I was walking through Georgetown (M Street) this afternoon after eating an excellent lunch at Harmony Cafe. Since I’m poor, I swore to myself that I would NOT buy anything while walking the streets… but I caved after I found this book:
I’m really excited about reading it, mostly because I like Ira Glass, Chuck Klosterman and Malcolm Gladwell (even though The Tipping Point got kinda boring after a few chapters).
At the moment, here’s my current summer/all the time reading list (based on books I already own):
1. The Best American Travel Writing - ed. Susan Orlean
2. Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas - Chuck Klosterman
3. The New Kings of Nonfiction - ed. Ira Glass
4. 100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
5. Mirror Mirror - Gregory Maguire
+ all of the free books I’ll get from my summer seminar on poverty and prosperity in July.
Now that I’m a real adult, I’ll have time to read without school getting in the way. THANK GOD.
26 May, 2008 at 10:11 pm
· Filed under thoughts ·Tagged cleaning
So, I’m cleaning out my junky closet and finding all kinds of neat things… I’m pretty sure I haven’t been in these boxes since I packed them up my last semester at UVA. Here’s a list of some of the things I’ve found:
1. 2006’s list of “Top Things To Do Before You Graduate”: I got through 34 out of 90. I was kinda lame, but I did more things on the list post-UVA.
2. A bottle of Pina Colada mix… I have no idea why this was in a box, but it was definitely molded. Gross…
3. Mini polaroid pictures of my ex-roommates Jihye, Emily, Melissa and Linh. They’re weird looking…
4. Negatives from the underwater camera I used when I went to Jamaica in 2006. I’m not sure where the actual pictures are…
5. I JUST FOUND THE PICTURE CD I MADE OF THOSE UNDERWATER CAMERA PICTURES!!! sweet.
6. An adorable ice cream scooper
7. Old Iraqi Dinars from Saddam Hussein’s regime (from a former friend of a friend)
8. The can of corn I kept since seeing Wet Hot American Summer for the first time during my first year of undergrad… (no, it’s not talking to me - don’t worry)
The past few days have been crazy busy… sorta. I was graced with the company of some of my closest friends for my graduation (and the week prior), so I haven’t been glued to my computer in my normal fashion.
The post-school fun kinda started on Wednesday when Adam and I went shopping for work clothes. He ended up buying much more than me - but actually has a job. Me - I’m still unemployed, so I only left with a shirt and chinos from Banana Republic and a skirt from New York and Company (to wear for graduation). After a long day of stimulating the economy, we got back to my apartment just in time for David Cook and David Archuleta’s Guitar Hero commercials…
I flipped out when I saw these commercials.
Thursday morning, after brief water problems (a pipe burst in my building so they shut off the water for a while), Adam and I headed for the District. The trip wasn’t really as adventerous as we’d hoped, but we made a pilgrimage to Vapiano’s for some not-so-fast food pasta. Anyone craving pasta for a low price (with free gummy bears for dessert) should head to that place. We hit up a few more stores, then returned to home base to begin Music Downloading Fest 2008.
We cashed in our change at Coinstar for amazon gift cards… which meant a night of reviewing and downloading music. One of our favorites was Little Jackie - “The World Should Revolve Around Me”. We fell victim to its catchy-ness, I guess. I grew attached to this one:
Oh Kate Nash…
So yeah, eventually Adam got the munchies (for lack of a better word), so we made an emergency trip to shoppers for some cornbread and lemon cake - Bake Fest 2008. Two hours later, we experienced great disappointment:
The cornbread turned out okay (yay for Jiffy!), but our lemon cake broke :( At least it was still fun to bake, I guess.
Friday was graduation. It was boring. I was happy some more of my friends got to come to the ceremony: Emily from band and Jessica, my “sister from another mother”, and her mom. Then my parents took even more of my friends (474-7 HOLLA) and I out for a ridiculous feast at Maggiano’s. I almost died every time they brought out another course… the amount of food we got was pure insanity. For dessert the waiter brought out a graduation cake (about 7″ high) for me with super cool candles. Even with 10 people eating, I have about 10 separate containers of leftovers…
On Saturday, Adam left me (sniffle) and Jessica and I had some time to hang out. This began DC Photo Fest 2008:
Her camera was much better than mine.
