September 16, 2007
bright blessed days / dark sacred nights
I'm too sexy for this song...
Yesterday was the 4 year anniversary of when I met Ben on a porch on a random september evening. Yesterday was also my 10 year high school reinion.
Ben and I celebrated the former by spending the afternoon and evening laying around in our bed - him watching baseball and football, me napping and reading. We capped it off with a game of scrabble after grilled cheese sandwiches. Yum. Our bed has two inches of memory foam and therefore is very comfortable. It was the dog's favorite day ever - she loves to lay in our bed, but doesn't like to be away from the action. Yesterday she got to lay around in our bed and still be with us.
One might expect me to say I can't believe that it has been four years or ten years...but I can. I've accomplished a lot in the four years and even more in the ten years. Every year my life has been vastly different. No September goes by which I feel like my life even resembles the one before. At GT every year was different due to activities, friends, life.... Then in chicago every year involved a change either in the introduction of ben, some major step in our relationship or a major step in my graduate career. So I do feel each year that has gone by and feel like each one was lived.
I, as you might guess, did not go to my 10 year reunion. I was planning on it before the whole baby thing happened. My graduating class was smallish (150) and so I am interested in seeing how everyone ended up. When it comes down to it, though, I see the people that are really important to me every year. And they reminded me last night how awesome they are when they called and left a really sweet message about missing me. So i am excited to see them at Christmas for our annual get together. In the end, they are they people I truely care about and know that i really didn't miss anything but them yesterday.
Sid, me, Amanda, and Courtney. Missing is Tera who had Jack around this time last year so couldn't come.
Posted by christina at 3:03 PM | Comments (0)
September 10, 2007
blackbird singing in the dead of night
A new whole food opened up 5 blocks from us. It is about 2 blocks closer than the other whole food. it is quite a bit nicer. First, it was not busy today at 11. The other one is crazy at 11 on mondays. the parking is much better along with the elevator. the store is huge. We could definitely walk there. And I would have, except that i wanted to take the puppy and she can sit in the car, but cannot sit alone out front.
Papers take FOREVER to get through the review process. I submitted a paper (basically half of my thesis) in May. I logged in to change my e-mail address (as my NU one finally expired) half expecting that the paper would be out of review, but no, my memory of 6 months is right. Though, as i said as we were slow in submitting, that a later publication date is better for my CV. I'm trying to figure out my timing from here - when to go back to class in order to minimize a gap on my resume for another kid. I also think about getting a internship summer that is more applicable to my goals. I have lots of time now to look and bother people, so I have no excuse. I would like to stay in chicago, but the upside to ben being a teacher is that he is off this summer and we can go somewhere else (as long as we can take the dog and cat).
this is my current dream - we'll see. I'll be honest, I can't imagine making any sort of decisions with my hormones still settling and my sleep still interrupted.
Posted by christina at 12:21 PM | Comments (0)
May 28, 2007
you don't have to tell me now
the highlight of today is the discovery of a new internet radio station - pandora radio. So far, for the past 4 hours hours it is has been awesome. no audio ads, all interesting music. i just put in the name of a band that i like and it creates this station of music like it. so interesting. all three i have tried have been pretty right on. well, Hem radio produced a couple of show tunes, but a couple thumbs down made those go away.
it is nice to have this day "off" from "work". I have worked on school work all day. Besides the requisite last week of quarter push of assignments, i am also trying to get a jump on my 2 final papers and final exam. due to the fact that i am going to new york on friday to see pete and jay play. yay for that. i am looking forward to the trip. i really enjoyed new york when we were out last june.
the day off is also good because it was quite the busy weekend. on sat i went to get the rattling checked out on my car and my suspicions were right, it was just a look exhaust. i hear that it is a quite common thing around here as the salt rusts that bolts on the strap that holds on the exhaust. yay for it not being something complicated. though still not cheap. well, maybe cheap in the car repair world. it was a $30 part, but $80 for the labor! crazy. for like 45 mins. i need to become a car mechanic. for reals.
