week three

i had all these things i was going to blog about last week, but last week turned out to be a huge bummer, so i didn't blog about them. now, i'm going to try to remember the good stuff that happened before the bummer stuff and formulate an entry.

first off, last week was our second week of classes. so far, this seven classes thing is going pretty well. i have been managing to get all my reading and writing done and still have time for fun (which i'll get to later). i know it will get harder once GLEE starts up, but i don't think it'll be significantly worse.

in the past few weeks, i've been reflecting on how utterly thrilled i will be once classes are over. i am really excited to get started on my research and have been spending lots of time day dreaming about potential dissertation research sites. right now the only one i've talked to my advisor about is the cal academy, but i've been fantasizing about lots of others, including (but not limited to): disney's animal kingdom, the monterey bay aquarium, and any zoo at all.

i've also spent a lot of time thinking about how i can't wait for this summer (and how impatient i am, in general, as a person). i really want to know what i'll be doing this summer (hopefully at OZ) so i can mentally prepare myself/have something to look forward to.

we had an environmental conference at stanford last week, and it was (for the parts i attended) a pretty good time. i'm feeling a lot better about things now that i get to spend more time in the env.sci. department. i feel a little less like a token student and more like i actually fit. last week, the associate director of the IPER (interdisciplinary program in environment and resources) called me an "honorary member" of the first year cohort. 

the best thing that happened at school last week was that my digital storytelling professor gave us all cameras to use for the quarter. i took a canon g12, and i'm obsessed with it. i've been looking to buy a new camera/get into photography more, and this is cool because i get to test-drive this camera for 10 weeks. it came at the perfect time too, because mel came from australia this weekend to visit. we went to the monterey bay aquarium and napa and these are some of the pictures i took:

sand dollars, that are alive

jellyfish, all tangled in a knot

a chicken at a winery

a theater at a winery

a hawk with a dead baby opossum

oranges, blooming in the winter

a flower. duh.

anyway, it's been a lot of fun. i've taken more than 300 pictures so far. some of them even have people in them.

i think that's all i have to say for now. in summary, classes are fine, i'm impatient about my summer/first year project and i like taking pictures of things.

new directions

i really want to start a style/design blog. like, really. my angle will be design, style, and trends on a grad student sized budget. ways to incorporate everyday cuteness into your life without spending tons of time or breaking the bank. plus chatter about some music. i might be able to incorporate it into here, but i'd have to do a major overhaul so that the blog doesn't seem so all over the place. alternatively, i kind of like the idea of having this be my blog-for-friends-to-read, and then have a blog-for-anyone/strangers that's separate. because sometimes i want to whine about having a cold or how much homework i have, but not to a wide reader base.

thoughts?

resolute by nature

I wasn't going to write any New Year's Resolutions, but I decided that I would. I don't remember what my resolutions were last year, but I probably accomplished them. The only resolution I ever remember making was to brush my teeth twice a day for two minutes each time, no matter what. And I kept that. Okay. Resolutions:

1. Stop biting my nails. Seriously. I was pretty good at this for about three weeks last year, and then I left my potentially-poisonous anti-nail biting polish at school and it all went down the drain.

2. Cook more complicated things. I don't like to cook, but I really like to eat. And I get a lot of joy out of cooking something especially delicious. Yesterday I made a sweet butternut squash and caramelized onion pasta dish, which was great.

3. Journal more often. In my paper journal, I mean. The one you guys can't see. Where I write all my secrets and things about you.

4. Get significantly better at music. I was originally going to just say guitar, but I also want to improve my voice. And write more songs. And polish those songs enough to record some sort of little disc by the time the year is up.

I feel like I should make some sort of career-related resolution, but I don't really think I want to because I don't have a lot of control over the things that would be happening in my career right now. I'm in school, that's all I have control over. I also was thinking today that I should make a resolution about my relationship-life, but that's also something I have no control over. I thought maybe I should resolve to say yes to someone who asks me out (I mostly ignore people who I think might like me and say no when they ask me out) but I decided that that would probably just make me unhappy because I say no to those people for a reason. Because they're gross.

But I want a fifth resolution because five is a nice, round number and four is not.

5. Master a new crafting technique. Mostly I'm thinking a new jewelry technique, but I'll settle for learning paper crafts or photography or becoming a proficient embosser.

There. Five resolutions. Documented, which makes them real. It's funny because at the start of every year, I can't help but think...what if, later in life, I look back on this year as a really big deal in my life? Like, in 2011 I....something. Right?

