I think I understand what people mean when they say time flies. Okay, I don't think, I know. Especially when I see how long it's been since I posted my last blog post. Since then a few things have come up, but I'll start with something exciting that I want to brag about as much as I can. 1. The Summoning. The Summoning (synopsis: A grieving widow summons her dead husband back from the grave with disastrous results) is a movie that Phillip worked on--his position being that of the *Best Boy Electric--and it aired on TVOne on Saturday. I haven't seen the film yet as I don't get that channel, but I'm waiting for it to pop up online or to see it as it is recorded at home. Either way, I'm excited to watch it. Not only because my brother worked on it, but because I'm a fan of horror/thriller movies in general. Plus, we get this cool picture from it: *best boy electric: is an assistant to the gaffer where he/she is in charge of the day to day lighting. 2. My Master's Project. I've been working with my advisor/graduate program director to get the ball rolling on my master's project. I still haven't had it approved as it has to go through IRB first, but I'm really excited to get started on it. It'll be a literature review and a field study/observation of girls in skateboarding. That's the general idea so far, most of what it will be is a history of the sport pre and post Tony Hawk era and then the gender differences within the sport will come into play. Again, it's not completely hashed out yet, but it's getting there. 3. Writing. I'm always writing as it is, but I haven't really been focusing on any of the works that will go into the Quadruple or Nothing series or the other books ideas that I've had. As a matter of fact, every time I try to write for them I lost motivation and inspiration very quickly or I don't like the way it's going and start all over again. For example, I've written the first three chapters for a work that will go under Quadruple or Nothing about five times now because there was always something wrong with it. (It happens). But I realized it wasn't because I didn't like what I was writing, it was that I was putting too much pressure on myself to have it at a certain standard to sell. I wasn't doing what I had done with my other ideas and write it for fun and then polish it to be sold on Amazon or the other outlets I have to choose from. It really sucked the fun out of it and made it a daunting task for me. Now that I have an entirely different outlook on it, it's gotten a lot easier and I'm having more fun with it. I may even post chapters of it up on here as I have done with some of my writing from before. I think it would be fun for everyone to see how it comes together as I'm writing it and give me feedback as I go along, rather than wait for the final product. Now I just have to work on actually finishing a chapter to the point that I like it. Haha.
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Hello everyone,
Long time no talk. Well, I would have had other blog posts up but there hasn't really been much to talk about. As you may have seen from our Facebooks, Mere and I have finished our first year in grad school and are gearing up for our second one. I would announce my grades, but I haven't gotten any of them in yet so I have no idea as to what they are. I'm thinking two As and a B though, as one class was actually pretty difficult. (Let me tell you, don't ever use SPSS unless you absolutely have to, it's a nightmare). I know the classes I'm going to be taking next semester: Sports Journalism, Sports and Recreation Marketing, and Television and Society. I'm really excited for the Sports Journalism class; not only is it something that will bring in my interests to work on, but it will also help me with my work at S4 as well as an internship I just started with Live Out: The Outdoor Social Network. I'm waiting for my project topic to be approved and because of the fact that I'm doing a project, I don't have to take a summer class. Which is great in case I ever need to/want to go home or if there's something that I need to help someone else with. However, as many knows that means I have to look for a job. I've already had a interview somewhere so far, and I'm setting up an interview at another place so I'm crossing my fingers that I get something. Though I have been told by both representatives that looked over it, that I have an impressive resume. *Pats self on the back*. What else can I tell you? I have more time to write now, so I'm going back and editing Two Pair one more time (let me tell you, editing is never finished) as well as getting started on a few more ideas that will work towards other book ideas that we've had for a while. It's just a matter of time of figuring out what I want to write and not losing motivation or inspiration for it. But with so many ideas, it'll be easy to jump around and get a multitude of projects started so that'll be fun. I hope everyone has a great end of the semester, graduation, and summer break! Peace. :) I meant to post this blog yesterday but I was too busy being excited for the new episode of Flash that I completely forgot. Seriously, if you don't watch that show then you're missing out. It's one of the better CW shows out now (including Arrow, which Flash is a spin-off from) and doesn't really fall under the 'villain of the week' thing like Smallville did.
