Where in the world?

Sorry I haven't blogged in a few weeks, I was in LA/at school for the past two weeks, and had the greatest vacation ever!! Spent time with my family, my boyfriend, my friends, my professors, my dogs, and just generally enjoyed being around people I love so very much. I miss it so much already and honestly didn't want to leave at all...these next two months in Cambridge are going to be hard, but I'll pull through with the love of family and friends! Now back in Cambridge for just two days in order to organize myself, try to get rid of the jet lag, pack, and be on my way to the next leg of my journey. Next up: Rome, Florence, Venice, Vienna, Prague, and Berlin with two of my very close friends. Hopefully I'll blog a bit from the hostels, but look forward to lots of info and pictures for sure when I come back!

Books

I got two new books from the library today: Seven Theories of Religion (Frazer, Freud, Durkheim, Marx, Eliade, Evans-Prichard, and Geertz, some of which I've read, some of which I haven't) edited by Daniel L. Pais, and The Batttle For God: Fundamentialism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam by Karen Armstrong. I am suuuchhh a dork!

Library

I went to the library for the third time (I really like it there!) and I checked out "Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art: The Analytic Tradition" and "The Philosophy of Art: Readings Ancient and Modern" for my...can you guess?...Philosophy of Art class. I'm still really not sure about this class. Looks like a really deep dive into aesthetics, which I'm not so interested in. Oh well, I hope to get something out of it, and, it's only for half the semester anyways. I also checked out, for my own pleasure reading, because I am a huge Dork Extraordinaire, "In Whose Image? God and Gender," which, after 3 pages, I already have problems with (which of course I love, because, well, see the previous discussion about challenging one's beliefs and pursuing knowledge!), and "An Introduction to New Testament Christology" because I don't know enough about Jesus or the New Testament yet. In case you were like "wtf is Christology?" my handy-dandy book tells me that it "discusses any evaluation of Jesus in respect to who he was and the role he played in the divine plan." I'm stoked. :-) The library doesn't have return dates, unless your book is called back by another student, so I can just chill with them for a while, which is cool. There's a 10-book limit, though, and I will probably need to swap some out as the term progresses.

That's it for today's random update! Hope all is well back in the states!

Busy little bee

Packing packing packing packing. That was how I spent most of my day, and I actually got a surprising amount done. Heading back to school on Tuesday...can't believe the summer is over already!

I also had a lovely late lunch with Jordan today, which was so much fun. I had such a great summer with her, and I am going to miss her so much! But she's off to London tomorrow, so good luck Jo, you're going to have such a great time!!!

Off to bed now...hoping to get an early-ish start in the morning.

The time can pass so easily

I feel like I've spent this whole summer driving. Not that it's a bad thing, as it has taken me to tons of great places--Santa Monica, Malibu, Claremont, up and down the coast, Hollywood, Glendale... So, more driving today, but also a great day! It was hot, but not too hot, perfect to wear this awesome summer dress that I got for $15 from a thrift store in Seattle. I met up with my friend Andy and one of our professors/my academic advisor for a really nice little lunch and coffee. Then, a tiny bit of last minute back-to-school shopping, and now back home to chill on the couch with my brother and my dogs, and answer some work e-mails....

School starts in a week from today. I'm resolving to make the most out of these last days of summer...seeing friends, swimming, chilling by the pool, reading lots of books.

Gender, Science, Math

This is a very interesting article from Slate about the gender gap in science and math, sent to me (a decidedly humanities-type student) by my science and math-y father. Among other things, it includes a report about an interesting experiment done to study whether the gender of one's science or math teacher has an influence on one's test scores/grades. Hint: it kinda does....

Almost over

The semester's almost over, and I feel like Harry Potter at Hogwarts. Not that I've got a terrible family to go back to or anything like that (they are fabulous!), I just don't want it to be over, at all.

Bed Musings

This post shall be filed under the "more random than anything else" category. Sorry for its complete unrelated-to-anything-blogworthy-ness.

I think it's interesting that in middle/high school I never did any homework on my bed, and now I practically live there. At home, I mostly worked in the kitchen/dining room, and hardly ever in my room at all, let alone on my bed. I used to tell people that I kept my homework separate from my bed because I had problems sleeping (that part is true) and I wanted to keep all work-related stuff out of the area where I was supposed to be calm (not sure if it really works that way, but it sounded good). Mostly, I think I just liked being in the kitchen, around my mom while she was cooking dinner, or at the table with my brother or sister, or on the couch curled up with my dogs. I liked seeing my dad first thing when he came home from work. I liked feeling connected, like I was in the middle of it all (as far as 'it' was my home), and like I wouldn't miss anything. My bed, and my room, just felt too far away from the warmth and life of the kitchen.

Now, I practically live in my bed. Part of this has to do with the fact that I have upgraded from the small twin I had at home to the dorm-issue twin extra-long I had freshman year to the big, fabulous, beautiful double bed that I have now. I love it. I do all of my work here, all of my random internet browsing and movie watching and e-mailing and reading, everything. I haven't used my desk as anything other than storage space in months. I have a small couch and a chair in my room that I'll occasionally use, but mostly they are just for my friends/sponsees. I love this bed so much that I'm planning on squeezing it into my bound-to-be-much-smaller dorm room next year. I swear, I will get rid of every stick of furniture in that room if I have to, as long as I can keep my bed.

