been pouring through records from the Alaska Road Commission (they built the airstrip and shelter cabins in the area, though that possibility was quickly eliminated), biographies of the pilots who lived there, survey plats, accounts from old trappers and prospectors who lived in the are (some of them decades prior to the existence of the airstrip). Even dating the thing is difficult; we know it existed in August of 1937. Before that, we have some conjectural proof that I would never use without further corroboration, and being in a state of uncertainty is maddening. A visit to the site has indicated that the cabin had built somewhere else, taken apart, and moved to its current site. This makes tracking the damned thing down even more maddening, because suddenly, we're looking for a cabin that was built within a several mile radius of the current site. I still have a couple of theories that might pan out, but given that I can demonstrate that it is a historical building, I feel a little less nervous about determining its origin. It was a focal point for aviation in the area, people learned to fly by making trips down to the cabin and visiting the pilots, and there are pictures of people like Bradford Washburn there. Demonstrating historical merit isn't too difficult. My other big thing, which I'll be starting soon, is the history of the refrigeration building at Kennecott. All I know is that by the time I'm done here, I'm gonna be one of the experts in the field of Alaskan aviation and the history of ammonia refrigeration. |
| Sunday, June 7th, 2009 | | 10:37 pm |
Some days before I left, my parents told me that they thought I seemed unusually nervous. I've been anxious about an upcoming date: my twenty-first birthday. Birthdays are not really a big deal to me, normally. I don't like big parties, and the chief reason I have them nowadays is because it coincides with all of my friends coming home from school; it's a nice kick-off to the summer. I'd actually stopped having birthday parties after I turned fifteen; I just don't like 'em very much. I don't really like a big hullabaloo, either, and I don’t set expectations all that high. I like getting a couple presents from my parents and grandparents, I like going out to dinner, and I like my friends wishing me a happy birthday. Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy to be turning twenty-one, so I can finally drink a beer after work, go out and have wine with dinner, or make a nice stiff Manhattan after a crappy day. I won’t be confined to enjoying good alcohol with my parents anymore, and I can finally go to all of the twenty-one and over venues. However, I’m terrified of oncoming adulthood. I graduate in a year, and I’m not happy at the prospect of having to leave LC. I like it too much. My first year of college can barely be described as a year of college, given that I spent a third of it convalescing. PSU wasn’t all that different from Sunset High School; the only difference is that the classes tended to be better. I’ve loved most aspects of LC, and I don’t want to leave. It goes beyond leaving a place that I like, though. I still have grad school to look forward to, and I’m sure that that will be really fun. I’ll be able to study what I love all the time, and be with like-minded people. No, it’s the fact that I seem to be drawing ever closer to adulthood. There are responsibilities that I want to avoid, such as getting a house, finding my position (not a guarantee). Obviously, I can’t avoid them forever, nor do I necessarily want to. I just want to be harmlessly irresponsible, not burdened with these adult worries, and indulging in my hobbies and fancies when I want. I basically want to be childishly selfish, and I don’t see this as a bad thing. I'm also afraid because I'm twenty one and have done nothing with my life, but that's more typical insecurity on my part. I can laugh at that. Bosh. Flimshaw. |
| Monday, June 1st, 2009 | | 10:18 pm |
Well, things have hit a bit of a snag in terms of employment here. Due to increased government security and background checks, neither I nor the other interns could begin work today. It might be up to a week before we can actually start, which is a little worrisome financially. They've assured me that I'll have no shortage of opportunities to work overtime. Somewhat more distressing is the prospect of having to kill time for a whole week. It's surprisingly difficult in a city where you know next-to-nobody, have no car, live downtown, and everything is fairly spread out. I’ve found a few ways to kill time. There are some gamers in town, and I went for a board-game day at a nearby store. They’re all significantly older and adhere to some unfortunate stereotypes about nerdy males. While their company does leave something to be desired, it is an opportunity to play games and do something nerdy. Beyond that, I can be shown good board games without having to buy them. I’m also trying to begin my research for my thesis. The public library here is available to me, and most of the books by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft are here as well, so I can begin all of the necessary reading right now. Unfortunately, it will take a few days before I can order books, so again, I’m waiting for the time being. I have some research to do for work, which helps. That’ll give me something to do for another couple days, and given that I might go to work at any time, it will be good to have that out of the way. Most of my job involves research, as a matter of fact. I met with some of my bosses today, to fill out more paperwork and acquaint myself with the office, and we discussed the nature of the job somewhat. I can do archival research at the University of Alaska, the Anchorage Museum, the NPS Office and the various city libraries. I have to say, this is a step up in the world; having my own cubicle and office gear feels a little better than working as a house painter. Beyond that, doing nothing but research all summer is not a bad fate.
