asteroid B612

I haven't been up in Pennsylvania for awhile. It was fun to hang out with my siblings again. It was the first time all five of us have been together since the Christmas Chris and i got engaged three and a half years ago. This picture was taken right as Nick and I were leaving on Monday, so Mary isn't in it as she was on her honeymoon. We're all laughing because I'm trying to reach behind Sam to pinch Nick to make him smile, because he was being a pooper about the picture.

Nick lives in Germany working for the Air Force. I'm planning on visiting him while I'm over there. Sam and Luisa are still in highschool, starting their senior and junior years respectively. It was kind of a crazy weekend, so we didn't really hang out much, just us, but it felt more natural...the running in and out of the house, the delicate maneuvering of vying for the shower while there's still hot water, Sam's voice always about 10 times louder than everyone else's. Anyway...it was fun.

More pictures that my cousin took.

Well, I arrived Wednesday, got my haircut, had a really great evening with my in-laws. Em (Clutcher) Sirinides came over with her new husband, and we had a blast catching up. What I love about Em is that we don't keep in touch very well (at all), but we can always pick up where we left off, have great conversations, and totally enjoy each other's company.

On Thursday morning, I had a fab northeast bagel for breakfast. My mother-in-law drove me half-way to meet my mom (they live about an hour and a half apart). When I got to my parents things were pretty low-key. My sister (Luisa, not the one getting married) and Laura (my cousin) were cutting up tons of vegetables. I set about getting the poster made of cute pictures of Mary and Scott when they were kids. In the afternoon and evening mom and I went all over the county shopping--food, gifts. We stopped at the home of our old friends and former neighbors from when I was around 4 or 5 yrs old. Their two kids are approximately the same age as my brother right after me (Nick) and I, and we had great fun with them as kids. The dad plays the cello, so we were borrowing it for the weekend, so that I didn't have to haul mine on the airplane. Later that evening the Minichs came (my mom's oldest sister--Linnea's mom) from Nebraska with only one of their kids. And even later Scott and Mary came back from their day at the airport with two of Mary's friends from Covenant/Italy semester. The party had begun.

Friday morning my one aunt who lives in Pennsylvania had a shower for Mary, two other aunts and some of their kids were staying with her, so when we arrived, there were four of my aunts and eight of my cousins there. We had a wonderful lunch, fun presents, and I laughed so hard I thougth I was going to throw up. Of course, it ended up with all of us singing. Then Dad called and asked if I could help him out a bit with the flowers.

So I went back over to the church where he had just finished all the corsages and buttoneres (I can't think of how to spell it, so I'm just going to call them my fun name for them). My Uncle Dennis was really great and carted me to the craft store to get ribbon and offered to go back if I needed more. Dad did all the flowers; I did all the ribbon.

In the afternoon we all practiced our song. My mom, her friend, and her sisters all sang this really beautiful piece that had organ and cello accompaniment. We rehearsed on Friday, once on Sat before the wedding, and it turned out really well for the wedding. It was kind of fun to play the cello again, but I'm really rusty, so I felt like my performance could've been sharper. Overall, though, I think it went well.

I won't even go into how crazy that afternoon was. But there was one point where I distinctly had the feeling that everyone was running around like recently beheaded chickens. My family cooked the rehearsal dinner, too, but Scott's family hosted it at their church. It was very low-key. In fact, so low-key, that my mom was obliged to run home to get some pretty tablecloths, candles, and flowers to spruce things up a bit. There were no toasts or stories or anything. I was little disappointed. At least his family paid for the food and made a yummy German chocolate cake for dessert. When the respective groups of bridal parties went off for their parties, we all went back to my parents house and hung out. My Aunt Rachael and I made a dip for the wedding (actually, she did most of the work; I was so tired I felt a little dazed). Then we watched part of Moonstruck so we could learn the song "When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's Amore!" We sang this song ALL weekend long. I'm so sick of it!

Saturday morning I got up as early as I could drag myself out of bed to go to the church to decorate the sanctuary, the reception hall and finish wrapping ribbon around the bouquets and corsages and buttoneres. Another craft store run. Ribbon runs out fast. Another craft store run. Forgot the flower girl basket. Thankfully there were a few people who showed up with teh golden question "What do you need me to do?" So I set one wonderful woman to wrap bows made out of tulle and ivy on the pews. I edged the head table and the serving table with tulle and ivy. Dad made small vases with flowers for all the tables, and I set out candles. I threw together the flower girl basket. I got ready for the wedding in about 10 min flat, and was so thankful to finally sit down for the ceremony. But it all went by so fast, and my mind kept racing to the next thing that it was hard to take in the ceremony itself. Plus jumping up to go play the cello.

As soon as it was over I ran back to the reception hall to light all the candles/tea lights, wh. took me about 15 min. The reception was a lot of fun. Instead of clinging glass (wh. were plastic and wouldn't have been all that effectual anyway), there was a microphone set up. If you wanted them to kiss you had to sing a song with the word "love" in it. With my family that is no problem. A lot of people got up and sang...even just a couple of lines... It was so fun! Better than karaoke. My mom and her sisters and I sang "The King of Love" (more for "special msuic" than for "kissing music", though). I had a great time catching up with old friends. The reception kind of dispersed gradually. We weren't allowed to throw anything at them (church policy); and we hadn't gotten organized enough to do the bubble thing. Most people were gone anyway by the they left, so those of us who were there (mostly relatives) made a tunnel with our arms they had to run through, and we all decided that that was a lot of fun and a satisfactory substitute. Their "decorated" car was undrivable. So it took us another half hour or so to get it cleaned up enough (I ran and got a bucket) so that they could drive it to a car wash. I was a little pissed off at my brother and company. They really went too far. I felt sorry for my sister. She's pretty laid back, but still, after you've been through the emotional..umm, roller-coaster is quite the word for her...anyway, the emotions of the ceremony, the exhaustion of being "on" for a reception and having to kiss every stinkin' time the next unabashed relative gets up to sing (and she's not that demonstrative of a person), and getting all the way out to the car, I would just want to leave and not have to wait to get the car cleaned up.

After cleaning up all the left over food (and there was tons), the party moved to my parents' house where we continued to eat reception food (most of us didn't really get a chance to eat at teh reception anyway) and stromboli and fried turkey that one of my aunts had fixed. Old family friends stopped by. The guys smoked cigars. I had 5 aunts and 10 cousins there (and a couple uncles--most of the aunts had left husbands and some of their kids at home).

We sat out in teh backyard with the lightning bugs and pond and waterfall my dad had just built. It was very cold all weekend. i couldn't sit out in the evenings without a lap blanket. It felt good, though, since I knew that I was only having it a short time before going back to Louisiana. We all stayed up as late as we could stand, looking at old pictures and telling old stories and laughing and laughing. the last time I was with the Aunty Crowd was my wedding, and I missed all this, so I had a great time. Their youngest sister is only 6 years older than I (I'm the oldest cousin), so there's this sort of continuum where the line between generations is blurred, and it's just all one big crowd.

Sunday morning, dad and I got up at 3 am to take Mary's two friends to the airport in Philly (2 hours away). He drove on the way up, and I knew he was beat when he actually let me drive on the way back. We were both half asleep. We stopped at Dunkin' Donuts and had to wait for it to open. We got home just barely awake, crashed back into bed. Wehn I got home an hour later, it was just us and we could have just Sunday. Everyone was gone. Going to church bleary-eyed though, we all told Luisa (who is 16) that her wedding was goign to be on a Friday.

We had a quiet Sunday, during which I mostly slept. On Monday we went back to my aunt's house, my uncle took Nick to the airport in Philly, and my parents took me to the airport in Baltimore. glad to be home. Not sure if I can get through another wedding this weekend.

UPDATE: Sorry. I was trying to link pics from the Ofoto albums my cousin and I created. Doesn't look like it worked. I'll see if I can't keep tweaking it.

For pictures, click here. More later. Very tired.

It's so nice up here. So nice and cool. Having air conditioning is not necessary up here. It's like spring! :)

I can't believe we're having a wedding in a couple of days; it doesn't feel organized around here. I'm sure I won't have to wait long until it does. I FINALLY met my sister's fiance, for about 30 secs. He seems like a nice guy.

I wish Chris were here. I kind of feel like I'm wandering around wondering what to do. I am making fun posters with pics of Mary and Scott. Mary has some really cute pics of her as a kid. I just crack up!

