Snowy day

January 3, 2014:  7 a.m. on a snow day

Yesterday’s progress toward unspoken goals focused on a paragraph or two of my Jacqueline story (and sharing the opening with a friend because after five or six drafts I may have discovered a chapter one idea I like) and reading a few more pages of Robert Root’s Happenstance.

And watching several episodes of House MD in the evening while doing laundry and watching the snow fall.

So now it’s 7 a.m. My husband and daughter have a snow day, but I working retail, do not. A colleague has already mentioned that she has no transportation today. Her evening shift is mine for the taking. I had volunteered for a noon to 5 p.m. cashiering shift, and who knows if the person scheduled to do the mid shift in our café will make it. A heap of snow makes everything helter skelter. 

I need to decide if I am working my existing shift, my colleague’s shift, both or a combination of the two. After we start shoveling, I’ll need to call and see what’s happening.

In the meantime, here’s hoping that the child sleeps in and perhaps I’ll allow myself a few more paragraphs of the Jacqueline story before I try to negotiate our checkbook (it’s pay day!) and dig into the cat box. 

And yesterday I finally listened to a track by Maj Trafyk I downloaded. If you’ve never heard of him, that’s okay. Chances are that if you’re an anglophone you never will. I discovered him while searching iTunes for a French translation of Frosty the Snowman. Struggling to hear and understand the French words reminded me of the roots of my affinity for obnoxious French rap. 

My honors thesis at Lafayette College looked at the stereotypes regarding Algerian Muslims created by the French during the colonial era and how those stereotypes still exist in contemporary times, especially as the French legislate the presence of the veil in their society. I examined some of the political statements made by Diam’s in my work. I would love to continue my research with Todd Shepard at Johns Hopkins. I think French rap music makes a lot of statements on the disenfranchisement of “immigrants” in French society. This is what I thought about during my shift at work yesterday.

I see that some of my friends are reviving old writing projects or picking up books they’ve meant to read. Two friends of mine are currently reading my latest revisions of my manuscript(s). Pins and needles time for me.

Enough babbling for now… 

Defense of my undergraduate thesis tomorrow

My goal has been to practice my honors thesis presentation once a day for the last week. I have not hit that mark. I have missed two days. Today I'm supposed to practice it twice, since tomorrow is *the big day.* I practiced it one and a half times and recorded it via Keynote and exported it as a QuickTime iPod movie.

I also exported it as a small web movie, but the file size ended up being 500 MB vs. the 25 MB of this one. 

I only listened to the first eight minutes or so before I got distracted by the idea of how could I upload this to friends far away. It's about 32 minutes long, which means if I STICK TO WHAT'S ON THE ACTUAL SLIDE versus going off script at will, I should nail the intended time frame.

My adviser has asked for 20-30 minutes. I have broken it down into five minutes on each of my chapters, plus a few minutes to explain the introduction and the nature of the project.

Honors update

Somehow, as I transition into what my new routine of normal might be for 2013, I have managed in three days to edit 42 pages of my undergraduate honors thesis. It's been more fun and more thought provoking than I thought it would be.

This project has moved in directions I never thought it would, including an invitation from my College to present at the National Conference for Undergraduate Research (NCUR). What began as an invitation from my faculty adviser in the wake of Hurricane Sandy received a pledge of financial support from the Dean's Office so if I get accepted by the NCUR folks, I may be presenting this piece in Wisconsin in April.

While that is pretty exciting, it's also intimidating. It's transformed something personal and fun into something that will see broader audiences. In a way, I lament that change.

I won't hear from the NCUR people for another two weeks, but it's certainly transformed how I look at my own work. The difference between what we do for ourselves versus what we do for presentation to others... Psychologists might say I know my material and getting out there to share it will only enhance my performance.