draft one is done

Is it really done if it's a draft? Whatever. I just sent the draft of my conceptual territories paper to my advisor so it's done for now and I refuse to think about it again until she gets back to me with her feedback. It was slightly longer than 12 pages (like 3 lines over) which means if anything I'll have to cut stuff, which is more fun than adding stuff. The hardest part about this paper was narrowing my thinking. There is SO much I've read and could say about these four thing and figuring out what I wanted to say the most and fitting it into a 12 page paper was really difficult. There were things I started to write about that I would have liked to write more about, but couldn't really because of the nature of the paper. But I'm done with it, for now at least.

Next up is the Selected Questions paper. And all those little annoying reflection papers.

what happened to my motivation?

I finally managed to look at my conceptual territories again since I've gotten feedback from my writing group. Only took a week to get to this point. I have to send my draft to my portfolio advisor Thursday and I just can't make myself actually work on it. There is a stack of things I want to read and I can't get myself to do that either. It's not like I'm doing anything really cool or fun instead. Why am I so unmotivated?

I'm also really annoyed that as soon as this draft is "done" I need to start working on the next one. I just got my "selected questions" approved by my other advisor and I'm probably more interested in writing about those than writing about conceptual territories. But right now the thought of it makes me want to go hide out in cave somewhere or something.

All I can say is that I better get a damn job after this.

battling this first draft

A big problem I have with writing long-ish papers is the fact that I at some point have to go back and read what I wrote. I hate doing this because I usually only notice how stupid I sound. So it's good that I have this writing group, because they can read it for me and tell me how much it doesn't make sense and I can fix things without tirelessly re-reading my ramblings so much.

I need to email my group a draft of my paper today, and it is nowhere near ready for human consumption. I just opened the document and sort of shuddered because I didn't even want to look at the thing. I know what I want to write about, sort of, but actually doing it is a struggle. Searching through the jumble of words I've already written to find the perfect spot to insert whatever new thought entered my brain while I was unable to fall asleep. But I am working on it.

Portfolio-ing

I stopped blogging here for some reason. I could say I've been too busy with school, but that wouldn't be entirely true. But I can say that now I plan to post somewhat regularly and with a purpose! You see, I'm going to be finishing my masters program in December and an essential step in doing that is completing and presenting my "Learning Portfolio" so I can prove that I've learned what they wanted me to learn in the program and it wasn't a complete waste of everyone's time.

I won't bore you (or myself) with the details, but basically the portfolio consists of two long papers (12 pages) and several short papers/reflections. We have to send drafts of our longer papers to our portfolio advisers a predetermined times, and the first one is due September 1.... which is very soon. This first paper is about the "Conceptual Territories" of the Reading/Writing/Literacy program, which are: interdisciplinarity (not even a real word), inquiry, diversity and change. How vague, right?

I've been trying to tackle each conceptual territory at a time and I've got inquiry, diversity and change started in a way that almost makes sense. I've been struggling with interdisciplinarity because what does that even mean?

I have a little over a week to figure it out and put it all together, so I'll let you know how that goes.

Oh, and I've got this kitten now and she tries to eat all my books/pens/post-its. It's cute half of the time.

Philadelphia in the springtime

I didn't update this blog all winter because winter was kind of miserable. But now it's kinda-sorta spring-ish outside! I saw flowers today! However, now that it's getting warmer and the snow has melted the trash that has accumulated over winter is clearly visible. Our "front yard" is basically a trash heap. I'd like to clean it up, but I don't want to catch anything. I need one of those litter poker-grabber things or some good rubber gloves.

I don't know if this picture really does justice to the amount of trash flying around. This is the island at the corner of Baltimore and Springfield. It's truly disgusting.

Although I did see a couple people picking up litter today as I was walking home from my fieldwork.

Hopefully I'll have more to share as things warm up. This semester has been pretty intense and I don't have time to do much. Technically it's spring break right now, but I have so much work to do it's basically just a week-off-from-classes with no less school work to do.

job hopper

I had an interview for a part time tutoring job today, which I probably won't get because my classes are all during their programming time and I don't think the interviewers liked me. The questions were pretty standard and I thought my answers were good, but I just didn't get good vibes from them. And one question really bothered me and caused me to feel a little defensive, so that may have cost me some points.

The question was also a somewhat standard interview question. The interviewer, looking at my resume, noted that Ive had several different jobs in the past three years since I graduated. I know this is a concern for employers and a question that is sometimes asked. Maybe he just felt like he was supposed to ask this question. I don't know, but it felt like a challenge. Since graduating UMass in 2007 I have worked at several different places (not all of them noted on my resume, they don't need to know I worked at Target). That summer I worked at Girl Scout camp, which obviously ends in the summer. After that I returned reluctantly to the Y as a site coordinator this time. That job ended with the school year, and I chose not to return for another year because there was no room for advancement, and I couldn't work part time with no benefits forever. Unable to find a "real" job I took a job at Target, which was the most miserable three months of my life. Out of desperation and a desire to do something that mattered, I did a year of service with AmeriCorps, not that it is a YEAR OF SERVICE. It says year of service on my resume. Unable to find a "real" job after that year, I finally ended up doing relief office work, which let to my first "real" job in HR. Which I left to go to grad school so I could get a job doing something I really care about, which is teaching kids. SO, that's 5 jobs in three years. But 2 of them are expected to end after a period of time, one is clearly not a long term option, and another I worked at for three years prior and had advanced pretty much as far as I could. And can you blame me for leaving my full time job for an opportunity to study at the University of Pennsylvania? I feel like this makes sense and is perfectly reasonable. Dream jobs are hard to come by, and I'm not going to stay at a dead-end job I hate just so my resume looks better.

Sorry I'm ranting. Like I said, I don't know if he asked the question just because he felt like he was supposed to, or if he was really concerned about my apparent job hopping. But really, am I really going to work at the Y part time for $11 an hour for the rest of my life?

PNBR

Today I met my sister in center city with the intention of shopping. I didn't end up buying anything, but it was nice to hang out and look at things I would buy if I had money. We sat in Rittenhouse park for a little while watching cute dogs run around and enjoying the weather. Today was the Philly Naked Bike Ride and someone nearby was talking about how they were heading this way, to go around the park. We saw a few semi-nude people gathered, and a even larger crowd gathered to gawk, but no one actually riding. We decided to part ways and as I rounded the corner to catch the trolley back to west Philly I saw them. A HUGE mass of naked and semi-naked cyclists. It was..... interesting. Most of these people were not people I would want to see naked. I lingered to watch the last of them before going down to the trolley, and a teenage girl was there loudly expressing her disgust.

Here's a video! Warning: There are nekkid people in this video: