bugsii

Yesterday, I went to the Digital Media in a Social World conference on OSU’s campus.  It was a good conference.  I was a little nervous for my presentation.  Only four people came and one was a friend, so that ended up being good.  It turned into an interesting discussion and I’m glad I did it.  The conference wasn’t my favorite one ever (too many vendor presentations), but it was decent.

Flash forward to today, I’m actually in Oxford right now at the grad student conference.  There wasn’t anything I really wanted to see during this session, so I decided that I would take a break.  The past few days I’ve been on academic overload and I think I can stand to miss one little session.

*Warning, feeling nostalgic, but may change my mind tomorrow.*

I drove into Oxford this morning and it felt so strange.  I haven’t been here for about three years and every time I come to visit, I feel like I am communing with the 19-year-old-Laurie that was here as a happy-go-lucky undergrad.  It’s strange that a place can make you feel an old part of yourself.  When I got to campus, I parked on a side street, walked past the houses, almost forgetting the tradition of naming houses and posting a sign (the one I can remember from this morning was Morning Wood.  Nice.).  I walked into McGuffey, that houses the school of education, for the first time since I graduated and my mind was sort of blown.  When I was here, McGuffey was the crustiest building on campus and since then, they have completely remodeled and it is actually very nice.  Not as nice as the business school, but still, I was impressed!

The conference is full of interesting people that care about social justice and like Bergamo, I will be back.  This is my kind of conference.  And, it helps immensely that it’s a grad student conference.  I felt much more at ease.  My presentation was the first session and it went pretty well.  I talked too fast, but I was trying to cram a 45 minute presentation into 20 minutes.  Ah well.  I got some good feedback and made at least one contact.

After lunch, I was spent and decided to walk around campus for awhile and take the aforementioned break.  I headed uptown and walked past the Fiji house, St. Mary’s, Dubois’, Follett’s, the old First Run, the old Attractions, the Princess theatre.  Every spot had memories associated with it and I started to feel kind of emotional.  Things seemed simpler then.  And more fun.  Since it’s Saturday afternoon, the town is pretty quiet.  I saw a few students walking their parents around uptown.  A few alum back with strollers and babies.  I decided to take slant walk down to King Library to relax and write my blog.  The town feels so peaceful next to the big city madness of Columbus, with its city buses, busy streets, and the necessity for the constant surveillance of your surroundings.  Here, it was so easy to cross the street, that it was kind of surprising.  It made me wish that I was here again for graduate school.  I feel like I could think better in the peace of it all, in the tiny town in the middle of cornfields.  Maybe someday I’ll be back again as a professor.  Right now, that sounds grand.

Today, I worked on my presentations.  I will be giving two in the next two days.  I was feeling strangely calm about the whole thing earlier, but right now, I am feeling a little tense and I have a headache.  I don’t know why I’m getting anxious, I am actually pretty excited to share what I’ve been working on.  My body just needs to listen to my head and relax.  This is a good thing though, giving presentations, and here are the two different conferences where I will be sharing:

Digital Media in a Social World

Miami University’s Graduate Student Conference on Social Justice

I taught a class tonight and decided to go to the library for awhile afterward.  On my way, I realized that I don’t venture out onto campus at night much.  They have white lights all around mirror lake and the library was looking very nice surrounded by the glassy snow.

Thompson Library

I better get to work.  I need to pick Dan up from the airport at 11 tonight.  Wish me luck tomorrow!

So, I finally left the house today after two lovely days all snowed in.  I was going to take a picture of the snow piled on my car, but was feeling cold and lazy.  Instead, you can visit this blog and see some cool snow figures some students made around campus.  Awesome right?

And a final tidbit I wanted to share with you (well, Uncle Ray mostly).  If you send in a video, you have a chance to be in a commercial with Flo, the Progressive lady!  Check it out here.  I could totally see Ray on one of those commercials!

I set my alarm for 6 this morning.  I was going to run early, then work.  But, when my alarm went off, I kept hitting snooze until it was 6:40.  I grabbed my phone to check mail and guess what?  SNOW DAY!  To celebrate, I promptly went back to sleep for another hour and then leisurely got up, made breakfast and got to work.  I took a little break to run (around my house, no lie), but aside from that I have been so terribly productive, that I think I might just cry.  I caught up on email, I did work on my blog study, I submitted an abstract for a research forum, I edited an article and submitted it to a local journal and now I’m writing my blog!  I did everything on my list for today and two things from list for TOMORROW!  Did you hear that?  TOMORROW!  Oh, happy snow day.

