grad school – Page 2 – Lena Corazon

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Kicking off ROW80 with Goals, a Party, and Vintage Cocktails

Welcome back, ROWers! Round 2 of ROW80 is about to begin. Are your engines revved and ready to go?

For my friends and readers not in-the-know, ROW80 stands for A Round of Words in 80 Days, the “writing challenge that knows you have a life.” Better yet, it is comprised of a community of amazing writers who are some of the most supportive, hilarious, and creative folks that you’ll ever find, online or off.

I’m kicking off ROW80 with what is potentially the most amazing trifecta of awesomeness ever: my new goals for this round, details for our ROW80 party coming up on APRIL 4th, and some drinky-fun to get you in the mood.

First up: The Goals. I’m keeping it short and simple this time around.

1. Day Job: Refine my dissertation topic, and try to write 1000-1500 each week. This writing can take any form, including brainstorms, reading notes, and dissertation proposal drafts.

2. Writing: Finish TELL ME NO LIES, and try to write an average of 500 words each day.

3. Exercise: Work out 4-5 days each week, and continue to whittle down my sugar intake.

4. Social Media: Blog twice a week, and comment on at least 10 blogs each week.

And now, what you’ve been waiting for: the 411 on the upcoming ROW80 party! Even the Party Sloth is ready to rock.

Theme: “Throwback Party”
Oh yes, we are going WAY back. This party is a celebration of generations, music, and fashions. We want you to come on Wednesday ready to kick it like you used to “back in the day.” All outfits are welcome, Lena’s stirring up some munchies and beverages to last all night, and DJ Barbara will be spinning tunes for all decades.

Date: April 4, 12:01 AM to 11:59 PM EST in the U.S.
This will also be the first day of Round Two check-in so there should be a bevy of ROW80 peeps and friends wandering around the blogosphere.

Party will be held at the #ROW80 hashtag.
Include that in your Tweet and join in!

Blog with Photos Competition:
From April 2 to April 8, we want you to keep the party going and post some “Throwback Party” ROW80 celebrations. Just make sure to include some pics in the post that reflect the theme and let your party monster rage. Whatever you want to do to work this into your post, go for it. We trust you are a creative bunch. Then, we’ll review them and decide on the best to spotlight in a post.

To enter the blog competition:

Create a blog that reflects the “Throwback Party” theme.
Creativity is a plus as are great pictures. We know there are some folks holding a treasure of pics showing them in their glory with bell bottom, platform shoes, biker, poodle skirts, and tie-dyed ponchos.
Lena and I will look at the comments on our ROW80 blogs for recommendations of top picks as well as review them all for inclusion of top picks/faves in a mashup and for your vote.
To enter the blog competition, click here (Link forthcoming).

My co-host, Barbara McDowell, is throwing down the jams to get you in the mood. I’ve got the drinks you’ll need to have you dancing on the tabletops with a lampshade on your head in no time. I LOVE vintage cocktails, so here are a few recipes to get you into that period mood.

A slippery nipple shooter (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

1980s

Zagat has a great blog revisiting some of the cheesiest cocktails of the 1980s, but my favorite might have to be the Slippery Nipple (tee-hee). This new twist on the Sex on the Beach (what were people thinking when they named drinks in the 1980s?) also looks divine.

1970s

Gourmet has rounded up their favorite drinks from 1941-2009, and this selection from the 1970s is nothing short of fantastic. Their recipe for a Gin and Grapefruit Cocktail looks unbelievably refreshing.

Source: Mad Men Cocktails, AMC

1960s

These days, the 1960s has become synonymous with AMC’s hit show, Mad Men. Throw on your favorite 60s garb and take a swig of one of these drinks from the Mad Men cocktail guide. My personal favorite? The Blue Hawaiian — just look at that color!

1950s

According to In the Spirit, the liquor of choice during the 1950s was gin, my personal favorite. Get in the spirit with a Gin and Sin, or give this Gin Daisy a try.

Whiskey Sour, Enmore, 2011. (Source: Wikipedia)

1940s

Some of the classic drinks we know today originated in the 1940s, like the Sidecar, the Manhattan, and the Whiskey Sour. For something a little different, mix up a Mary Pickford or a Cugat Congo.

