I Think I'm Making The Move

To wordpress that is. Or at least I'm going to give it a try... So my blog is now found here...http://mycheckedbaggage.wordpress.com/

Hard Work DOES Pay Off...

This has been the hardest year of my life to date. School is becoming increasingly more difficult with the pressures it brings and work is always a complicated finessing of different personalities. BUT there is a glimpse of sunight! I knew that a paper I wrote had been accepted competitively at The Eastern Communication Association's annual conference. Today it feels official since I now have a date and time. I'll be trecking down to Baltimore in April to present my paper entitled "An Exploration of Why People Participate in Second Life Social Support Groups". (You can download the program...I'm on page 17)!

Truthfully I'm overwhelmed and overtired which results in a deadly combination of inappropriate emotions... but it feels like all the hours and all the sacrifices I've made to get here are all worth it. It still doesn't seem perfect and I will always feel like I should be spending more time on school work and with friends and family. But I've decided to take the advice my rhetoric professor gave our class in regards to feeling like we should be online discussing and commenting on our ning site all the time ... I have to make decisions on what time each thing in my life deserves and realize that I will probably feel like I'm not giving enough time to anything. Unfortunately I think she's right. I'd like to think that someday I'll feel as though things are in balance but it just isn't looking like that will happen in the near future. Maybe never.

But today I'm going to let that all go and revel in the fact that I have a date and time! And that I got an email from my Mom telling me that she and my father are proud of me :) A girl can't hear that enough....

Thank You World For Your Concern

I have to admit that I think I can do it all and do it well. My founding principal is that anything is possible as long as you try hard enough. So, that being said it is upsetting that it appears that people question my ability to do it! I'll admit, full time work and grad school is hard. I miss doing things with friends and spend not nearly enough time watching tv and relaxing, but the hard work is worth it. I love school and I like doing the reading and writing that it requires. I think I'm good at it. But as is the case with most things in my life, I tend to go overboard. I'm not content with just getting my degree...I need to have an A average. I need to publish, go to conferences and graduate in the shortest time possible, at least in my mind.

Clearly this would put stress in anyone's life, especially for someone with a hard core type A personality. And it appears that others are noticing that I may be under a little bit of pressure right now. I've gotten the are you okay? You're quiet and not acting like yourself. To which I answer, I'm fine...just got a lot going on that's all. Unfortunately that wasn't sufficient for some people. They decided that my weight is now a problem. Apparently in their eyes I don't weigh enough. Now, I'll admit I'm not a stress eater. If I were then I'd be the girl reading journal articles while the forklift came to get me out of my house. Instead, I tend to not want to eat if I've got a lot on my mind. This inevitably leads to weight loss. I probably went down 2 sizes over the summer and quite frankly I didn't think it was even noticeable to the outside world. But apparently it is. As of now I've had not one, but two coworkers comment on my weight. No one would bother me if I put on a few pounds....but loose some and your fair game.

Perhaps others wouldn't be bothered by this. I'm within my BMI range, albeit on the low side. I'm a healthy person. What is most upsetting is not that they think my body isn't right...it's that it implies that I'm unable to handle what I'm doing. People suggest that I cut back on classes saying "what's one more semester". Well, one more semester is significant in my eyes and will not be happening. Perhaps for someone not as type A as myself, this would just roll off their back. Perhaps I need to be more that way, but if I were then the motivation to get me through school could perhaps fade as well. Maybe lack of sleep is making this all the more upsetting. Maybe a good night sleep would make the world seem so much more in line and everything would be perfect. But I'll never know because until August, a good night sleep is simply unobtainable.

In the meantime, maybe all concerned individuals will join togather and invite Jeff VanVonderen over so they can tell me how my problems have influenced their lives in the following ways.....

Now that I would take an afternoon off from studying for!

And So It Begins Again...

