O-H-I-O!

I spent the last few days working on a couple of projects that were due before break-one being the first chapter of my thesis and another my research paper for my German history class. I finished most of what needed to be done over the course of the past week, but still made the same mistake I always do: left editing to the last day. It's pretty amazing how much my concept of writing papers has evolved over the course of nearly four years here. I was always a spell-check kind of girl-I'd skim my papers over maybe once, use spell-check to fix any big problems, and then turned in my papers. While I still got pretty good grades back then, it's amazing what a little extra editing can do. Of course, it wasn't a skill I acquired until Junior year (some people *cough* don't really learn how to do work for college until about the time they leave college; it's kind of sad, really) but at least by the time I graduate I'll have a good idea of how to write a paper on the Perception of Hitler in the Film Triumph of the Will for my future employer, as if they'd care. By this point I'm so burned out on Nazis that I really need a break to get myself out of the 1940's and back into reality.

Thanksgiving Break is coming up, and while I think it's a pretty sketchy holiday, it's still a good excuse to miss class and eat lots of food--two of my favorite activities. Because I'm from Ohio, this trip also entails an eight to ten hour drive in a car that only has a cassette deck with two tapes--both by the Velvet Underground. If you ever plan on going on a drive with me, you'd better like the VU or else it's going to be a pretty miserable trip, because that's all I've got. One weekend, my boyfriend and I decided to go to Minnewaska State Park, which is about a 30-minute drive from campus (being from Ohio, I always measure distance in time). I volunteered to drive, but it didn't take long for my boyfriend to suggest that maybe next time he should drive because I didn't have any other tapes. If that's the case, he's really going to hate this next trip...

Regardless, I'm getting really excited about the aspect of being on the open road. The drive from New York to Ohio is quite beautiful because it's mostly trees without crossing any particularly big cities until you get to Cleveland, and I live close enough to Cleveland that we don't hit any really flat farmland, like the stuff you see in Indiana (don't you just love state rivalries?). Driving across that state was one of the longest days of my life. This will also be the first time I've driven home without my parents, which adds a bit more excitement to the trip. I'm thinking about bringing my laundry with me because that what everyone from the east coast does; I'll drive my entire wardrobe part way across the country to save $3.00 on laundry costs. What has happened to me?! At least that way I'll be making up a little bit of the cost of gas. My housemate mentioned to me that it'll add extra weight to the car, which would in turn bring down our gas mileage, but compared to four people and our luggage, I think the laundry weight is pretty negligible.

Ohio-here I come!

101 Things To Do (in and around Poughkeepsie)

Hey everybody!

I just started on a cool (almost) new project called 101 Things To Do In And Around Poughkeepsie (that capitalization always confuses me) that is basically what it sounds like--except that we do not yet have 101 things. But we're working on it!

Anyways, I'll leave a link so that you can check it out in case the blog is really boring you (it shouldn't be, but of course I may be the only person who thinks so).

Cheers!

http://vsa.vassar.edu/index.php/resources/101-things/

Denazification vs. Berlin

It's been a pretty crazy week, but at least now I feel like I'm getting somewhere. Most of my thesis chapter done? Check. Spring semester class pre-registration finished? Check. Half done with the Nazi paper? (Yes, you read that right. Nazi paper.) Check.

I started writing this paper on Nazi Germany a couple weeks ago for a class I'm taking called "German History from 1914-1990." Boy, they weren't kidding. If I had any sense when I signed up for the class I would have realized that we would spend most of the semester talking about the Nazis, considering that's pretty much what modern Germany history is; you know, Nazis taking over the government, starting World War II, denazification, now. It also doesn't help that I have blonde hair and blue eyes, which causes my Jewish housemate to interrogate me while I read a book called "The Racial State," or when I curl up on the couch with my popcorn while watching the propaganda film "Triumph of the Will." But I swear I don't do this for fun--I have a term paper! My paper focuses on Weber's definition of charismatic authority and it's representation in the film "Triumph of the Will," which I think is a pretty cool topic. But that also means I've seen the film so many times at this point that I'll catch myself whistling the music out of nowhere--then I have to pretend that I was whistling something else in an effort to make people feel less uncomfortable, especially considering the number of Jewish friends I have on campus.

As much as I need to get away from the Nazis, I have a very tempting offer to take a seminar next semester on the Holocaust. You may be wondering why I'm considering taking a class on such an uplifting subject. Well, the key to this class is that it offers a study trip and study trips are AWESOME! Well, I don't know that for sure because I've never actually taken a class with a study trip, but any class that makes you to travel to another country as homework must be awesome.

Basically, if I take the class, I get to spend Spring Break in BERLIN while getting financial aid to help cover the cost of the trip. And considering the amount of financial aid I'm on... well, we'll just say that for me it'd be a pretty sweet deal. Plus, the professor said that after Spring Break I wouldn't have that much work to do because going on the trip is a such an important part of the course, which would give me time to work on my thesis. And what's holding me back from this exclusive offer? Two things: a thesis and a Sociology seminar.

At this point, the question is: "Do I give in to senioritis and take some easy courses to balance the work of the thesis and a required seminar, or do take something interesting and opportunistic even though it might cause me to scream at random points throughout next semester?"

Decisions, decisions.

Actually, reading over that last big paragraph just talked me into it. I'm signing up for the seminar!