So go wild and crazy! Throw on your snazziest clothes, spin some party tunes, pour yourself a drink, and get thee to the ROW80 party this coming Wednesday. And don’t forget to enter the blog contest — we can’t wait to see what you all come up with!

ROW80: Another One Bites the Dust

March 4, 2012 / Lena Corazon / 37 Comments

Well, folks, somehow I did it: on Thursday, I successfully defended my MA thesis, and received a “high pass” in the process.

Can you hear my squealing screams of delight?

I want to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone who has encouraged me through the long, lengthy process of writing and revising my thesis, and to everyone who told me that I would clear this hurdle in my grad school career. All of that encouragement has meant the world to me, and I think I walked into my defense all the stronger for it.

The experience itself was surprisingly pleasant. Really, it’s hard to go wrong when you have three really smart people who care about you and support you sit in one room and discuss the various implications of your work. They had so many wonderful things to say about my project, and a ton of ideas about what I can do with it in the future — a very, very good thing, since I only have a few months to churn out a dissertation proposal.

With this challenge completed, I feel like I can finally move forward. I’ve already made a reading list for the next month, and a list of research questions/concerns that I may want to address. This, really, is where I excel: wading through a vast world of research, mapping the scholarly and theoretical terrain, reading broadly and widely (something the committee commended me for doing) and pulling together various strands of thought in order to formulate my own theories.

I’ve learned so many things from this process, things like patience and dilligence. I’ve learned that it’s not the end of the world when projects change, and to follow my intuition, even if it contradicts all of my initial plans.

Even better, I’ve learned that I know more than I think I do. Really, it goes back to the goal I set for myself last week, to abandon self-doubt and tackle my goals with an increased sense of confidence. In the conversation that ensued during the defense, I let my knowledge flow, and it was a remarkable feeling, because I didn’t realize how many crazy facts I had stored in my head.

I have a lot to consider in the days and weeks to come, but I am looking forward to hopefully getting back to a less stressful state of mind. This last week was absolutely ridiculous — didn’t do any writing, barely worked out, ate lots of fast food — but I’m taking this weekend to rest up and recalibrate. I have watched lots of cartoons, taken naps, sat outside and stargazed, and just relaxed. It feels so darn good.

I am still on a Queen kick, as you can tell from this post’s title, which means I have to add a video clip. 😀

How’s everyone else holding up? Can you believe we’re already in the first week of March?

Don’t forget to swing by and visit the other ROW80 participants to see how they’re doing this week.

ROW80: It’s Business Time

January 15, 2012 / Lena Corazon / 43 Comments

It’s my 3rd check-in for ROW80, and I seem to be making some progress with my goals! I’m still not completing everything that I’ve pledged to do, but this week was another strange, rather jumbled one. I spent all of Tuesday traveling (that 5.5 hour drive is no joke), Wednesday unpacking and prepping for class, and Thursday and Friday recovering.

One surprise that happened is that I had to drop the one class I was going to take, as it overlapped my TA-ship by 50 minutes and I wasn’t able to get permission to leave early. That means that I will now only be going to campus Wednesday nights for class, and 2 hours Tuesday mornings for office hours. I now have a lot of free time on my hands, and that makes buckling down to a regular routine all the more imperative. Starting this week, it will be Serious Business Time, and I will hold myself to my goals.

Here’s my week in review:

Writing: I’ve decided that for this round, I want to accomplish 2 things with writing: (1) finish a rough draft of TELL ME NO LIES and (2) figure out how PATH TO THE PEACOCK THRONE ends (I want to be able to finish my draft of PPT during Round 2). My goal is to rewrite and edit the first 4 scenes of TMNL, and I got started with that through the ROW80 wordsprints on Thursday and Friday. I wrote 1486 words on Thursday and 1631 words on Friday, which isn’t too shabby at all. I also spent a couple of hours brainstorming and reading more of THE BARBARY COAST for research purposes.

