shuttercal and an opus in progress

As with every summer, I try to promise myself to chronicle as much as possible. As per usual, I end up being too busy "living" that I forget to jot down the best bits and pieces. Here's to hoping for a summer a bit more productive...considering it'll be the last one before grad school.

Man, I feel like I'm getting married or entering a convent.

The Grad School Waiting Game is like dating... sometime they're just not that into you

Program Acceptance vs. Rejection...

• NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
• Ford Foundation Diversity Fellowship
• Washington St. Louis
  
• Harvard University
• George Washington University
• University of Missouri - Columbia
• SUNY Stony Brook

in love completely and unconditionally

Ah... I love me my physical anthropologist rock stars.

How are they all so brilliant, so friendly, so supportive, so warm, and so hot at the same time? How is that even possible?

*sigh* I don't even care anymore that I go rejected from Mizzou or Wash U. I don't even think I care much anymore if I get on the shortlist to GW (granted that after my botched phone conversation with the GW prof I adore...thank you phone-star-struckness...lord, i'm such a dork). They are all too awesome, and I know for sure one day I'll be working with them.

C.W. ... sooooo awesome. Best speaker I've ever heard. Brilliant, engaging, and always thinks out of the box.

B.R. ... thank you for thinking it was kind of funny that i was stuffing my drunk face with oily pizza at the bar last night. I was mortified I bombed getting the chance to chat with you at the bar, but THANK YOU for finding me at the poster session, coming up to me and chatting with me. My lord, if only you were still single... I don't mind that I won't be going to GWs anymore. At least I got to laugh it up with you (brilliant hot rock star, you).

T.H. ... still the most supportive professor ever.
S.A. ... you're awesome and hilarious. I owe you a drink.
T.D. ... you will always be Prof. McDreamy, you over-caffeinated primatologist you.


I am so glad the pieces are finally falling into place. CAN'T WAIT FOR CHICAGO! Hello future 6 years in intense gradschool. Hello FUTURE. yaaaaaaaaaay!!!

"i wanna hold your hand"

The Beatles got it right. It's not about the sex now or the happily ever after. It's all about just wanting to hold your hand. That's all.

Plain and simple. We like to keep it simple. Simple is good. Simple is happy. Simple is bliss.

So fuck the complications. Forget the "he's just not that into you" a-holes. Just hold my hand and I'm good. Life is good. Things are set for the next 6 years. Busy. Science. Learning. Inspiring. Logical.

Now it's just finding someone to hold your hand, even if it's just for the summer. Even if it's just for the month.



***
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist.

HOORAAAAAAAAAY!!!

I am battling sickness, but even the mean weather and my body falling apart CANNOT trump my spirits:

Program Acceptance vs. Rejection...

• NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
• Ford Foundation Diversity Fellowship
• Washington St. Louis
  
• Harvard University
• George Washington University
• University of Missouri - Columbia
• SUNY Stony Brook

GREEN LIGHT: I'm going to GRAD SCHOOL!!!

feeling like a gradschool reject

Stupid recession... this is making it harder. Why can't people just let us become what we want to become???

I'm a little heartbroken. I'm beginning applications to the UK.


Program Acceptance vs. Rejection...

• NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
• Ford Foundation Diversity Fellowship
• Washington St. Louis
  
• Harvard University
• George Washington University
• University of Missouri - Columbia
• SUNY Stony Brook

more applications

I've never been much of a gambler. I love taking risks and pushing the limits, but always with a plan B.

In this spirit, I have begun my graduate school applications for UK MPhil programs. At the moment, I'm looking at Cambridge and UCL. I can't take the anxiety anymore, and since it is now officially the 3rd week of February, either the programs have made the decisions are are making the decisions as we speak.

A one-year program in the UK wouldn't hurt (except it would make me bankrupt). However, it will be a much needed respite from New York City. My nomadic soul needs a change of pace.

restless spirit

My soul is feeling restless... inquieto. It is calling for a drastic change.

I think I may go into a hiatus from life in May-June. Go back to the Philippines. Go to the jungle. Volunteer to build homes, schools, etc. Teach. Learn. Reconnect.

I want to feel useful again. Wanted. Needed.


I think this can be the beginning of my grandest opus.

flow

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

A regular mentioned this the other day at Alice's.