The week began with my first rhetorical theory class. Since I'm taking the class online through another school there is the obligatory difficulties that go along with it. Case in point I signed up late because of a clerical error on my part. Signing up late then means that there is a hold on your account since you didn't pay for the class until you are officially a non degree student there. Then once you pay the hold still stays. So by the time I officially was signed up it was the friday before the class started. Being slightly type A I then worry that I'm going to be behind because I haven't done any reading (since I just joined the class and although classes hadn't officially started there typically there is "pre"reading to do). I email the professor who luckily informs me that the syllabus will be emailed on the first day of class. I sit on monday morning waiting for my email and nothing comes....I then get an email on Tuesday from said professor alerting me to the fact that I have an email account through the school and that is the one she is using. Sadly when you sign up for classes or as a nondegree student, noone ever tells you these things. Now I'm a day behind. That night I proceed to set up all the accounts I need for the class (Ning, blog, twitter, wiki etc.) and start reading. Little did I know just how much work this one class was going to be. Journal articles to be read and written about in blog posts (2-3 blog posts a week) a wiki with terms to be updated and tweets to be sent out. Then add in I believe 3 projects for the semester? I'm still lost on that one. But the class will complete my rhetorical theory requirement and is in my domain of interest (computer mediated communication) and will actually coexist nicely with the other CMC course that I'm taking this semester (which can I say also seems like a whole lot of work).

Perhaps this would have all seemed more doable had I not had a looming manuscript deadline. Suggested rewrites had been made however there is always something to be done which means extensive time spent thinking about and writing about social support groups in Second Life. Don't get me wrong, I love my manuscript and I think the rewrites made it considerably better, however the amount of work that has been done on it is daunting. Luckily the manuscript went out the door Wednesday and is officially off my desk until I have to most likely rewrite portions again when it comes back from review.

Sure the manuscipt is off my desk but that opens up my time for thesis writing (although a more appropriate term may be sucks up my time). In less than a month I need to have a thesis perspectus written in a finalized form. This will be approximately 50 pages. At this point 50 pages isn't a big kicker for me. I've written 30 for classes before and in some classes probably close to 60, so its not the lenght that is worrysome, its the fact that although I have done some research in the area of my thesis, what I have done is slightly different enough that it isn't useable. This means more research and more article reading for me at a time when I really have no time. I'm not sure how it is going to get done, all I can say is that I've managed to do everything I set out to do in the past so fingers crossed that the trend will keep.

Last semester I worried that I wouldn't be able to do it all. My classes were difficult and required a lot and I had hoped this semester would be easier. Unfortunately that isn't the case. School is hard and its stressful and I don't think it is imaginable until you actually go through it. The stress is compounded with a full time job with a 3 hour a day total commute. Sometimes it all just doesn't seem feasible. And it seems that when stress hits people find ways to add to it. But I'm learning that you can't control what other people do or say. All I can do is not let them derail me from my goal. I will graduate in May (well I'll walk in May and complete my thesis in August).

Should it Stay or Should it Go Now?

This blog has been around for quite some time now as with most things in life, a change may be due. Yes it's seen some good times, but it may be time to move it to wordpress where it can live with ABIEM and my school blog....

Tough decision...

A Romantic Night With an Axe Murderer

Canyoning, Whales, Fish and Tubes!

The last four days have been quite productive....here is a rundown of our adventures....

Canyoning=AWESOME! There are only good things to say about it...except for maybe the blister I got, which is actually quite painful. The two guides we had were very patient and definitely inspired confidence. We repelled down waterfalls and jumped in pools of water and the views were gorgeous!!



Whale Watch = tons of fun! I really wanted to go on a whale watch. At one time we went every year in Bar Harbor, but we haven't done that in years, even though we always say we want to. We only went 3 miles of the coast and saw a pod of 7 sperm whales and tons of dolphins...It was amazing and so worth the trip!

Thursday I had my shining moment, scuba diving. I freaked out when we initially went down, in fact I just got my head underwater before I came up, so we went to a more shallow area and I went in just fine and spent the whole 45 minutes underwater. Matt had a more difficult time adjusting to the change in pressure and spent a good portion of the time at the surface. Underwater was amazing though. The deepest we could go was 30 feet and it was incredible. There was so much to see!

Yesterday we went river tubing which was quite frankly my least favorite thing to do. The river was too low and the tubes had no padding on the bottom of them so my tailbone hit every rock there was...and let me tell you there are plenty of LARGE rocks in the river. It was actually pretty scary since they just put you in a tube and let you go. I ended up holding on to Matt's tube and we went down together. I wouldn't do it again, but I can say I did it right?!

