Welcome to My Time to Say Inappropriate Things WITHOUT Actually Saying Them

On that note...here are some pictures I found that may or may not come close to portraying my feelings on grad school right now (like I said...not actually saying it)

That is all.

Conference!

This past weekend I attended my first conference as a graduate student! I was super excited when I heard I got accepted and finally felt like some of my work was validated.

The conference was called No Limits! Beyond Violence: Dare to Speak and was in Omaha Nebraska. For anyone keeping track, I currently live in Michigan (I don't actually know if I mentioned that before) and I'm from Pennsylvania. It just so happened that the conference was scheduled for March 2nd and 3rd, which was right near then end of our "winter recess/spring break".

So here's how my "break" played out:
1. Drive from Michigan to Pennsylvania (approx. 9 hours).
2. Chill out at my dad's house (aka sleep for a few hours)
3. Drive to my mom's new house (30 minutes + getting lost time)
4. Hang out there for a few days (included panicking about my presentation)
5. Take my car back to dad's to get checked out (1 & 1/2 days + major stress of needing major repairs)
6. Drive to Philly (3 hours there and back) for 3 hours of hanging out with friends
7. Build a computer desk for my mom when I'm supposed to be working on presentation (5 hours)
7. Drive back to Michigan (9hours again)
8. Nap
9. Drive to Nebraska overnight (11 hours)
10. Straight from 11 hour drive to conference (8 hours)
11. Check-in at hotel and frantically put together presentation (4 hours)
12. Sleep (5 hours)
13. Present paper (20 minutes)
14. Rest of conference (9 hours)
15. Drive back to Michigan overnight (11 hours)

For anyone that's counting that's 47 hours of driving (over 20 hours of driving for a 20 minute presentation) Insanity? Maybe. Worth it? Definitely

The conference turned out to be great! I presented a paper titled "Internalized Homophobia in Lesbians: Unique Factors in Intimate Partner Violence", which I am also using as the spring board to my thesis. The presentation went really well and afterwards I was approached by a professor from UNO (University of Nebraska at Omaha) who was interested in some of the research I used, so we shared some idea and I got to meet some great people through her. Another woman approached me afterwards and here's were the really exciting stuff happened. She gave me her card and said she was the Executive Director of the Domestic Violence Coordinating Council in Omaha and that she's currently working on writing a grant for funds to do research on the prevalence of IPV (Intimate Partner Violence) in same-sex couples in Omaha. She asked me to e-mail her with my contact information because she thought my presentation was excellent and she would be interested in having me help out with the grant and future research for the council! SO STOKED!

So, all of the driving, insane scrambling and general anxiety about the conference turned out to be totally worth it. I made some great contacts, got offered a chance for research experience and got my work out there. I'd say that's as good a day as you can get in grad school!

Tee Hee

This happens ALL TOO OFTEN...you know...when I sleep

So it's been a while...

Yeah, it's been a while since my last post. Weird seeing as I have OhSoMuch free time! (I couldn't even type that without chuckling a bit).

The last post I made was right at the beginning of winter break. During the break I spent my time looking for (more) conferences to submit my work to. I'm happy to report that all that work of looking up conferences and building the conference page into my blog actually paid off! I submitted proposals to two conferences and the Graduate Research Fair here at EMU and I got accepted to one conference and the grad fair! Woot!

Break seems like so long ago and I really don't know what I did with the rest of my time. Did you ever feel like there is just so much going on that what happened last week seems like a month ago? Well break was 2 months ago so, you can imagine how long ago it feels like.

Since getting back I've started my second semester as a grad student. I'm in all psychology classes this semester after a major disappointing cancellation of  what looked like a truly awesome WGST class that my prof from Feminist Thought was teaching. So I'm in Social Pysch and Psych Stats 2. Stats 2 has been the bane of my existence this semester. If I thought Fem Thought was difficult last semester (and it definitely was challenging!) then stats is...well, hell. I haven't taken a stats class in a few years and this is my first grad level stats class. I really should have thought twice about it upon seeing the "2", realizing that I should probably take "1" before skipping ahead. Yeah that would have been a better plan.

