You know what sucks more than Colbie Callait? Nothing.

Jess on March 4, 2008

So I heard for Boston and it looks like Kyle and my options are down to basically just Iowa, so hopefully that works out.  I’m not too worried about it though.  If I get in, then I get in and we’ll explore that option further and if I don’t get in it could be good to have some time to think about things and maybe consider taking the LSAT and trying to go the lawschool route or looking at what some of my other options might be.  I don’t NEED to spend the next infinity years getting a PhD and getting tenured.  It could be good to have a reason to take some time off and get to know me better.

Wedding planning is going really well aside from the part where my computer decided to fuck up randomly because Apple rushed Leopard it would seem.  Kyle and I spent the weekend together and got to talk to his parents about all of our plans which was a big positive step.  Things went really well.  I was sort of nervous at first on Friday night because it seemed like his mom had much bigger plans for what the wedding should be than I did and she wasn’t too forthcoming about willingness to pay for things she wanted that we didn’t necessarily care about.  But then on Saturday we had a mroe formal meeting where we went over a list of things that grooms families usually do and added to it based on what will be best for my parents and the wedding in general for us to pay for things.  It turned out very well… and overall I think the cost of the wedding should be split nearly perfectly down the middle with a little bit of money kicked in from me.  The nice thing about my not having to spend all my money on the wedding is that Kyle and I will have a tiny bit of a nest egg when we get going next year, wherever that will be.

I have been doing much better with finances and saving this semester than ever before.  I think living with Tim really kicked up my responsibility level and those things.  It was good to be basically wholly reliant on myself with the help of a roommate for rent and bills purposes. 

 That is all. My life is more exciting than this, I like to think.  But really, it’s not.

In the last chapter of the first volume

Jess on October 28, 2007

Today was my cousin’s baby’s birthday so my mom and dad and I trucked it to Rossville to spend some time at the party.  Any loyal follower knows one thing about me… I love my family especially in all of its extended wonderfulness.  I love it which means that I’m pretty damn excited to get to spend some time with them.  It’s also awesome now that there’s little kids around.  I think the last three holidays I haven’t put little Nate down.  And today, I was bummed that he’s walk/scooting around so he gets fussy when he’s held for too long.  But he’s at a cute age where he likes to play with trucks and other badass toys for little boys that my cousin uses to force hegemonic masculinity on him and his brother 🙂 right.  So there’s all kinds of cute stories I could relay… like the “ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha” faked laughs of a one year old on his birthday, or how he clapped for every gift that he liked and how he clapped through the cake eating after stuffing his mouth with a huge piece of cake, it was simply adorable… but this is more about a realization that I had  about this being basically the last random holiday that i’ll be around for.

It’s weird and sort of sad that next year I might not even make it home for Thanksgiving and certainly not for a second birthday.  It’s strange to watch all of these chapters in my life come slowly to a close and me left completely unsure of what the next chapter will hold.. or even what the setting is.  This is like a choose-your-own-adventure book where the control I have over the plot only seems to be of my choosing.  Really, I’m antsy because i want to know where I’ll get into grad school, where I’ll get money, and where Kyle and I will end up in a year.  So frustrating not to know.  I’m going to be the weird academic in my family who moved away, the one who waited to start a family, the one with a doctorate.  i’ve always been fairly different from these people but i mean, you can tell that they’re just a little weirded out by what i plan to do.  ahh.  it’s strange.  I’m excited to go wherever my plans take me this time though.  Unlike this same process in high school, I’m so happy that my life is going to go somewhere awesome.  I’m excited for the next step.  And I’m not even paralyzingly afraid of change.

Distance has no way of making love understandable

Jess on October 26, 2007

I hate being this far away from Kyle.  We’ve both been really busy this week, or mostly since Wednesday, he’s been really busy this week and I feel like I hardly get to speak to him.  The worst part is that because we live seven hours away that whole talking-on-the-phone thing is extremely important to keeping our relationship well-oiled.  I hate being lonely when I have a boyfriend.  So that’s my opinion on that, basically.  Just that I wish that we could just make regular time for each other, so I’d have something to look forward to instead of having to go out to fill the time in which we would usually be talking to each other. Our relationship has also hit that point where it’s now a little bit hard. 

On the phone the other night we had a very tense discussion about a lot of things including travel and finances.  It’s frustrating for me because I wasn’t planning on having to plan my life around someone else at age 21.  But, I love him, and I love him now, so it’s alright that I have to.  There’s things that I’ve ruled out because of him as far as moving away goes and there’s certainly a disadvantage to trying to live by ourselves next year because it’s going to be so expensive no matter where we’re going.  He says a lot that it’ll be really expensive to move these places and I know that he’s right but I don’t think he understands how discouraging that is for me.  My parents said that to me over and over during my undergraduate school-picking process and as a result I ended up at Washburn on the promise to myself that I’d put whatever money I needed to into my graduate degree.  And I’m really afraid that he’s going to talk me out of it because of money.  Mostly, when he brings it up, I just get really bizarrely defensive about it because I want to go where I can get the best degree or the best major professor or whatever.  I want the best education I can, and I’m not willing to let someone come in the way of that but I know how I feel about him and I know that my heart really would let him come in the way of that.  I guess I just leave the ball in his court and hope that he won’t pull that card.

