Third time's the charm

via Toothpaste for Dinner

We're in the middle of Interview Weekend for my grad program. Yeah, it's kinda like that. Except the vision quest is interrupted by free lunches, free dinners, and 2 hour tours of an 8 story museum that leaves you thinking "WHAT ON EARTH did I just see??"

This is my third time around in this experience, and it gets better every time. When I interviewed, I was a nervous wreck in the middle of questioning my purpose in life. Last year,  I was excited and relieved, and was really starting to feel like I belonged in my program. Now it's my third and final chance at all this wining and dining, and I'm just here to have fun. There's no pressure - I'm never going to share a library with the incoming class, and the first years are handling most of the organizational tasks. My class has been pretty preoccupied waiting to hear back about jobs, so all this fuss is a welcome distraction.

So I guess you can say this is the museum's and my second anniversary. I'm so grateful for the time I've had here, and feel proud of all I have learned. Big gatherings like this always make us students feel like we're part of a real community of scholars, where you can geek out over textiles or architecture at the lunch table, and where your colleagues really do want you to succeed. And if you can have kitchen dance parties in your off hours, then that's even better.

When I got home from my first Interview Weekend, I got a double fortune cookie.

Everywhere you choose to go, friendly faces will greet you.
Many pleasurable and memorable adventures are in store for you!

I think we can safely say that has come true.

Deadlines

This pretty much sums up my life right now. Tomorrow a classmate and I head to the DC area to present at a conference, and right now I am up to my eyeballs in PowerPoint slides of 1970s church architecture. Oh, and I need to also be working on a thesis seminar presentation that I will give in 5 days. EEEEEK!

At 2:30am last night I hit the point where I usually ask "why do I do this to myself?" But I realized something - maybe I need this adrenaline rush of panic to get my brain to fire on all cylinders. I've been thinking about my thesis for weeks, but have had trouble making a concise argument. Likewise, it took a looming deadline to inspire some serious presentation editing, which was a hard decision to make.

How about you, 2.5 readers? How do you think through a project?

JPII you the illest!

As if I didn't already love Kate Beaton's comics about history and literature, here is one she wrote about Mehmet Ali Agca's assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II. (Click here to see it on her site since my formatting is messed up.)


It's no secret that I am a papal fangirl. I got to see JPII live an in person at World Youth Day in Toronto. I wrote a high school paper on said assassination attempt. And yes, there was the infamous Pope poster that hung on all my dorm walls in undergrad.

He died on my little brother's birthday, as I was about to leave college due to medical issues. It's one of the first deaths that really personally affected me.

Image source