Finale

So I sorta graduated Wednesday. Um, yeah. Whoa. It was the sixth CUNY Macaulay Honors College Convocation ever in the entire wide world. All 200 or so of us from the graduating classes of all 7 campuses.

It was, of course, ridiculously hot. I had to spend the better part of an hour, all told, outside in 90+ degrees, no shade, wearing a suit. And when I say a suit, I mean a black suit, and when I say a black suit, I mean:




Because black goes with everything. Especially if everything is black. On top of that, of course, the standard-issue black gown:



We all gathered at the Mac Center on 67th and Central Park West, then assembled outside. Then waited for 10-15 minutes. Then walked about 4 blocks to Lincoln Center. They even had cops stopping traffic for us:



See, aren't we special? We then formed a line--where by "line" I am understood to mean "vaguely linear mob"--outside of Avery Fisher Hall:



For at least another 20 minutes. Here's me just quivering with antici




pation. No, seriously, I was excited. Hot and tired, but excited. Because, hey, it was graduation. That was pretty cool. Finally we all got to sit, and there were speeches, and honorary degrees, and R. L. Stine gave us some valuable life advice, and there was a student speaker--one of our own, of course, because Hunter Honors students are just cooler than other Honors students--and then they had everybody line up, college by college, and get their names called and shake a lot of hands and carry off pretty little pieces of paper (not the actual diplomas, of course; each was a letter from the Dean of the Honors College, telling us how splendid we are). And that was pretty cool. There were lots of gowns and caps of various sorts, and much Pomp and Circumstance, and all those things graduations are supposed to have.

Afterwards, it was off to dinner with the family, presents and cards, and then back to the dorms, no longer sporting cap and gown:



And in close-up--notice the shiny new Macaulay Honors College Alumni pin on the lapel:



The cap went home with my family, the gown was donated after the ceremony to be reused by an underserved high school in the Bronx.

So I got back to the dorm, and back to homework. Um, yeah. I had one final paper due after graduation. My Honors project, to be precise. So that was my Wednesday night, and my Thursday, with a break to attend the Hunter Macaulay Senior Dinner. Nice little affair in the President's Conference Room, with more touching speeches about how much Hunter and the Honors College mean, raffles, an award, and delicious cupcakes.

And then back to the Honors project. The deadline was 12:00 noon today. At about 10:00 AM, I slipped under the professor's door some 4,285 words, 13 pages, 17 works cited, titled "Re-Understanding the Role of Authorial Intentionality in Determining the Status of Beckett’s Self-Translations." Not the most brilliant final project ever written, but a relatively solid paper, I feel... I hope...

...and that's it, really. I'm done. I mean, I still haven't moved out of the dorms (seniors can get 1-week extensions of check-out), so I get to just observe the lovely frantic-move-out atmosphere:
Stuff lying around hallways--

--stuff lying around lounges--

--but really, basically, it's done.

So yeah.

Auf Wiedersehen...

À bientôt...





etc etc etc

Summer is here!!!

Done, finally done! I do like finals week - it's a great reason to spend days at a time home in one's pajamas reading all day, and it's very focussed. This was a semester of extreme ups and downs (in life as well as grades) and finals seem to have gone the same: some went well, others less so.

But for now, I'm just thinking about about the extreme busy-ness of another variety that's about to ensue. First, a whirlwind week and a half of semi-relaxing: my brother's graduation tomorrow, a science fellowship poster presentation on Thursday, going to a really neat-sounding theater show with all old friends, my boyfriend's going away party Saturday, and then a few days of trying to pack up stuff for a major apartment rearranging that will occur when the brother moves back home. Second, a week in Vermont teaching at a dog camp (don't ask, but it's the best job ever!). And third, immediately after Vermont, I'm heading off to suburban Baltimore to spend eight weeks at a neuroscience lab at Johns Hopkins.

And right now, I've discovered this cool thing called television...

Ramblings

So after a rough time writing a 15 page paper on French philosophy, The Scarlet Letter, and Middlesex, and after all of my exams, I am DONE. I just have to present a creative project tomorrow, which is finished except for a letter of intent. Easy as store-bought pie (because, in reality, it takes a lot of skill to make a decent pie crust...)

