It’s getting pretty close to the end and I can start to see the worry on the faces of my friends. Those of us who know what’s next are starting to realize that we had better get ready because “what’s next” is just around the corner. With only 1 week of classes and then another week of exams comming up the end will be here before we know it and while we are all counting down, cheering as the days go by we are all also pretty sad that we’ll be leaving this place. But onto more happy happy fun thoughts, sorta.
On the school work front I received my draft of my thesis back with quite a bit of what my professor calls “working feedback”. So even though I thought I was done with it, I’ll have to give it another pass over. On the plus side however I did well on my presentation about the paper so that’s one thing on my list of things to do done!
I still have 2 more papers to write and 1 final exam to take but those won’t be too hard.
On the more fun side of things, this past week was Spring Fling which was just madness, the carnival was great.
In my ongoing saga of fighting senioritis I’ve reached an apex; and I feel as if I may have beat it back for the next couple of weeks. Today I finally handed a rough draft of my thesis paper for my capstone class entitled “An Analysis of the Representation of the Korean War in Film” http://tinyurl.com/4yachk it still needs some work but it’s pretty close to being done. I still have about 4 things left to finish for the end of the year: a presentation on my Korean War paper, a paper on the fall of the Mogul empire, a final exam in my Asian history class, and a paper in which I’m going to correlate the campaign funding by labor to the amount of favorable legislation created by the recipients of the donations. Besides that I’m pretty much home free which is nice since I still have friends who are going on job interviews, looking for apartments, etc. Luckily for me I was able to finish this paper before the weather got really nice or else I wouldn’t be able to get anything done. Case in point, this past Saturday was nice so I spent the entire afternoon just hanging out on the Beach.
Also since I had the major paper finished for day I thought it was probably more practical to do my laundry rather then have it sent out to be washed. (yes this sounds amazingly lazy but I figured it would be easier then finding time to do it but at $9 a load, It would cost me 3times more per load then doing it myself)
As previous posted I have been battling my senioritis pretty hard and have able to keep up with my school work at least. I have a draft of my capstone paper due next week so i’ve been hunkering down in the tech center and getting this paper done. But my seniroitis has taken it’s toll on my room, my face, and my laundry. I’m about 2 weeks behind on cleaning my room or doing my laundry, now i still have enough clean clothes for the next week or so; but i plan on doing my laundry next week. My face on the other hand has been as lucky as my school work, i generally fluctuate my look between a neatly groomed beard and being clean shaven. Currently it’s in a state of being an unkempt mess.
Senioritisn – a disease possessed by those who will soon be graduating from high school / college, it causes the possessor to become extremely lazy in regards to all manner but especially in regards to school work.
This past week I’ve had the worst case of senioritis; I’ve been unable to get anything legitimate done which is really bad since I have 3 major papers left to do, and only 1 month left to do the work, less on some. But on the non-school related front I have been doing all those things that I’m going to miss about philly: going to the crepe truck, going to the reading terminal market, going to my favorite restaurants downtown and just hanging out with friends.
A new feature you might notice on the right side of the blog page is my twitter feed, twitter is a microblogging tool which allows you to update via txt, web or im. It allows me to post exactly what I’m doing in real time.
The following video has nothing to do with anything but my camera is broken so I’ll be adding YouTube videos to add some media to the blog:
Well it’s nearly official I’ve picked a graduate program and on Monday I’ll be sending my initial deposit to let them know I’ll be coming in the fall. In preparation for this I’ve spent this past weekend in Arlington, VA looking for an apartment, and let me tell you all this: rent is expensive. Compared to Philly the rent for places I’ve been looking at are almost 10-15% higher. The other major downside is that the subway system isn’t as large so I’ll be relying on the bus system more than I liked to but I’m forced to do what I have to. The biggest upsides to this program is not only the location which is just outside of DC which is like the heart of the public policy world, but I also get to live with my best friend which is a big plus, and he has a car which is nice.
On the school front I’m knee deep into my history thesis I have my sources picked and my movies are all sitting on my desk waiting to be watched. At first I was excited that I was going to be able to watch movies for my paper but then I realized that I’m going to have to actually watch all 6 of the movies and at about 2 hours apiece that’s a lot of time spent watching movies.