then dinner with the sister and her friend. and then yesterday afternoon at a birthday party for ben's cousin's one-year old. there were a lot of people there with kids in the 1 year old range. and none of the screamed like the children in the apt downstairs. the experience reminded me that i am not a child fan. i am sure i'll be a fan of my child (heck, i think the dog hung the moon), but when other's come around i'm kind of like, hi, how's it going? and am perplexed when they don't answer. : ) though i did really love tera's baby at christmas, so maybe it just depends on the baby...or my mood. : )
the puppy sleeps a lot. even when i am here to bother and the balcony is open for people watch, she still spends much of the day laying on the couch sleeping. so cute.
both of the papers i have spent the weekend working on have really bad prompts. really bad. it is annoying. one is a critique, easy enough, but the prof tried to be nice and give us some guidance, but some of the "guidance" makes no sense in the context of the paper. Not to mention the paper we are critiquing is a lit review. it is really hard to critique a lit review as you have no idea what the author left out from the original studies. I have enjoyed thinking about "the water challenge" though. it makes me feel lucky to me living next to a giant body of freshwater.
this quarter has made me really think i would be awesome as a professor - mainly b/c i think could be doing a crazy better job than my current profs. Someday, i really do think i'll be there, just after i do the dc thing...
Posted by christina at 4:36 PM | Comments (1)
April 3, 2007
Sincerley, Me
SO. I'm in this very strange situation at school. I have never experienced anything like it. It started with the new quarter last week. I signed up for a persuasion course. The prof is old and amusing and very interesting. He was bewildered at the 30 people who where there the first day. It was much bigger than expected. and he was at a loss for what to do. (Why not cap the enrollment?) Anyways, he mentioned that he was teaching a history of science course in the afternoon that had very few people in it. I though it was be interesting, and so I decided to transfer into the afternoon class and leave the persuasion for next spring when it might be smaller.
So i go the first day. There are 6 people - 4 undergrads and 2 harris people from the morning session. I go the second day - just me and the other harris dude. I am perfectly happy to go back to the persuasion course. dude is also in the persuasion - i.e. history of science is his third course. The prof is willing to teach the course, but he and I are both uncomfortable with the lecturing to two students situation. Dude says that he is going to try to get into another third class, but won't know until the next class (today).
So this morning after I sat through the persuasion course, we find out he couldn't get into the econ course he wanted and instead of just finding ANOTHER COURSE so history of science can die a peaceful death, he decides that he wants to do the history of science course. of course, i am a nice person and go with it. The prof does too, though is obviously not excited about it. So we meet in the afternoon. Prof still not excited. Dude has some change of mind since noon and the end of this class and decides that, wait, maybe i should try to get into another course. Instead of just doing it (as i know the course he is looking at doesn't have a cap) he is stringing us along. It is so weird. He has no respect for my or the prof's time. The prof feels obligated to teach the course if he wants to take it. I feel obligated to stay to make it not just a one person course. though I am pretty much at the end of my rope and am really close to just saying f*ck this and telling them both that I'm taking the persuasion course. This is ridiculous! If I didn't like the prof so much, and wasn't shamelessly using the opportunity to get the 85 year old man to learn my name as to give me an A in the persuasion course which has no formal evaluation system, I totally would be e-mail them both. I am doing the readings for both classes, which is annoying since I have much less time due to the saving of the earth on Mondays and Fridays. The readings are interesting, so that makes it a little better.
So strange.
so. strange.
almost as strange as the fluttering in my lower tummy. it has been off and on all day. is it the sack o' organs? or is it stretching of the uterus? Whatever it is, IT IS STRANGE. Some people say it feels normal, but to me STRANGE. VERY STRANGE. This morning in the persuasion course, i felt it and almost flipped out. It is very similar to the feelings I had in that region before spring break during a final exam. I brushed it off as it was early (14 wks). Though most people don't sit around in a silent room staring at an exam for the 3rd time and giving their body their undivided focus. As i was not doing that over spring break nor at saving the earth, i haven't really felt it until i was back in class not distracted. Though the fluttering is distracting me now.
