tiamatschild: Painting of a woman resting on a bridge railing - she has a laundry bag beside her (Default)
I have reread the entirety of Les Miserables!

And done a whole bunch of other stuff, but much of it that has happened on the internet has consisted of reblogging scientific illustrations, some of them kind of disturbing, on tumblr and playing March Mammal Madness.

...so. Not really much worth noting, then.

(In the not!internets realm I appear to have won the trust of several more undergrads. Telling people that what you're asking them to do is hard and it's totally reasonable that they struggle with tends to make them feel better about telling you when they have problems.

Also it is. Man, research questions, why so difficult to formulate?)
tiamatschild: A painting of a woman in a chiton hanging washing on a line (Hanging the Washing Out to Dry)
*shakes digitized archives until sources fall out?*
tiamatschild: Painting of a woman resting on a bridge railing - she has a laundry bag beside her (Default)
So evidently some of the professors on my campus have been disclosing students' disabilities publicly without their permission.

...Lovely.

To do the adminstration credit, they have responded with "this is super unethical and dangerous and needs to stop right now," unfortunately the next words in the press release were "it puts the university at risk for a lawsuit."
tiamatschild: A painting of a young woman with one hand on her heart and the other on the wall (One hand on my heart)
... ... ...Why. Why. Why. *whimper*

Groupwork. I agreed to put the paper together. Nobody sent me their chunks with proper citations. Citation stresses me out.

'nuff said.

...What.

Mar. 17th, 2012 11:02 am
tiamatschild: A painting of a woman in a chiton hanging washing on a line (Hanging the Washing Out to Dry)
On battlefields stretching from the Solomons to Burma, the medical problems of jungle warfare continued to mount. For a time after General MacArthur reached Australia, it seemed that the next battle might be fought there, perhaps in the island contients's tropical north. But after the Battle of the Coral Sea, the eyes of allied commanders turned instead to the strange land that lay beyond the warm waters of the Torres Strait.

As a battlefield, New Guinea was unique - a huge, primitive island of sometimes stunning beauty, with cloud-capped mountains, tangled jungles, painted headhunters, glorious birdlife, and abominable diseases. It seemed to belong to a younger earth where life was more fecund, its forms more preposterous and splendid. But those who fought there found intolerable labor and death in an endless variety of forms.
Fighting for Life: American Military Medicine in World War II, Albert E. Cowdrey

What. What. What the hell. Why, Dr. Cowdrey, why? Couldn't we relate the medical history of the U.S. Armed forces in the forties sans weirdo racist exoticizing objectification?

He keeps doing this. If I weren't required to write a review of this book, I'd have given up by now.

*hands*
tiamatschild: A print of a figure with a blue umbrella, walking away along a path in the rain (Walking Home with a blue umbrella)
Oh god that was so embarrassing oh man I attached the wrong file to an email and okay, it was almost the right file and argh so embarrassing it wasn't the right file and the person I wrote had to write me back all hey you sent this in already and it doesn't match your paperwork is that what you meant to do and oh my god I fixed it like a grown up instead of hiding and crying and never dealing with it so that's good but oh my god - !

Hi. Huge anxiety trigger. Set off. Like whoa. Now I look like a brainless fluffhead when I was trying to be impressive about how clever and insightful I am oh my goooooooooooood -

And I still have to interact with classmates today! And send them stuff in attachments! AGH WHAT IF I SEND THEM THE WROONG THING -

Oh sorry, I didn't mean to send you that file! AGH AGH NO YOU DON'T NEED TO READ IT I WASN'T TRYING TO HARRASS YOU - - -

... .... ....Yeah, okay, I don't actually have any PDF files of porn I might accidently send my groupmates but I still have nightmares about these things okay
tiamatschild: Painting of a woman resting on a bridge railing - she has a laundry bag beside her (Default)
Went to the pyschatrist this morning. Went better than it has, although he did not actually have any helpful advice for me. Oh well. Guess I needed to make an appointment with my talking cure person anyway.

