future?

Look at my new favorite toy! My mommy bought it, and now I owe her a ridiculous amount of money! Wahoo! I LOVE that I took this picture of miBook with miPhone!

...so, the reason I try not to blog very often is that when I do, it either tends to be nothing, or a lot of complaints about what's going on with me. I feel like I ought to have moe to say in a blog than some angst-ridden teenager. But I need a place to let a lot of my stress out, so I guess we'll try this again, whenever I have internet.

Graduate school is ridiculously hard, and the more often I hear that "a person has to love the dirty bits of research for little to no pay to make it in this field," the more I doubt my ability to do much of anything, especially become a professor. I recently logged into Project Muse to see what I could dig up in the field of my undergraduate thesis, and found that someone else has already published almost my exact article. I was completely taken aback...I still am. What do I do with a year's work that is now apparently worthless? I found that she even referenced some of my same sources! Do I study her article to dissect it, or do I start anew with another topic, only to be thwarted again? I couldn't bring myself to read her whole article, and I don't know who to talk to about it. I've lost my drive to become published, at least in the critical field.
Chris's parents suggested once that I seemed to be more of a children's author/illustrator. Lately, that appeals to me more and more! Who doesn't want to spend their life dabbling in arts & crafts, and rhyme? I could be Dr. Seuss! THAT would be awesome!

so anyway. Those are my most recent jumbled thoughts...aside from money, lack of sleep, and the ongoing attempt to balance school and work.
see you later!

miPhone

Buying a now-discontinued 4GB iPhone yesterday made me reconsider my college experience. I realized three things over the course of being-unable-to-put-it-down and a compulsive checking-its-battery-power all day:
1. miPhone is amazing.
2. Most of my most recent and favorite pictures are on my laptop, where my iTunes account is not.
3. The thing I regret most about my college career is the total disentegration of my family life.
It may seem like a funny thing, to be led to this discovery by miPhone (that's what I named it, and that's what I'll call it. It's an iPhone, it's mine, so there!); but as I searched for pictures of my family to put under their contact information, I found more family pictures from when I was younger than ten than I found from the last twelve years, of any of us (except of myself, which is no good for my contacts list). I also discovered that I was the last to leave Dad's family cell phone plan. I'sweird, isn't it? To create your own cell account and realize that your brother and mother have already "abandoned ship," as it were?
I just miss my family. I miss eating dinner together, and Zack humming when he knew it was almost time to eat (although I've picked up that habit). I miss being forced to go to church after a tantrum on Sunday morning, if only to sit together and be bored for an hour, and listen to Grandma sing. Lately, I've been missing my grandparents more than ever. I feel like I'm missing a home.




And graduate school is hard.