Day Job: I finished the first draft of my thesis last Sunday, and gave my advisor a hard copy on Wednesday, despite technology’s attempts to thwart my efforts (I had to deal with not one, but two, on-campus printers running out of paper, along with a paper jam and other ridiculousness). She’s promised to have it back to me ASAP, so I have more editing in my future (although she tells me that she thinks the changes will most likely be minimal).

I actually have a full plate when it comes to school, including brainstorming dissertation topics, working on a conference paper proposal, and preparing a grant proposal. I’m also a research assistant for my advisor, and so I need to set aside time to do some work for her. Not taking classes is actually a blessing in disguise, provided I can buckle down and get things done. In the week to come, my focus will be on my research assistantship and dissertation brainstorming.

Social Time: I’ve been really good at this! Monday I had a ‘farewell dinner’ of sorts with one of my high school besties, Tuesday I went to a ‘welcome back to town’ late-night happy hour with a couple of grad school friends, and this morning I had a brunch/work/shopping outing. I’m really proud of myself, though, because I invited a few friends out for drinks at my favorite bar tonight. Given that I rarely initiate things (I have been burned in the past by people who say they will come out and instead flake), this is progress.

Exercise: There’s been incremental improvement here. I went for a 2.5 mile walk on Wednesday, and a 4 mile walk on Thursday. I had wanted to throw in a couple of days of at-home Pilates, but going to bed late and not getting enough sleep meant that when I woke up Friday and Saturday, I was less than inclined to work out. The goals for next week: go to bed by midnight, wake up by 7:30, do some form of physical activity at 8 am.

50/50 Challenge: I finished three absolutely wonderful books: HER OWN DEVICES by Shelly Adina, STEAM & SORCERY by Cindy Spencer Pape, and HER DARK BARON by fellow ROWer, Nadja Notariani.

I also got started with a little movie-watching: The Peacemaker starring George Clooney and Nicole Kidman (meh), Peter Pan starring Jason Isaacs and Jeremy Sumpter (cutesy, a little cheesy, but Jason Isaacs is really hot), and The Warrior’s Way, which is this absolutely amazing collision of ‘East-meets-West’ — it’s about a disgraced Asian assassin who flees to a tumble-down Wild West town to escape his vengeful clan, and ends up learning about love and life and things beyond murdering people. It’s bloody and gore-filled in a sort of comic book way, but I loved it. Geoffrey Rush has a small role as a drunken former outlaw.

-oOo-

Is everyone else getting down to business time, or are you flailing about like me? To encourage everyone pursuing Serious Business, I leave you with the New Zealand duo, Flight of the Conchords. Their song, “Business Time,” might be one of my favorites. 😀

*insert requisite ‘put-down-beverages’ warning*

ROW80: Winding Down

December 18, 2011 / Lena Corazon / 11 Comments

It’s difficult to believe that Christmas is only one week away, New Year’s Eve a scant two weeks away, and that this round of ROW80 is rapidly coming to a close. It’s been a packed and busy 80 days, but I’ve managed to get a lot done.

There were my original goals:

Write, edit, and polish the MA thesis, 8-10 hours/week.

Outcome: The thesis will be finished as soon as I tack on an introduction and conclusion (which is happening today). My time schedule didn’t always work out, however, and I’ve found that it’s easier to work on research when the mood strikes me. It’s not the most organized way to go about projects, but right now, it seems to be the way I’m operating. For those of you who are interested, I wrote some reflections about my thesis-writing process, and how it compares with the way that I write fiction. Surprisingly, I’ve found that the two aren’t all that different.

Write, edit, and develop WIPs, 8-10 hours/week.

Outcome: This mostly worked the way I wanted. The 8-10 hours/week came in handy during October, when I was focused on plotting and planning for NaNoWriMo. Of course, once November rolled around, the timeframe went out of the window and I more or less wrote every day (and I won NaNo! I’m still tickled pink.). I think that may be my goal for next round: do something writing-related every day.

Overall, I now have 2 novels that are sitting on my computer, mostly-finished and unpolished. Moving forward, my priority will be to finish them before taking on any new projects.

Tinker with author platform/social media stuff.

