under review

Today, 2 fellow graduate students and I sent out our paper for journal submission. We worked incredibly hard over the last month and basically wrote an entire paper to make the April 30th deadline. I learned a lot in the past month about writing, editing, journal submission, and linear growth curve models. It is a relief to have sent it off, but of course, I have other stuff to work on. All right, that's all I've got for now.

29 pages

I know that this is counterintuitive, but I am glad that the weekend is over. Why? Because I spent last weekend working on two papers. I finally got a draft of my anti-rape paper to DM, on Monday, as promised. It was 29 pages. I had no idea that I could write that many pages. You see, when professors impose any sort of page number expectations for class papers, I'm always the person that comes up short. So, you can see my surprise.

I'm working on a paper with 2 other people, and we have been working hard this past week, writing and editing. Here's a funny story: One of the coauthors, Chris, and I were editing the introduction today. (side note: His fiance, K, and I are both DM's students, and DM challenges us to be good, clear writers) So, Chris and I were going through the intro, word for word. At one particular point, I said we need to clean up a paragraph because there were too many different points in it. I also said that we need to start off with a topic sentence that reflects the content of the entire paragraph. (obviously, this is stuff that I've learned to do from DM) And you know what Chris said? He said that this is exactly how K writes too! Good story. I thought it was really funny, and I had to share it with you.

the tasks lab on gmail

This post is going to be nerdy. There, you've been forewarned. I feel like every quarter is when I make this effort to improve how I work and figure out how to work most efficiently and effectively. I don't believe in New Year's Resolutions, but apparently, I believe in New Quarter Resolutions. Among some of my strategies to be efficient and effective: be disciplined and work during the day so that I can play at night, save the heavy lifting for the day (reading, writing) and the easy stuff for the evenings (TA stuff, easy reading), maintain hobbies (baking, knitting, crocheting), be active to relieve stress (yoga), and don't feel guilty when I'm not working (presumably because I've worked hard during the day, right?). And here's another strategy: To Do lists on the Tasks lab of my gmail account.

It is already the third week of the quarter, and I still haven't finished a new draft of my anti-rape paper. I wanted to get this new draft to DM at the end of last quarter, which was about a month ago. I have felt quite overwhelmed with it and this feeling was stalling my write up. I read a lot for the paper last quarter but recently I have felt like I had nothing to show for it, so it gave me this nagging feeling and very mild anxiety about doing a new draft.

So, during the first week of the quarter, I decided to quit stalling and get my ass in gear. I set a goal to finish the paper by a certain day, but that day has already come and gone. So I have a new goal (Monday), and I am making it happen, damn it. Let me tell you about my strategy. If every journey begins with a single step, then every paper begins with a single sentence. I have broken down the pieces of my paper into manageable sections to be completed- intro, theory, data and methods, results, discussion and conclusion. Then I go through each section and quickly freewrite and jot down notes and what I want to say in each section. This helps because then I just quickly say what I want to say without agonizing over word choice and grammar. Finally, I go through each section, cleaning it up and trying to make it sound good.

To stay on track, I am using this wonderful tool on my gmail account: the Tasks lab. It is amazing. I have a To Do list for every day of the week, a weekend To Do list, a weekly To Do list, and an Ongoing To Do list. It sounds insane, but it's helping me stay on track. I break up everything I need to do into manageable pieces and put them on my To Do list. After I complete the task, I get a nerdy sense of pleasure and accomplishment in checking off the task. So far, the Tasks lab helps me stay accountable, and at the end of the day, I get to see everything that I've accomplished. Because I've broken my anti-rape paper into small, manageable pieces, it doesn't seem so overwhelming anymore. And I WILL have a new draft on Monday. Seriously.

weekend excursions

Drew and I have done a little bit of exploring these past couple weekends. First up, we headed to Costa Mesa to check out the Noguchi Gardens, this little sculpture garden tucked away among a couple office buildings. I love outdoor sculptures (one of my favorite places is the Sculpture Garden at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis), so I was eager to check out Noguchi Gardens. It was kind of cool, but very small with few sculptures. The sculptures were great, but I wasn't that impressed because it all seemed so corporate since the garden itself was enveloped by these tall office buildings. It was definitely not like the sculpture gardens at the Walker or the Getty. Anyway, here are a couple pictures:

Some cool cacti:

Next up, Drew and I headed up to Huntington Library, near Pasadena. Huntington Library is comprised of a library, art collections, and botanical gardens. There are a few buildings that make up the actual library and house American and European art, but the best part of the Huntington Library is actually outdoors. There are over a dozen themed gardens on a property that covers about 200 acres. It is seriously cool, and I was so impressed. We started off in the Desert Garden, which had an excellent collection of cacti and succulents.

