Timeline So I started my internship at Vandy on Monday, and found out I'm to make weekly reports on my every action for the supervisor. I figure ya'll might get a kick out of it as well, so...

Monday – Met IM Staff, reviewed RFI and Project Overview Draft. Sat
in on afternoon conference.
Tuesday – Continued review of RFI. Sat in on Laura / Fonda issues
conference. Added Fonda issues to Team Issue log. Uploaded updated
log.
Weds – Continued work on Issue Log. Attended Staff Scheduling Project
Meeting and created Project Meeting Notes. Revised meeting notes and
published on team website. Began developing Vacation Time Scheduler
in Visio.
Thurs – Continued Visio Calendar, Integrated Project Meeting Notes
into Issues. Attended HIMMS luncheon. Created Vandyworks Timeline.

Not a bad first week. Tomorrow I fly solo. My Team Leader (and apparent mentor) is out of town, so I get to figure things out on my own. It'd be a lot easier if I could have a network login, but that's floating around the mists of HR for who knows how long.
What's not in that lovely little blurb is the fact that "Created Vandyworks Timeline" took like 4 tries. Everything I fixed screwed up something else. Finally my bosslady was just like "do this. Just this. There. Like that. good."
By then it was 4. My brain turns to jello at this job after about 3. Too much thinking all day long, exact inverse of the warehouse. Not as exciting as MR. Although my Medical Records background keeps coming in handy. An MA in Health Info Management might not be such a bad thing. Or maybe this leadership stuff. I don't really want to restrict myself, and it hurts to pull away from Lit. I'd still like to teach, and lit is the route to that, but I'm not sure it's the only one. And whenever I think about the essays I've enjoyed I realize it's the search that I enjoy as much as the knowledge. I'm not sure that's leadership, but it's definitely organizing a process, creating steps and managing the workflow.
God. I don't want to be white collar, do I? What about that scruffy English Teacher?
Maybe I can do both.  ¶   4 comments

  The Adventures of Nomad, who eventually finds an unexpected home A little while after posting yesterday I decided to poke my nose outside because it looked really pretty out and I'd been in the SGA office for far too long. So I left my stuff and headed out for a little romp up the campus and back down again. I saw no one, but wasn't really surprised by that. I came back to the Curris Center, satisfied and ready to kill a little more time before church and then SCA, but found the door locked.
Visions of the mess I'd left around the office flashed through my mind.
Then I remembered the open window.
Lucky for me, I found the man with the keys first, and after waving frantically and panomiming a few things, he let me in. So then I got to sit around with my stuff, waiting for a ride, feeling very homeless. But at least I had my stuff back. A short story I read this morning said "A man with a little property can be infinitely more territorial than a king over all his lands." That was me. I would've slept with my backpack under my head had I not been on an airmattress.
Today I have made the RCA area spotless, and significantly more organized. My desk is starting to feel a bit more like my desk, even though it's something of a community thing. The folders are organized, the cabinets are getting there, the phone's plugged in, the tables are cleared off, and even the basketball hoop is standing up a little straighter. Emily Just kept me company today, along with brief visits from Jeannie and Meaghan (whose name I never can spell, that may be right). Casteele did too, of course, and I visited Dr. E today to pick up my paper. Scored another A! If only I could do that well in the class as a whole. I fear another "C" is on the way. If so, it'll be all alone, though. I've had a very A-B semester. But a C will bump me off the Dean's List, I think.
which reminds me, I forgot to put Deans List on my resume. Oh well.
Had a nice little chat with Dr. E this afternoon. Talked about everything from the Pope to the Apostle Mark, with a little SGA and a lot of academics thrown in. I'm looking forward to this fall.
I need to change my "what I'm reading" bar, but what I'm reading is changing so quickly it doesn't really matter. I read a sci-fi collection this morning, I'm reading about 4 books on writing currently (dialogue, scene, plot, and character), and I'll probably start something else on Friday. Of course, with work starting Monday my free time is about to be seriously cut into.
Haircut. That's what I forgot. D'oh.
Vandy's gonna think I'm a hippie.
Little do they know I'm just lazy.
Maybe I'd better let them think I'm a hippy. That might be better.
I realize I'm rambling. I'm somewhere between tired and excited. There are a lot of things opening up that I didn't think would. Casteele's shown me quite a few writing oppurtunities which I may follow up on this summer or fall. If I decide to get a cell phone, as I've been encouraged to by the SGA, Los, and everyone else on campus, writing a few of those articles per month would easily cover the fees. Of course, without any source of income this fall (SGA pays in scholarships, not checks) I may have to write just to eat.
Declining balance will only get me so far, and summer $$ should go to a car and toward savings (which are just pathetic right now).
I hate having to deal with money.
Emily left the TV on CMT. I think the music is adversely affecting my brain. I seriously want to go turn it off before it makes me depressed. As it is, it's just annoying.
Our conference starts tomorrow at 7AM. I haven't been to bed before 1 since before friday. I think I might should try to tonight. On the bright side, we have 5 hours to get to Cumberland Falls. Where is cumberland falls? I haven't got a clue. Somewhere in Kentucky, east of Murray. Probably Northeast.
I could google it, but I'm too lazy for that too.
I just figured out why I'm so tired. I have had no caffiene today. I've drank a bunch of water (around 60 ounces) and had a caffiene-free rootbeer with lunch. Wow. ok. That explains a lot.
That reminds me, too. Coffee Pot for SGA office is a must. I don't believe there's not one! This will soon be remedied. Since Tristan doesn't like the stuff and I'll probably be coming here before my T/Th classes, I may just move the coffee pot into here. MWF I should be awake enough, and I may come in here before then just to get a little coffee. I doubt it, but anything's possible.
I meant to bring LJ's book with me to the office today. I was gonna read it. It's probably better that I didn't, though, because I've been reading helpful stuff instead. I'm in the mood to write, though, so I'm going to do that now.
By the way, thanks again to all of you who read this loyally. It amazes me sometimes who is out there following my little bit-by-bit portrait of life. I don't consider this anything spectacular, but it flatters me to hear from those of you who enjoy reading it.
One other thing I've started on the SGA whiteboard is a Weekly piece of food for thought. I'll try and give them to you, too. Here's this week's:

