• Mood: disappointed

School's In, Cat's Out

Freakin' LJ just ate my long-ass updated post on what's going on with me, but here it goes again. My first day of classes were yesterday and I was moving into my suite a few days beore that, which accounts for my lack of posting/commenting recently. I always have a lot of anxiety before going back to school, but I've been slowly getting over it as I become more settled, see my old buddies, and bond with my four suitemates. Last night we went to this super cute Italian restaurant in Harlem that had excellent gnochi. 

This semester I am taking "Women in Antiquity," "Mass-Mediated Cultures," "Religion, Gender, and Violence," and my thesis seminar. That's been freaking me out because I'm not really sure what my topic specifically will focus on yet. I'm a religion minor, which is also my concentration within anthro, so my thesis will focus on exploring the changes in spirituality pre and post-9/11 in the congregations surrounding ground zero. My only problem is I'm not sure what specific questions I want to explore in that very broad topic, which denominations I should focus on, which congregations might be best to speak with, and how might be an effective way to approach them. I want to discuss this with my advisor ASAP, especially because the aniversary at Ground Zero is coming up next Tuesday, and I'd like to get down there for some preliminary observation even though I have class for most of the day. My interest in NY, religion, but especially trauma should come as a surprise to no one who's read my fics, especially the trauma part. I took a class last semester called Anthropology of Disaster for which I also did a research paper that dealt with mass-media depictions of 9/11 as an event for consumption, so I have some basis to use as a springboard.   

In other news, the phone service is out in my entire suite, so I called academic technologies to fix the problem. I'm happy to see that institutional incompetence is still running strong. They bounced me to three different numbers, and every person basically would not take responsibility for the problem, wouldn't issue a work order, and would not give me the correct person to speak with. I also have to get back into the groove of writing story pitches for the paper, and writing stories themselves. Not really looking forward to that.  

Since I'm going to have to hit the books shortly to get my learn on, I've not had any time to work on the next chapter of All Wrong, which is kinda sad. I'm even more disappointed because I wanted to have my Wes/Lilah fic for feedmykink's kink of the month complete by the 10th, but the chances of that are looking slimmer and slimmer. Maybe I'll be able to pull through yet though; we'll see.