Anyway, just some things that I wanted to update everyone with. If you've seen my last blog post you would have seen that I am working on a lot of writing projects, but most specifically on what is (for now) titled Reagan. Yes, it's a 'sub-story' off of our Quadruple of Nothing series that's all about Reagan. Well, not all about her as there are many other characters in it and it does shift POVs sometimes, though I may just keep it form hers in first person. I haven't written in first person in a while. I can't tell you a lot about it, but I will tell you that it is set between Four of a Kind and Royal Flush just so you have an idea of the timeline. That and I recently had been able to sit down and interview skateboarder/photographer Sierra Prescott for S4. Not only does she skateboard really well, but she also has a career in photography of the same field as well as for those that are living on the edge in some way. She's taken a lot of great shots and being able to interview her and get her ideas on the industry was fun. (*Ahem, shameless self-promotion - http://www.snowskatesurfstyle.com/q-a-sierra-prescott/). I've also been able to interview eight-year-old skateboard and surfing phenom, Sierra Kerr, daughter of surfing professional Josh Kerr. I'm currently working towards interviewing X Games Gold-medalist Tom Schaar, so fingers crossed for me. Now for the school front; the semester is almost over. Just have until April 28th and then one more year. This semester is flying as with the snow days we've had schedules had to be adjusted so that we can fit everything in to be completed by semester's end. Otherwise, things are going well. I've mostly decided on doing a project to complete my Masters as it seems it would be better for my topic and the opportunities I have with it. Not only that, but if I did a thesis, I'd be in school until--at the very latest--Fall of 2017 despite graduating in Spring 2016. Though that does bring up what I'm doing now. All I have left apart from doing my project requirements are electives and I just need to see which classes interest me enough to take. And while doing a project, I will not have to take a class over the summer, so now I'm looking even harder at jobs as I know I don't have a class to work around. On the front of getting another assitantship...I don't know what's happening with that. I'm getting ready to apply to be considered for one, however the places they'd put me in are not what I want to do. My first semester doing my assistantship I was a TA/assistant for a 100-level and a 300-level communications class. It was fun and I got a lot of experience. This semester I'm dong Media Commons which is also fun and gives me even more experience of running a website, something that I dabble in while working at S4. However, doing it again next year will have me be a TA again, but for larger classes and that's really what my advisor is pushing me to do. I don't want that because after my Masters I am not furthering my academic career in any way neither with a second Masters nor a PHD. While all of the teaching assistant positions will give me the ability to potentially teach communications classes in community colleges, that's not what I want to do, nor do I think I'll still be qualified as I only started taking communications classes last Fall. If I were to teach, I'd prefer lower level English or French. Apart from that, I don't believe those positions would help me achieve the career I want to have in the industry I want to be in, let alone being a journalist, a freelance writer, a content coordinator, or a Social Media/Digital Marketer (of course I'll still continue my writing, I'm not giving up my dream of being a NY Times Best Selling Author). Other than that I'm in a great mood as I've gotten a lot of writing done as of late, got good grades on my two mid-terms with positive feedback on both, am really looking forward to a paper/research I'm doing in one of my classes its warm, and my second class today was cancelled so I can get home early. :) Whew, it's been a while since I've written a blog. But I didn't want to bore you with anything? I mean, who cares to know that my semester ended and I'm getting ready for the next one?
I'm actually pretty excited for that, the classes portion anyway. I'm taking a level 500 intro to communications class that should merge with everything I've learned from 601, 602, and 603 but give me all of the background information I hadn't known before or was confused about. So it should be very helpful with the 604 and 605 classes I shall be taking as well. And so far I'm talking about taking a class during the summer, I'm not sure as of yet because it would tie-in with doing a thesis and I haven't decided if it will be a thesis or a project yet. All I know is skateboarding and/or surfing will be involved and that's good enough for me. Otherwise I'm looking to see what sort of jobs I can get over the summer. I'm hoping to work at the Vans store this summer because it would be a good stepping stone to eventually end up working for the company out in CA (that's one of my dreams anyway, I haven't given up on being a NY Times Best Selling Author). Otherwise I have also extended an option to volunteer with the ECSC (East Coast Surfing Championships) during August down in Virginia Beach and I'm waiting to hear back from that. Nothing on the internship front yet, though I'm asking my adviser every now and then potential contacts that he has or ideas of places to intern with (though S4 technically would be that because I write for them and don't get paid, but it's fun and blogging about extreme sports is something I can never get tired of). Other than that it's almost Christmas time, which everybody should know considering the fact that we've all been celebrating it since before Thanksgiving. Let's be honest here. I'm going back home for said break, however Justin won't be there this year but I do have something that I'd like to send him as a gift that I think he'll appreciate if not get a good laugh out of. I usually have more to talk about when my sisters and I are all together so don't be surprised if I have a few anecdotes here and there to tell. Ask me about the time Mere and I thought we witnessed someone stealing a car. Later. I know it's been a while since I did a blog post (probably about since mid-November) but I have been busy.