"Motivation is everything. You can d o the work of two people, but you cannot be two people. Instead you have to inspire the next guy, and he will inspire his people." -Lee Iacocca  ¶   1 comments

  Alone Last night Los went for a walk to think back on everything. He's been at Murray State 6 years, but he donned the medieval gown and walked off campus today. Pulling aprat the room I realized I'd never be talking to Los about how nice it is to have another drummer as a roommate, how crazy women are, or how bad Cartoon Network has gotten with their scheduling. I'll never see his "desk" spread out around the head of his bed or trip over a gig-bag big enough for a tuba. Los is gone now, and the campus feels empty.
Of course, the campus is empty. I never realizedquite what it feels like when 10,000 people suddenly stop being all around you. I saw casteele in the Curris Center (where I'm piddling around doing some RCA stuff and currently writing this) and nearly tackled him, just because he was another living soul. And it's only been 2 hours since everyone left. I live most of my life surrounded by people, friends and family, and to suddenly be so alone isn't as easy as I thought it would be.
Even the gamecube, which I kept up here as a loyal companion, just isn't the same without Los or Tiff to wince, cheer, or even just plain complain.
The solitude is a little relieving too, though. I have this next couple of days to think, reflect, and prepare. I want to write some (as always), but I want to read more. I've certainly got a lot of prayers to say, and I hope to learn a few things over the next day or two as well. A bit of the Dead Sea Scrolls, privately owned, is on display in Paducah along with copies of many religious texts. Tomorrow the owner of the scrolls, an expert of sorts, is going to talk to University Church about their significence.
I've had so much on my mind. I have so much on my mind. I've been so stressed for so long that now I sit here and realize how much time has slipped by without me even noticing. I've made great friends here at Murray, but my own time with them is slipping away. Soon I'll be off to grad school, with any luck, and where will they end up? What does the future hold? It's something all writers imagine, but few capture in their writing. This uncertainty is certainly part of life. The 3 stars of the Murray Crest: past, present, future. Sure, they're also something like "Hope, Persivere, and whatever", but both apply. MSU's my present, but it's really starting to become my past too. And the future's not to far away.
I hope I'm ready for it.  ¶   0 comments

  Breakfast...Breakfast...Breakfast "Ya'll broke some s*** heere. Ya'll."
Gotta love finals week.
Last night was midnight breakfast, which we went to around 10 and left around 11. That's an MSU tradition, one which Amber suggested we try and nominate for some kind of award. No clue what, but it was a good idea.
Tiff's watching Breakfast Club now. I'm drowning it out with my Shoutcast player. It's more of the 80's nostalgia that hangs over our generation, and while it's not a terrible movie, I've seen it too many times to enjoy it.
Tension's a little high, too. It's dawned on several of us that we have big finals tomorrow and everyone else is celebrating the ones they passed today. Doesn't make for a good combination. Tiff and I are going to breakfast in the morning before ours in the hope that we'll be awake enough by the time our finals roll around. I figure it'll just give me indigestion while I'm pondering over the Christian imagery in "Billy Budd" or something similar.
Anyway, I've been in front of notes and outlines on this computer all day. I'm getting off here.  ¶   0 comments

  Yeah, another semester nearly down the drain. Ashlee Simpson's TV Show (they gave her a TV show?!) is blaring at me. Los left it on, I turned it off. Haha, it's the SNL episode. Oh, poor, poor Ashlee.
I hate hollywood.

I've got to get some work done for SGA, as usual. That looks like it'll be my life this fall. I'm excited about it, but I'm getting concerned, too. I have a lot of people trying to tell me what I should or should not do, and all my ideas are supposed to be in there somewhere. There's a happy medium between taking advice and letting others run the show. I want the council to be able to make thier own decisions, but the council doesn't even meet until the fall, and all these decisions have to be made before then.
We've got a lot of work to do.