Outcome: Kristen Lamb’s class was absolutely fantastic, and I not only learned a lot, but I made lots of new friends in the process. I decided to try a MWF schedule, which I’ve been rather mediocre at keeping. I think this past week is the first that I’ve managed to post something on all three days. What I’m learning is that I actually need to write my blogs before I try to do anything else, which seems a trifle backwards, but if I save blogging for last, I’m usually too tired to write all that much.

Exercise 4-5 times each week.

Outcome: This was my weak spot. I slacked off more than once, so now I’m trying to play catch-up. The best part about being home is that I have my mom around to whip me into shape — she’s also on a health kick (she recently learned that her cholesterol levels are really high), so now we’re workout buddies. She also makes sure that nothing too sugary or fatty enters the house, which makes my life a lot easier. Hopefully I can build up some good habits while I’m home that can carry me through when I return back to SB.

And that’s Round 4!

Overall, lots of positives, with a few misses here and there, but I don’t feel too terribly about that. For next round, I think I want to add a blog-reading goal. I definitely didn’t make it around to as many ROWers as I wanted to this round, which really bums me out, but next round (which coincides with my winter quarter for school) should be a little less overwhelming.

Don’t forget to check up on the other ROWers this week, and wish them well as we wind down Round 4!

Fiction Friday: Reflections of a Novel-Writing Sociologist

December 16, 2011 / Lena Corazon / 26 Comments

As I write this, I am almost through with the first draft of my MA thesis. It’s currently 66 pages long (about 23K, for those of you who think in word counts), and once I add the introduction, conclusion, and a few transitional paragraphs, I estimate it will clock in around 70-75 pages.

On the surface, academic and creative writing are a world apart. In academia, we build on the work of previous scholars. We draw heavily on the research that’s come before us, and try to fit ourselves within an established framework while still demonstrating how our projects stand out.

In creative writing, get to wield our imaginations to the best of our abilities. While we have to fit ourselves into the boundaries of a genre, our success depends on the uniqueness of our voices, our ability to create worlds and characters who are distinctive, fresh, and compelling.

As I struggle to reconcile my two selves together, I’ve found that these worlds might not be as incompatible as I’ve always believed. I begin creative and academic projects in similar ways: immersing myself in research, reading as much as I can, and mapping the field.

Although my thesis will probably never make for exciting bedtime reading (unless you’re thrilled by sociological discussions of etiquette and social inequality), reflecting on the writing process has led me to realize that some of the lessons I’ve learned from creative writing are applicable.

1. It all begins with a question.

Source: f-oxymoron via flickr

In creative writing, we constantly ask questions about our work, our characters, and our worlds constantly. Trying to answer those questions helps us to invent new tales or to jumpstart flagging ones, and so we find ourselves toying with ridiculous scenarios, just to see what will happen.

What if a horde of zombie chimpanzees crash-land a spaceship in the middle of a cornfield just as the protagonist and her on-again, off-again boyfriend are arguing?

For academic research, questions are just as powerful and pivotal. Here, it’s usually “why” and “how come?” that orient us. (Yes, academics were probably the most irritating toddlers on the face of the planet.)

My thesis is no different. It was born out of countless questions, including one that came to me as I was working on my senior undergraduate thesis:

Why has etiquette played such a large role in shaping wedding practices in the United States? If etiquette is as important as historians of the wedding suggest, why hasn’t anyone else studied it in-depth?

Some of my favorite fiction projects have started the same way, as ideas that have tumbled around in my head, not quite substantial enough to explore in-depth, but too shiny and promising to ignore completely.

Learning to question our work throughout the writing process, to view it with all the curiosity and excitement that motivates us at the start of a project, is one key to unlocking our creativity.

2. Long projects are long.

By this point in my academic career, I have mastered the art of ~~bullshitting~~ crafting a 10-15 page paper. I have a sense of how I need to organize my ideas, the number of extended excerpts I can mobilize, and the number of subsections I’ll need to plan. With longer forms of writing, however, all those rules go straight out the window.

Nothing is scarier than being faced with a mountain of words — or, even worse, with the blank Word document, the one that will eventually become a mountain of words, but is nothing more than a empty sheet of possibility. We’ve all felt that stab of panic as we stare at the blanking cursor, waiting for the words to flow, and so each word, each sentence, each paragraph feels like a tiny victory.