Busy, busy, busy, me. Not only had my last few weeks been filled with getting papers done, finishing projects, and presentations. Not including the work that I had been doing for my assistantship has ended for the semester. Other than that I can say that I've finished my first semester. I actually finished on Thursday but I've had so much stuff to do that I haven't had time to even say it out loud really, other than a loud "I'm free!" yesterday morning when I woke up. Not saying that I didn't enjoy my semester, I actually liked it a lot, some classes I enjoyed more than others. One of my classes I always looked forward to because not only did we have actual discussions (rather than arguments) but we also laughed a lot and that mad it a very entertaining and warm class vibe that I really enjoyed being a part of. But I had also really enjoyed being able to sit in and help with COMM 100 and COMM 300 classes, getting to meet some of those students, talk to them, help them out a bit was really fun and after a while they started asking me questions to help make things clearer as well as really wanted to present some of their projects to me when the learning community had their poster presenatation days. Seeing all of the topics they had come up with in means of positive communication and relationships (be it Long-Distance, heavily filled with social media, etc.) and articulated through their presentations was great. However, I am a bit ticked with my assistantship because I was told at the beginning of the year I would be a research assistant that would help with three specific professors, the learning community, and doing research on positive communication and ESM in the means of researching articles about it, collecting data, and helping out with the creation/beta test of a research app. Now I've been told that I'm switching my job with another student that's doing an entirely differently different job for the next semester. It's very upsetting because I had, really, been blindsided by it, especially considering one of the professors I was working with was just telling me that he'd get my feedback on a paper that I had written for my research work as well as figure what would move along with it and what would be done in the next semester before finding out I'd be switched. I feel that all of the work that I had done for the project as well as being what could be done next semester has all been for nothing when I had been nothing but excited to know what the next semester would hold for that portion of my job. Now my excitement is completely gone and I'm just...upset. I had voiced these concerns to my supervisor, and simply got a quick response of "thanks for the note, but the changes are necessary". No room for discussion and that just made me feel worse, really. At this point I'm not excited to be going back next semester for my assitantship when before I was always happy to go. But I am excited for my next semester of classes because time is flying by, soon I'll know if I'm doing a thesis or a project at the end, and before any of us realize it, I'll be graduating. And there's no room for discussion on that one. :) You know what they say, it's never too early to plan for the future.
My plan is only a year in advanced. I plan on graduating in May 2016 with my Master's Degree. But what about after that? Raise of hands: Did anyone ever think that I would go on to work for ESPN? *checks count of hands*. Yeah, I didn't think so either, but it's now something that I'm looking into . Anyone that knows me know I love the XGames, skateboarding, and surfing. For the three days it goes on (for summer and winter) I'm glued to my TV and computer for live coverage over the competitions in extreme sports. It's always been something I love to follow and keep up with as the years go on. (Ask me how many months in advance I mark on my calendar when the next series of XGames is). The one thing is, though, never seriously thought I could make it into a career. Don't get me wrong, its a dream job, along with being a NY Times Best Selling Author and a TV/Film actress. (They're all going to happen, I'm sure of it). But I never thought about working for ESPN, in particular, the portion of the company that works on the broadcasting of the XGames. It wasn't until I had a meeting with my adviser about the rest of my time here in grad school that I thought about it. Working for the Vans company is something I want to do, but knowing that ESPN is an option, I'm thinking about it. Up until now I didn't even think I could base all of my grad work around it, but two of my three classes I'm writing papers on extreme sports communication in the lifespan, as well as the normalization in surfing. Then I'm thinking of doing a final thesis (if not a project) about extreme sports as well--more likely than not focusing on skateboarding or surfing as they're big things around here. As my Mom has said, I have a lot of reading, papers, and months before it gets to spring 2016 and graduation, but it's almost spring of 2015, so it's really not that long to go. I'm excited to see what will happen. It’s been a while since I’ve done a blog post