Preparing to make history

I just got all fixed up for voting tomorrow, identifying the candidates who will be on my ballot in my wee little town. I had thought I'd probably get more information in the mail, like I did in the past in California, but all I got was from the GEO at University of Michigan.

It took a while to figure out who was running for congress and for the house in my town. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that there is just a Republican on the ballot for state representative here.

Anyway, I'm ready. Now just nine more hours to wait. Hopefully the lines won't be too crazy first thing in the morning here. I'm inclined to agree with folks who are arguing that states that don't allow for early voting are effectively doing the same as charging a poll tax for people who want to vote in person, if you have to stand and wait for several hours to cast your vote.

Ah, a friend just sent helpful information -- there's a website that will show you your ballot ahead of time if you're a Michigan voter, and links to lots of information. It's PUBLIUS. I'll never get over the whole romanticization of ancient Graeco-Roman civilization as the original seat of democracy in light of its profound inequalities, but never mind the name. It's super useful.

Little victories

Well, having eaten enough to sustain a small village for a night or two (bacon and pierogie fried with onion right in the bacon grease, covered with sour cream, and washed down with a bottle of nonalcoholic beer, perfect food after working for two days straight with hardly a crumb in my stomach, and then trudging home in the snow), I'm going to bathe and go to bed for a few hours. I pulled my second all-nighter last night (okay, okay, I slept from 8 am til 1 pm on Monday and 5:40 to 8 am this morning, but that doesn't really count) to get the portfolio finished for my democracy course, but it is FINALLY in. I'm accepting incompletes in my independent studies, and have worked out the arrangements with the professors. Now, on to finish my undergraduate grading, and to magically make an ungodly number of field work hours and my final field work paperwork happen between now and Friday, and I'll be finished with this semester of craziness. Thank God I never have to be a first-time Anthropology 101 GSI ever again. Next time, it'll be the second. And that makes all the difference in the world!

By the way, my final paper for Democracy ended up being 35 pages. And you know, I feel pretty good about it. I hope she likes it too.

The other good news: I have a prelim committee forming, and prelim ideas being generated, for Social Work. And the whole team is people I think are amazing and fabulous and whom I love working with, and am excited to spend time getting to think with. And they seem enthusiastic too. About the ideas and about each other. Score. Like, major score. I just need to talk to the last of the four (four is the upper limit; three is typical and I've already got three on board), but assuming she has time, I'm pretty sure she'll be game, because I know she's positive about working with me although I haven't approached her specifically about prelims. She gave me an A+ in her class. So yeah, I think I can hope for her support. :) So, life is looking nice from here. Although it's a little blurry, since I need to rest my eyes. Now, on to the bath. Hello and good tidings to you, world.

Grad school highs and lows

The good news: I have finally, after more than a year and a half of delay, finished my two final papers for Qualitative Methods. I have my portfolio all ready to submit, and will do so tomorrow. It's not perfect, but it's done. And that is something. And actually, I do really like one of the papers, and my colleague I wrote about seemed to, also. That's also something.

The other good news: I have a paper idea for my Democracy course (also for finishing out a long-incomplete class) that my other professor likes, that she thinks will work well with the course materials, and that I know will also help me tremendously in kick-starting my work on my research internship, which I have to finish next semester. I'm going to examine ideas of participation embedded in housing programs for Roma in Central Europe, considering cultural assumptions about Roma implied in the policies and implementation, and reflecting on connections to rhetoric of the deserving and undeserving poor in American social welfare history. There's really a there there, and I'm excited about it, I have the field data to support this line of analysis, and I'm looking forward to thinking about it.

The bad news: I'm supposed to have submitted work to the professor with whom I'm doing an independent study, today, in preparation for our meeting tomorrow. I have nothing done. I've been teaching, writing and helping prepare the final exam for the Anthro 101 students, writing for other courses (see above!), and commuting to and working in Detroit to finish out my field placement at AFG. Really, that's about all I've been doing except writing in my blog and taking photographs. I've had the occasional Gilmore Girls break to keep myself vaguely sane, but then gone back to writing. And obviously I've taken care of the minimal daily requirements of sleeping, eating, maintaining the minimal level of hygiene, and filling up my grocery cart and my gas tank. Seriously, that's really it. But, it doesn't change the cold stark fact that the work isn't done. Fuck. What do I do?

What I want to do is delay our meeting yet another few days and bust my ass reading and writing this weekend. But I fear I've lost my credibility now. Argh!!! Why is this so hard? And I'm so damned tired -- I only got back from our exam meeting in Ann Arbor at 11:00 last night. SIGH.

Update: I wrote to her asking for another damned extension and telling her about my revised schedule plan. I'm going to work work work tomorrow afternoon and Friday and the weekend and Monday, so that by the time Wednesday rolls around, I can hopefully have solid work done on my doctoral papers and can focus on my field placement. And then somewhere in there I'll fit in my grading for 101.