It's an absolutely gorgeous day here and I am sitting in my rocking chair in one of my windows with a mug of coffee. To be honest the weather is sort of worrying and the factory near by is in in the midst of offloading a multicar shipment so there is a lot of squealing trainbrakes and noisy warning horns going on that makes the open window a bit of a disadvantage - although come to think of it the sound the brakes and wheels and tracks make all together is fairly awesome and if I had time for my found sound composition amibitions to be anything more than ambitions and a set of notes I would really need to do some sampling because I think I could make something deeply dreamy and relaxing out of this...

Especially with some human voice stuff hm.

But that is all Things I would like to do if I had time which I do not have time because I am writing intensely political histories of disability and disease instead tah daaaaaah so.

Anyway. Good day. Going well. I'll figure out which way is up in this sea of mid-19th century articles and court cases that use the rhetoric of degeneracy eventually.
tiamatschild: Painting of a woman dancing a circle dance - she is smiling, her hand outstreched (Woman in Blue Dancing)
I have a TA position for next year!
tiamatschild: Painting of a woman resting on a bridge railing - she has a laundry bag beside her (Default)
Writing abstracts is haaaaaard.

Especially as this room is going to be full of sciency people. No Humanities buzzwords for me!
tiamatschild: Painting of a woman resting on a bridge railing - she has a laundry bag beside her (Default)
I'm trying to describe my interest in history as an area of serious academic study and -

I have no idea how to do it. "It's shiny!" is not appropriate here, even if I am supposed to be avoiding "academese". I am apparently not supposed to say "exciting" because it's too general. I am also advised to avoid epigrams, which yes. I don't really go all gooey over history because those who don't know their own history will probably repeat it anyway because evidence suggests that knowing history is not exactly a guarantee that you won't just do the same damn stupid thing over again anyway. And then there's the false equivalence problem, which is definitely a big one. So. Yeah. It's not true. Um.

"Why do you want to study history?"

Because it has people in it. And they were real, and important, and had worth in themselves. And they're dead now, but sometimes they wrote things down, or things about them were written down, and you can see that, traces of people left on the world, and I find that really compelling. It's important.
tiamatschild: A painting of a woman in a chiton hanging washing on a line (Hanging the Washing Out to Dry)
So, I checked out Tintin because I thought I should, in the interests of being a culturally literate comic books fan, take a look.

Now I can't stop.

I'm not sure what it is: it's not at all like my reaction to Krazy Kat. Although, of course, nothing is like my reaction to Krazy Kat. Reading Krazy Kat is like reading a love letter page after page and each page is the first time this person has ever told you they care for you.

Tintin is not like this. But I feel anxious for the characters when they're in trouble, and happy for them when they're happy in their lives together. Herge's use of racist visual stereotyping jolts and throws me all the time (especially when mixed in with obvious Word Of Author comments about how ignorant and stupid this kind of stereotyping is - I suppose it's a good lesson in how thoroughly a racist culture screws with your head). I smile and say quietly, "Oh, of course he does," whenever Tintin matter of factly reveals another skill. I love Tintin's attempts to be strict with Snowy, which he always forgets within a page. I love how frequently the action takes Tintin mountain climbing or hiking and how much he revels in both. I love Haddock's occasional attempts to deny Tintin something for his own good and how rapidly those attempts break down.

And I enjoy the art - Snowy's loose, leggy energy and Tintin's poise. Haddock's vigorous enthusiasm. The street scenes! Oh, I love the street scenes, and how every person in them has a personality.

Also, I am writing this with my own loyal, strong-minded, miniature white mutt curled on the back of my knees and yawning periodically.

Also also, but unrelatedly, I took the GRE this morning and did well.
tiamatschild: A painting of a woman leaning over a railing to set a candle in a lamp (Everyday Devotion)
Woosh. All tests taken, everything's in, and Dr. F. emailed me already with her notes on the research project that ate Cold Spring Harbor and the news that a) she gave me an A, and b) she wants me to submit the paper to the departmental prize committee. Yay! (This also implies that she read mine pretty early, as I only turned it in Saturday, which makes me feel all warm and fuzzy - maybe she was looking forward to seeing it! eeeeeeeee people like my writing!)