As I grapple with understanding the structure of the novel, I am also struggling to grasp the mechanics of long-form academic writing. Scholarly writing is much more straight-forward, at least on the surface. There are no plot points to figure out, no need to sort out character motivations and overarching themes. Academics are expected to tell and not show, to reveal the our results in the very first paragraph (this makes me sad, because sometimes I’d like there to be a big reveal — I toiled in the archives for days and weeks, and hunted for clues! At last, the meaning of etiquette books was revealed to me…).

My adventures with NaNoWriMo have taught me that while I benefit from outlines, I am a nonlinear, scene-by-scene sort of writer. I’ve penned the thesis in the same way: in odd bits and pieces scattered around Scrivener, culled from past seminar papers and conference talks. Those chunks of text are somehow cobbled together by a form of alchemy that I can only guess at, fitted together to form a seemingly coherent product.

My take-away from all of this? Write, no matter how short or silly or stupid the idea is. Scrawl as many memos and notes as possible, keep track of how ideas jump around and leap about and evolve. Eventually, some sort of structure will emerge to unite some of those pieces together.

Continue reading

ROW80: ROW-ing Through the Snow

December 11, 2011 / Lena Corazon / 9 Comments

ROW-oh-ing, ROW-oh-ing through the snow, writing bells are ringing…

Happy Sunday, friends and ROWers! Yes, that is my one-line attempt at a ROW-flavored holiday song. For fun, here’s Nat King Cole singing the original:

I’ve been back in San Francisco since Thursday, and right now, life is good. Here’s my mini-list of exciting accomplishments:

Work: I’m half-way through grading final papers, and for the most part, the students have done a wonderful job. I’ve been reminded of my favorite part of TA’ing ethnographic methods classes: I get to supervise students’ research and watch their projects (and their skills) develop over the quarter. Many of them have come a long way since the first few weeks of the course, and have written up excellent accounts of their research projects. Even better, some of them actually read the feedback I provided on past assignments (you’d be surprised how rare this is), and incorporated my suggestions and edits in their papers.

School: I had a great, albeit somewhat impromptu, meeting with my advisor before I left. She’s asked me to help her with a research project that she and I have been discussing for the past couple of years, and I’m really excited — it involves archival research about religious communities (i.e. Catholic nuns) in the United States. The project is in its preliminary phases, but if she can get funding I can come aboard as a paid research assistant. We also started discussing plans for the dissertation fellowships I’m going to apply for next year, which is really exciting.

Writing: Now that NaNo’s finished, I’m back to rotating between my multiple unfinished projects. After some not-so-gentle nudging from the characters of my steampunk tale, I’m working on a plan for edits and rewrites. Apparently I’m also writing a short story or two of prequel-esque backstory, because Tempest Dumont has demanded it, and she’s the sort of gal that one can’t refuse. I pantsed the first draft of TELL ME NO LIES, and now I’m struggling to impose some structure on my sprawling mass of scenes. It’s too short — only 51K, with about 35 scenes, so now I have to figure out where to fill in the blanks, and what to add. I won’t lie, the whole thing is incredibly daunting. Sometimes I think I’d be better off sticking with short stories or novellas…. but we’ll see how things go.

Now that we’re firmly in the midst of December, how is everyone else holding up?

ROW80: The End-of-the-Quarter Vortex

December 6, 2011 / Lena Corazon / 38 Comments

I should be writing a 1-2 page self-evaluation for my feminist studies course, but the thought of trying to expand the single sentence that I’ve managed to write into at least 1 page makes me feel pretty “meh” at the moment. Seriously, how else can I say “Give me an A because I came to class and did the work and participated in discussion”? Talk about the worst assignment ever. :/ So here I am, writing a very rare Wednesday ROW80 check-in!

I haven’t touched anything blog or social media-related in quite a few days, and wow, I’m going through withdrawals. But I thought I would try to be a responsible sort of student and close Tweetdeck and Google Reader so I could focus on all the work that I have to do — painful, but necessary.