I have to say that I enter this state quite often. Most noticeably when I was living in Florence a few years ago. Dianne would most likely attest to this.

Volleyball. Art. Travel. Excavating. These for me induce a meditative state of mind that melt the world and my troubles away. Too much of it is also quite degenerative.

A secret I've never shared with anyone: in high school, I was an inadvertent anorexic. Because of my passion for volleyball, and the state of "flow" I was in, I would often forget to eat. Exhausted, I would crash once home and fall asleep losing all my appetite and need to do anything but drink water, learn, and play hard.

That was why I tore my knee so terribly my first year in college.



No one knew. That was how I broke my own spirit. Florence mended and renewed it.

update

I think I just might be able to survive February without moving if I get more interviews with the folks I want to work with and am kept busy with conferences...

Still trying to save up to spend some time just living somewhere else. It'll happen.


***
I am also TELLING the universe that these folk WILL love me and take me into their program. I am awesome and it's the right time this year. This is my year.

my wanderlust calls

"The world is a great volume, and man the index of that book; even in the body of man, you may turn to the whole world." - John Donne


The mini-vacation to London, Madrid and Granada has been fantastic. Bridging my two lives by sharing it with a very good and close friend has been so much fun. As Martin Heidegger said, "The world is what I share with others." It is what I share with the ones I most care about.

Being a nomadic soul, I have found that I am quite lucky in having so many people love and care about me all over the world. But the one melancholy footnote in my book is not being able to bridge my chapters together. I have grown and changed immensely from page to page of my life but I have become too accustomed to leaving the last page, never turning it back and never sharing it with anyone.

It can be pretty lonely realizing that though people know you and how you are, there is not a single soul in the world that actually knows you completely. My experiences have come to define me so strongly but no one knows my details. I have only seen everyone passing through bits and pieces of my life and have become so used to it (and so guarded because of it) that opening up to find someone who could keep up, appreciate, and understand my story has yet to happen. My story just hasn't been too conducive to life-long anything, and I now understand that that is what keeps me damaged.

I am in limbo. Limbo sucks.



So I'm thinking of drastically changing my life again so I can run away from my internal conflict. Moving to London, Spain, or Southeast Asia for the spring? Teaching English in some remote village of Thailand or Vietnam. Maybe join my cousin in the Philippine jungle to help poor farmers survive? Something that would divert my attention to positivity and helping the betterment of the world.

My wanderlust is calling, but traveling for me is my time to be alone and to think, reassess and renew myself. I can be a ghost--an observer with no identity. I can be a nobody that objectively unravels the beauty and complexity of the outside world. I travel alone to understand my relationship to the universe, but I think I've finally had my fill, and I feel the need for change.

Another chapter... I'll just try to be better at leaving certain pages open with ellipses.

The quest for violin-playing goats.

One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things. - Henry Miller

This past week and a half has been another whirlwind of travel. As always, I learn more and more of myself, the world, the universe and my place in it as I continue traversing oceans, peoples, and places. I can honestly say it's not easy being a traveler, and more often than not, it can become a chore if you are but only touring through.


Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living. - Miriam Beard.





http://www.bravenewtraveler.com/2008/03/07/50-most-inspiring-travel-quotes-of-all-time/

let the anxiety commence

Ah... post-application nausea.

Week 1: Call from director of grad studies in Mizzou. Rejected because of lack of hard-science background in undergrad. Ah, the sweet life of an anthropology/liberal arts undergraduate upbringing begin to haunt me... At least Matt was sweet about it, and he offered to buy me a drink at the AAPAs. Nice.



Program Acceptance vs. Rejection...

• NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
• Ford Foundation Diversity Fellowship
• Washington St. Louis
  
• Harvard University
• George Washington University
• University of Missouri - Columbia
• SUNY Stony Brook

done...and done.

It was so nice to have reassurance that my choices in life are the right choices. That the path I'm taking is the right path. And that I will be successful and be able to inspire others the way I have been inspired.

And that my instincts are right. I already know the answers. It's just a matter of clearing out the noise and listening to the universe, taking things as they are, and most importantly, getting rid of the negativity.

I am feeling better.
I am feeling free.

And tonight I found out that I'm not new to this world. That I've been here before and I have had a powerful influential past. An entertainer. A traveler. A learner of cultures. Everything makes sense.