There's this guy out my window who looks a LOT like this kid I went to high school with and it's freaking me out. It's probably not him, but the thing is, in a place like NYC, you never know who you're going to run into. Case in point, I found out my high school ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend were at the Museum of Natural History the same day at the SAME TIME I was at the New York Historical Society last month. That'd have been awkward...

So anyway, I'm just relaxing at this point. I finished a sweater sleeve that I've been putting off (in a sweater of my own design - I had misjudged the sleeve cap and ended up knitting it too short and too narrow. I was so distraught that I put it away for two months and, while watching Good Night and Good Luck, my Netflix rental that arrived, also, two months ago, I fixed and attached it. Now I have only to make the other sleeve! And the collar...) I slept for 15 hours yesterday. I moved most of my stuff out Saturday, which was a relief because, as of late, I'm getting pretty damn sick of the dorm. Let's just say some of my floor mates have sticky fingers. And let's just say that some of them think it's appropriate to leave RAW BEEF liquid all over the kitchen after they cook their disgusting, heart-attack-on-a-plate "meals" with their girlfriends who manage to spill at least a gallon of water on the floor while doing the dishes. And let's just say that some think it's funny to throw whole rolls of toilet paper into the toilet.

I'm so glad to be moving to a new floor next semester. Hopefully these shenanigans will end. If not, well...maybe it's time for an apartment. (And, thus, a job. Yikes)

Now I'm just in the awkward stage of waiting for grades. Dear incoming freshmen: this will, inevitably, be as stressful as taking exams and writing papers. Even if you know you're going to do well, the fact of the matter is, you have to wait, sometimes weeks, for affirmation. And sometimes, when you have a 3.95 because Hunter counts A-'s as 3.7's but A+'s as 4.0's, you sit and watch your A's come in one by one and watch the 3.95 creep up to a 3.957, and then a 3.96, and then a 3.97, and then BAM, the one A- comes in and it gets knocked back down to a 3.95. Not that I'm averse to A-'s in general - totally a good grade. But just imagine constructing the most intricate card castle, for 5 months, and you're almost done and it's immense and gorgeous and, when you're just putting the last cards onto the top, the crowning jewels, you slip a bit and the whole thing topples and you're back where you started. It's a bit frustrating.

I hate to be melodramatic, but there's something depressing about knowing that your GPA can pretty much only go down.

Egh.

In any case, I'm going to go read. FOR FUN! What a thought!

Tschüss, dear Readers,

Katharine

The high art of procrastination

Was working on Honors thesis: 15 pages on the status of Beckett's self-translations. Reading up a lot on authorial intentionality, and the popular persistence/post-structuralist criticism thereof. Which led me, naturally, to Wikipediaing computer-generated music, and coming across this really cool article from a few months back (okay, I only skimmed it, because I'm not that much of a procrastinator, but I guarantee it's interesting):


Triumph of the Cyborg Composer

You should read it. Or at least listen to the music samples:


Sample of Emily Howell - Track 1


Sample of Emily Howell - Track 2

Two things strike me about the article:

1) I'm very impressed with Douglas Hoffstadter, who's quoted in it. I'd only read his book Gödel, Escher, Bach, which is quite fascinating but makes pronouncements like "Any computer that can beat a human at chess will also be able to write poetry." Hoffstadter, as quoted in this article, is clearly willing if reluctant to adjust his views on music, artificial intelligence, etc as new developments arise. Which is cool.

2) The whole debate of "Is it really music?" seems strikingly similar to the debate around the turn of the 20th century about whether photography was really "art." I have a feeling it'll turn out the same way--people will acknowledge that, yes, even if a machine does all the mechanical work (reproducing a certain view of a certain place at a certain time, or arranging a certain set of notes in a certain way), the important bit is the human element directing that production, however distantly. Even if the production was entirely uncontrolled by humans after the initial programming--if the program was just left on its own, with no one saying "write a slow waltz in a minor key for full orchestra" or "give me something in a 12-bar blue progression with arpeggiated ostinato for bass, harp, and drum kit" or whatever--humans would have defined the parameters for the composition anyway. And even if they didn't, frankly--if, I don't know, a computer programmed a computer to program a computer to produce music--I think we'll really stop worrying about this stuff. Because, you know, humans still enjoy looking at things like sunrises, and we know the sun and the rotation of the earth and the atmosphere don't get together and plan to look pretty.

