Treat yourself.

So there's this saying that's been floating around the Internet lately:

I think it's supposed to be some sort of motivational/self control/weight loss mantra or something.

Well guess what. I'm not buying it.

Consider birthdays. People decided a long time ago that the best way to celebrate surviving another year was with cake. And ice cream. And (if you're from my neck of the woods) a piñata full of candy. 

 So of course I'm going to reward myself with food. I like food. And if I do something big like, say, finish my master's degree, I'm definitely going to treat myself to something beautiful and indulgent.

Something like this gorgeous Black Forest gâteau...

And I won't feel even the slightest bit sorry about it. Because what else would I reward myself with? And because taste buds are a blessing, so I'm going to make the most of them. And because dessert makes me happy.

I don't care that I'm not a dog. Besides, dogs can't have chocolate anyway.

So the next time that you do something that's worth celebrating, celebrate. Treat yourself. 

It's the right thing to do.

I'm all fidgety and I can't concentrate.

Y'all.

I just saw the printed version of my dissertation. Holy cow.

Let me tell you something. Seventy pages looks like a lot more in person than it does on the screen. And when I picked it up, it was heavy -- like the weight of my entire MA year was in my hands.
  

 

Dramatic? Maybe a bit (Actually, who am I kidding -- totally dramatic). But my goodness. I'm turning that sucker in tomorrow, and then I'm DONE.

Forever.

Sorry for overreacting, and for dragging you along with me. I just needed to have a little freak out...and freaking out by yourself is not half as fun as when other people are involved. So thanks for indulging my need to be a bit crazy this morning.

Also, in retrospect, that coffee I just drank may have been a bad decision. I'm all fidgety and I can't concentrate. I need to chill out.

I think that after I turn this in tomorrow, I might do a little dance right there in the postgrad office. Actually, probably not. But I'll be dancing like a fool on the inside. At the same time, I'll probably also be panicking. I just keep telling myself, it's okay. You're not going to fail. And then I think, what if I accidentally plagiarized the whole thing?! What if, somehow, I messed EVERYTHING up?! What if I do, in fact, FAIL?! Not possible, I know, but these are the things that dominate my thoughts.

That's normal, right?

Right...
  

Squiggly red lines.

As what some may call an overly grammar-conscious individual, I pride myself on my proofreading skills. I'm the kind of person who uses punctuation in text messages, and I never send an email without rereading it. So imagine my horror when I realiz(s)ed that, upon arriving in Britain, pretty much everything I'd ever written instantly became littered with spelling errors.

And it's all because British people spell things wrong weird. 

It really does make a difference.

 Consider, for example, the following words I had to change in a document, simply because it was drafted in our DC office, and we needed a UK version. The American spelling is listed first:

program v. programme

center v. centre

analyze v. analyse

color v. colour

revitalizing v. revitalising

pediatric v. paediatric

counseling v. counselling

mobilized v. mobilised

dispatched v. despatched

maximizes v. maximises

organizational v. organisational

You may have noticed that Brits don't really care for the letter 'z', but they are quite happy to add extra letters and move others around, often in blatant disregard of phonetics.

After a year here, most of which has been spent writing academic papers, I've grown accustomed to these silly spellings. Perhaps too accustomed, as I'll occasionally accidentally use a British spelling when writing to an American friend. (Incidentally, this always makes me feel like a bit of a traitor.) But I typically try to adjust my spelling based on who will be reading it. Kind of like how I talk football with my housemates, but soccer with my friends from home.

Anyway, many of these American spellings are widely accepted, even if they're not preferred. As I'm writing this with a UK spellcheck, the words center,  analyze, color, pediatric, and counseling all have squiggly red lines below them. However, the others aren't flagged as incorrect. 

This can be problematic, because sometimes when I'm editing things for work, I won't catch them -- either out of habit or ignorance (my untrained American eyes refuse to believe that 'program' is missing some letters.) -- and neither will spell check. 

And then I get made fun of.

But not anywhere near as much as the first time my coworkers heard me say the word, "y'all." That was a whole nother level of hilarity, my friends.

Happy Monday, and may your computer's spell check be ever more zealous than mine.

 

Thanks, Kingston!

Guys, I got some fun news today.

My university is having a student blog competition, and I just found out that they listed mine as one of the top five! So fun.

My blog was selected along with this nature-y one, this fashionable one, this random-assortment-of-stuff one, and this artsy one. They're all great. Go show them a little love. 

The competition runs through August, so they haven't picked an overall winner yet. But I'm just happy to be considered.

So thanks, Kingston! And thanks to all my sweet friends (back home and elsewhere) who laugh along with me as I stumble through my new life in London. I wish you could be here in real life (aka, come visit!), but for now we'll just have to settle for some long distance love.

Y'all are the best. Seriously.

The entire Internet...

Everything on the Internet, was not enough to keep me entertained today. I finished what I wanted to on my dissertation fairly early, so I decided to take the rest of the afternoon off. You know, just waste time and chill. But no. Later, I went back to it out of sheer boredom.

Basically I was so unmotivated that I couldn't motivate myself to stay unmotivated. Which meant that I ended up being motivated. Does that make any sense?

I think I just really need to go outside.

(source)

Though I did find this and this and this. Each of which definitely made me smile.
  

Wednesday randoms.

My favorite food is anything breakfast, so I was really really excited to see that this exists.

We went to a pub in Surbiton to watch the Champions League final between Bayern Munich and Chelsea. Since Chelsea is a London team, pretty much everyone there was wearing blue and singing songs like, "You are my Chelsea..." The game went to overtime, and then penalty kicks. And then Chelsea won, and all hell broke loose. Half the guys immediately ripped off their shirts and started swinging them around their heads. Others climbed onto the tables to lead a celebratory sing along. A couple glasses went flying, and we decided that was our cue to leave. It was certainly entertaining, though. And the whole bus ride home, these guys behind us were singing this song. Quite the night.

I submitted my final essay of the term today! I had over 16,000 words in this month, so I'm not as worried about my 10,000 word dissertation as I used to be.

McDonald's McFlurries choices are severely limited here. They choices are all Cadbury's stuff...no Oreos, no M&M...and, worst of all, no Reese's! Disgraceful.

The best email a girl can get? "Two pairs of pretty, but occasionally impractical shoes headed to you tomorrow." Thanks, Dad!

On the subject, mail is quickly becoming my love language. Especially when there's coffee involved. And the tank was just in time -- the next day, it was 75 degrees (F) and sunny! Lovely.

I'm really excited for June. Friends are coming the first and last weeks, and about mid-month, I'm headed to Italy! The last time I was in Italy, I was only 5. All I remember is getting stung by wasps, my uncle's cracked rear-view mirror, and people burning trash on the side of the road. So I'm hoping this go around will help to redeem the country for me. And with Google images like this, I'm thinking that might just happen.

Happy Wednesday!
 

Wednesday randoms.

I met a Texan on the Tube this weekend. Even though Tube etiquette necessitates that no one make eye contact, let alone speak to anyone else, I noticed his Texas A&M hat and just had to ask. "I'm sorry, but did you actually go to A&M?" His response: "Well, yes ma'am, I did." Ma'am! I haven't been called ma'am in months. My heart smiled. It made me miss Texas boys.


Other things that made my heart smile this week include:

This video. It's pretty much my life.

This other video. I'm so proud.

This handy dandy website. Super helpful in the kitchen.

This cheddar cheese. I haven't seen yellow cheddar since I moved here. Apparently, it's called "coloured cheddar." Who knew?

This picture.

Skyping with my sweet sweet friend to figure out what we're gonna do when she visits me here soon!

The flowers Hannah and I bought ourselves because it was Friday and, well, why not?



Things that have not made me smile? Well that'd be:

Forms that make me list my address history. Where have I lived in the past 5 years? More like, where haven't I lived in the past 5 years...

Running out of vanilla while I'm trying to make frosting.

Finding a massive run in my new gray tights the first time I wore them..after I'd already left the house.

Not being sure whether the proper spelling is "g-r-A-y" or "g-r-E-y."

Realizing that I'm rapidly approaching the real-life-adult status that requires that I find a full time job.

Not being able to play tennis because of the rain.

The absurdly high price that the university charges for color prints. 40p per page? Seriously? I'm a poor grad student.



But, let's be honest. Even though the things on this second list may be frustrating or inconvenient, they definitely don't outnumber or overwhelm the good stuff. I spend most of my life smiling.

Hope you do too.

Caffeine highs and hallelujahs.

Today was deadline day. One of them, at least.

I got up early, piled my hair on top of my head (because, let's be honest, a shower just wasn't going to happen), grabbed a sweatshirt and headed out the door. In typical finals fashion, I wore my glasses, which wasn't the best idea since it was raining. And rain and glasses don't exactly get along.

But I made it to uni and turned in my essays...all 49 pages of them. Hallelujah! 

I then treated myself to coffee and tried not skip down the street as I sang praises to Jesus under my breath all the way home. So happy to finally be done with those.

It's okay, Starbucks. I'll forgive the impressively poor attempt at spelling my name
since this caramel macchiato was particularly delightful.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not done. But I'm almost done. Only one more essay to go. Once that's in, I'll have written over 16,000 words this semester. Did I mention that's 6,000 more than the suggested minimum word count for my dissertation? Yeah. Cool.

And now, seeing as how I'm tired of staring at computer screens, and I'm rapidly coming off my caffeine-on-an-empty-stomach high, I think I'll take a little nap.

Goodnight, world.

 

YouTube comments and the future of humanity.

I don't know whether to laugh or to cry.

Over the past month (and I'm embarrassed to say this), I've logged countless hours on the YouTube page for Justin Bieber's "Baby." Hitting the mute button immediately does help a little, but it's really started taking its toll. Why would I do that to myself, you ask? Well I don't really have a choice. It's the topic of my research for my computer-mediated communication class.

I'm studying flaming. Now, you may have never heard that term, but if you've spent any time at all on the Internet, you've seen it. Flaming is basically hateful speech, and it's everywhere online. 

I picked the Justin Bieber video for two reasons: 1) It's the most-viewed video on YouTube.
2) It inspires overemotional responses. So it's a prime subject for flames.

Anywho, I've been looking through hundreds and hundreds of comments lately. This afternoon, when I pasted several hundred into a Word document to organize, this happened:

My spell check just gave up and died. I didn't even know that could happen. Those Bieber fans sure have a way with grammar. It's shocking what you find on that page. It's also really depressing.

Lev Grossman said this on the subject:

“Some of the comments on YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity just for the spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and the naked hatred.”

And that pretty much sums up my entire life these past few weeks.
 

Rube Goldberg.

A Rube Goldberg machine: accomplishing a task as inefficiently possible.

Also known as metaphor for my approach to writing essays. Especially lately.

It's amazing what you can accomplish when you have essays to write. Otherwise boring things become super interesting. It's not that I'm deliberately looking for distractions (okay, maybe I am...)

It's just that the Internet is full of stuff that's not my essays. And it's calling my name.

It'd be rude not to respond.

   

Proper Wednesday randoms...

...will return shortly. 

That is, after I conquer the 5 essays I'm working on. These babies are seriously limiting my ideas for randoms, because thanks to them I'm not going anywhere fun or learning anything new.

Oh wait, yes I am. I'm going to the kitchen to make more tea and learning loads about the construction of online identities and how to do critical discourse analysis.

But that doesn't count.

To maintain some semblance of sanity, I've been taking time off every so often to watch old episodes of The Office online or hit refresh while staring at Twitter...you know, so I can live vicariously through all you lovely people and the neat stuff you've got going on.

Did I just say neat? Anyway...

So until I have something exciting to tell you, I'm going to try not to waste your time. Or mine. Because I've seriously got to get these essays done.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with this picture, because it accurately sums up how I feel after pounding away at my poor keyboard for hours upon end:

"Me? I am never going to be happy again.
So I'm just gonna go curl up in my sock drawer and sleep for days."

Wednesday randoms.

Today and tomorrow, we're basically doing a presentation marathon in my intercultural communication class. We did two hours today, and are scheduled to go from 9-1 tomorrow. Plus, our questions of censorship presentations are scheduled for tomorrow as well, from 1-3...so that's a grand total of eight hours of sitting through PowerPoints in two days. Six of which will be straight through. Kill me.

But at least I got one of mine out of the way today. And since I couldn't bring myself to do anything remotely academic when I got home, I baked. Normally, I've got an open-kitchen policy when I bake. I just leave stuff on the table, and people from our building are welcome to take what they'd like. But I've decided to bring these to class tomorrow (you know, to lesson the blow of hours upon hours of presentations), so for once they're not up for grabs.

My sweet grandpa sent me a check for Valentine's Day. The problem is, if I want to cash it here, I've got to pay a fee, and it could take up to 2 months for it to process. Lame.

The weather was gorgeous over the weekend, so a few of us went down to a nearby park and played football (soccer). I haven't played in ages (and it showed), and I'm also pretty out of shape (and it showed), but it was still a lot of fun. Hopefully that'll happen more often, once its a little warmer.

I recently busted out an old jump drive that I got from Baylor about 4 years ago. On one side, it says Baylor, and has our mascot. I always knew that. But what I just noticed was that it says Kingston on the other side! Foreshadowing? Crazy.

Well, that's all I can manage for now. The exhaustion is setting in and I don't have the energy to type anymore. Okay, so I'm being a little dramatic. (But seriously...)

Happy Wednesday!
 

Inside, looking out.

 Sunshine, blue skies, and only the slightest breeze. It's an absolutely beautiful day. 

And I'm stuck staring out the window. Not going outside.

Okay, so that might not be entirely true. I made a Tesco run and checked that mail, so technically, I have left the flat today. But that's it.

Sunny days make me want to run and jump. They make me want to go on long walks and play tennis and wear dresses. But there's too much to do, so I can't. Well, I guess I can still wear dresses. So there's that.

Over the next week and a half, I've got two presentations to put together, plus I've got to design a practical project. And since we haven't really been given any guidelines ("just do something that has to do with one of the lectures"), I'm essentially starting from scratch. Once I figure out exactly what I want to focus on, I should be fine. But that's the problem. I'm interested in too many things. I've seriously changed my idea for my intercultural communication class 3 times in the past week. 

The good news is, after mid March, I won't have as many classes to attend. Sure, I'll still have plenty of reading and writing (soooo much writing) to do, but I can do that outside. And I will.

But for now, I'll just have to be content staring out the window. And maybe if I position my chair just right, I can manage to be sitting in the sun...even though I'm still stuck inside, looking out.

I feel ya, Calvin.

Bring on the spring.

Pandas, monkeys, bananas.

I had an American moment in class the other day.

We were talking about cultural relativity in cognition -- basically, how individuals' cultural backgrounds influence how they think about the world. To demonstrate, our prof showed us the following images, and asked which two of the three are most closely related:

What do you think?

Most of my classmates grouped the monkey and the banana together on the basis that monkeys eat bananas. 

But I disagreed. I raised my hand and very adamantly said something along the lines of, "But the panda and the monkey are both animals. They both move and breathe and they're fluffy!"

Then our prof nodded and moved on to the next slide. I had my head down and didn't notice what had just popped up on the screen till I heard laughter and a classmate say, "Oh my gosh, Kristen!" When I looked up, this is what I read:

"The American participants showed a marked preference for grouping on the basis of common category membership; Panda and monkey fit into the animal category...[as opposed to] grouping on the basis of thematic relationships..." (Ji, Zhang and Nisbett 2002)

Bam. Exactly what I said.

A nice little reminder that despite my new affinity for tea and biscuits, I am, in fact, American.

Wednesday randoms.

Today started off with a sweet, sweet email from one of my favorite people ever. So I just knew it was gonna be a good one. And it was. But then again, Wednesdays usually are for some reason.

I found out my draft proposal for my dissertation is due in just over two weeks. Aaaaaand panic.

Traffic lights here are slightly different than at home, in that there's a yellow light after the red light (before it turns green) too. It's weird.

I found out that "braces" does not mean what I thought it did. We were watching this music video, and Hannah pointed out how cute one of the guys looked in his braces. I argued that none of them had braces. Apparently she meant suspenders. Except, here, suspenders hold up ladies hosiery -- they're garter belts. So be careful how you use that word...

We read an article in class today on gender stereotypes called, "Women don't eat pizza." So I came home and made some. And now, I will eat it. Take that, sexism.

Recipe here. And trust me, you've got to try it.

I still haven't gotten any grades back from my modules last semester. I just want to know what I got. But I also don't want to know at all. But I have to know. Just tell me already. 

Boy bands seem to [still] be really popular here.

I really wanted Mexican food the other day, but I was feeling kind of lazy, so I settled on taco salad. (No, Pine Cove friends, it wasn't a Wednesday. Sorry.) But there are no Mexican cheese options -- like the jack, asadero, colby medleys I'm used to. Just cheddar. So many different kinds of cheddar. Which also made the layered dip we had for the Super Bowl party not so authentic. Oh, and the salsa is super sweet. But we made do.
 

Principles of Intercultural Communication.

This kicked off a great discussion in my Principles of Intercultural Communications class today. Out of the 15 or so people in class, there were at least 12 different countries represented, which makes the topic that much more real and applicable.

I'm thinking it should be a lot of fun.

Done!

Well this is a first. I've completely finished all of my coursework, and it's not due for another three days. (Not that I'll turn it in before the day it's due, but still...) I'm done. And I'm in a bit of shock. This doesn't usually happen to me. I never (ever) turn anything in late, but I'm hardly ever early. Definitely not this early. 

Plus, classes don't start back up again for me until the end of the month. So I've got like three weeks of no responsibilities to fill. The only problem is that my flatmates won't be done for another week or two.

So I don't really know what to do with myself.

Guess, for now, I'll catch up on some highlights...

(Men v. Tech)

(Women v. Iowa State)

But then, who knows?

Suggestions welcome. Encouraged, even :)
 

Cabin fever.

We usually keep our doors open in our flat. But not right now. There's too much work to do. We've all got deadlines to meet the next few weeks. So every door stayed shut all day, as we attempted to keep focused on our essays without succumbing to cabin fever and going completely insane. It was really quiet around here.

But then I heard voices in the kitchen and couldn't take it anymore.

Once I left my room, there was no turning back. I didn't get a single thing done after 6pm today. My flatmates made sure of it. We just laughed and ate chocolate and watched Tangled.

And it was so worth it.
  

Deadlines.

I know I've already mentioned this, but I've got three essays due in January. The first two (a 1000 word critical review and a 2000 word essay) are due the 5th, and the third (a 2500 word essay) is due the 12th. Now, I could pretend that I'd get some work done while I'm home, but who are we kidding?

That just won't happen.

So I've been working hard to wrap up these first two before I leave on Sunday. And while I typically don't like to wait till the last minute, I don't think I've ever started working on a paper more than a month before it's actually due. But it's got to be done, so I've given myself deadlines.

My first deadline was last Friday. I wanted to finish my critical review before the weekend, and I did! So I took the whole weekend (plus Monday) off, and it was awesome. My next deadline is tomorrow. To reach it, I decided to write 500 words a day. I'm just over 1300 words right now, so I'm right on track.

Oh, hey cyberpolitics. Thanks for stealing my Christmas joy.

And basically the only reason I'm writing about this is because it's literally all I've been doing the past few days. Except for the time I waste deliberately (you know, to remind my papers that they don't own me and I can do what I want), there's really nothing else going on. Sorry I'm boring.

This is my life.
 

Just keep swimming.

I was going to say that I'm drowning in course work. But I'm not...not quite. 

Right now, I've got 3 essays, a presentation and a report to do. Most of those don't have to be in till January, but who wants to spend Christmas doing homework? That's what I like about the US system -- finals are before the break.

Not pictured: Coffee. And lots of it.

So I'm trying to be diligent and manage my time well (instead of making Christmas playlists and baking all day, which is what I'd rather be doing). But the presentation is actually a nice change of pace, since I get to be kind of creative. Plus, we're making our slideshow with Prezi, which I just love. And the good news is that both the presentation and the report are due by next week, so it'll be easier to focus on those essays.

Until then, I'll just keep swimming*.

*Originally, I had linked this clip, for obvious reasons. But then this other song came on Spotify, and I loved it too much to keep it to myself.