but I’ve been really busy. Plus, there’s wasn’t anything particularly interesting to talk about. It’s school, you know? I wake up, eat breakfast, do leftover homework, pack up my backpack, workout, have lunch, go on campus, have a snack, go to class, go back to the apartment, eat dinner, watch TV, do some homework, go to sleep. Day in and day out. But this past weekend was Fall Break and boy did I need it! I mean the week goes by really slowly when you have three two and a half hour classes throughout the week and mix work in around that. It’s sort of frustrating, especially considering how much I have to do as a research assistant as well as working on S4. Plus there’s the fact that some of my teachers have openly admitted they forget that I’m a first semester grad student when everyone else around me (minus two other students) have been in grad school for a while. So, hopefully some things will get a bit easier. This week will be easy for sure. I only have class today. Whoop! Whoop! Monday and Tuesday were off for break, I have class today, and my class tomorrow was cancelled because my professor is going to be out of town. Thank God! I needed some time for things to be easy. Now I have another long weekend to look forward to, I just hope that today’s class doesn’t drag on because of the fact that it’s my only class for the week. Anyway, back to Fall Break. We got back home early Friday and my sisters and I went to have lunch with Mrs. O to catch up a bit. (Hope the day’s treating you well, Mrs. O!!). Then we went to the mall and stopped at a few stores, getting some new clothes. The best shirt I bought is a jersey style shirt with ‘U annoy me’ written on it, similar to the ‘U’ that represents universities. I can see myself wearing it a lot. Oh, and a tip, plaid is back in, you’re going to see it at basically every store. Then later that night I went to the gym. Saturday was a really relaxing day, not much happened then. Sunday was the same. And Monday we (minus Steph and Mom) went up to our grandparents’ house to catch up with them. It was a surprise because they didn’t expect us to go see them. And it was fun to be able to catch up and chat about school and everything. We wouldn’t have had been able to stay long if Mere and I didn't chance our plans to go back to school on Tuesday. Yesterday I had to get back on campus by ten thirty so I could decide on what one of my paper topics was going to be. I have three papers that I have due by the end of this semester. I have a 20 page paper for my first class (not including my final exam), a 18-25 page paper for my second class, and a 20 page paper for my third class, and this isn’t including the paper I have due for my research assistantship due right before Thanksgiving. I swear at some point I’m going to rip my hair out while writing them, and that’s only because I need to try and find something to ramble about for 20 pages as the topics are so vague and I can only do so much. (Not to self, remember to find really big, block quotes). Other than that, nothing’s going on. Not anything that particularly exciting anyway. But if anything does, I’ll let you know as soon as it happens. You’d probably see fireworks and confetti canons going off as well. For those that don't know, National Novel Writing month is celebrated in November. The idea is that you take the whole month of November and write a novel. It doesn't matter if you finish the celebration is that you got started on a project you enjoy.
And that's how Two Pair was born in 2010. I wrote it in two weeks then spent the next two (technically three if you count that year) years editing it to be sure it was good for publication. And you know the rest of that story. Since then I haven't participated in NaNoWriMo though I would've liked to. The only reasons I hadn't was because I had no ideas. But now that I'm sitting in this corner chair that has exclusively become mine (ask anyone that walks by this corner M/T/W/TH at about three o'clock and they'd agree with you--*hangs up reserved sign*) I've been thinking about the things I could do and have narrowed it down to two ideas: 1. Flynn. <---That's a tentative title, but it was the idea I turned in and co-won for the Hollins Fiction Prize senior year at Hollins. 2. Ride or Die. That title I really like. This one would be a book about a girl that participates in BMX and how she had to deal with being a girl in a male dominated sport as well as dealing with a family that thinks it's too dangerous for her to participate in. Which is a tentative plot, but the general idea is the same. (3. Maybe that novella on Reagan between the Quadruple or Nothing series and what could potentially come after). Now, I' not saying I'll be able to finish one of these in November, especially since two of my really long papers are due that month, but I'd like to get a good chunk of it out of the way. I'm crossing my fingers that I'll be able to do it, no matter which one it is that I work on. I'm great at time management as anyone can say, but 20 page papers can really kick my butt, especially when I think I've said all I need to say in 10. Note to self, call home more.