Classes ended last Thursday, and after that I fell into the spiraling madness of thesis-editing and final paper-writing. It is a strange vortex, rather like an alternate universe, where I forget the days of the week and maintain really odd sleeping hours, punctuated by brief sprints of writing and odd breaks filled with television and/or video games, and longer periods staring into space and avoiding work altogether.

This weekend, the television show in question is the original UK version of Being Human, which is so bloody awesome I cannot contain my glee. It is about a ghost, a werewolf, and a vampire who share a house and grapple with their attempts to fit in with humans without revealing their supernatural status — a genius premise, if you ask me. It is dark and somewhat creepy and funny and touching, all at once (for the record, I cried twice during the first 3 episodes, which I was not expecting at all). I’m almost through with Season 2, and I highly recommend it.

On the writing/work front, things are coming along. I finished writing a 14 page final paper for my feminist studies class today, which actually turned into a paper that I am proud of. Better yet, it opens up some interesting ideas that I can potentially explore for my dissertation.

The thesis-editing is finally happening. My methods section is totally finished and I’ve tackled rewrites and line-edits for half of the findings section. Now all I need to do is finish the second half of the findings section, tack on a few transition statements here and there, brush up the introduction, and write a conclusion. Cross your fingers that I can get the whole thing fixed and shiny by mid-month, so I can send it off to my advisor and be done with the whole business (at least until I get her edits back in January, that is).

Things are lightening up, but I’m not out of the woods just yet. My students submit their final papers tomorrow afternoon, so grading is my weekend priority. And I take off on Thursday morning for my parents’ house, where I’ll be for the next month (so exciting!). As result, blogging will continue be a little sparse through next week, but I will hopefully be back in full force once I vanquish all my school stuff. I have countless ideas for blog posts floating around in my head; the challenge is finding time to sit down and write everything out!

Finally, on a fun note, I did get a chance to get out over the weekend and pop into my favorite store that sells sparkly jewelry things. I found these amazing peacock earrings and had to buy them, since I am building an accessory wardrobe of feathered headbands, hairclips, earrings, and necklaces.

The longest, most epic earrings ever.

I’m excited to get back to my Google Reader and check out all of the posts that I’ve missed from y’all. Can’t wait to get back to blog-hopping!

ROW80: Tryin’ To Get That Feeling Again

November 12, 2011 / Lena Corazon / 36 Comments

Yes, the title of today’s post is indeed a reference to Barry Manilow’s hit song, and yes, that’s a clip of him performing it in concert below. It is, I promise, relevant for today.

You see, I have hit the mid-month slump. My pretty NaNo novel, which seemed so sparkly and wonderful and exciting when I started it at the beginning of the month, now seems rather… lackluster. Insipid. Boring? Metaphors and figures of speech are unwieldy, not to mention a bit cliche, my characters are revealing some crazy inconsistencies, and I’m starting to see the holes in my lovely outline. One of the problems is that I’ve been working on the voyage sequence (where my main character has been sailing to the strange and frightening land of her birth) for over a week, and I think I am just sick and tired of talking about it. I need to get poor Liandre off the darn ship and onto solid land, so the rest of her journey can take place.

I can’t complain terribly about my NaNoWriMo progress. The beginning of the week was a challenge, but I’ve caught up with my word count. At the moment, I have 19,311 words, and by the time I finish writing tonight, I will have hopefully added on at least 2k more. When I sit and really think about this, I can hardly believe that I’ve written so much in such a short period of time. It’s not perfect — far from it — but I think by the end of the month there will be some salvageable bits that can be edited, polished up, and (maybe) turned into something real and substantial.

I think I’ve reached the mid-point blahs with everything, not just writing. Monday marks the beginning of Week 8 in our academic quarter (there are 10 in total), and oh god, I am just… squeaking… by. I spent the past couple of days laboring over a 5 page paper that I should’ve been able to write in a few hours. I can barely stand reading for class. That thesis thing that I’m supposed to be writing? Yeah, that’s not happening either. I’m a bit tired, a little low on energy, lacking in excitement, and all I really want to do is go home and see my family. Thanksgiving can’t come soon enough.