Some of my work also involves publications, and that’s the part where I get a little excited. It’d be one thing if all I do this summer is write what other people have written, but some of this is going to be my own writing. In a week or so, Bonnie (my boss) and I are headed to the Kennecott mine to do some research on a cabin that was owned by an early bush pilot. I’ll write more about that later, but the important bit is that I get to write the Determination of Eligibility Report for it to go on the National Register. I can be proud of that. |
| Friday, May 22nd, 2009 | | 2:08 am |
So...Alaska. I leave in seven days, and I'm scared shitless. I won't be completely alone; there will be the other interns, and some LC kids, but I'll still be mostly alone. It's a new experience for me in a lot of different ways. I think working and reading in preparation for thesis will help ease some of my loneliness at first; it will serve to distract me somewhat. My work is also pretty cool, which helps. A lot of it is technical, but writing a Determination of Eligibility Report for a cabin in Kennecott Park will be cool. I'll be researching the cabin and getting to do some actual field work, and my research will be used to qualify it for a national register nomination. I'll be spending my birthday in the Kennecott National Park, which is kind of up and down. The downer is not being able to get a beer on the day of my birthday. However, my boss told me that I'll have free time in the park, so I'm going to try to schedule a glacier hike on the 9th. I might as well; I'd be stupid not to. I've nearly nailed down my apartment. Most of my $15 an hour is going to rent and food, so I won't be saving much money. Oh well- this will do a lot for my resume in the long term, which helps. |
| Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 | | 10:51 pm |
Now that I am a senior in college, I find myself starting to think about where I head after this. Ultimately, all paths will lead to graduate school and my dissertation, but there are some different paths to get there. 1. Teach for America. I applied to work for them as an Operations Coordinator over the summer and was hired in Phoenix (and was recently contacted to work in Philadelphia as well), though I had to turn the position down as I waited to hear about this job for the NPS. They're affiliated with Americorps, and after I graduate, I could apply to work as a teacher for a few years. I would get a grant towards my student loans ($10,000), receive a teacher's salary (not a lot, but better than nothing), and I could get a Master's in Education over the course of two or three years. Then, I could finish and go back into Grad School, and it's not as though I would have been completely out of school. It would be difficult teaching in under-funded schools, but it would be training like none other. 2. Peace Corps. I'd like the experience, but I have to say, it doesn't give me much help with my financial aid. It helps reduce Perkins Loans...but I don't have any Perkins Loans. Interest would be suspended for some of them and I'd have deferrments, but Teach for America sounds like a better option. 3. Fellowships/Scholarships. Committing to something like a Fullbright, Luce, or Rhodes Scholarship would be an amazing opportunity. A Rhodes Scholarship is almost impossible to get...but what is the cost of applying? Nil. Might as well put myself out there and see what I get. A professor recommended me for a Luce Scholarship, which is a scholarship to teach and study in China expressly intended for non-East Asian Studies Majors with no experience speaking Chinese. In other words, me. I'll definitely be looking into that one. 4. Graduate School. Heading straight into the next school path is an option too. At this point, I've got a 3.83 and 3.97 from PSU, and I'm looking at being able to graduate Magna Cum Laude. I'm going to earn my Honors Thesis if it goddamned well kills me, and I have a number of activities/extracurriculars/leadership positions under my belt. All I have to do is score well on the GREs, and I think I'll be able to gun for the top-tier graduate schools. I want to apply to the Ivy Leagues, to UCLA, to University of Texas-Austin (Latin American History Program), and a couple of others. Those are my tentative plans as of this moment. |
| Monday, May 11th, 2009 | | 8:25 pm |