Deadline - Program

• Nov 6 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
• Nov 14 Ford Foundation Diversity Fellowship
• Nov 20+21 SUNY StonyBrook visit
• Dec 30 Graduate Record Exam (GRE) - great depression
  
• Jan 1 Washington St. Louis application deadline
• Jan 2 Harvard University
• Jan 5 George Washington University
• Jan 10 University of Missouri - Columbia
• Jan 15 SUNY Stony Brook

Next week: London & Madrid.
Take life as it is.

Time to repack my two-pair underwear.

mentally slitting my wrists

F*@!$#k!!!

I hate the how my life works sometimes. Stupid GREs. Why??? Why???

Why does the ONE professor I want to work want want to work with me as well? And why does that program and those professors begin speaking about what grants they can nominate me for? Why??? Why when it all comes crashing down thanks to ETS and the program's unbelievably near-perfect minimum for acceptance?

Why?

Slit my throat now please... the disappointment is unbearable.


...
I'm mostly disappointed I left my mentors down. And myself. And the professors who actually want to work with me.

Fuck me.
Fuck me for overachieving in highschool and totally bypassing mathematics and english because I fulfilled requirements before entry into college.

Fuck my overachieving teenage self.




Deadline - Program

• Nov 6 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
• Nov 14 Ford Foundation Diversity Fellowship
• Nov 20+21 SUNY StonyBrook visit
• Dec 30 Graduate Record Exam (GRE) - great depression
  
• Jan 1 Washington St. Louis application deadline
• Jan 2 Harvard University
• Jan 5 George Washington University
• Jan 10 University of Missouri - Columbia
• Jan 15 SUNY Stony Brook

the light at the end of the tunnel

rocking out to:
the darkness - i believe in a thing called love


Deadline - Program

• Nov 6 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
• Nov 14 Ford Foundation Diversity Fellowship
• Nov 20+21 SUNY StonyBrook visit
• Dec 30 Graduate Record Exam (GRE) - great depression
  
• Jan 1 Washington St. Louis application deadline
• Jan 2 Harvard University
• Jan 5 George Washington University
• Jan 10 University of Missouri - Columbia
• Jan 15 SUNY Stony Brook

I see the light, and it rocks like big-haired 80's bands.

• Jan 13 - flight to London
• Jan 14 - arrival in london: drinks with UCL friends, possibly meeting up with Emily G, MEETING LEAH'S NEW FIANCE!!! and hanging out with Saskia's lovely Courtald pals
• Jan 15 - Borough Market (and Portobello Market if I can help it)... mmm epicurian fantasies...
• Jan 16 - MADRID!!! ...possibly running to meet with the Alcala folk!!!
  
• Jan 17 - Saskia & Museums!!! a date with the madrilenos (and re-enacting excavation summer...ie. tapas and lots of liquor)
• Jan 18 - ...
  
• Jan 19 - mmm, escaping to Granada (Marisa has been informed) yay mini-holiday with the *ahem*
• Jan 20 - happy birthday poet!
• Jan 21 - back to madrid
• Jan 22 - back to ny
  

muppet the cornsnake

Feeding time at the museum. Ugh... also known as a terrible distraction. Muppet is one of three. He/she is, by far, my favorite. Mostly because he handles so well, doesn't hiss, and is so damn PURTY!

I may like snakes. In your face Indiana Jones!

AMNH Bone-terns LineDance

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

AMNH Bone-terns Party

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

language is a living thing

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Mike Huckabee Pt. 2

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Prop 8 and its denouncing gay marriage as a human right is absolutely ridiculous. As an anthropologist, I find that the 68% of the American population that voted for the ban on same sex marriage are masking their homophobia for a conservative belief that the word marriage is strictly restricted to a life-long union between heterosexual couples.

Really? A 5000 year-old definition should be upheld? Well then, 30-year old men should be allowed to force 8-year old children to marry them. Men should still stone a 15-year old female to death because she was raped.

"Religion is far more of a choice than homosexuality…we protect religion, and talk about a lifestyle choice."

People get so hung up on the definition of a word that they forget languages are living things. It changes over time with the norms and standards of decades, cultures, and societies. It is all hypocrisy in my eyes, and when people finally begin to admit that Prop 8 is just one more way for close-minded folk to spread hate and hang on to their prejudiced hateful beliefs, then a true conversation about equality and basic human rights can begin.


Disappointing.
The worst part is that I'm related to these people.