I just want my schedule finished.
I am love love loving commuting downtown. Even with the mean renovation to the el which is making my commute more people packed, I love sitting on the train reading. I love walking to my building. ben came down on friday for dinner and walking north across the river i had occasion to turn around and point out the building I worked in and it turned out the my one of my favorite of the skyline - the Jeweler's Building. I never looked up before. It is awesome.
Posted by christina at 8:38 PM | Comments (0)
January 24, 2007
Big Eyed Fish
my mom and babylove
I go to school with some really immature people. Or they are just stupid. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say they are immature. Though the stupid questions they ask during class point to stupidity, but then again, we all have stupid questions, we just know enough not to ask them in the lecture hall of a 100.
I decided that there should be a limit to how many questions a person should get to ask during one lecture. 2 seems like a good limit. The same people ask questions over and over. I am convinced they just like to hear themselves speak. The majority of our professors so far just put up with it and answer their questions. Clarification questions and interesting question are okay. If you are having trouble with the math, go to the TA! Many lectures have been sidetracked due to these people's disease.
Finally, though, I have a prof that will say what I think every time. Okay, not really. But he got the "thank-you for finally acting like this is a professional graduate degree program" award yesterday. One of the worse suffers from the aforementioned disease asked a question totally about last week's reading. Why she didn't ask it when we talked about that subject, I don't know. I do suspect it is because she didn't do the reading. This class is very segmented from class to class. She was asking about minority representation and we were talking about political parties. There was no connection to her question. And the professor just said, that is something you should have asked last time and then moved on. It was awesome.
Today I lost (if this was even possible) more respect for my classmates and gained some for a prof I thought was lost to the sea of question. It has to do with the midterm being schedule for the day after the superbowl. Of course, the bears are in it and a fair amount of my classmates are complaining about it. The prof can't move it because there is a classmate who have a 3 day interview at the end of the week and went out of his way to talk with the prof at the beginning of the quarter and schedule the trip around the midterm. Also, two versions are never the same (agreed). I am not sure why the prof told us this. I would have just said, you all are adults, act like it! I feel bad for that person b/c now all these stupid people hate them. The test is at 10:30 on Monday. The game at 5:30 on Sunday. Study before hand. From the snide remarks of the people behind me, it isn't the studying, but the fact that they are going to be hungover on Monday. What are they, freshman in college? Though I believe that they should go for it, better for the curve.
Posted by christina at 2:06 PM | Comments (0)
December 5, 2006
brain hurts to much to hear music
big dog. small dog.
two down. one to go.
my brain and hand hurts. I've had two 3 hour essay (basically) test. I have stuff a lot of information into my brain. Yesterday's test went well. Today's went pretty well. I was chugging along at a good pace and was totally thinking i was going to get down in half the time (1.30 hr) but i hit a wall at the last question and spent the remaining 1.5 hrs on it. i think i figured it out, but who knows. and i certainly don't care now.
tomorrow i have my stats final. It is good because it is open book (no more stuffing things in the brain) and it is only 2 hrs. but i have a lot of problems to work to get into the stat thinking mode - where i can look at a problem and know how to pick out the information.
i want the snow to melt. though i'm not as affected as usually since i've restricted to the elliptical and with the 9 am final i've been doing a short core work out instead. except this morning, when i studied profit maximization. turns out, should have worked out.
not we are just hanging out until our stats final. it is hard to believe that this time tomorrow i'll be done and started the first break, real break i've had since, well, my semester off at GT. i'm looking forward to mopping.