Up north is so...different. I'm going to have to think about it.

Cookies. Chris and I deduced that identity theft in this case happened because of a cookie plant on my computer. I didn't even know what a cookie is (still a little foggy there). I gather that it's basically a way for someone else to plant a connection from them to you, and when this is done, they can see into your computer. I, of course, now have the cookie option protected on my computer.

Passports. When you change your name (as I did when I got married) and your passport is still valid, you don't need a new passport. They just put a little sticker in your old passport saying that your name has changed. You don't need to renew your passport until it expires. All this angst--passport photos; expedited replacements to lost marriage certificates; appointments--could have been avoided had I been in possession of this bit of knowledge. The fee for getting this sticker by mail is minimal (esp. compared to the passport renewal fee). I would've done this ages ago if I had known.

I'm slowly getting myself together to start the Mad Summer Travels tomorrow. I leave very early to take good ol' Southwest Airlines to Balto, where I will be picked up by my dear mama-in-law and whisked to get my hair chopped. My hair hasn't been this long since high-school. I wear it in a ponytail constantly. One day I realized that by wearing it in a ponytail constantly I was basically pretending I had short hair, so why not get a classy short haircut of infamous college length? Thurs I descend upon my family's house and Mad Wedding #1. My mom called me this morning to see if I had a good punch recipe. After my suggesting the mixture of cranberry juice and gingerale, she found a recipe with those two bevs along with a couple other kinds of juices to make it more "punch-y". Watching three episodes of Simpsons a day is sounding very good about now. I need an escape mechanism. :-)

I can't believe this!!! My identity has been stolen AGAIN!!! I've always been careful...even more so after it happened on a conference trip in February. I have NO IDEA how this could have happened. But this time nearly $800 has been swept from our bank account in one day (yesterday), not that we HAD that much, so the bank acct shows negative however much. So today I went down to the bank. The lady who talked to me was really nice and sympathetic. When she saw the list of transactions she was as in utter disbelief as I was. I filed an official, notarized transaction dispute, they'll credit our bank account what was lost, make an investigation to make sure the dispute is valid (I don't know how they do that, neither did the lady), and I'm sure it'll be fine. But it certainly is disarming and alarming to have that much stolen from you without your even knowing it! And we've been SO CAREFUL about budgeting and cash flow, that it sort of messes things up a bit. *sigh* Please pray that this gets resolved quickly and easily, especially since I'm starting my mad summer travels on Wednesday.

In short, a job.

I've been meaning to respond to "Preprofessionalism: What Graduate Students Want" by John Guillory for some time. He lays out basically what I see as a trend in my generation of grad students (that is, the present one) towards the quest for the prize: the job. The altogether, very hard to obtain, if at all prize.

Among the determining influences on the course of professionalization in recent years has been the job market itself, which for some time now has been driving graduate students to “professionalize” very early, perhaps too early. The result is the penetration of graduate education by professional practices formerly confined to later phases of the career, the obvious examples being publication and the delivery of conference papers. This development has become so marked as to constitute a new professional domain, what I will call preprofessionalism. Graduate students are preprofessional not only because they are not yet professors, but also because their engagement in professional activity is premature, undertaken without any certainty that it will culminate in an appointment. The premise of graduate education as a course of study is undermined by the new domain of preprofessionalism, which looks more like a curious sort of on-the-job training. Students do everything that their teachers do—teach, deliver conference papers, publish—without the assurance that any of these activities will secure them a job.

He and others echo my complaint with preprofessional pressure in that it "inhibits students from developing long-term intellectual projects and thus propagates intellectual shallowness". And, at this point, the market demands this kind of preprofessional activity, leaving the grad student feeling inadequate, pressured, and stymied.

At least, those are my personal sentiments towards this phenomenon. I'm left with the feeling that I need to turn every term paper into something presentable/publishable. My research needs to be incredibly thorough, taking into account the whole orbit of research on a given topic.

A variety of responses derives from the preprofessional pressure. The first of which, I call Term Paper Angst. I find myself being overwhelmed with a simple term paper. I can't limit myself sufficiently to just write a 10-page paper. I feel like in order to write the paper, I have to become an expert on that whole area of research. No wonder I'm stymied! No wonder I have incompletes! No wonder I can only manage to get one paper out a semester!