Guess we'll find out...

winter quarter conquistador

Here we are: winter quarter 2011. 10 weeks, 7 classes. I am hopeful that this will keep me more occupied and less bored than last quarter, with less time to watch three seasons of Angel. I'm not actually excited about this...I more feel the way I do before a big crew race. Get in, get out quick, get it done. That's pretty much the way I feel about this whole Ph.D. experience, actually...

I wanted to write a whole farewell to 2010 thing, because overall, 2010 was a pretty good year...especially compared to 2009, which was chock full of pain, heartache, and life-changing crummy feelings. In 2010 I...
...got into Stanford, on February 12th
...saw the first hope of putting my pieces back together, after a year of quality moping
...had an amazing last semester at Yale, graduating on May 24th
...had one of the best summers of my young life
...started the final stage of my academic career

This all feels very notable and positive. Like Miss Haylie, I am a little saddened to know that 2011 (probably) won't bring very many big happy events like this. I'll spend the year at school; no graduations in the near future. I don't know where I'll be spending my summer, but it probably won't be at ZooCamp (though I'm crossing my fingers and everything else cross-able that I'll still be at the Zoo). But I guess as long as nothing bad happens, stasis is not such a bad thing.

Well, my first class is in an hour and I haven't done any of the readings because the libraries don't have the book I need, and neither does Google Books, and I won't spend $150 on a book I'll never use again. I'm not sure how I feel about this, but that's mostly due to apathy which probably means that I'm not that bothered by it. Pretty good start to the quarter, if you ask me...

incognito finito

quarter one is over. i came home friday and since then i have:
- seen anna sing opera
- had dessert at papa haydns w/zoe and kristen
- watched buffy w/zoe and kristen
- watched love actually w/claire
- spent a lot of time with my mom
- made a holiday skirt w/my mom (pictures to come)
- spent a lot of time with my cat
- done minimal holiday shopping

i'm really glad the quarter is over. all my papers ended up being okay...i'm not expecting super high marks on them, but as long as i get b's, i'm okay. let's review this quarter:

academically this quarter was a bust. three out of my four classes were really boring. they weren't demanding enough to require me to do a lot of work, so i probably didn't understand the material as well as i could have. i also didn't take enough classes so i had a lot of downtime which i used to watch angel. i really liked my research assistantship with the girl scouts, though. i'm looking forward to that and my new classes in the coming quarter.

socially this quarter ended up better than i thought. i started out not really feeling the general social vibe at stanford, but now at the end i'm realizing that i met a lot of cool people who i look forward to getting to know more in our infinite tenure at stanford. my roommates are really sweet too, and though we have fewer dance parties at stanford, i still like almost everyone i've met. next quarter, a few of us are going to work on starting a band/some sort of musical outlet at the school of ed, so i'm excited about that.


professionally this quarter was great, because of aza. the aza conference was a very big success, and i'm looking forward to more conferences like it in the future. i'm sad that i didn't end up going to the international zoo educator's conference, especially since it was in disneyworld, and especially since i had a presentation to give, but my life (insofar as settling into a new school) and pocketbook are happier for it. there's always 2012...at the chester zoo in the uk.

that about wraps it up, i think. i'm really happy to be home. tonight, jessica, bethany, zoe, and i are going to a lecture at ecotrust on bees. i start working at the zoo again on friday and we're getting our christmas tree this weekend. all good things on the horizon.

FINALLY

Good news! I FINALLY picked my classes for next quarter. In my effort to diversify my courses, I had six different schedules I was choosing from. So, without further adieu, here is what I'm going to take that will make my academic life* dramatically better (and busier) than it was this quarter:

Statistical Analysis in Education: Regression
Primarily for doctoral students; part of doctoral research core; prerequisite for advanced statistical methods courses in School of Education. Basic regression, a widely used data-analytic procedure, including multiple and curvilinear regression, regression diagnostics, analysis of residuals and model selection, logistic regression. Proficiency with statistical computer packages. 

I really like stats. And luckily, it's required.

Learning Sciences and Technology Design Research Colloquium

Students and faculty present and critique new and original research relevant to the Learning Sciences and Technology Design doctoral program. Goal is to develop a community of scholars who become familiar with each other's work. Practice of the arts of presentation and scholarly dialogue while introducing seminal issues and fundamental works in the field.

Quarter 2/9

Proseminar 2

Required of and limited to first-year Education doctoral students. Core questions in education: what is taught, to whom, and why; how do people learn; how do teachers teach and how do they learn to teach; how are schools organized; how are educational systems organized; and what are the roles of education in society?

Death by required courses. But I heard the professor is into informal ed, so maybe there's hope?

Science and Environmental Education in Informal Contexts

There are ever-expanding opportunities to learn science in contexts outside the formal classroom, in settings such as zoos, museums, and science centers. How are issues around science and the environment presented in these contexts, how do people behave and learn in these contexts, and what messages do they take away? This course will cover the learning theories and empirical research that has been conducted in these settings. Case studies of nearby science centers will add an experiential dimension. 

There aren't enough exclamation points in the world to describe how excited I am about this class. (!!!!!!!)

Reporting From The Field: Digital Story Telling For Researchers

New technology presents new opportunities for researcher-driven outreach, explanation and presentation of results. This course provides a starting point in multimedia storytelling for graduate students actively involved in field research. Students gain project-based experience in blogging/social media, still photography, audio podcasting, online slideshows and web video production and editing, enabling them to record and report their own research stories from the field.

My first course in the Environmental Science department! So fun!! So related to this blog.

Directed Reading With My Advisor
In this course, we will do many interesting things like read papers about zoos and evaluation and evaluation in zoos. We will also work on a literature review and Kathayoon will finally finish her manuscript from her Masters thesis. 

And that's it! So many classes. Also I'm supposed to sit in on this class for no credit:
 
Environmental Research Design Seminar
Required core course for first year E-IPER Ph.D. students; optional for Joint M.S. students; other graduate students with instructor's permission. Series of faculty presentations and student-led discussions on interdisciplinary research design as exemplars of the research design theories discussed in ENVRES 320. Designing Environmental Research. 

The idea here is to get me to meet the first year IPER (Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources) Ph.D. students so that when I take their core course with them spring quarter, I don't feel so left out of their circle. Also it will be useful to my research.

Yay! My next job in raising my quality of academic life* is to work out what my Ph.D. minor in Environmental Science is going to look like. It will either be in Climate Science...or Global and Community Ecological Something. I can't remember the name.

Two more days left in the quarter!




*Let's face it. That's the only life I really have.

Decisions, Decisions!

I'm notoriously terrible at making decisions. Shopping with me is a nightmare because I have to look at everything, try everything on, put things on hold, try them on again...before I can even decide on a single piece of clothing to purchase.*

Right now I am faced with two decisions, one far more important than the other.

First of all, today two people in the Science Ed lab, my friend Anna and my future friend Evan, offered me a desk in their office. It's on the third floor, it has windows, and apparently they've been trying to fill it with "cool people with similar interests." It sounds pretty awesome. I like my office because it's right next to the cafe and I don't share it with anyone. But sharing might be fun, and also I would like to be above ground. But I don't know, will I be able to get as much done there? Is it worth switching?

And then there's the more important decision: Christmas present!! Okay so background: I complain a lot about traveling with my guitar. It SUCKS. My guitar case weighs about 20 pounds without the guitar and the weight is distributed terribly, but that's just the way guitar cases go. I'm also always nervous about it getting lost. I was complaining about this to my dad last weekend and he offered to buy me a new guitar for Christmas. That way, I would have one guitar at home and one at school. This initially seemed excessive, especially since they would probably be of roughly the same quality. But it was really really really thoughtful of him to suggest (my dad doesn't really do gifts, so this was totally nice and unexpected) and I started thinking I would feel extremely guilty if I denied his gift idea. But the more I thought about it (and the more I looked at guitars online), the more I thought about how it might be soooo nice to never travel with my guitar again, and be able to get something a little bit different with a different sound, different maker. 


BUT my plan all along has been to ask for a digital SLR camera (or half of one). I've kind of wanted this since graduation. My dad does not want to get this for me though, on account of it being so expensive. I thought I could wear him down by asking for half the money it would take to buy one, but then he took me off guard with this guitar thing. I would buy one on my own, but I'm (hopefully!!!) about to drop a lot of money on a plane ticket to South Africa to visit Julie with Owen.**

Wait so I wrote all of that and it helped me decide what I'm going to do. I'm going to go for the guitar. It was really nice of my dad to suggest such a thoughtful gift, and I think in the long run it would be a good investment in my musical future. Digital SLRs will always be around.

Thanks for the help, blog!!









*But please consider going shopping with me because I also can never decide whether or not something looks good on me/is worth the price/should be purchased without a few honest outside opinions.

**I purposefully did not cross this out because I wanted to find a way to mention that Owen might be coming with me to visit Julie. We have to solidify dates and stuff, but even the possibility of being with TWO of my housemates in AFRICA is more exciting than my little heart can handle. I might explode.