Social Psych, however, makes everything seem OK again. The prof is just awesome and we connected pretty much from the beginning. Being at a much bigger university than my undergrad, I was really missing that community feel that I used to have. I feel like I've regained some of that with this professor. When we were all going through the motions of introducing ourselves the first week and talking about research interests and such, she said that my research sounded interesting and that we should set up a meeting sometime to talk about it. So we did. We've been meeting (kind of) regularly since then and it looks like if everything goes as planned she'll be my thesis advisor, which is kind of (REALLY!!!) exciting.

Well I guess that's all for now. I'm going to make a real effort to post more...it'll serve as my break from the insanity :)

Things I learned in a Week: Revisited

This semester has been a absolute whirlwind, but it's over now. Yes, my last "final" aka my theory paper was handed in last Wednesday.

It's funny how I feel like I got so much more accomplished in the past 6 days than I have in the entire semester. After I went back through and re-read what I had written about grad school over the course of the semester I thought I'd go back and "pull a Mohany". In the first few weeks of feminist theory we read a piece by Chandra Mohanty called "Under Western Eyes", Mohanty revisted the piece ten years later and wrote a follow-up to it.

One of the first things I wrote on here was about ten random things I thought I learned in a week. Well, it's time to revisit this list and see which of these things actually held up through the semester.

1. Just showing up is half the battle. FALSE. Sure showing up could be a battle in itself sometimes, but the true battle happens after a month or two. This first chance I got to go home I took it. I forget why I even had the chance to go home, but I did. The real battle? Going back!

2. Needing a map. TRUE. Yes, it's still true. Midway through the semester I was running late to my morning class so I was going to try what I thought was a shortcut. It was raining and long story short I got lost. I had to ask two people for directions before I found the building. It didn't help of course that my professor changed the building that day. Turns out that the way I took was a shortcut. I made a wrong turn and ended up on the opposite side of campus.

3. Housing is a pain in the ass. TRUE. Enough said.

4. Coffee Pots are gold. T.R.U.E. This may be the most true thing I have ever written. Seeing that housing is a pain in the ass, they may have told you that a basic flex plan will be all you need as a grad student. When saying this they are probably thinking that you're 1. not going to be out of the library much or 2. a commuter (even though you've just signed up for a room).

Regrettably my coffee pot that was given as a gift by my favorite high school teacher at graduation, has reached then end of it's life. I was heating up water a few weeks ago when it started smoking. Yes I caught my coffee pot on fire. :(

5.  Free printing. TRUE! And it gets better! The university made a mistake, Grad students don't get $25 free printing, they get $45!! So when my printing started running out and I was talking to other grad students about it being good while it lasted, I got an aditional $20 once I figured it out. Happy Camper :)

6. Sliding window. TRUE. The window still slides, but you might want to be cautious because there are lady bug impersonators out there that will invade your room, eat your bamboo plant and generally annoy you. Do not hesitate in killing them, they are not lady bugs!

7. Networking is good. TRUE! Umm...I don't see this as something to be contested.

8. Buying books for class sucks. TRUE. What sucks even worse sometimes is having to read them. Reading a book by Lundy Bancoft was seriously the worst torture you can give a grad student, even worse than theory. Why?  It's painfully simple and contradictory. I can't truely explain to someone who hasn't gone through it themselves, but if you haven't, keep it that way.

9. Undergrad prepared you for grad school. FALSE. I was so please when I was able to use stuff from undergrad...too bad that was the only time it happened. I loved my undergrad, don't get me wrong. I had great professors and took some amazing classes, but there's a reason why a majority of the students from my undergrad go straight into the work force. It's probably why I was faced with so much opposition of choosing non-professional degrees. They didn't prepare me for grad school and maybe there's no way to really be prepared, but there's got to be something better.

10. Study groups are good. TRUE!! My entire cohort was in Feminist Theory this semester and most of us formed a study group that would get together to read or write or just get coffee. It was especially helpfull in the end of the semester with the final paper we had to write. We got together to exchange books and especially to motivate each other to not quit, I think that was the most important function of the whole group. Getting together with these people truely gave me some great friends, some of the best a person can have.

