Thesising Seniors

The current away message:
Thesising seniors... I guess that doesn't work as well as "designing seniors" does. Maybe I should have gone into engineering...

Shabbat/1st days of Sukkot in NE Philly at J.M.'s was good. I managed to finish my archaeological reading plus a Terry Pratchett novel. The food was good. I got a lot of sleep. It was very cold out at first, and then got warmer. The first day was uneventful.

However, the second day's festivities were not so festive. I was staying up reading the anthro while J.M. was out gallavanting, and then he came back, and I asked him what he did when he was out, and he said that a kid that he knew (age 16) had gotten hit by a car, and was taken to the hospital, and it didn't look good.

And today we found out that the kid had died in the hospital. The driver was a drunk driver, and he was taken away in handcuffs.

And although the funeral is tomorrow (today now) the family cannot sit shiva until after Simchat Torah.
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I got back around 9:30, to an e-mail from Ben. He thinks I should take a GIS class (and he thinks that I would be good at it). I don't have to worry about the technical formatting stuff for now, just the content, (though the thesis guide says to use endnotes, not footnotes, and not to use them for additional information except when completely necessasry. Darn. No witty footnotes for me :( ), and that he'll do the looking into of the rules about me using stuff in both theses. So yay Ben!

I have another 11.5 hours until my meeting with Ben tomorrow. I'll probably go to bed soon and work on stuff after services. (I like going to shul on sukkot to use my lulav and etrog (not "esrog") during Hallel).

Right now I'm doing the intro. I also need to help out lopaanre and edit a paper of his. Maybe I'll print it out and use an actual pen to mark corrections as opposed to just doing it on-screen. Fortunately there's free printing in the anthro musuem.

I'm more worried about the Stern meeting at 3, since I haven't seen him since May, and I want to look like I'm actually making progress. I'm not sure that I am. The way that my intro is going right now, it isn't going to be 100% useable for the Jewish Studies thesis. Maybe a lot of it can overlap, but I can't have the same introduction word for word. And I don't mind bringing Ben an intro with lots of incomplete sentences, bullet points, and footnotes.* But for Stern, I feel like it should look more professional. In the end it'll have to be professional anyways, and I can edit it for that, but right now I want my thesis to be at least slightly amusing, so it isn't torture to write. Ok, well it isn't torture, since I am interested in the topic(s). But still, I hate having to stifle creativity.

I talked a lot about my thesis over the chag. J.M.'s parents were really interested, and they said that it seemed more like a dissertation topic, and that I should write a book with a lot of pretty pictures that will be either widely read, or at least bought so people will see it on your bookshelf, and that it could be the defining text about miqva'ot. Unfortunately I can't write it like that now, because a lot of my theory needs more research/publication to be proven. And I can't run my own excavation until I have a PhD. And I can't get a PhD until I write a dissertation. Stupid circular logic.

Hopefully it'll be shiny when it's finished, even as an undergrad thesis. Hopefully it'll be publishable. Hopefully someone besides Ben will want to read it.

*Noting things I'm not sure of.

why I'm actually on LJ now

I finished my intro*!!!!

It's about 7 pages long. It's shiny**. It's completely and totally unedited.

I still have to re-work things for Stern, though.



*Well, I still have a few things that are listed as points that have to be filled in, but conceptually I'm done. For now.
**I even got to use the word "shiny" in there (we'll see whether or not it can stay).

Progress

After services this morning I spent an hour on the intro of the anthro, and then biked down to the museum. Ben liked what have so far, and although he liked the order, he wants me to integrate things that are currently separate sections. he says that I'm using my headings as a crutch, and he's right. He didn't remark about my usage of the word "shiny" so I think I got way with it. And I'm not sure when I'm dating the Torah to, so I said "[1250 BCE/Late Iron Age/6th century BCE/Choose your own Biblical criticism adventure, since I have no clue what date I’m working with]" and he was amused by that. Hehe. Choose your own biblical criticism adventure. I'm so witty.

He also thinks that there isn't a methodology of studying the archaeology of purity, and that I'll be inventing one. I could be the next Mary Douglas or something. I wish that I was more knowledgable, that this was a dissertation and not a thesis. That's what it should be. But I can always expand it later.

He wants this for Oct 25th. If he really thinks I can establish a methodology for studying the archaeology of purity in the span of two weeks, then he's out of his mind!

And he said there's an advantage to being "the GIS guy" and with a week-long summer course in grad school he was able to be the GIS guy. So I'll take that course, and Death (by Monge) and work on the two theses and have an equally cushy semester in the spring. Hate me if you want, but more free time equals more deli-roll and more kippot and I can edit your papers. My cushy schedule benefits all.

So then I worked on my Jewish Studies thesis, and created a new outline. Stern made me focus on what really interests me- the reinterpretation of ritual. And even with that I can write so much. I can probably get the background out of the way pretty quickly, and maybe I should do that now to feel good about myself. But I need to interview people, and before that figure out what I need to know. So that's the current goal.

Then I worked on editing lopaanre's paper, and finished after 2.5 hours (plus whatever I did last night and this morning).

So all in all it was a productive day. I might do more, so I can justify tsking all of Wednesday off to vist A.G. (levana_b, this is a reminder that we're switching mashing shifts so you'll be there from 4-6:15.) Actually, I should do the kippah now. Maybe someone will be nice and play a videogame so I can watch while I crochet.

And I had trouble getting access to a printing computer in the library, so Chrissy in the JWST department let me print. And I noticed she had a Mac and now I'm interviewing her tomorrow for my communities project! I also have to talk to Monge, but she's currently in Hawaii. Why didn't she take me along?

I should probably contact nerdx111 and see when I can interview him about his PC.

And that's it. Maybe I'll work on the acknowledgements section, because that would be amusing to write. Or I'll work on transforming the archaeological world.

I want my patiche!!!

(no subject)

Gah. Why is the stress hitting me? I have nothing due tomorrow, it's 10:00PM, I can get tons of sleep, and today was the most productive day ever.

Maybe it's because I'm head-mashing simchat torah. I really don't want to miss the hakafot.