Abort! ABORT!!

Today we left from Antigua for Dominica. Let me start by saying that I am a really good flyer. I've been to Africa twice, Thailand and various short flights here and there. I am a good flyer. This flight however gave me a bad feeling. I was fine going through customs and getting on the plane. Then as we were getting ready to leave as the flight attendant was reading the emergency instructions the lights on the plane started flickering. One side would go off and then come back on and the other side would go off. This happened a number of times and quite frankly screamed electrical problem to me. But I blew it off, even though I was nervous. Then we are going faster and ready to get into the air and I could feel the brakes come on. Apparently one of the check engine lights came on. At this point I'm seeing it as a sign and thinking that I need to get off this plane. When we came to a hault I asked the flight attendent about it and she didn't seem concerned and Matt saw no problem and the problem seemed to be fixed by the mechanics, who were there for less than 5 minutes, so I stayed. Thankfully our plane did not crash and it was an uneventful 30 minutes.

I did not realize that once we landed there would be another hour and a half of driving to get to the city on one lane roads. Crazy! It was well worth it however because our hotel is beautiful!! We rested for a while and then rented some snorkeling equipment and went to a beach about 15 minutes away. SO much fun!! I expected the fish to be deeper in the water but they were actually very shallow. This freaked me out and I have video of me yelling underwater trying to get the fish away from me. I got over it though and stayed a little deeper than they were.


We got back and made a trip to the pool for some reading and then to a BBQ dinner at the hotel with a live steel drum band. So much fun! Tomorrow we'll go canyoning (repelling down waterfalls). I don't like heights...this will be interesting!

The Dirty Truth About Travel...Sometimes It Sucks

Traveling requires one to be flexible, a virtue I tend not to embrace. I try to be go with the flow, but as Matt can attest, that is difficult for me under the best circumstances and realistically my flexibility is proportional to the amount of sleep I have under my belt.

This vacation, although it only officially started today, is trying my patience and pushing my flexibility to the brink. Last night we stayed at the Sheraton in Revere Ma, so we could leave our car for the week and catch our 5am flight to Dominica. Well, lucky for us, the management of the hotel decided to put the honeymooners in the room next door. So, all night we heard yelling from multiple people (they were playing drinking games) and the lights on the wall actually moved around. That is how loud they were. This does not bode well for me when I need to be up at 2am to make my flight. The people did get kicked out of the room, unfortunately they were kicked out at the same time we were leaving. Awesome for us. Then there is a shuttle that takes you to the airport every half hour. So, we haul ass to get down there for the 2:30 shuttle. The driver was kicking out the honeymooners so he was late and then we realized that we forgot our battery charger in our room. So, Matt goes up to get it and they tell him that they can't bring us to the airport until 3 now because the driver wouldn't have enough time to get back. Great. So, we wait another half hour, finally leave and the driver gets a call on his radio that there are people there that want a ride. So, he tells the front desk girl he is turning around. I have a problem with this and proceed to tell the driver that no he can not turn around because I am not going to miss my flight. They were late, they can wait until the next shuttle.

We arrive at the airport and the ticket counter isn't open yet. So we wait...and wait...finally it opens up and then we wait for security to open up. My bag apparently has problems because they keep it under the xray machine for a good 5 minutes trying to figure out the contents (it doesn't zip so I'm not sure why they didn't just empty it out and be done with it) and then put it through the machine once again. We get through that and go and sit at our gate and its 4:45 and they still aren't boarding. Finally someone from the airline comes down and tells us that they changed gates and are now boarding. Wonderful...good to know.

We make it onto the plane and endure the frigid temperatures for 2 hours. Seriously, it was sub zero in there. I had on a tank top, heavy sweater and jeans and I still had goose bumps. Thankfully even though our flight was late we made our connecting flight from Charlotte to Puerto Rico. That flight would have been perfect. We had an extra seat in our row so I tried to catch some sleep, but just as I was nodding off, Matt spills a can of coke in his lap with some of it landing in my hair...so it looked like he peed himself and that pretty much woke me up.

We were supposed to have a 2 hour layover there so we got some lunch (I spent $10 on lettuce...seriously, the salad was ONLY lettuce and was literally $10). We finally found our gate and it turns out that our flight is delayed an hour. So we sit and wait. And then they say our flight is delayed another hour...so we wait. Finally we get on the plane and it stops in Antigua before going to Dominica. We are told that we will need to go to the transit area so we go and find out that our flight left without us because the plane that was supposed to originally take us from Puerto Rico to Antigua had mechanical trouble. So, trying to be flexible I try to let it roll off my back. They are going to give us a hotel and feed us and get us to and from the hotel and there are worse places to be stuck than Antigua right? Well, maybe Iraq but really after being here, Antigua isn't at the top of my list of places to visit again. We fill out paperwork, go through customs and then we pick up our luggage. Now everywhere else I've flown, that is it. You can just take off at that point. Not in Antigua. They go through ALL of your luggage. We stood there and watched customs people open everyone's luggage and go through everything in it. They were going through the pockets of all the pants in the luggage. Yeah. I really have nothing to hide, but I'd prefer some stranger didn't go through my underwear in front of a room full of fellow travelers. After about 45 minutes of standing and watching other people have their stuff gone though, we get the go ahead to leave, without having our stuff checked. I don't know why...but I'm not complaining.

We then go over to the cab station where the LIAT (the airline we were on) agent got us a cab. I was taking pictures because the grounds were nice, but then I got yelled at and told to put my camera away because I was taking pictures of the airport...yeah. Welcome to Antigua....I did a vlog in Laguardia! Seriously. Oh, and I'm pretty sure that our cab driver may have been drunk. Fantastic!

We get to our hotel and get to our room, after the chaos of getting rooms straightened out for half a dozen stranded people, and see that there are little ants crawling all over our bed. So, we get another room. We then go to dinner which takes an hour and a half...which of course bothers me. I'm an American. I want my food fast. Once I sit down, I want to be out of there in 30-45 minutes. I'm impatient. I can't help it...I blame my culture.

I'm reserving the right to be grumpy tonight and tomorrow after I get to Dominica I will fix my attitude...

Pushing Through

My directed research over the summer is finally ending...or should I say slowing down. Monday marks the date I need to have a final paper written for my class. Granted I've been working on writing this for the past month or so, but it is still in less than ideal condition. I have the data, I know what I want to say, however it just isn't coming out on paper. My adviser is fantastic and incredibly helpful and when I meet with him I'm always energized and excited to talk about and work on my project. But the next day when it's time to actually sit down and write all the ideas and everything we talked about the day before all information is lost!

It's not perfect, but this morning I finished up the paper and sent it off for the final grade in the class. I'm not worried about the grade, he knows I've been spending incredible hours on this project and I'm certain to get an A, however I'm more worried that I'm not going to have the paper close enough to its final stage to get it into a conference. While my adviser is sure we'll get it in, I'm concerned about the time it will take to get it to the point where it is ready. Come Tuesday I start school back up again and will have two difficult classes. So, my time will be limited and I'm not sure how much I'll have to give to this project. Add in work and I'll be moving back to the point of overwhelming stress I was at last year. I want to be able to go out with friends and not spend every minute reading/writing, but I don't see anyway around it once school starts. Granted I tend to be type A and very hard on myself when it comes to school, but no matter what it is going to be a hard road.

So, in order to get ready for the stress that is lined up to hit September 1st...I am getting ready to have a relaxing week in Dominica. Okay, so I have my laptop and told my adviser that if he has changes I'll make them while I'm gone...and yes I'll check my work email while I'm away because I'm anal and afraid that I left something undone when I left. BUT, I only brought four journal articles with me (which I consider to be progress since I brought them all to Savannah a couple of weeks ago). Instead of all school articles, I added in a touch of good old fashioned girl smut...aka Cosmo and two romance novels. Because what's better for relaxation than sitting on the beach reading about sex! Granted I'm not a beach person and typically need to be doing something at all times, but they'll be good to read in airports and at night. Wish me luck on the stress relief and let's hope I can relax on vacation and NOT worry about the things I'm not doing for work/school etc!