Creative ways to make Graduate research fun

Research is a large part of graduate school, some might argue it's the biggest part. If you're in a master's program, having research, presenting at conferences and the all-important publishing of research is the thing that will make you or break you in terms of getting into that Ph. D program you've been drooling over.

As a grad student, I feel like I was born with this natural affinity for research that some people never quite develop. I guess if we had a world full of research loving, potential grad students it would be even scarier out there! This affinity can be both a blessing and a curse. It's the blessing that most likely got you and I into grad school, but it's the curse that will haunt us for the rest of our lives! (Refer to Proof of the 3 P's)

The rest of my graduate career will undoubtly be bursting with research (including a Thesis that I should probably be thinking about), so to save some shread of sanity I'm trying to come up with ways to make graduate research fun, yes fun! Here's what I've come up with so far:

1. Research something you're actually interested in*

Ok this might seem like a "well, duh" statement, especially if (like me) you're just starting out in grad school, but here's the thing...I've heard stories, awful stories about poor, unsuspecting grad students being used as research pawns to research things that OTHER people are interested in...other people being anyone yu might interact with: advisors, random professors, other grad students that are above you in the hierarchy, etc. Sure it may start off with "Oh, hey, do you remember if it was that one Judith Butler article that has that anecdote about heterosexualization of the social bond of marriage?" But soon, you'll be writing papers just to submit them to conferences and/or writing papers because you're professor is interested in something as random as Chick-fil-A (true story!).

Moral of the story, research what you liek while you can. Because what Florence and the Machines doesn't know is that the dog days are just beginning for you and I.

*There is of course the chance that doing massive amounts of research on a subject you once thought you liked will make you resentful of that subject...the risk is yours

2. Research something you have a background in**

Researching something you have a background in means you already know something about it and can build off your original knowledge, this sounds a lot better than trying to teach yourself about whatever the hell someone wants you to research while you're writing the paper.

**The problem here is that not everyone has your background, so you'll probably have to go back and write in all that useless crap you already know and thought you wouldn't have to write about...

3. Do research with fellow grad students***

Doing research with people that also have to do the same can serve as a motivator. You see them working, they see you working and you feed off each other's energy. You can learn about what they're researching and talk out some of your papers.

***Yeah, you might want to be careful here too. Try not to feed of each other too much because you'll shortly realize that you're starved for energy and so are they. Soon you'll start reading for class popcorn style and everything will crumble into manic laughter and playing ridiculous games that involve sticking pieces of paper to your forehead and guessing what the soc/crim major sitting next to you wrote on it.

4. Do research with fellow grad students while drinking rum (or another liquor of choice)****

This is the best idea ever! The rum (or liquor of choice) will break down those walls that were inhibiting your writing, plus you get the added motivation of #3.

****This is the worst idea ever! Yes, for those first two shots or rum and coke, you might be doing ok, but the sad truth is grad school is basically set up to create alcoholics and doing massive amounts of research, especially for things like your final paper in a class that has consitantly given you migranes all semester, while there is liquor in a 30 ft radius is just a shitshow waiting to happen. Add in the fact that those fellow grad students you're doing research with have gotten those same migranes and you'll have most of your cohort being a drunken mess at whoever's apartment.

5. Do research alone while drinking rum

NO! Stop right now! Put down the rum. Pack up your research. Unpack the rum from your research bag! Put it away and go to the library.

I may have just saved your life.


Maybe I should stop trying to make research fun and just grin an bare it before my liver gives out.

Yes, it's that time again...

Something I never quite understood is the concept of a final paper. I mean I get it, I do. In place of an exam we will give you this HUGE assignment (anywhere from 15-30 pages usually) that will test your ability to apply concepts we've talked about all semester or your ability to explore topics related to the course. You're aware of this assignment at the beginning of the semester, so in the professor's eyes you should be working on this paper for the entire semester.

The only problem is throughout the semester you've been writing weekly papers for the same class (and of course more than one class has given you this dilemma).

Realistically, your professors know that you only have that one week to write this paper. Sure you might have come up with the concept for the paper early, you might even have a stellar outline, but you won't actually start writing until the week it's due. Hence: