downtime.

downtime at last!  the quarter is finally finished, and i'm back home for the holidays.  the goal is to rest up, visit with family and friends, and let my brain atrophy for a couple of weeks before jumping back into the ring for another quarter of work.

i was more or less horrid about blogging this quarter, so the goal for next quarter (i know, i know, but i REALLY mean it this time) is to really get into a habit of jotting things down.  i was going through a few entries from my oxford days, and it was really cool to read up on the research that i was doing back then, so i can only imagine how useful (and entertaining) this blog will be in a couple of years when i'm moving through the grad school process.

first, a retrospective.  this quarter was ten weeks of intensity, stress, angst, worry, and discombobulation, with a few brilliant points of success, happiness, excitement, and achievement.  it's my hope, really, that the yuckiness of adjusting and learning to fit in and find my niche is more or less over; i'm looking forward to returning in the new year with a renewed sense of self, of purpose and of direction.

this quarter, i think i was successful in a lot of areas.  i decided on a broad topic of my MA, which will be a continuation of my undergraduate research on the sociological understanding of the western white wedding.  denise bielby, my 1st year advisor, has agreed to serve as my MA committee chair, which is awesome: the first time i met with her, i sat in her office, gave her 10 minutes worth of ramblings on my thoughts on a MA topic, and within 30 seconds she managed to offer me a neat, tidy, and rational summation of exactly what i was trying to tell her.  that sort of direction is invaluable to me, and she's already been awesome and agreed to write 3 letters of rec for me.  in addition to denise, i asked simonetta, my theory prof, to also serve on my committee.  simonetta has a background in both theory and culture, and given my topic, i figured she'd be a good choice as well.  that leaves me with a 3rd spot open (unless i decide that i absolutely need a 4th committee member, which i will admit i have been pondering), but i'm not in a huge hurry to fill it.  i figure i can be much more leisurely about 'shopping around,' if you will, next quarter.

i also managed to write my first major fellowship proposal this quarter.  i've come to realize that i will spend not only the rest of my grad school career, but the rest of my life as an academic, hustling for money, so i suppose i'd better get use to the drill.  after much angst and stress (and a whole lot of over-analysis, i think), i managed to pull my application for the ford fellowship together and submit it on time.  as hard as it was, i'm really proud of the final product: it is the clearest, most succinct summation of my intended research that i've managed to create. really, the statement of intended research is like a summary of 3 years worth of pondering, thinking, and wondering, and it is utterly thrilling to imagine that next quarter i am going to get to tackle head-on a topic that i've spent so much of my academic career wanting to examine.

some academic successes were a bit more subtle.  theory threw me for a loop for the first few weeks, despite having read the "big 3" (marx, durkheim, weber) as an undergraduate.  once we got into the final week of durkheim, however, and moved into weber's work on bureaucracy and power (i know, i still can't stop talking about it. i think it's brilliant), stuff really started to come together, and although that final paper caused me a bit of anxiety (note understatement), i still feel like i can walk away with a basic understanding of what they all were about.  at the moment i am excited to pursue theory b and get into the intellectual and theoretical legacy that these scholars bequeathed, but i am sure i should be quite careful of what i wish.  

somehow, on top of the work and the soul-searching and such, i also managed to TA and look after 70 students.  there are some things i'd definitely like to do differently next time around -- tying the coursework into current events and pop culture is a must, along with instituting a way to facilitate better classroom discussion -- but, really, for my first quarter, i'd like to think that i did rather well.  it was really exciting, even in the midst of wading through my gigantic stack of midterms, to read through their essay questions and to see that a lot of them were more or less able to synthesize the information, and that a few of them could even go beyond the general level of analysis that i expected, and offer some beautifully written discussions of major social problems of the day.  stuff like that just makes me all emotional, and reminds me why i'm throwing myself into this grad school madness and trying to become a professor one of these days.

i've been really lucky this quarter to also find myself with a good group of people, both inside and outside of soc, and beyond the university, which is actually really nice.  i need to remind myself from time to time that there is more to life than MA requirements, thesis talk, term papers, and other such silliness.

all in all, a good quarter, and i'm already making plans for the winter.  coursewise, i'll be taking theory b, comparative-historical methods, and 2 independent reading courses, 1 with denise that will help me to start navigating the literature for the MA, and the other with fernando to make up for the 1st half of comp-hist that i missed this quarter.  this is going to be a heavy-reading and research quarter, but i am SO excited: i'm going to get to spend most of my time doing the stuff that i really love, which is research on a topic i've picked for myself.  by the end of the haul, i should have a decent concept of what the MA is going to look like, along with discrete steps of how i will arrive there.

i'm making a long list of stuff that i'd like to do in addition to study next quarter, though: partaking in stateside's a la carte sunday brunch that includes unlimited champagne for $8; finally getting myself into wine country to wander a few vineyards and taste some wine; getting some friends together to hit up zodo's and elsie's for chill nights out; and venturing out to LA and the surrounding areas to visit family and friends.  i'm also looking forward to an awesome series of workshops maryam and i are working on that will tackle some of the challenges of presenting at professional conferences.  it'll be student-led and run, which is super cool, and i'm sure we're going to be able to cover a lot of essential issues.

speaking of conferences, it looks like i'll be in san diego in april, presenting on 2 panels: one on religion and community, and the other on feminist media studies.  that means more traveling for me, and lots of immersion in "the field."

this break, though, i'm going to try and relax, though i will be avidly working on (1) an application for a funded summer research program at ucsb, (2) an application to TA for the writing program, (3) my letter of intent for the feminist studies doctoral emphasis program, and (4) some extra reading for the comp-hist course to make up for what i missed this past quarter.  of course, i'm going to also try to refine some of my thoughts and musings on the MA thesis as well... having fun, though, is the first priority, so i'm going to def try to balance all of that together.  whew!

well, i think that's all for now.  as i've also been scanning some old-school pics, i'll add a few of those, just for laughs...