And I got that email yesterday after Da and I went and selected an exceptionally lovely Scotch Pine for a Christmas tree on the way back from him picking me up. The Andrew brother's criteria for a tree is that it must be taller than he is. As he's six foot four (or possibly five now, oh bother my brothers for making me look dainty and generally fun sized), this ruled out a lot of the trees I liked. But I found him one! I am not the most exacting tree chooser in the world. Not because I don't care or don't enjoy it: I love doing it and the cold rarely bothers me, in part because walking three miles to school and back every day means that you spend a lot of time getting used to said cold, and anyway yesterday I was wearing a full length coat, thick cotton mittens with thermal fleece lining, wool socks and water proof hiking boots, which was more than adequate to deal with a windchill of five degrees F or so. No, the trouble is that I tend to see virtues in everything, and get all tangled up about which I like best. Da does not really help because he's so compliant he just says yes to everything. It's hard to tell what he really thinks. But even so we only took about forty minutes. That's fast for us.

Anyway. Getting the email from Dr. F. after successfully choosing the tree and getting it home and anchoring it in the stand made the (lovely, gratifying) feedback feel awfully like an early Christmas present. Which was wonderful!

Saw the new psychiatrist again yesterday: it went fairly well.
ExpandCut for lengthy digression on medical professionals and self advocacy )

I need to head out to the bank today to deal with two checks and make sure my checking account has enough to cover the month's rent and the electric bill - I think I may have forgotten to transfer the funds from the savings account. But at the moment I'm drinking coffee at my mother's tall kitchen table next to her advent wreath, with cold bare toes and my hair a complete disgrace, feeling pretty good. I'm going to fold Peter's laundry, move the towels, and get started on mine pretty quick here.

...Even if I do feel really weird no longer having the project that ate Cold Spring Harbor to work on, it's nice to be off for a month.
tiamatschild: Painting of a woman dancing a circle dance - she is smiling, her hand outstreched (Woman in Blue Dancing)
I just turned in a ten thousand word orginal research paper with seventy one footnotes and fifty four items in its bibliography! I've been working on it for nine months, it's on a topic there is very little historiography for specifically, so I juggled some five intersecting historiographies to write it, and I'm actually quite pleased with the outcome, even if I couldn't cover everything this foray!

SQUEE.

Major final on Monday and one more final project: then I may actually be around again somewhat.
tiamatschild: A painting of a woman in a chiton hanging washing on a line (Hanging the Washing Out to Dry)
...Yes, I suppose it does look like a sudden jump in ability when we finally get to the projects I can work on without bouts of suicidal ideation.

Actually, of course, it's just that it's much easier to write well and revise well when you don't have intrusive thoughts about self harm every time you look at what you've written.

*sigh*
tiamatschild: Painting of a woman resting on a bridge railing - she has a laundry bag beside her (Default)
I love editing, I just hate turning things in.
tiamatschild: A print of a figure with a blue umbrella, walking away along a path in the rain (Walking Home with a blue umbrella)
Words that probably should not pass unexamined in an analysis of sexist advertising and art include:

tramp
trampy
slutty
prostitute
whore
innocence
vulgar
vulgarity
classy
trashy

This editing class is depressing.
tiamatschild: Painting of a woman resting on a bridge railing - she has a laundry bag beside her (Default)
I owe EVERYONE comments!
But the research project that ate Cold Spring Harbor is calmly masticating its way along, so that's good.
tiamatschild: A print of a figure with a blue umbrella, walking away along a path in the rain (Walking Home with a blue umbrella)
Okay, while the nightmares are, admittedly, entertaining glimpses into both how highly creative my psyche is, and some of them really would make great novels, and they're vivid and well-constructed and all that -

...Can I stop having them every night?

(I'm getting good work done, though! Lots of work! Aaaaand the sun is setting so I've got to split.)
tiamatschild: A painting of a woman leaning over a railing to set a candle in a lamp (Everyday Devotion)
*eyes library's gloriously long list of resources relevant to Current Research*

The problem here is that my eyes are very definitely bigger than my stomach my backpack.

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tiamatschild: Painting of a woman resting on a bridge railing - she has a laundry bag beside her (Default)
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