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I did science research this summer to decide whether I wanted to go to grad school, and emerged thinking that I do--to get an MLIS.

Talked to people at Houghton a couple of times last week; it sounds like going into Special Collections librarianship might actually be something I could do. I have experience, so mostly I guess it's in getting the library degree and a job at a rare book room (which people seem to do concurrently). Processing, I think, is where I'd enjoy myself the most--getting to work with lots of different items all the time, but getting to work with the physical objects of the books. Either that or book conservation, which is its own entire thing. Or taking care of a smallish rare book room where I'd get to do some of all of those.

Which was all happening right as my science research program was wrapping up. Yesterday morning I uploaded all of my relevant files to the wiki, so I have discharged my obligations, taken care of my responsibilities, et cetera.

Other things I did recently include buy a copy of a Harlan Ellison book in Greek. I'm not a huge Harlan Ellison fan, but it was a dollar used and after taking Homeric Greek last year I've been wanting to try to learn a bit of modern Greek.

Today I've been writing--finished, finally, a full draft of the story that's now called "Lightening", tweaked "Katabasis" and sent it out again--and packing, sorting all the papers I've accumulated over the course of the summer. I can't believe I am leaving in two days. I can't believe the summer is almost over, either. Didn't I just get here a little while ago? In some ways I long to be back on the Mount Holyoke campus, but in other ways I want to demand another summer--one where I can relax and write more. Ah well. At least I get a couple of weeks' break in the middle, and I get to go back to Minneapolis.
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Words! 659 of them! Technically I wrote them yesterday and just typed them up today (and swapped some things around/added things), but still. I plan to add more later, actually written today.

Which is progress on the short story which currently has no title, which used to be "Nettles for Penelope" and now is I have no idea.

But the Iliad is working itself in nicely, and so is the Little Mermaid, which makes me happy. Maybe the Odyssey will come--well, that's more the first part of the story, and this is the middle bit, and in a small way I think the Odyssey is already in this part, too.

Not sure what the third part of the story will be like or about, yet; there's a crisis at the end of the middle that I haven't gotten to yet, and don't completely know what that will be about or how (or if) it will resolve, so I have no idea what anyone will do about it. Maybe Aeschylus will come into it somehow: the end of the Oresteia has always frustrated me, with the whole part where Athena talks down the Furies from being saturated in "corrupt" female power into fertility-and-crops-and-wholesome-female-goodness. It would be nice to get a chance to do it properly.
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Iliad, tr. Fagles, lines 204-205:
But the lord of men Agamemnon shot back,
'Desert, by all means--if the spirit drives you home!'


...clearly they do not give me enough to do here. (Five minutes in GIMP with skills learned through physics research last year, woot.)

Also, my character in the play--it has now been decided--is a wimp and has a secret Latino boyfriend who indulges him in this utter wimpiness because he thinks it's cute. (As I told Kate this evening, I can't even act straight.) You have no idea how many of my lines this motivates. Hint: all of them.

And I sent a bunch of emails I have been pointlessly not writing for varying lengths of time.

So this was a good day.
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The semester started on Wednesday. I am not sure how I feel about this.

Classes I'm taking are:
- Real analysis: should be interesting and teach me things--it's full of people who are about at my same math level, which rocks.
- Quantum mechanics: best class ever? Quite possibly. (I have been waiting years to take quantum mechanics. On the first day we got a thermal image of a zebra. As far as I care this class can do no wrong.)
- Second semester of Greek: more maiming! More violence! Always fun.
- Science, revolution, and modernity: a critical social thought class, which seems very interesting and also kind of intense (six books plus supplementary readings? 3-4 page paper nearly every week?), at least to my physics-major brain. But hey, readings and not problem sets, so that's nice.

I auditioned for the five-college early music program and got placed in a group. Singing madrigals! I haven't done that much since freshman year of high school, and I have missed it. (I kept forgetting to check and see when auditions were, the past few semesters.) I will have concerts to go and do, in addition to two hours' weekly practice.

[Edit: And of course working in special collections. Forever.]

In grand college tradition, I would also like to attend at least a few meetings for the Coalition for Gender Awareness this semseter--I've been on their email list since last year--and, oh yeah, try out for a play. I am going to try out for the play anyhow, which might be a bad idea but oh well. CoGA might have to wait. I seem to be cycling through all the things I want to do; I just have to hope that I have enough time to actually do all of them before I graduate.

Not helping with this: I hope to study abroad for a semester next year. I have a shortlist, just need to fill out all the forms. I do have some time on that.

Meanwhile, though, I still have physics research applications to do. I am getting through them, but I have some left--the plan is to do those today. (Also, my homework for tomorrow.) I submitted my application to the U of MN materials science REU program this morning, which I point out especially because their application webform has a box to type in for gender, not just buttons for male and female. Win!
aamcnamara: (Default)
Apparently, since I curated this display, I get to post pictures of it online.

teaser picture! )

Putting this together was, overall, an awesome experience. I look forward to making more displays... possibly not with quite such a time constraint, but hey! That's life sometimes.

No progress on A Returning Power because I have a) been busy and b) figured out that it's not so much what I do with the dragon as what the war is about and why the people who win it do so. Tricky business! And I have had no space in my brain for novels, worse luck. (I tend to get really terrible about working on things once the school year hits; the hope is that having the outline up on my wall this year will prod me to add some words to it once in a while.)

On the bright side, as I posted to facebook a few days ago, I know how to say "I have an evil plan" in Homeric Greek.

And hey--tomorrow is Inauguration (aka a good excuse to not have class on a pretty late-September afternoon; not sure yet if I will go to the event itself), and the weekend looks like it will be awesome. Maybe I will even find my brain enough to get some writing done.

May 2017

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