Another response I call the Mountain of Stuff response. I'm left feeling inadequate, because one cannot become an expert in an area over one semester with one term paper. I feel like I've failed. It's really silly, I know. But usually what the term paper does is reveal a whole mountain range of stuff that bids me to scale it in order to have anything worthwhile to say...even for a 10-page term paper (N.B. thus, my term papers are rarely as few as the 10-page assignment). Even when just going through the reading assignments and their environs for a class, I look at that Mountain of Stuff and think "how can I fit it all into my head?" I have to engage with the professional world now! which means I have to know all this stuff now! This leads to irrational stresses, such as "oh no! I don't know every single one of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas!"

A third response could be the Foundering Ship response. When I came to grad school I had a pretty clear idea of an "area of specialization" to identify with--I still do, I guess--the music, history, and culture of fifteenth century, Francophone courts. Whenever you go to a conference or meet someone new, the question pops up "What's your area?" It seems silly, though, to keep trotting out this response based on the fact that I wrote my bachelor's thesis on such a topic and I am currently not engaged in any research thereunto. I'm just taking all these classes all the time (and learning a lot of valuable information!). In other words, I'm in graduate school doing what I came to grad school for. It's a little presumptuous to think that I do have an area of specialization, at least until I get to my dissertation. For me to say "15th c courts" I need to be actually participating at that professional orbit, but I'm not. It's not time to. But I give the response and go off brooding to myself "I don't HAVE an area of specialization. I'm taking classes!" Granted, some grad programs don't have extensive course work requirements, so students basically enroll in their programs in order to write their dissertation, so I guess they do have an area of specialization.

Anyway, back to Guillory's article, as he offers some insight into the bleakness of the market, providing a more tempered, contextualized perspective than merely the overproduction of PhDs. He is primarily responding to the discipline of literary studies, but points out that some scholarly endeavors become more politically "cool" and others get marginalized, which will, of course, result in the diminishing of jobs in the "uncool" realm. A discipline becomes "uncool" when it has "irrelevance to the socioeconomic conditions of our society."

(For the record, musicology is currently "uncool". You say the word "musicology" and you get blank stares--what's that? oh, what instrument do you play? :S --if you're still wondering what it is, basically defined, it is the study of music history and criticism.)

The response of the "uncool" discipline is to then try to become "cool", i.e. to try to gain social and political relevance wh. will then cause our society to value it, to invest in it, and to create more jobs in it. This "coolification" has repercussions throughout the university and inevitably will effect grad students. Guillory states, "Because graduate students suffer most from the consequences of the social marginality of the literary profession, their practice is subject to the greatest pressure to become both hyperprofessionalized and hyperpoliticized."

Guillory proceeds to give some context on the market crisis, couching it a basic historical understanding of the global unemployment crisis. He also talks about what is considered as measurable productivity in the academic market, number of articles published (are they then worthwhile or just numbers to chalk up to productivity?)? number of students taught? Concluding, he says, "What I call preprofessionalism is nothing other than the realm in which the profession's fantasies, both professional and political, are acted out. The kind of sociological analysis I have in mind will demand that we suspend some of our investments in specific agendas of professionalization and politicization in order to clarify what is merely phantasmic in those investments. The decline of the job market is a reality check, then, and perhaps an opportunity."

I had a chat once with my advisor about this whole preprofessionalism thing during a recent bout of Term Paper Angst. His advice was not to play. I don't have to give in and throw out there whatever mediocre conclusions I have based on a brief touch in a field for a term paper. It's obviously not ensuring a job out there. That's not say my advisor doesn't encourage to present presentable stuff in an appropriate context. But I think there is an extent where you just have to stop worrying about how much you're doing or not doing or how much you do or don't know and just let yourself be at your level. I'll continue to read and to grow. I'll continue to benefit and to learn.

Personally, my experience has been that when I'm with x-super-famous-scholar and I say "I don't know" their response hasn't been to recoil with shock and horror but rather to sit down for an hour and share what they've learned about the topic at hand. I don't know if this is normal or not or whether I just happen to bump into the nice people. But I think the larger community of scholars would rather have a junior colleague who admits his/her inexperience rather than one who pretends to have experience that he/she does not have.