And, in the midst of all of this work, I occasionally took some facebook breaks (of course) and these led me to two very interesting blogs.  I’m sure I was more interested because I had been writing about blogs all day, but still, there’s a connection, so don’t leave yet.  So, in my own writing, I’m trying to think about what’s going on with blogs.  I’m looking at women in grad school, but my real questions are:  What are women doing with blogs?  How are they using them?  Is this something new?  What is going on here?  (basically).  So, through facebook I was led to these two blogs…

The Sullivans

matt, liz, and madeline

Don’t even try to click on those links unless you are ready to cry your little eyes out.  I’m serious.  They are two blogs written by two men, who at first were only documenting their wives’ pregnancies, but then through two different tragedies, began to document their lives as widowers and single fathers.  Both have acquired a pretty large following and receive loads of comments of support daily.  They are definitely two different people, one a deeply religious person, the other curses and writes poetry.  But, both are using these blogs in ways that couldn’t have existed before the internet.  Journals would never have written back or given support, or spread throughout the country.  Talking to a friend would never have generated this type of response.  Both have started raising money for different causes and both are struggling publicly in this new space.  What does this mean for how we view old notions of a separate private and public life?  In lots of ways, these men are similar to my blogging women, struggling through grad school, garnering support, trying to figure things out in a public space… though admittedly their (our) lives have not been thrown into upheaval as these men’s lives have.  Most men don’t keep “personal” blogs.  Without their wives, are they searching for a connection they lost?  I don’t know, but if you have time, read, cry and show some support from a distant land.

This week’s challenge was to watch some old movies from childhood.  In the end, I settled on three.  On Thursday, we watched Harry and the Hendersons.  On Friday, we watched Flight of the Navigator and on Saturday, we watched The Neverending Story (which I can never say without singing… The Nevereeeending Stooooooryyyyyy!  Lalalalalalala).

Harry and the Hendersons-

I don’t think I have seen this movie since we went to the theater to see it when I was about 6.  We didn’t go to the movies too often, so I remember this being really exciting.  I thought Harry would look pretty crappy 20+ years later, but I have to admit that I was still thoroughly convinced that he was really bigfoot.  I had forgotten about the little boy in the movie, but he really cracked me up, especially when he swore (awwwwwwe!  That was that kind of awe that gets progressively higher pitched.  You know the one you do to someone in first grade when their in trouble?  That one.).  I for some reason distinctly remembered when Harry ate the teenage daughter’s fifteenth birthday corsage and she yelled at him.  I like a tough girl, I guess.  Overall the movie wasn’t as terrible as I thought it was going to be (but don’t ask Dan about it).  It was decently well made and I liked all of the characters except for the bigfoot hunter that had a really bad french accent.  The thing I didn’t like about it was that it was 2 hours long!  I don’t remember it being that long and I’m kind of surprised a kids’ movie was so long.  I had to stop it before it was over and save the rest for another night because I was too tired.  Ha.  I’m old.  My favorite part when I got to the end though, was the baby bigfoot that came out of the woods when Harry went home.  Aww, baby things.

Flight of the Navigator-

As a kid, I think I only saw this movie a few times on television, but I remember thinking that it was so cool that the main character was taken away for 8 years and didn’t age (when he was found they asked him who the president was and he said “Jimmy Carter” and I was like who?  Wait, we’re gonna have a different president someday?).  I remembered each of the scenes pretty well once the movie got going, but I didn’t remember that he was sort of quarantined by NASA and then escaped (with the help of Sarah Jessica Parker, no less) and went on a joy ride in the spaceship.  Dan and I loved the awesome old green screen computers at NASA and the fact that they hooked his head up to the computers and someone shouted, “He’s communicating with the computers in binary code!”  I know I thought that the spaceship was awesome because the stairs magically melted out of the back of the ship (the graphics were definitely crappier than I remember though).  And, I also forgot that the voice of the spaceship was Peewee Herman.  Ah, it was pretty funny (Hey blimpo!  Too many twinkies!  Oink oink!).  On a crazy side note, years later when I went Disney World with my dad in college, the spaceship from the movie was relegated to a site to see as you waited for a ride.  It was looking a little less shiny.