We hit up Zaytinya (of course) for an awesome lunch - with even more pictures…
After lunch, we roamed Georgetown, where Jessica started to get a little tired of walking. So, we visited the waterfront, took some more pictures, then finished up DC Photo Fest 2008.
I don’t have as many pictures from the rest of the day - but we hit up Beth’s (one of my roommates) graduation party, ate some Japanese for dinner, and finally threw in the towel.
Jessica and her mom left pretty early on Sunday morning, so here I am again - in front of my computer. Just like the good old days… minus the constant memo writing.
First of all, thanks to everyone who helped me through the past few weeks of hell. I appreciate the comments, advice, emails, gchats, and phone calls. I think I’ve finally made it through grad school :) No more complaining about my extreme paper writing sessions…
In under 48 hours, I’ll be graduated. Unfortunately, I don’t actually get my diploma until mid-July, which is 100% bunk, but oh well. My relationship with my school isn’t over until my loans are paid off - God only knows when that will be.
So, in other news… David Cook won American Idol. I’m not too excited about that. Unfortunately, I can’t complain because I was too lazy to find my phone to vote for David Archuleta 12 million times. My bad. I hope David Cook finds a way to hide his massive forehead now that he’s the new Idol.
The presentation last Thursday went fine. My 2nd reader TORE APART my paper… in front of my entire class. I wasn’t really embarrassed - I was mostly bored. A hateful email would’ve done the job, and saved me and my class 15 minutes of ridiculousness.
So, yeah. At least that’s done. I have until Monday to revise my Guatemala paper… except I don’t have time. We’ll see what happens with that. And I still have a paper (on Brazil) due on Wednesday.
Gosh, I just really want to be done. Friday at 4pm couldn’t come soon enough.
Today is the presentation of my life… and I’m crazy nervous. I’ve never been this nervous before a presentation - and that makes me even MORE nervous!
Basically, I’m a wreck.
So, in order to relieve some of this nervousness, I decided it was a good idea to type up exactly what I plan on saying during the presentation. Now I don’t have to stumble on words, and maybe even my voice won’t shake. The key to minimizing the freaking out is to lay low on caffeine. Just recently, I realized that coffee actually does give me the jitters, but only when I’m already freaking out about something.
Coffee + extreme nervousness = Really, really bad news
At 1:45pm, it will be my turn to present my paper on inequality and economic development in Guatemala. If people ask me intense questions (or any questions at all), I will die.
Oh, and after this I’m one 8 page (single-spaced) paper away from ditching this stupid school. And I graduate in 8 days.
So, I think my project course/short thesis paper is just about done. It needs a little fixing up, but I’m almost ready to email it to my 2nd reader.
Inequality + economic growth + human development + Guatemala = 24 pages of fun.
Except, even though it’s done, I’m not actually finished with it. I have to make a powerpoint presentation and present it to a bunch of people who have nothing else to do on Thursday morning. It’ll be the last presentation of my academic career (until I go back to school at some unknown time in the future). Thank God.
And now, I have 2 more papers (and a powerpoint) left. I hope to finish my memo on Federal hate crimes legislation tonight so I can devote the rest of my energy to Brazilian inequality and fun powerpoint presentations.
Oh - and I still have class today and tomorrow… wtf.
My paper on Globalization and Colombia is done. 3.5 pages single-spaced. I’m so over that class. My teacher makes me want to rip my brains out…
Now, I have to start to edit the very rough draft of my project course/short thesis paper. I think I have it mostly written - 22 pages without graphs. Hopefully I’ll have the editing and final drafting done by tomorrow night so my fake advisers, Adam and Beth (and anyone else who wants to read and give suggestions on my paper) can read it tell me how much it sucks.
It’s that time of year again. Finals, sorta. Well, final papers. I have a take-home final in one of my econ classes due today, but after that I have 4 papers to write (as you probably know). Thus, I will have to take a break from writing in here. For now, I need to devote all of my writing efforts to Colombia’s economy, Brazilian inequality, Hate Crime Legislation and Guatemala’s inequality and economic development. It won’t be fun and I will miss writing in here. Hopefully I’ll be alive in a couple of weeks to talk about it.