How I Spent My Birthday

My birthday weekend was wonderful, my actual birthday however pretty much sucked once I left Savannah. We arrived 2 hours early for our flight and score...found out that we had free wifi in the airport, but then it all went down hill. Our flight was delayed by two hours or so. I entertained myself by playing bejeweled, my new obsession. Then we arrived at Laguardia only to find that our flight that was supposed to be delayed by 45 minutes was actually canceled. We had also been booked on the 8:30 flight however that flight had been delayed to 10:30. This was problematic since we also had a 2 hour drive home once we got to the airport. So, we ended up with a fair amount of time at the airport, during which time I played bejeweled.

I tried to score some free stuff at the airport by telling them it was my birthday...which was totally true, but it didn't work. I was turned down. I did however receive a happy birthday song...



We ended up getting home at 3:20am and being the good worker I am, I was up at 4:30 to get to work at 6:30am!

Overall FABULOUS weekend...FANTASTIC trip!!

Savannah, Day Two

Our Savannah trip was very short by nature, so that meant we would need to take full advantage of our one complete day there. We woke up and were out of our hotel around 8:30am and headed down to see some of the squares we had missed. We ended up getting as far as Forsythe park, which is absolutely beautiful! And then over to the Mercer Williams house, which really is the reason I wanted to go to Savannah to begin with! After seeing Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil I was sold! So, as you can imagine one of the highlights of my Savannah trip would be seeing the house where the movie was filmed.

The tour of the house was fun although we couldn't go upstairs because of the safety issue of there only being one staircase. And there was no picture taking which sucks, however the tour was worth it. The house was amazing!

We ran over to the Moon River Brewing Company for lunch, which is supposedly haunted. Ghost Hunters actually did an episode there. We saw nothing. We hurried through our lunch to catch our dolphin tour on the Savannah River. We almost went on the river boat tour and I'm so glad we did this one instead. The weather was fantastic, high 80's to low 90's and extremely humid. Great day to be on the water! We saw a ton of dolphins and my body saw a ton of sun! Unfortunately as we were heading back we hit some rain, or the rain hit us. It actually pelted us! Those of us on the front deck were soaked and while the rain hitting actually did hurt, it was well worth it!

We walked around the riverfront and had some fried green tomato's, which actually just taste like fried anything really. I don't eat a lot of fried foods, but this wasn't bad. And now I can say that I had some real southern food.

And then the highlight of the night....Ghost tour at the Sorrel-Weed house. We did a quick walk through the squares that were close by and then also went back into the house for some more information about the house. It was a lot of fun and we took a ton of pictures (to be uploaded later!). Perhaps we caught a ghost (there was one picture that had a squiggly in it). Definitely worth going.

Savannah, Day One

Our first day started out with a 3:30 am wake up call. We left our hotel 4:30am for the airport. Surprisingly enough our flight from Portland to Dulles left on time and actually got in early! This was especially important since we only had an hour layover in Dulles before our flight for Savannah left, and anyone who travels knows that so much can happen to make you miss a flight! We actually had to go to another concourse so we had to take a bus to another part of the airport. But all the flights went shockingly well and in total we probably spent 3 hours in the air. This is so refreshing for people who are used to spending 24 hours in the air. These were probably the shortest flights ever for us!! We even did a vlog in the air :)


We ended up getting into Savannah around 11:30 am or so and hit the visitors area of the airport and got some brochures of things to do, caught a cab and made it to our hotel. That afternoon we decided to walk around town and get ourselves acquainted with the area. We walked around and saw a ton of the squares in the area, which was amazing! I envisioned Savannah with old Greek Gothic type houses and spanish moss and I wasn't disappointed!

Late afternoon it was looking like hte weather wasn't going to cooperate so we headed back to our hotel room. Good thing we did since it started raining heavily and thundering and lightning out. We stuck around the hotel until we had our ghost tour at 9:30 that night. The tour was fun, we walked around to a number of squares and heard the ghost stories of Savannah, which is apparently quite haunted. Sadly, I didn't see any ghosts, and I think the heat, humidity and being overtired got to me since I felt like passing out most of the time we were out walking. We got home around midnight and were completely exhausted by all of the excitement of the day! I fell asleep for a little bit in the afternoon and promptly fell asleep again when my head hit the pillow.

Surprise!