What a year! I went from the hardest semester of college I've ever been through to the best semester of college, and overall, I feel as though I can say that this was the best year of college. Platt West was an amazing dorm to live in, and I find myself still missing my residents and looking forward to seeing them again in the fall. I made a lot of friends this year: Louis, who is basically my twin brother, Andrew Lawley, who I knew pretty well last year but has become a solid friend this year, all of the kids from my hall Spring Semester, Nick Tiller, Sam Bock, Nate Anderson...It's been good. Fall Semester was so difficult, and I can honestly say that I never want to work that hard again. From Louis' birthday party in September until early December, I can remember one day in that entire span of time in which I didn't do at least a few hours of homework or wasn't working on something. Materials nearly killed me, and doing that combined with being an RA, doing all of my clubs, and keeping my grades burned me out. That said, I see now that it was building to something. I had to take Materials for my Major, and in doing so, it only reinforced my love of history, even though I nearly cracked from the workload. I had to live in Hartzfeld D, but in doing so, I got to live in Platt West, and learn what it was like to actually love the people you live around. The sacrifices I made were calculated, and everything seemed to pay off karmically. The year had a few road bumps. Somewhere, I seemed to adopt this naive and stupid belief that everybody is a kind person, deep down. I don't know how I acquired this bizarre form of insanity, but the result was that I dated a few people I shouldn't have. These people weren't very nice, and I would have been better off not doing so. The faith I placed in some of my friends at the beginning of the year was misplaced, and it did bring me some pain. That said, I don't really mind the bad parts. It was a lesson I had to learn (or re-learn, since I believed at one time that kindness was a rare thing), and it has re-established kindness as the most important quality in another person. The friends that didn't turn out to be the best of friends are a part of life; I met people who are worthwhile, and I believe that I will continue to do so. And in the end, most of the conflicts I had with people were resolved, and everything turned out ok. I love my school. I'm happy to come home and hibernate for a few weeks before I head to Alaska, but I am excited to go back again in the fall, and I'm sad to think that it is my last year at L&C. But then I have Grad School to look forward to, and I have plenty of reasons to look forward to that. A lot of my LC friends are in the Portland area, and I'll be hanging out a lot with them before I head out at the end of the month. It'll be a good time. I'm going to finish my episode of Antiques Roadshow and get a good night's sleep. Current Mood:  happy |
| Saturday, May 9th, 2009 | | 5:13 pm |
I'm coming home on Monday and staying until the 28th or 29th of May. I'll be home again on the 14th or 15th of August; I'm trying to be home in time for Jeff's wedding. I might have to take a redeye flight and leave Anchorage at 1:30 AM, but it should work out. |
| Saturday, April 25th, 2009 | | 10:05 am |
I got offered the job in Alaska. The job would go from June 1 to August 22 (I'm trying to negotiate to come home sooner-we'll see how that goes) and I'd be living in Anchorage for the summer. The pay is good-the absolute minimum I start at is 11.57 an hour, and the work is full time, in addition to the 23% Cost of Living Allowance. Even factoring in the housing costs which I will have, I will make good money and have a job that's in my field and area of study for the summer. I'm pretty sure I'll take it. I just have a few things to look into. |
| Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 | | 3:50 pm |
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| Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 | | 8:46 am |
One thing I don't really care for is when I'm having a headache and people decide it would be an excellent time to start cracking jokes about my brain hemorrhage. I can promise you right now that it is not funny in any way, shape, or form. I'm fine with joking about my weird, fucked-up brain when I don't feel like there's a small man with a hammer in my skull, but when that little dwarf comes and visits my frontal lobe, I don't like the hemorrhage jokes. I don't want to be reminded of the last horrifically painful headache I had, and while I am aware that any headache I have now is not linked to the past, I do find it moderately frightening to have it brought up in the middle of my ongoing headache. Imagine if you went up to a breast cancer survivor who was complaining of chest pains and suggested that they're suffering a recurrence. They might know that it's probably not that, but they still would not find it comforting or amusing. So, in the future, shut the fuck up and find something else to talk about. I promise that you will able to wait four or six hours to make jokes about the back of my head bleeding uncontrollably. And if you can't wait that long, just know that nothing is stopping me from going into your room while you sleep and snapping your neck. |
| Monday, March 30th, 2009 | | 9:08 am |
I had a dream last night that I started dating somebody. I was relieved to wake up and discover that it was all a dream. Current Mood:  relieved |
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