It’s also difficult cos I’m not willing to be away from him for another year.  Especially if I move somewhere really far away like Boston.  I’m not opposed to the idea of taking a year off so that one or more of us can work and I can live in Kansas City for a while and maybe we could save up and have a wedding… but that’s sort of a bad option for him cos what would he end up doing after that, plus I’d lose my mom and dad’s insurance so it would sort of force a wedding, assuming he had insurance at whatever job he got if i didn’t at mine.

 When it comes down to it, I’m so excited to have him to take with me.  It’s just hard to adjust to this having some reason to not be selfish about major life decisions.  I think that’s the kind of selfishness that we’re allowed… we go where’s best for us in hopes of finding other people who have the same interests as us and hopefully they’ll be whats best for us.  But I already know he’s best for me.  I already know that even though its hard now and we fight a little more when we’re together because we want it to be easier to be apart that I want it to be hard with him only.  Cos it would be hard with anyone, right?  And there’s just not a single other person in the world that compares to how he treats me.  I believe that.  I feel like I’ve grown up a lot in the last year, and realistically, I have.  But I’m pretty sure we’re also still twenty-one and invincible.

Everytime we close our eyes

Jess on September 26, 2007

Seeing Kyle this weekend was really great. I surprised him with a bottle of Chrome.  It was cute.  I was kicking around the idea of buying it for him because he’s been wearing axe and that needs to change.  So I went to the mall on Thursday and realized I didn’t actually have time to go in, I just had time to drive by and then go to work.  So I went back on Friday and went in and decided maybe I wouldn’t get it, but then I had the lady spray a card for me and i melted a little bit when I smelled it so I decided to buy it for him.  I hid it under my receipt from the toll booth on the seat.  I wrote a note for him on the back of the receipt and when he got to the car he went to move it and found the box underneath.  He was so adorably surprised by the gift.  I love gift-giving like that.  It makes me so happy to know that he’s happy with what he’s got.

He did well at the tournament, 6-0, byed through octs, dropped in quarters to chad and tom in a really close round.  It was a good debate.  It was also really sweet how well he balances having a girlfriend and kicking ass at debate.  As a girl who dates debaters, I think I have a lot of respect for a boy who can do both well.

This week, I had three tests on Tuesday.  I’m really expecting an A on all of them.  However, I could see my grade on Art History II being a B possibly cos I was bad at memorization.  It was just hard trying to remember the information for all three classes on the same day and that meant I didn’t spend as much time on Art history as I normally do on art history tests.

Jenny and I went to the Spencer Library today to get books for our upper division art history courses.   She’s writing her medieval term paper on San Lorenzo and I’m writing my african art paper on Ibeji figures.  Specifically, I’m going to write about the artistic qualities of the photographs and plastic dolls used as modern ibeji figures in place of the carved wooden figures while addressing some of the reasons for the change.

Oh, and I looked at graduate programs again today.  I think my top two choices are Minnesota and Boston.  Northwestern is probably off the list. I need to get my purpose statement finished soon.  I was going to do that tonight but now I’m relaxing and enjoying the opportunity to not be motivated for once.  I could use a break.

It’s nice having a close female friend in my major again.  I think I’ve missed Cara more than I realized.  And I like Jenny a lot.  I hadn’t really realized how awesome she was until we talked in Florence when I was upset once.  She’s really a wonderful girl.

Productivity in two simple steps

Jess on August 13, 2007

Wait for me another year or two/I will graduate and marry you/You roll the number and I??ll buy the lumber/To build a house up on an Oregon hill//There??s a mountain/There??s a time to/They were put up there to keep us apart/So I watch you making plans and I make plans
– Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, from “Oregon Girl”

Kyle came into town cos he didn’t want me to spend a night alone when things were crazy.  I’ll explain what was crazy later, probably in a private entry.  But it seems alright now.  It’s just a whole lot of stress… but what would the last week of summer be without stress? Really.  So I got to spend an unexpected day with him.  It was much fun.