I don't know what exactly promoted this change (or why I devoted an entire blog post to it!) but I know that I will really miss this bed over the summer. But, come fall, it will be back at school and so will I. Until then, I shall remain faithful to my steadfast little twin at home, which has been so good to me for so many years. :-)

Finals Coming Up

Finals are right around the corner, the last day of classes is tomorrow, and I am freaking out. I'm not ready for this year to be over, I am not looking forward to the summer (no job + most of my friends live in other cities = bored and lonely-like), and I am just generally sad about school ending. I like it here, I'm happy, I don't want it to change and go away. At least I have two papers and a test to distract me from all that....blech.

Picking Classes

Picking classes....is not going fabulously. I feel as though the offerings for next semester are very much sub-par, as compared to the past four semesters I've been here. Hmm. Recession? Budget cuts? Coincidence? I don't know.

I DO know that I want to take Introduction to Religious Thought (a Christian/Jewish theological theory survey, with a great Professor I have this semester) and Problems of Philosophy with a Prof I've heard great things about. After that I have two more spots to fill, and I don't know if they should be taken up by Contemporary Issues: Women in Islam, Religious Ethics, Jewish Mysticism, Bioethics, or European Civilizations to 1350. 

Yes, it is pretty obvious I have a specific area of interest...oh well...thoughts?

I Liberal-Arts-ed the Hell Out of That...

I have become liberal-arts-icized. (And I'm ok with that. I think.)

Exhibit A:

Today, my friend and I scoffed at a professor from another college who stopped him in the middle of an explanation about his final paper to ask him what the hell "eroticizing the other" meant. "Oh my!" we laughed, "how could he not know?!" And then I realized just how "liberal-arts-icized" I have become. Good lord.

Exhibit B:

I just typed the word "intersectionality" into a Word document. A usually-helpful red, squiggly line appeared under the word as my spell check tried to tell me, "I'm sorry, but that's not a word." "Oh, yes it is!" I laughed as I clicked "add to dictionary."

Hot Hot Hot

It is hot as HELL out there right now. Helllllloooooo, summer, you have officially arrived. 95 degrees (and counting) and I am wondering why I must be in class and not lying out outside with a book and some good music to listen to....

In other news, I got housing for next year! Yay! And it is good housing, too! I am living with four of my friends in our own little hall in a dorm on a great part of campus. We have 3 single rooms and one double room between the five of us, and though we haven't yet figured out who is getting the double I will not let that put a damper on my mood. It really couldn't have worked out better for us and I am very, very grateful that it did. :-)

Schedules

This week was a week of over-scheduled craziness. A couple of weeks ago I set up an Ical on my new computer and it has done three things: 1) appeal to my slightly fanatic love of organization/list-making, 2) given me an extremely useful/helpful/color-coordinated way to see what my week looks like at a glance, and 3) freaked me out because it has caused me to realize just how much of my time is structured and just how little of it is free. This past week, as I said before, was particularly over-scheduled, mostly because of various meetings/interviews/deadlines for my head sponsor application. This coming week is deceptively nice-looking, though it does have a big, fat paper due at the end of it. Meh. I guess it never stops, but c'est la vie!

BLARRRG!!!

SO MUCH WORK!!!! I'm a terrible blogger, I'm sorry! This semester has me pretty blindsided so far as I try to work out classes, dance, scheduling, work, applying for new jobs, friends, etc. GAH!!! I apologize again, I hope to get back on track soon and back to blogging as well. Hang in there!

100th post!

So, this is my 100th post. Woohoo! Here it is:

First, a quote:

"It's never too late, or in my case too early, to be whoever you want to be. There's no time limit. Start whenever you want. You can change or stay the same. There are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people who have a different point of view. I hope you live a life you're proud of, and if you're not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again."
--The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Second, classes!
My first class was great, but I'm waitlisted on it, so I hope I get in! I have a pretty good chance, so we'll see. Next up is a class I am signed up for but will hopefully drop if I get into the other class. That's in half a hour, so I better get moving!

Studying for finals

I feel like I have a metric ton of work to get done before the end of Friday and I am not excited about it. I wish I could take my exam that is scheduled for tonight at 7 RIGHT NOW just so I could get it out of the way and move on to the next thing. I don't like that it is looming. Also, people have already started leaving for winter break and that makes me super-sad because I won’t see them all for a month! Jeez—why does our break have to be so damn long? Really, I’m just going to get immensely bored by the end of it, and will miss everyone too damn much. Bleh. I don’t approve. Meh, enough of my complaining, and back to the trenches with me. Wish me luck!

It's Raining!

It is raining! And though I somehow missed that fact for the majority of last night (damn you, closed window shades!) I am now enjoying it to its full extent. I'm going to go walk up to the Motley, sit there for a couple hours and finish reading The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao so I can write my paper on it. Also on today's schedule, which I will HOPEFULLY be able to stick to: Write at least 3/4 of my study guide for Gender and Women's Studies, watch a movie for The Holy Fool and write a one page paper on said movie. Until then--Mexican hot chocolate, here I come!

Ah ha!

A brief moment of internet clarity! I must seize it! My computer has been slowly dying for a while now and has recently decided to speed things up...the Ethernet connection is totally useless and my wireless is spotty at best. Not to mention it doesn't work off of battery power and likes shutting down randomly....I can't blame it, really. It is four years old. But doesn't it know that finals are two weeks away and there are essays to write and research to do?? Poor computer...stick with me for just a while longer!!

The List

Katie had the brilliant idea of us making huge lists summing up everything we have to do in the next three weeks. And by brilliant I mean it really was super-smart, it is just also incredibly daunting to see it all laid out like that. That being said, I knocked two things off the list yesterday, did two more so far today, and will do one or hopefully two more by the end of the night. And that is only the beginning....These next three weeks until the end of the semester will be all kinds of crazy but hopefully all kinds of good too. I can't believe this school year is almost halfway over...wow.