In other news: Joel Grey + Muppets. Don't ask questions. Just follow the link.

Finals!

I'm happy to report that one week from today, I will be entirely, 100% done with finals and with the spring 2010 semester (well, except for a research paper I'm writing, but that's for my internship not for school so it doesn't entirely count), relaxing in festivities after watching my brother, and the rest of the MHC Hunter 2010 class, graduate at Lincoln Center. It will be much fun.

Sadly, the 6 days in between now and then will probably not be much fun at all. My schedule currently looks like this: wake up at 7, study German for an hour, work on CHC report (finished it today! Hoorah), study biology at the library all afternoon, come home to study chemistry all evening, work on poster for research presentation till ~12:30/1, go to sleep, repeat. Yuck. So I'm choosing to concentrate on that nice post-final feeling and it's impending real-ness.

No longer legally aiding

See this?



That's my ID holder, without my Legal Aid ID. All empty. And that's kinda weird. Like, whoa. Today was my last day (actually, last Wednesday was supposed to have been my last day, but I didn't really do anything last Monday, I would have taken the day off to work on my Law & Lit paper except that was a day I might have had to testify in court, so yeah... I just sat around researching for the paper until it was confirmed that the case was being moved back to next month... point being, I figured I might as well come in one more day to make up for having not really been there one day). Dropped off my ID at the Legal Aid headquarters, picked up my Completion Certificate (I would have gotten it at the closing ceremony but I had my Law & Lit final at the same time as that).

[oh, and the earphone is because I took this picture while looking up different recordings of Shostakovich's 2nd Waltz, which I've had stuck in my head for nearly a week and must therefore get on my iPod, along with the rest of the Suite for Variety Orchestra. Ended up getting the recording that Kubrick, according to Wikipedia, used in Eyes Wide Shut. This is all utterly irrelevant, and you have my permission to refrain from retaining this information in your consciousness].

Other than that, well, there's finals. This is that weird part of the semester where the regular-going-to-school stuff is over, but the finals aren't. Still got to do my Honors thesis (15 pages on translation and authorial intent in Beckett's work), and my Women and the Law exam (which is fun, you just analyze fact patterns to see what precedents would apply). No final for the writing workshop. Law & Lit--well, not feeling terrible about it, but neither the paper nor the test went as well as I'd hoped. I knew I wouldn't do too well on the test, but I had hoped for a more solid paper. It's probably A- material, though I'm not ruling out B+ altogether. I just didn't manage to get any sources. There are five entries in my works cited, counting the text I'm analyzing. Took too long to read Discipline and Punish, you see, and needed to get that done to do a good job reading other sources. So yeah.

Just one more week...

This weekend is going to be full of paper writing (and CHC presentations on Sunday, but I'm not counting that - skipping out as early as I can, because my paper is a lot more important). I'm writing a paper for my Sexuality and American Culture class. I think I have a thesis. I at least have a topic: Spatial relations of power - how homes are used in Eugenides' Middlesex and Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter as centers of power (bio-power?) and how the power relations within shape people. This might also include the sense of liberation found with leaving the home in these two novels. And I have to talk about Michel Foucault, probably heterotopias, normalization, embracing the heteronormitive, and bio-power.

Considering how unsure I am, I definitely need my full day at the Baruch library to sort it all out. I feel like it'll be good once I start...

All in all, though, this upcoming week is a lot less hectic than my finals normally are. I have my Freud final on Monday, this paper due Tuesday, and a German final Thursday. I have a creative project due next week, but that's already finished, so I'm not even concerned.

I see cookie baking and knitting in my near future. HOORAY!

Good luck everyone,

-Katharine

Last CHC class ever in 10, 9, 8...

I'm excited to announce that in a few short minutes, I will enter my very last CHC class ever. It's not that CHC's are inherently bad, in fact I have generally liked mine. It's just the significance - now I too, like generation (well ok, a few classes) of Macaualy students before me, will have officially spent two full years learning about a city that I grew up in any way. Hoorah!