Sadly, or maybe not so sadly, this is a big birthday for me and I was hoping to do something special and that is exactly what I got! I had known for maybe a week and a half that Matt was planning a vacation for us for my birthday, but that's all I was initially told. I was told a week out that I needed to take off Friday. Other hints given included: prepare to be spooked, you may want to bring your bathing suit, the weather will be similar to what we have at home, bring a rain jacket and walking shoes. I went back and forth on where we could be going. I thought I had it figured out yesterday, in fact I was almost positive I had it figured out. I thought I was going to Niagra Falls. Here was my logic...Prepare to be spooked=I'm deathly afraid of heights, Bathing suite = Yeah, there is water there, Rain jacket = again the falls, walking shoes = walking around the falls. But I was wrong!

Where did he bring me and how did I react?

And the Research Goes On...

Blogging has taken a back seat to the infinite amount of time that I've spent in Second Life conducting interviews and sitting in on support group meetings! My nights have revolved around when a group was meeting and how many people I could conceivably talk to after the meeting to answer questions about their thoughts on what they get out of support group meetings in SL. Thankfully I can now see a glimps of the light at the end of the tunnel!

I have essentially finished my interviews and although I still need to go to group meetings every now and then, I don't have to spend my Sunday's going to 3 or 4 meetings, which as you can imagine takes up a full day leaving me with little spare time after work, writing, etc.

Currently off the check list:

Interviews (although it would be nice to get a couple more done and that may continue to happen on a sporatic basis as I sit in on random groups to continue my work for my thesis)

Theming my results

Interpretation (can you say hyper personal relationships!) Realistically this will probably continue but the majority of the work I believe is done

Still to do:

Continue with group meetings to stay "in" with the groups and not have to try to regain access

WRITING....oodles and oodles of writing, initially to get into the ECA conference and then hopefully get published later on this year!

Now I just need to get through presenting my research findings to my advisor and two faculty members that he works with from two different colleges. My advisor is a Computer Mediated Communication person who does work with Second Life, one of the other faculty members is a SL person as well and the final person deals with Computer Mediated Communication and social support. So, I will be presenting to people who actually know what they are talking about, which adds much more pressure than talking to people who have no clue what I'm talking about!

Wish me luck tonight!

The Worst Nacho's EVER as told in a vlog

This week in our culinary adventures Andy and I visit The Whig and Courier and test out the Nacho's...

And So It Goes...

I am currently well into my summer research and it is proving to be much more work than I had initially imagined. As many know, I am looking at why people use Second Life as a means of social support, so I am sitting in on support group meetings in Second Life. While by nature SL is hyper anonymous, getting accepted by a group has proven to be difficult in some respects. For example, before I started actually doing my research on a regular basis, I had sat in on some AA meetings. I asked the group leaders if it was okay for me to be there (which they said yes) and then asked the group. During this particular meeting I had one individual who IM'd me very upset that I was there. In another group I asked to be able to sit in and there was another individual who was uncomfortable with me there as well. I have sucessfully sat in on several groups recently and I may have found the formula to being accepted by the group...but only time will tell on that!

This doesn't mean that I haven't been able to get interviews however, I'm at around 15 people in, which is actually behind where I think really should be. Unfortunately the best time to get people is immediately after a group meeting and there are only so many meetings a week. So, I'm going to be content getting maybe 2 people a meeting. That seems to be a controllable number in terms of managing IM's and should keep me somewhat close to the final number of interviews I need (about 60-80). Of the people I have asked to interview, only one has declined saying they were busy. In fact most people seem to be very willing to answer my questions and tell me about their experiences.

Not only is the interviewing (and sitting in on groups which typically go for about an hour) time consuming, but there is also reading and writing to be done as well. While I had an idea that the project would take lots of time and energy, I didn't think it was going to take THIS much time and energy. My work schedule has changed and the number of hours I'm putting in at the day job has increased significantly (one day last week I left my house before 6am and didn't get back until after 7), and while that isn't a forever change, it is definitely making the whole research thing seem to go a little more slowly. While I know I will be able to get the project done by the end of the summer, the pressure lies in that I have two professors counting on me to write a decent paper that will be accepted to the Eastern Communication Association Conference as well as be published.

That is where the stress lies! How does one work a full time plus job, spend 12 hours a week driving, spend another 8 hours or so simply sitting in on support groups and then another who knows how many hours writing...And expect to have a decent result? And how do you explain to others the amount of stress that you are under without sounding whiny? I'm really the only person I know of in my boat!