I think my grandpa used to cultivate these:

I love the contrast in both color and texture here- the bright, soft flowers next to the prickly cactus:

I love, love, love cacti! I got really excited when I saw these:
and these:
oh, and these too:
I love the bright colors:

I adore this view. I did not want to leave the Desert Garden. Of all the gradens, we probably spent the longest period of time in this one.
Next up, we went to the Japanese Garden:

Drew said that this tree reminded him of Dr. Seuss' art style:

We also checked out the Herb Garden, the Rose Garden, the Chinese Garden, and the Jungle Garden. And we took some time to check out the art collections. Somewhere along the way, we came across these fabulous flowers:

We ended the day at the Lily Ponds:

After leaving Huntington Library, we headed over to the Santa Monica Pier to ride the ferris wheel and to eat dinner. A couple views from the top of the ferris wheel:

Well, that's all I've got for you! It's been an adventurous couple of weeks!

it's time to meet the BF

If you will recall, I mentioned in a previous post about 25 random facts about me that February is usually the time of the year when I am most likely to meet someone new, date, or start a new relationship (see #14). I mentioned that, in case you were wondering, February was shaping up to be a quiet month. Well, scratch that. I am about to embark on what is uncharted blogging territory for me: I'm going to blog about the new BF, Drew.

Drew is a graduate student in the Sociology department. See, in recent department history, there have been many couples made up of Political Science men and Sociology women. And so, I thought to myself, "Hey, that looks like a pretty sweet deal. I'll give that a whirl." Uh, I'm kidding. Kind of. Anyway, Drew and I had crossed paths in the Social Science Tower, but we formally met (for the second time) at a social gathering in the beginning of February. Thanks to the wonders of Facebook, we started talking to each other in cyberspace and it wasn't long before we started hanging out in real life. (That's right, Facebook: helping people get dates since 2003.) So, we've been together since around mid-February, and you know that person that I referred to as "my friend" in previous blog posts? Yeah, that would actually be Drew.

What does he look like, you ask? Check out the picture below, taken while riding the ferris wheel at the Santa Monica Pier.
Drew is a liberal, progressive, feminist-y dude (that's what I call him) from Virginia. He rides a motorcycle, has a neat-o buddha tattoo, and is a really nice guy. I knew he was a keeper when he passed my Vagina Monologues litmus test by joining me and my friends for a performance in mid-February, indicating that he supports the empowerment of women and gets stuff like male privilege, oppression, sexism.

We have a lot of fun together, and we laugh a lot. He laughs at my jokes, which is practically a dating prerequisite. (Drew makes jokes too, but we have decided that I get to be the funny one) Drew cooks a mean breakfast burrito, sings me songs, and gives me nice shoulder massages. And since he's a foot taller than me, he comes in handy when I need help grinding coffee at Trader Joe's (I'm not tall enough to see into the grinder) and when I need something from the kitchen cabinet above the refrigerator. I dazzle him with homemade lasagna, baked goods (naturally), and my ability to remember the lyrics to "Baby One More Time" by Britney Spears.

Here we are again at the Santa Monica Pier.
So, that's Drew. Stay tuned for pictures from our excursions to the Noguchi Garden, the Huntington Library, and the Santa Monica Pier.

cake!

The latest in baking news: I bought a cake/pie carrier and a big inverted spatula to frost my cakes (I already have a small one for cupcakes), just what I need to look like a quasi baking professional. Last weekend, I baked a Chocolate Buttermilk Layer Cake with crushed Oreos both in the cake and in the Vanilla Buttercream. I took the liberty of adding crushed Oreos to my recipes from the Magnolia Cookbook. The cake seemed a little on the dry side, but everyone adored it. Here's a picture to get those salivary glands going:

Seems I'm a bit territorial in the kitchen. I baked this one solo, and my friend happened to come over while I was making the buttercream. I couldn't bear to cede control over my hand mixer, so he ended up crushing Oreos instead. Hey, that's a big deal. After all, he did play an integral role in making the frosting and he helped me arrange the Oreos on top of the cake.

UCDC baby!

In all of the hectic-ness of Week 1, I almost forgot to tell you some good news. I have been accepted as a Teaching Associate for the UCDC program. Undergraduates from UCI and the UC Riverside campuses go to DC for a quarter to take a couple classes and intern. In the past, the program sent a graduate student to serve as a Teaching Assistant, but next year the grad student will instead be a Teaching Associate and be in charge of teaching two classes. So in addition to teaching two classes, I will be working on fieldwork for my to-be-determined dissertation. I will be spending one quarter in DC, and can you guess which quarter? That's right, Winter, 2010. My winter attire will finally see the light of day.