So, in conclusion, preprofessionalism sucks.

In other news, I just got another paper accepted at a student conference... ;)

I've said before that in the afternoons in the summer we have these weird storms where it rains like crazy, but it's still sunny. I wondered perhaps if the humidity just explodes in these instances.

Yesterday a sudden, loud crack of thunder sounded like that indeed was what had happened. The downpour that ensued was incredible. The drop were so huge that you could almost see each individual one. I highly recommend clicking on these thumbnail pictures so you can see what I mean. The drops were so huge, even my dinky, little camera could pick them out! The top picture is of the sky looking at the back of the house out my kitchen window. The colors were so fierce in real life.

The next picture is looking from our porch in one direction towards the west where the sun was especially gleaming. And this shot is looking at our street from the opposite direction, where our street intersects with Napolean and S. Broad. Despite the downpour, it didn't cool off any. It was such a freaky rain!

It is SO hot!!!

I think it's hotter this year this time than other years. The weather.com sticker says 87 with a heat index of 101 F. So humid. So hot. The thing about heat down here compared to heat up north is that the sun is closer to the earth, because we're closer to the equator. The heat index also doesn't get below 85 F during the night.

It's about this time of the year I remember one of my favorite words: estivate. Its winter equivalent is hibernate.

I've been roller-blading in the park in the mornings, wh. is a lot of fun. The canopy of live-oaks shades the path nicely so its not too hot. Though I am drenched by the time I'm done. I came home and did a few sit-ups on the floor the other day. Now there's a white spot on the wood floor from the moisture of my back. (I know, you really wanted to read that.)

Our one ancient window unit air conditioner is cranking away, wh. at least makes the apt livable, though still quite hot. We really could use another unit. The poor thing can't keep up with three rooms. All I want to do in the afternoon is sleep! I get so drowsy. Yesterday, I decided when I hit the hot part of the day, I was going to watch a movie, then in the evening, I got back to work. Except the apt was still so hot, I up and moved to the coffee shop where it was cooler.

We talk about whether we should try to stay in New Orleans after degrees are obtained. Chris really wants to. I want to, too (though not quite as much as he does), provided I can get an adequate university position (I'm not expecting much). My other stipulation is that we move to some place with central air.

Maybe I'll go watch a movie like Dr. Zhivago or something. Some movie where there's lots of snow...

UPDATE: I was feeling a little bit like a loser for posting about how hot I was, because no matter how many words I use, it just doesn't do the heat I feel justice.

I'm relieved to find that I'm in good company, as approximately at the same time of day KatieK posts about the heat. :-)

I've glanced at this blog a few times over the past few months found it through link on Apt. 11D. (it never ceases to amaze me...this wide world of links...)

The thing the initially struck about "this woman's work" was that she homeschools. But not for the reason that I and so many people I know were homeschooled. She does it out of feminist convictions (the ensuing discussion to this entry is also very interesting). Apparently feminist homeschooling is a whole category I had never realized existed. It makes sense, and I'm intrigued about how people phrase why they do things.

I'm not a feminist in my scholarship, wh. is the primary arena of my familiarity with it. Nor am I politically. (I don't think I'm much of anything politically...except mostly uninformed.) But from what I get from this woman's statements is that her reasons for homeschooling are 1) everybody in the family ought to be in the arena that is most suited to their happiness and personal development and 2) sex doesn't determine gender roles. I guess I would agree with both of these, though perhaps the first one a bit more qualifiedly in that happiness in a family will come from obedience and submission to the gospel. But I do know that in my own experience, I was much happier and, I'm sure, developed in my own, wh. was completely different than the classroom, when my mom started homeschooling me in 2nd grade. My 1st grade year is still a painful memory. I just needed to run around. I was quite happy to return to school in 6th grade after I had run around for awhile.

So does this make me a feminist? Probably no more than believing that capitalism is not as helpful for those of us employed in non-commerce enterprises makes me a communist. (Though I do believe there is a little communist drummer-boy beating a faint, but steady drum-beat somewhere....)

I hope this woman posts more on homeschooling. I find her perspective really interesting and completely different from the homeschooling picture I have in my head.