I woke up late for the dentist which is good cos I really didn’t want to go.  I considered calling in with some bad excuse but I already did that last month so I showed up for the appointment and got my teeths cleaned.  They did a good job.  There was lots of whining at me cos I don’t floss but I don’t lie about it.  I just hate doing it and I don’t have the time and I’m not leaving floss and hand sanitizer out by the tv so I’ll do it there cos that won’t happen.  I want to watch 24 while I’m watching 24… not be concerned about my teeth.  So fuck it.  I might actually take up flossing as a regular habit though, mostly because I hate the dentist so much that I try to keep them from whining at me.  They gave me two different kinds of floss cos I prefer the non-waxed kind for most of my teeth and i require a very waxed kind for my front teeth cos they’re half fake and not very well sanded.  This is too much talk about my teeth.

After adventures with the dentist I had to break into James house to return the PS2 so that David could play Spyro and didn’t have to keep calling me about the PS2.  He’d be the best debt collector ever, I believe.  I left it on the couch and continued to plot how I will tackle the issue of cleaning that place in the next few days.  I’ll do it, I will.

Then it was off to meet with Bearman or more particularly Prasch.  We talked about Grad School.  My list has changed.  I’m gonna do this in tiers like my buddy list on aim.  (bet you didn’t know i tiered my friends there, but i do.  it makes a difference too.)

Tier 1: Schools I Really Want to Attend

  1. Minnesota
  2. Wisconsin

Tier 2: Schools I Would Like to Attend

  1. Northwestern
  2. UCLA

Tier 3: Schools Which will possibly be elevated to tier 1 or 2

  1. Boston
  2. Michigan

I’m currently looking for a movie about something in African History on which I can write a conference paper! Do leave suggestions! I’m going to post this on my suicidegirls account too… cos they are much more academic than my wordpress readership.  Not kidding. But that’s because I have way more wordpress readers.

The search continues

Jess on July 30, 2007

As I know everyone is very interested in things like how the search for grad school is going, I figured I’d blog through my thoughts about the whole thing to keep people up to date.

First, I have to take the GRE in September or October. I need to get signed up for it but you have to have money before you can shore those things up and I don’t right now so to hell with it. I’ll take it at some point and hopefully do well on it and then everything will be fine and I can start really truly applying for grad schools. I’ve been trying to get better at the math section again and it’s going really well. The book I bought seems to help and I like to have the opportunity to do math things because I’ve always really liked math but been unable to take the classes due to a lack of time in my schedule and it being relatively unimportant to my growth as a student. So i also need to start working on verbal but I hate flash cards and vocab and all such things so that’s not something i want to do.

So I have a lot of lists that float around in my head about grad school and those things right now. Here’s my Top 5 if we were going straight masters degree:

  1. Wisconsin-Madison
  2. UCLA
  3. Minneapolis
  4. Northwestern
  5. Texas-Austin

The only changes to the list if I look at it more longterm is that Minneapolis has a really sweet dual Ph.D. program in African History and Women’s Studies that the more I think about the more I get excited about. I think that if I decided I wanted to knock out a Ph.D. right away Minneapolis would for sure elevate itself above the other options. And with Texas being a safety school I’m pretty sure that if I got into and through any of my top 4 programs then I’d be a shoe-in for a Ph.D. at one of the other schools too.

Of course, it’s also important that we factor in realities of living… so i’ve shopped around via facebook marketplace to look at what a one or two-bedroom apartment would run us. If I factor in cost of living from cheapest to most expensive the list looks something like this:

  1. Madison
  2. Minneapolis
  3. Austin
  4. Chicago
  5. Los Angeles

If I look at it from where I think I’d be most happiest living the list looks like this:

  1. Minneapolis
  2. Madison
  3. Chicago
  4. Los Angeles
  5. Austin

If we end up in Madison, we’re a morning drive from Dudley and Shaw which would make us a good meeting point for all three boys. If we end up in Minneapolis, then Kyle has Dudley to play with. Knowing how sort of nervous I get about moving to new places and not knowing anyone, I think that Minneapolis looks increasingly popular on the list. Because of that I was canoodling about on their website today and decided that I should check out what research is happening there. It looks like they have a prof who does work on pre and colonial Great Lakes countries like Rwanda, Tanzania and Burundi. That’s basically what I’m looking to research. So here’s to Minneapolis probably being my top choice for a variety of reasons.

In other news, I should have a car by Friday. I’m so happy about that. Kyle’s dad found me a 1994 grand prix with 87 thousand miles on it. So that’s sweet. And it’s in really good condition. It’s nice to have Kyle’s dad look for the car cos I know that he’ll put me in something that will get me to carbondale as much as possible so I can date his boy 🙂 happy. I’m so excited about being able to see him and things. Even if I’m not excited about him going.

Also, i ran into Naylor at Travis and Trista’s wedding yesterday and she mentioned needing an asst. coach who can travel with her debaters and later with her forensics kids.  I mentioned that I was really hoping to get a job doing something similar this year and she said she’d definitely call me.  So I look forward to that.  Hooray!