The Neverending Story-

This was by far the best movie of the week!  I remember visiting the movie rental store and I knew exactly where this movie was because I wanted to rent it every time we went there.  It was in a little three-sided cubby, on the left hand side, two shelves up, right in my eye line, resting on a tiny plastic shelf and the wood-paneled wall.  I would pick up the box and look at the picture of the empress on the front and turn it and turn it and hope that one of my parents would ask if I wanted to rent it.  I loved that movie.  And, it was just as good as I remembered too.  Who doesn’t love a movie where the boy, instead of going to take his Math test, sneaks up into the creepy, cob-webby attic of the school and reads a book all day?  Although, no school attic I know has a wolf head on a stick in it, but whatever.  I loved all of the fantasy creatures in the story, the rock-biter, the racing snail, Valcor the luck dragon, and all the crazy creatures of Fantasia that went to the empress for help.  I also loved the idea of “the Nothing.”  “Was it a hole?” “A hole would be something, no, this was nothing.” Oh, and I loved Atreyu, who was much younger looking than I remember (ha).  And, I was so sad when Artex, his horse, got sucked into the swamps of sadness.  And I loved when he got to the Southern Oracle and the little funny people helped him.  And I was scared when the gamorck came after him.  Man, it was just such a great movie.  If you’ve never seen it, you should.  When I was looking it up, it turns out it was originally a German film.  That totally makes sense.

Looking back on all of these movies, I realize that they all had a fantasy element… a bigfoot, a UFO, a whole fantasy world.  Currently, I claim to like documentaries best and movies about “real events”.  I don’t know why I gave up on fantasy and imagination.  It’s sad, really.  Maybe I should reconsider.

Yesterday, Dan and I celebrated Valentine’s Day.  Dan had made secret reservations at a place called dragonfly neo-v, which is an all vegan gourmet restaurant just a few blocks from our house (which I had been wanting to go to FOREVER).  Before we left, we exchanged gifts.  Dan was his usual lovey-dovey self and got me 2GB of RAM!  Swoon!  No, really, I love my practical husband.  I really did need it and my computer is so much faster now!

Aww. RAM.

I got Dan some iTunes cards.  He was excited about them, even thought it doesn’t show in this picture.

Aww. Ain't he cute?

Knowing that the RAM might not be that romantic, he also had some flowers hidden.  He’s so smart.

Yay, gerber daisies!

Dinner was so delicious and the restaurant was adorable!  I had pistachio-crusted portabellas and macaroni and cheese.  Dan got the vegan pizza.  Plus, we had awesome appetizers and bread with hummus.  We were stuffed, but we still left room for some ice cream at home!

Then this morning, we got up and had breakfast at Northstar.  It was a great weekend!  Now, Dan’s off to Salt Lake City for the week.  Booo.

I feel really lucky that Ohio State brings in some pretty incredible speakers.  I’ve seen bell hooks, danah boyd, and at the end of this month Maya Angelou will be here!  Today, I saw danah boyd.  There was conference at the law school on youth and social media.  It was a free conference and I made sure to register right away because the topic is so relevant to me and my research.

On a side note, I got to the law school and looked around a little.  The place is gleaming, with a grand staircase and fancy carpet and a coat rack and FREE Panera bagels (and later I found out FREE lunch)!  They have their own library and their own auditorium.  And everyone in the audience besides me and one of my professors was in suits and had really nice haircuts (boy was I mad at myself for waking up late, shoving my hair into an unkempt braid and wearing some jeans that were saggy in the butt).  If you could only contrast this with Ramseyer Hall (that houses the school of education), you might be as surprised as I was.  Or maybe not.  It is the Law School after all.  No one goes there to work with kids in a low paying job for the greater good.  People go there to make a fat paycheck.  And the building and everyone in it conveyed that very clearly.  Ramseyer is one of the older buildings on campus, lined with lockers from the time it was a lab school back in the 50s.  The rooms are oddly shaped after years of being chopped up over and over again into different configurations.  Some have drop ceilings, some have high ceilings, some have projectors hanging from the plaster.  They just painted the walls (for the hundredth time I’m sure) to cover up the peeling paint.  The building is nice in its own way, it has a charming feel, some decorative carvings and heavy banisters, but compared to the law school, it’s practically condemned.  This all says something about the prestige of these two fields.  Just sayin.