This being our very last one, the classmate I'm working with and myself decided to really try to make something of our final project, and I think we did a pretty good job - it was definitely the most enjoyable class project I've done in a while. This last CHC is supposed to be about the future of New York City, which in our class meant urban planning and sustainability, so my partner and I decided to examine composting in Central Park. The really nice thing about this project was that we got to go off the beaten path; our work has included lots of photography, editing and creating digital images, designing a composting unit, making neat powerpoint cartoons with Pacman look-alikes, and making lots of maps, such as this one:

'm excited to announce that in a few short minutes, I will enter my very last CHC class ever. It's not that CHC's are inherently bad, in fact I have generally liked mine. It's just the significance - now I too, like generation (well ok, a few classes) of Macaualy students before me, will have officially spent two full years learning about a city that I grew up in any way. Hoorah!

This being our very last one, the classmate I'm working with and myself decided to really try to make something of our final project, and I think we did a pretty good job - it was definitely the most enjoyable class project I've done in a while. This last CHC is supposed to be about the future of New York City, which in our class meant urban planning and sustainability, so my partner and I decided to examine composting in Central Park. The really nice thing about this project was that we got to go off the beaten path; our work has included lots of photography, editing and creating digital images, designing a composting unit, making neat powerpoint cartoons with Pacman look-alikes (standing in for aerobic microorganisms decomposing material), and making lots of maps, such as this one:

And now, very soon, we'll be presenting our research to our class, then on Sunday there's a big cross campus event at the Macaulay building for all of us sophomores to show our work. Just wait till they see my Pacman cartoon - er I mean diagram...

First Final = Massacre

So, my first final pounced on me today. Dreary, weary, and quite miserable from the near all-nighter I pulled just a couple hours ago, I was in no mood to tackle the task. The time, however, arrived.
I sat at my desk and stared... I scanned the page for a minute or so, with a small grin manifesting on my face, and it continually grew after I read each question. This test has met its match.
I pulled and readied out my BiC Ultra-Round-Stick-Grip pen, then made my marks! Line after line, I spewed out what my head churned....
Twenty minutes later, I look around, rise from my desk and hand in a paper nicely decorated with cursive letters and even one or two doodles on the side. :) Success!

It's GO time!

Here's to crushing finals and papers, one at a time.

Or maybe a few at a time, if, like me, Netflix is thwarting your time management skills by putting all 7 seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Instant Watch.

Good luck everyone!

The Finals Sickness

By some inverse relationship that exists just to make your life as a college student unendingly difficult, the more one needs good health to study and focus on finals, the more illnesses one contracts. So, it's crunch time, and I've come down with a fever, sore throat, runny nose, and general exhaustion. Unfortunately, I don't have the luxury to rest to get better, so I'll just have to deal with the endless bouts of coughing in between chapters of biology and chemistry.

Things keep happening...

I was going to bring my dress shirts to the dry cleaners yesterday morning, but I didn't. Today, I discovered/remembered that the buttons on the sleeves of the shirt I was going to wear tomorrow are somewhat cracked:



Had to find another shirt that wasn't too wrinkled. They were all too wrinkled. Luckily, one is wash-and-hang-dry, not dry-clean-or-iron. So I hung it up...



...and created an ungodly Doctor-Moreau-esque contraption from a Windex spray nozzle, and empty Pepsi bottle, and water...



...and sprayed it, and let it dry over the school day (with towel to catch drips, of course).



Not 100% perfect, but it'll do for another day of serving subpoenas, tracking down witnesses, looking for security cameras, and whatever else.

In other news, I somehow managed to spend all last night preparing for an oral presentation on my Law & Lit paper (an analysis of punishment theory, primarily that of Michel Foucault and Leon Radzinowicz, as played out in Camus's L'Etranger), and barely sounded coherent in class. I mean, I got a few laughs, which is always good, but my argument wasn't as concise and grammatically correct as it should have been, I rambled and searched for words. Oh well. Can't win 'em all.

I then proceeded to forget to hand in my last case brief for Pol Sci, and didn't remember until way after class ended, with the net result that I emailed it to the professor over an hour after the end of class--in other words, enough time had elapsed that I could, conceivably, have written it up after class. So I have nothing to prove that I actually did the homework by the assigned time, aside from any good-faith belief the professor has that I'm not a total slacker. Could be worse, I suppose.