What else is new? I don't know. Mothers day gifts are in the mail, yay. Thanks to all my moms out there who read this. I've gotten a lot of great support from all of you.
Ok, now I hear Mom in my head saying to go do my homework. I'm on it!  ¶   0 comments

  Brain. Hurts. I've been working too long. I'm trying to make it till 4, because at 4 I have to get ready to go to our Spring Retreat for RCC. There I'll be doing very little, since we don't have anyone running for my old job.
How painful is it?
Here ya go. These are my block quotes. Obviously, I won't be using all of them. I doubt I'll use half of them. They just represent the ideas I'm leaning toward in my essay.
They're not even sorted logically yet.
I've just been looking at them too long.

For the remainder of his career, Crane often expressed a distaste for the bureaucracy of journalism, but his love of truth compelled him to keep writing. (Bates-Eye 71)

Stephen Crane, when faced with a real life situation that embodied the naturalistic fears and concerns of an entire era, took the opportunity to speak from his experience, to convey not an invention, not a creation, but rather the truth, both of the experience and of the occurrence. It is our responsibility to accept the integrity of his vision as consistent with nonfictional truth-telling and consider "The Open Boat" as an early--perhaps one of the first--examples of literary nonfiction. (Bates-Eye 77)

"The Open Boat" picks up where "Own Story" leaves off and carries the reader through the rescue itself. Additionally, in August of 1897, he published a highly fictionalized story, "Flanagan and His Short Filibustering Adventure," which was also clearly inspired by his experience at sea. This narrative is about the captain and crew of the Foundling, which, like the Commodore, sinks in a squall, but only after it has successfully completed a filibustering expedition and fought off a Spanish gunboat. This short story is acknowledged to be Crane's attempt to capitalize on his real-life experience (Wertheim 281-82)

At the conclusion of "Own Story," as he closes the narrative and conspicuously leaves out the account of his perilous experience in the lifeboat, Crane explains, "The history of life in an open boat for thirty hours would no doubt be instructive for the young, but none is to be told here and now. For my part I would prefer to tell the story at once" (Crane,
"Own Story" 1).

Crane "knew enough not to put too much into a story for the papers; knew enough not to waste what he had to say, or wanted to say, on that most uncomprehending of all readers, the reader of the newspaper" (Hagemann 67).

And so he moved toward the type of fiction which best suited his needs: Naturalism.

The characters in "The Open Boat" are quite obviously dealing with the kind of forces in which naturalists believe; they face the indifference of nature and the opposition between hope and fear as they struggle for survival on the angry, open sea. Crane describes nature, which functions nearly as a character in this story, as "not . . . cruel . . . nor beneficent, nor treacherous, nor wise. But she was indifferent, flatly indifferent" ("Open Boat" 355). The entire action of the narrative reveals the correspondent's contemplation and resigned acceptance of his (humankind's)
insignificance and isolation in the face of an environment that simply does not care (Adams 422).


“What makes Crane’s realism remarkable is his search for the truth about what goes on inside a mind, given a certain set of circumstances. The circumstances did not matter to Crane as much as what they produced; and he was always willing to accept suggestions as to where he should go in search of material. His interest lay in . . . recording how the thoughts flowed through the mind of the sufferer.” (Lang, Art of Stephen Crane, p119)


In other words, there is some reason to believe that, for Crane, qualitative judgment is implicit in the act of perception itself; and because the ironist cannot help but perceive differently from the majority of his contemporaries, cannot be otherwise than more or less out of consonance with the assumptions of society, the huge will is instantly required merely to accept his perception as a valid basis for action which, if he is to be personally honest, will place him in conscious opposition to the convention.
Such a conclusion implies that Crane, from the beginning, relied ultimately upon his perception for his essential means of orienting his life, not upon his intellect, education, tradition, or even experience—if one can distinguish between detached perception and actual participative action. A direct acceptance and dependence upon perception, at any rate, best accounts for the odd air of authority that scholars have noted in both the man and his work, an enigmatic aura of psychological security not particularly open to argument in the man and not unduly vulnerable to analysis in his work.
Crane perceived that man’s mental machinery is ‘weak’ in comparison with the forces, both external and internal, with which it has to cope; and his several explorations of this particular perception constitute the essential subject of both his prose and poetry, as will be seen. (Linson 12)

He had no use for the old school of romance novelists. There was plenty of true romance in ordinary life. (Linson 31)

for I understand that a man is born into the world with his own pair of eyes, and he is not at all responsible for his vision—he is merely responsible for his quality of personal honesty. To keep close to this personal honesty is my supreme ambition.”
Starrett, Vincent “Stephen Crane, An Estimate.” Men, Women, and Boats. Boni and Liveright, 1921.


“Alternatively known as "literary journalism" or the "literature of fact," creative nonfiction is that branch of writing which employs literary techniques and artistic vision usually associated with fiction or poetry to report on actual persons and events. Though only recently identified and taught as a distinct and separate literary genre, the roots of creative nonfiction run deeply into literary tradition and history.” ( http://www.pitt.edu/~bdobler/readingnf.html )


I need a nap.  ¶   0 comments