Spring break is gone and over and I miss it more than anything. This past spring break I decided to stay on campus and work since most of my friends were not off the same week as I was off. I didn’t work the whole break though I spent the first weekend on a road trip across PA to bridge capital of the US; Pittsburgh, PA.The city is also home to one of the graduate programs I was accepted to so I decided to check it out before I made my final decision on schools. I found the city to be interesting but a strange place compared to Philly and New York. On an odder side of things, I never realized how many cows there where in PA. I mean come on, every 5 miles I saw another heard of cows.
On the way to Pittsburgh I stopped at this Hindu temple just outside of the city, now I’m not a very religious person but I always like seeing different temples, churches and mosques because the architecture always interests me. This temple was unique in that it is one of the oldest in the United States and is a hub for many Hindus all across the east coast. In the parking lot I saw cars from as far south as Virginia and as far west as Kansas.
During the week I spent most of it working and being lazy rather than doing any of the million things I have due over the next couple of weeks.On Friday night however one of my best friends came into town and we went to dinner at my favorite Persian restaurant in old city called Aromatic House of Kabob.
Sadly my camera has been, well to put it lightly on the fritz so I have been forced to use my cellphone camera.
I’ve hit the point in the semester when everything is about to punch me right in the face. It’s at the midpoint so work is being due and it’s not just done in an hour work but things I have to spend real time doing. I’ve also gotten my thesis topic approved and have begun my primary research which is actually going to be fun since I’m looking at movies. Otherwise things have been going pretty well this past week in addition to doing a lot of work I’ve been having a lot of fun. I went to a basketball game, which Temple won! In addition, I went to a Philly Phantom’s hockey game, somehow we got amazing seats and were right behind the ice. On top of that I finally heard back from some grad schools, I got accepted into 1 and rejected from another, but I’m really really happy about the program I was accepted into since it’s one of my top 3 programs. Unfortunately I won’t be getting direct funding from them in the first semester but I will be able to continue working for a statewide project I’m currently participating in while at this new school so I won’t be completely without funding.
the reason why I haven’t been posting regularly is mostly due to the increased workload; this is what I’ve been working on for the past couple of days.
Paley library is our main library on campus and I both love and loath it; I love it because it has everything I need, it’s open late, and comfortable; I loath it because I generally don’t go there for fun but because I have work to do. This past week I’ve spent a total of 14 hours in the library looking for books for my capstone class. One thing that I don’t think enough people use in the library is the EZ Borrow feature, which allows temple kids to borrow books from other libraries which is nice if we don’t have it, but it’s also nice if the book you want is checked out by requesting it from another library you know that you’ll get the book soon.
In an effort to update my blog, more often I’ve decided to try something new micro posting. Micro posts will be short 2-3 line updates about things I’m working on. I will still be doing longer more substantive posts but as the semester progresses and my work load increases I think that micro posting will help the blog from dying from a lack of updates.
One of the main reasons why I’ll be micro posting is because this being my last semester I’m taking my final history course or as temple calls it my capstone. The purpose of a capstone course is to combine all your coursework and knowledge of the major into a final project or paper. In the social sciences, this usually entails writing a thesis paper. My capstone is about American history from the 1950s-70s so my paper can deal with anything having to do with the period. As of now (and I hope it doesn’t change) my topic is going to be the evolution of the portrayal of the Korean War in film. So far I have the list of movie’s I’ll be reviewing and some books on the topic. I’ll be spending the next couple of weeks getting more information and working on an outline. Even though Paley (temple’s main library) have a couple million books there were some that they either did not have or were checked out; therefore instead of buying the books I needed I just used the ez borrow service provided by library which finds books at local/ statewide libraries and has them shipped to Paley. (I’ll also probably be posting more about the services about the library as I’ll be spending a good amount of time in there.)
"The owl of the night makes the eagle of the day."
"Many of us spend our lives searching for success when it is usually so close that we can reach out and touch it."
"Your diamonds are not in far distant mountains or in yonder seas; they are in your own backyard, if you but dig for them."