Anyway, back to the conference.  So, I get there a little early, and danah is prepping for her speech.  She’s walking around a bit and I make sure I go say hello to her.  It was a brief exchange, but she knew who I was and she was friendly.  She seemed a little nervous too, which always surprises me.  I don’t know why I have a hard time understanding that even well-established people get nervous before talking to crowds.  For some reason I think that if I really knew what I was talking about, that I wouldn’t get nervous, and since I only sort of half know what I’m talking about, I’m always nervous.  But, I’ve been thinking about this for awhile now, about what it means to be a good speaker.  Because, you know how when you go to see some speaker and it’s this guy that’s a real schmoozy slickster and the words roll right off of his tongue and he makes difficult things seem palatable and believable?  Well, he would be considered a “good speaker”, right?  And I HATE those types of speakers because I feel like they are insulting the intelligence of the whole audience by believing that the audience wouldn’t doubt a thing they have to say.  I much prefer a bumbling professor that circles round and round an argument, thinks about things on the fly, and considers that the audience is also thinking about the topic.  Even though they may appear to be a “bad” speaker, they aren’t selling anything.  I mean, they are in a way, but they are selling it with a much more complex argument, one that won’t just be consumed by the audience like a bag of doritos (mindlessly).  Not all professors are like that of course, and not all slicksters are really that slick, but you see what I mean.  The reason this helps me a little is because I get nervous before I speak.  I get nervous because I know that I don’t know everything about the topic I am going to present, but what I need to realize is that NO ONE does.  So, any slick speaker has essentially become uncritical of the stuff that’s coming out of his mouth.  I would rather have someone nervous and conscious of their own deficiencies than someone that has forgotten that they have deficiencies.  In academic research, there’s no real truth to be told, there are only angles of the truth, partial truths, fictions.  So, given that, I consider myself a darn good speaker.

danah was a good speaker in both senses.  She was confident, but also tried to show several sides of the argument.  She seemed less nervous as the presentation went on, and she shared some very interesting research.  She talked pretty fast and you could tell that she just had so much to share and one hour could never be enough.  You could also really see how passionate she is about her work.  I hope I can do this someday like that.  Another thing I loved about her was that she had her hair in a folded bun thing, nothing fancy.  She had a big fuzzy sweater on and big crazy earrings.  She also used a mix of casual and academic language, which was cool.  I want to be comfortable and confident enough that I can dress and speak more casually for conference presentations.  Wearing jeans and speaking casually does not make you dumb, so why do I play that game?  I hate wearing suits.  Don’t make me wear a suit.  Oh, and danah even had a mac with stickers all over it (what makes that especially funny is that she works for Microsoft right now).  I wonder what the law students thought about her.

Yesterday was a busy day.  I worked in the morning, read in the afternoon and then had class in the evening.  Only three people showed up to the evening class (out of nine) because of the weather.  I guess I should have skipped it, but one of my pals had to lead the discussion and I didn’t want to leave her high and dry (although I wish I could have stayed dry instead of having to clean off my car for the third time in three days).  Ah well, it was an interesting class and I’m glad I went.

Today, I ran in the morning, did lots more work, and then went to my Ed Tech seminar.  Right now, I’m waiting for my course to begin at five, but I thought I might take a minute to tell you about Google Buzz.  It’s like a new twitter, but from Google.  It’s integrated into your email and it can pull in facebook and twitter updates.  Sounds cool, but HOLY CRAP I do not need one more piece of social networking to keep track of.  I’m still annoyed about Google Wave.  Google, it’s time to take a break.  In earlier days, I just would have ignored something like this or maybe put it on the back burner with a clear conscious, but see, now this is my field, and I have to at least know what’s out there, right?  I have to at least say, I saw it, but I don’t really like it or something.  So, at the same time that it’s exciting to be in a field like educational technology where things are happening pretty fast, it’s also exhausting.  I just want to be in a rut for like a month.  A good old-fashioned rut.  Darn you Google and your innovations!

I was off this morning, since my Digital Tools class has now switched from Tuesday morning to Thursday night.  While I tucked into my favorite chair to read, I cracked the blinds so I could watch the snow fall.  It snowed all morning and by noon, I had an email from my professor that taught my 1:30 class that class was canceled.  An hour later, I heard from my other professor that my 4:30 class was canceled.  Oh, happy day!

I got to stay in out of this mess all day and I even got a little ahead on my work (knock on wood).  I still have the feeling that I am forgetting something though.  Not good.