This is really random.
Internet was finally installed on Friday. This means that I should update more often, especially when school cranks up and my internship starts here at the farm. However, it probably won’t be every day as 1) I don’t have the time and 2) My life is generally not very interesting on a day-to-day basis.
The new iMac is supposed to be here either this coming Friday or Monday week. Once I get it set up, I plan to spend a few hours with iPhoto going through all the pictures I took in the last 7 months in Latin America. There probably won’t be anything new that’s not already posted here, but I will transfer them to my new Flickr account which will make them available to a wider audience and also reduce the need to store them on my server.
This site may be undergoing some changes soon. I’m using the K2 theme, which is still in “beta” mode. The archive pages do not display properly (for example, photos are not linked). But if you click on the individual titles for each post you can view the original post page individually and everything is fine. I’m hoping this will be fixed soon. Also, as time permits I will be customizing the look so that it’s not the default boring blue. For all 3 people who read this site and have been thinking “Damn, that’s really ugly!”.
Classes seem interesting. Some a lot more than others. I think my toughest class is going to be Greenhouse Crops. Initially, I assumed that the “crops” mean tomatoes and such, but we are actually growing flowers. Almost 100 of them. Per person. And I have no idea how to use a greenhouse. Should be a great learning experience. Most of my other classes seem to be building mainly on what I’ve learned before… Crop Ecology seems especially interesting, because we don’t have a textbook and are instead relying on recent publications and articles.
Great notebooks are available at Book Factory. I ordered several 96-page general log books, as well as a lab notebook, and a half-size general notebook for lists and to-do. These things are amazing. After using looseleaf paper and 3-ring binders and having no idea where my notes are a year later, having a quality, bound notebook is a life-saver. I highly recommend them.
I spoke to a few professors about problems that I had with a university program (yes, I am purposefully being vague). They were all extremely supportive and I feel like my comments and criticisms were taken seriously. One of them I had never met before, and after I talked to him for a couple hours he offered to write a recommendation for me any time I need one. Awesome. I wish other students who had the same problems would come forward to talk about it. I’ve been trying to convince them, but only one other person has said anything, even though we all more or less had the same issues. Why are people so apathetic? I don’t understand.
Grad school is only 18 months away if all goes as planned. I’m nearly certain that I want to go to UC Santa Cruz to obtain my PhD in Environmental Studies with an emphasis in Agroecology. This is seriously exciting to me. My advisor is going on a trip there soon and said he will bring back any info or contacts he can find.
Poster presentations for the Ecology graduate seminar are coming on Friday. Tiffany and I finished designing the posters yesterday and we have to print them tomorrow. I’m kinda nervous about it, because details have been so sparse. I have no idea where we are presenting, how many people we are presenting to, or how long our presentations have to be. Maybe they assume that grad students know this? But we’re undergrads. Guess I’ll find out sometime this week. This semester is already occupying most of my free time, ugh.
Life on the farm is great so far. I spent most of the weekend building shelves to put all my stuff on. They are 10 feet wide, 2 feet deep, and 3 levels tall (each at 19″). Yes, I have a lot of crap. I still have to go through it all and consolidate it into boxes and sell/donate/trash the things I don’t need (like Tylenol that expired in 2001). Even with the mess around me, I feel comfortable here. It’s really quiet most of the time, although I often hear helicopters in the distance which is strange. Most of my time is spent outside or in my room. The rest of the house is kinda bare and empty and cold in the winter. Cooking here is great though — gas stove!
Today is MLK day. No school. But I still have 12 things on my to-do list. Time to do get it done.