Though I really wouldn’t know what to talk about considering I only have classes three days a week. Compared to undergrad where I had a class every day, not much happens to talk about. But that brings me up to the pint of this blog, which is something I’ve been thinking about for a while: How do you make friends in grad school? At Hollins I had my friends from specific classes, friends from World Music, and friends that I hung out with outside of classes; not including the friends I saw whenever I got home for holidays and breaks. But here, making friends is a lot harder than I thought it would be. Not that I find it hard to talk to people, I’ve always been good at that and still find it hard to stop talking when I’m with people, it’s everything else that’s hard. I’m one of the few people that are doing their first semester of grad school ever, but I’m the only one that hasn’t attended ODU or taken similar classes at all. Except for, maybe, three people, everyone around me is older (in their thirties and higher), but they all know each other due to having been in the same classes before or working in the same places. I’m the only one that’s brand spanking new and while I’m friendly with people I don’t really know how to become friends with them. It mostly stems from the fact that we only have class once a week and other than that we all have our own lives. If I’m not in class, I’m working; on novels, stories, my graduate research work, as well as working on Sº4 Magazine. Even then, my program has a collective dinner every Tuesday night at different restaurants around the area and I go to those every Tuesday, engage in as much conversation as I can, and still feel like I’m the odd one out. Maybe it’s because I’m used to going to smaller places in the private schools I’ve attended. Maybe it’s because I’m still not used to Norfolk yet (though I can tell you that with the other drivers around here I’ve managed to get very quick reflexes when driving). I don’t know. If there’s a special formula for this, I’m all ears. Let me start off my blog with a question for you guys; have you ever watched TV for a homework assignment?
*Raises hand* Of course, I have. If you’ve been following my blog since the start, you’d know that I was in a J-Term class called “Writing the Television Sitcom” so I watched a LOT of TV. Mostly 2 Broke Girls, which I ended up writing a script for. Now, I thought it would be the only time I would have the privilege of being able to watch TV for homework. Guess again! *Throws confetti while spinning in a quick circle* For my Com 602 class, I got to watch an episode of Storage Wars and write a blog post about how it pertains to capitalism. (And let me tell you, that was a good blog post, even if I do say so myself. I wont know what grade I’ll get on it later). Enough about that, I’m excited to be able to watch Storage Wars for homework. You know why? Mostly because I love that show. I had seen it once before while channel surfing and had found myself enthralled with it. It’s really fascinating, people auctioning off storage units that hadn’t had their bills paid and then making money off of the items that are inside. Or, trying to, anyway. Now, I would be even happier if it was that I was instructed to watch Chicago Fire or Chicago PD as one of my homework assignments. Especially tomorrow and Wednesday as the new seasons start and I’m going to be missing the first half of each one because we’re going to be driving back from campus at that point. Curse you really short stoplight coming off campus!! *shakes fist*. But that brings me to my second point. The MTV show, Catfish. I’m sure many people have heard of it at this point. Catfishing is when you create a profile or account of some website online and pretend to be someone else for your own personal gain or because you feel the person you’re talking to wouldn’t enjoy the real you. I enjoy that show as well. So much, that I’m going to be writing a paper on it. A 20 page paper. Yes, for my Com 603 class we’re talking about social change. As soon as Catfishing became a thing, or else that it got a name for it in the online realm, it would commonly be known as a con artist in the real world, it created a lot of social change. Not only were people even more cautious online, but they’ve now gone to start researching people they talk to online as well as checking the validity of what is said to them. I’m going to be looking through scholarly journals, databases, and other websites I can find about con artists and adapting it to Catfishing and will write a paper and present a presentation on it. The only reason that I’m studying con artists is because Catfishing is still relatively new, so there wouldn’t be any articles directly on the topic. But I’m excited to start the paper and see how it adapts. This semester in all three of my classes, I have nothing but papers. My first class has two short papers, one long paper, and then a final exam (which is an even longer paper), my second class has an 18-25 page paper that I am to write, and my third class has a 20 page paper that I have to write. (There’s some leeway to the paper for my third class, however). I’m going to be writing papers until I die, at this point but the topics are pretty interesting. The ONLY complaint I have is that I have to write in APA style. I dislike APA almost as much as I dislike Chicago/Turabian style. And allll of my papers have to be in this style. Thankfully I can adapt pretty well and I’ll write enough of them so that I get enough practice, but if I had my choice, MLA is the way to go. *Fist pumps*. So, I’m going to be very busy getting research and writing done, especially as these are going to be the longest papers I’ve ever written. But I’m excited to see how they come about. Also, on my first assignment for my first class, I got an ‘A’! So there’s that for motivation! :) |
About Me
Loves anything red. Rock music, playing the guitar, drawing, writing, tattoos, and sports are some of my interests and hobbies. I like to laugh, I like to think I'm funny. I talk a lot...just a warning. Archives
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