Progress

A long and busy semester has ended and my nights and weekends that were once filled with Health Communication and The Future of News will now be dominated by research in Second Life.

Initially my project on Second Life and social support groups was just going to be a literature review for my Health Communication Class. It evolved from there into a thesis topic and an independent summer research project.

Over the summer I will be working with my adviser to collect all of my data (by sitting in on support groups in Second Life and doing 1x1 interviews people who go to support groups in SL) and then writing the paper with the hopes of getting it into the Eastern Communication Association this fall and ultimately into a journal.

The big news, while at ECA my adviser spoke with another professor about work she had previously published and told her that we were using it in our research. They discussed the research I was going to be doing this summer and she was interested in it and ultimately wants to work on the project with us. It is very exciting for me!! We had a conference call a couple of weeks ago that went very well and I think that she will be able to bring more of the social support side of things into the equation that my adviser and I don't as much about.

Overall, VERY exciting!!

Who Ever Said Grad Students Aren't Any Fun??

So, tomorrow marks the beginning of the last day of the semester and what does that mean for me? EVERYTHING is due. Let's recap the excitement that was my life this weekend...

Friday night - Yeah, I have no recollection of what happened and not in the good, I was so trashed I don't remember my name kind of way...

Saturday - Spent the morning at McDonald's writing part of a health campaign. There are several McDonalds in my town so I actually have my pick of them. I decided to go to the one closest to my house. Now typically I would have had a coffee milkshake, because really that's my favorite, but since it was 9am I had a hot chocolate...which burned the top of my mouth. Even after that tramatic event I still wrote probably five or so pages...which I consider a success. Then after feeling strange for hanging out at McDonald's for so long, and since the weather was actually nice for a change, I decided to go to the waterfront and actually get some fresh air for a chance. So, I hung out there for a while and then my friend Michelle came by and gave me a much needed distraction from work.

That night I went out to dinner with a friend I hadn't talked to in years which was so fun. I happen to LOVE hot spicy food, so we went and had Pakistani, which we had together a million years ago and ate and talked for 2.5 hours. My clothes still smell like Pakistani food even a day after.

Sunday - Today I experimented with a new writing location, the food court of the mall. Here is the beauty of the mall food court...people leave you alone and they have free wifi. Seriously, I have the ability to get food somewhere if I want it, but I don't have to buy something if I don't want to. There are people walking around all over the place and yelling and chaos...which is the only way I can get anything done...if there is chaos around me. I tried the library and yeah I could plug my computer in, but it is just too quiet. I can't concentrate. But my time at the mall was highly productive and I finally got my health campaign paper written, all 28 pages of it. So, I'm feeling highly accomplished. Unfortunately I still need to create my portfolio and make up a power point, but that will have to wait for another day. Sadly it will have to be done the day before it is all due.

Yup, how exciting is my life?

And There Now Is A Plan

I've been pretty vocal of my love of Grad School. It makes me happy to spend time doing the readings and to write the papers. Things had been a bit up in the air since I was officially accepted into the program starting the fall of 2009. But now I have a plan.

I have been meeting with a professor about a paper that I was writing for another class about social support groups in second life. He had been giving me advice on how to do the research and some of the things I should be looking at. So, at my second meeting with him, and after I got my official acceptance letter, I asked him to be my thesis adviser. To which he said yes. So YEAH for me!! I'm incredibly excited. He specialized in Computer Mediated Communication, which is what I'm into as well. And he is into my research project. I sat down with him last week and set up my schedule and determined that I will actually go the communication route instead of mass communication, which is actually really good. I'd been going back and forth not sure which I should do and really just needed someone to tell me what to do.

With that said, the communication route is apparently more difficult and will be especially hard for me since I have no background in interpersonal communication. I went the pure journalism route for my BA. So, it's going to be a rough road, but I'm sure I can handle it....somehow. The best news...He wants me to do directed research over the summer and present at a conference in the fall, and then publish in the spring. Pretty sweet!! Oh, and he told me I should get my PhD....which I am actually considering doing. Who would have thought that someone who barely made it through their BA would be looking at getting a PhD....oh how life changes!!