Pictures of kittens make everything better.

On the other hand, I will say that I’m surprised that I didn’t hit this bump earlier in the quarter. I’m tired, my desire to juggle is flagging, but I’m not unhappy, and that’s more than I can say for previous quarters. By week 5 of each quarter, I’m usually indulging in escape fantasies — you know, plans to drop out of grad school and join the circus, or become a makeup artist, or move to a commune in the forest. I’ve managed to avoid escape fantasies this quarter, which I count as progress. Things are getting done, just not necessarily in the time frame that I’ve intended. However, slow and steady wins the race, etc, etc.

Anyway, if I go a little quiet on the Twitter/blog/social media front, you’ll know why. We’re entering the stretch when I have to tackle the most immediate things first (i.e., all that stuff that I’m getting graded on). I’ve got plans for this week’s blog posts, and some drafts, but we’ll see if I can actually pull them together. I missed Friday’s post because I mistakenly thought that I should be responsible and take care of my 5 page paper before everything else. Had I realized that the dumb paper would’ve taken 2 days to write, I would’ve just gotten the blog post and my NaNo writing out of the way first. Juggling — it is a fine art, and one that I have yet to perfect.

So that’s where I am this week! Just as a reminder, Em and I are hosting another Fun Not Fear! check-in, which I highly encourage all WriMos, and WriMo cheerleaders, to visit. And don’t forget to swing by and wave hello to the rest of the ROW80 community.

ROW80: There’s No Place Like Home

September 18, 2011 / Lena Corazon / 34 Comments

It is a strange feeling, having two homes.

My fourth year of graduate school begins on Thursday, and so I drove back to my apartment today, after spending six weeks at my parents’ house. Initially, I worried about going home to stay with my parents. I wasn’t sure if their presence would chafe, especially after being on my own for the past 3 years. However, the opposite occurred: I have realized that my parents are actually really awesome people, and I love being home with them. Leaving was incredibly difficult, and it was with a heavy heart that I drove back to school this afternoon.

There’s an odd amount of emotional work that has to be done in order to prepare for the transition: saying goodbye to my friends and family in my hometown, letting go of the coziness of my childhood bedroom, and detaching myself from the family cat. There’s also the work of adjusting to a change in roles, from daughter and sister to student and teacher, not to mention the shift in geographic location (northern to southern California; big city to small-ish town; my childhood home to my teeny but cozy studio apartment).

I spent the first couple of hours on the drive down here lamenting the end of my summer and dreading the looming specter of coursework and teaching, but once I reached my apartment, I felt the familiar longings for my school-life: the rhythm of seminars and lectures, the excitement of grad student gatherings and parties, the tranquility of my home, the beauty of the beaches.

There’s a lot for me to ponder as we reach the end of round 3 of ROW80, especially since it also marks the very end of my summer vacation. So much has happened over the past 80 days, and it will be an adventure to see how I will integrate this “writing-self” that has emerged with the “student-self” that I will become once classes begin.

And so here I am, about to begin my 4th year of grad school. This is the year when I need to complete my MA thesis, finish my last few classes, write and defend my PhD dissertation proposal, and advance to candidacy. If all goes well, this will be my last year in Santa Barbara, and I’ll be able to move back in with my parents next August, so I can write my dissertation, rent-free, in San Francisco.

“Focus” will be my middle name in the months to come, especially if I am going to accomplish all of the above, and still tackle the creative writing that I love and adore. I’ve drafted a weekly schedule that allows me time in the evenings for writing and social media stuff, as well as blocks out a couple of hours each afternoon for my research and thesis writing. We’ll see if I can adhere to it, but if I’ve learned anything this summer, it’s that I work best when I’m satisfying my left brain and my right brain. I won’t be giving up on my novel(s) any time soon. 😀

That’s all from me at the moment! I may be a little MIA over the next week or two: my mom is in town with me, and we will be busy sight-seeing, shopping, and hanging out together. However, I’ll do my best to blog-hop about in the days to come, to check in with everyone in our last few days of Round 3.

Lena Corazon

Flights of Fancy