Happy Holidays!

I spent Christmas in Oceanside this year. How could I resist the sunny weather? Of course, Christmas in California would not be complete without a trip to the beach.

(Mallory and me)

I am nearly finished with the second week of my winter break, and time is flying by fast! To finish out the quarter, I frantically finished a very skeletal draft of the lit review portion of my qualifying paper. Besides this, I finished up TA duties by grading exams and calculating final grades. The end of the quarter was jam packed with social events and cookie/candy making. We had a department party to end the quarter, I went to a Christmas party, and I hosted a couple dinner parties. After a day of recovery, I headed down to Oceanside for Christmas.

The End is in Sight

We are halfway through finals week, and the end of the quarter is nearly in sight. My students take their final Thursday morning, bright and early at 8 am. Proctoring exams is my least favorite thing to do, because it is 2 straight hours of absolute boredom. It means 2 hours of dead silence, making sure that nobody is cheating during the exam.

Today I turned in my class paper for my Political Participation class. I wrote a research design that examines the political behavior of Asian Americans and the contexts under which they are motivated to participate. In a research design, I have to state my research question, discuss the literature and theory that has addressed my research question, state my hypothesis, and then outline my plan for how I intend to answer my research question. I don't actually plan to follow through with this research design considering that the political participation of Asian Americans isn't really one of my research interests.

This week I am also working on a draft of my literature review for my 1st qualifier. I have also started data analysis as well.

In other news, I have decided not to go back to Minnesota for Christmas. I will be spending the holiday in Oceanside. I plan to finish up some RA work and I plan to work on my qualifying paper over the break.