Mid-Semester Updates

Well, hello again! Time for the mid-semester report card:
I just took the GRE this past weekend and scored a 640 on the Verbal (91st percentile, baby!) and a sad little 550 on the math (but who cares when you’re going into history?), so I’m a very happy camper on that front. I’ve also just been invited to co-facilitate one of the new freshman Paideia Conversation cohorts with Dr. Melissa Brynes in the history department, which is exciting for teaching-experience purposes as well as just sounding like great fun :]

I’ve also just been informed that my book contract with McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers is in the mail to me now so I should have it in my hands within the next day or so :D And while this news makes me ecstatic, it also scares me because that’s another 100 pages tacked onto my schedule of things-to-do. It’s a good thing I enjoy it, right? I do worry sometimes that I’ve really bitten off more than I can chew this semester, I’ve been much more stressed than I normally am, but I think a lot of that has to do with the giant question mark that is graduate school. I very much love plans and schedules, even if they are vague ones, so this not knowing is really putting me uncomfortably on the edge of my seat. Of course, the emails I’ve been getting back from professors at graduate schools have been nothing but positive, so I am on an upswing of confidence currently.

But the book contract is a big boon and branch of my Paideia research project/American Studies capstone/American Studies Honor Thesis. For the thesis-thesis itself, the Paideia project, I’m turning in thirty pages of edited material a month to Dr. Bednar for his feedback before deciding which sections to send to my other committee members. I’m currently preparing the second set of thirty pages, and it’s time consuming, but highly enjoyable. It’s relaxing to work on something I have so much control over. Other people have eating disorders, I write books. It makes sense to me :]

Anyhoo, I’ve also decided to use parts of this thesis for my graduate school writing sample – and you wouldn’t believe how often Paideia has come up in my Statements of Purpose for graduate schools! This really is a gold mine of education and confidence-building exercises, I think. So, thank you, Paideia!

Beyond this, I would like to also say just how much I’ve enjoyed the class readings and discussions so far. From Kandinsky to how our language forms our perspectives on the world (those articles are still blowing my mind) to introverts taking back the floor – it’s been an extremely diverse and yet well blended semester, I think, so far. Especially the language and introvert/extrovert discussions, I found, went exceptionally well together. I would like more discussion in class about our research projects though, just to see what exactly people are thinking about, what questions have most arrested their interests, etc. I’m very excited to introduce my reading material in November though I still haven’t decided between another article over the Beats or an article over Native American studies.

But these readings so far have really pleased me and appealed to my sense of liberal arts & what Paideia (I believe) is supposed to be about. These readings, though easily connected to each other, are coming from very different perspectives and have yielded some very interesting conversations. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the idea of introverts giving thought to how they feel – honestly, that’s not a bad thing or a insult, it’s just that that’s amazing to me. I feel that my tolerance and excitement for the differences of our world has been greatly expanded already this semester, causing me to rethink certain relationships and ideas and how I read and understand the works and ideas of people from other hemispheres and personality types.

I think it could be cool to speak more about any connections between these readings though – I’d be interested to see what connections people see or thought about between these articles and the German Art article, for instance. But I think we’re doing some very good work so far; I’m proud of us.

Till we meet again