Posted by christina at 1:10 PM | Comments (0)
November 15, 2006
imagine me and you / i do
today, in micro, the chick next to me was using one of those pens with the 4 colors - blue, black, green, red. it reminded me of my jr. high days when i used a pen with blue, black, purple, and pink. I would take classes notes in blue and write notes to my friends with the purple and pink. i can see that pen in my head. i wrote a lot of notes in class. this continued into college where my friend court and i would mail letters back and forth. we were old school like that.
there are some days when i have so much to read or i care (WAY TOO MUCH) about my grades, I wonder what i am thinking. why did i sign up for studying and tests and so much reading? Why did i take the hard stats when i could be breezing through the easy stats and my gpa would be better off. but my brain is better off. i am finally (thanks pepp ta) internalizing that grades should reflect what i should learn and not what i know. yeah, i made mistakes on my stats midterm (which, i have no idea as we haven't gotten them back), but i have learned what i did wrong and why it was wrong and how to improve for the next paper or the next exam and really for me in general.
i am here to learn a different language, which i what i am doing. i know where i want to end up many years from now. I have faith that i will end up there, the uncertainty of the path is bothering me. though, not really, it is a temporary bother that i know i just focus on as a distraction from my current work.
finals come soon in three weeks i'll be done with this quarter. i am not looking forward to finals, but i am looking forward to the break that follows. it is filling up with things like kitty surgery, a trip to arkansas, getting my plates changed, meeting with a very important person that i hope will be my path...
Posted by christina at 2:06 PM | Comments (0)
November 2, 2006
everybody loves you, so don’t let them down
jenny, me, and liz. at some event. (thanks chris/ray)
i'm not really sure where my time goes. All i know is i have no time to return phone calls and e-mails, much less blog.
i'm a morning person and all, but i really wish the people in my 8:30 class would talk quietly. it is still too early for the yelling and talking about being hung over.
npr is having their pledge drive. they like to say where people are pledging are from. this morning when they mentioned some pledger was from chicago, i found myself realizing that i more identify with living on the near north side of chicago then in chicago. this is probably because i've spent so much time with peeps from evanston or, now, hyde park. as much as i make fun of the northside, especially wriggleyville, i like living there.
classes are busy busy. some of the people in my program drive me batty, as you might suspect from the previous comment. people everywhere drive me batty, so i why am i surprised? some of the people drive me batty in ways that i suspected before i came, but then there are the hung over people that i just didn't expect to encounter in this program.
i have found two awesome people - josh and emily. josh lives by me, is engaged, and is old like me. emily is even older then us and married. we all treat school as important, but not our lives and that is really nice. so really, i complain about people, but in the end all i really need is a couple of people. we work on stuff and chat about life. it is nice.
i do have to mention that it is strange going from a life where i really didn't talk to many people during the day (hello, why i graduated in 4 years) to chatting with either josh or emily or some one else most days. i like it, but maybe that is where all my time goes. ha ha, not really. all my time goes into stat problems that once the question is explained clearly i could have solved in 15 minutes. oh stats. you are so interesting, but all the people in my class are freaked out about the midterm next week. it is open book, so i'm not that freaked out. it is a hard class. i'm use to hard classes. i do better in classes that are hard because i understand concepts, but tend to make stupid mistakes on exams. this works out fine in hard classes, but in easy classes it can make a big difference. hence, why i'm a fan of hard classes. plus it is open book.
plus i've recently made a commitment (yesterday) to stop being so intense about school. i got behind (b/c of the wedding) and then got use to working every moment not spent walking or dealing with ms. pepper. and i got caught in my grades as i thought, hey, i should be doing spectacularly. i'm actually not sure how i am actually doing, but i perceived that i should be doing everything perfect b/c hey, i'm smart. Through all of my years in school i never really cared about my grades, which is actually evident in them. I studied and i tried, but i was never an overachiever. seems to have worked out. the ironic thing about my johnny come lately obsession with grades is that i know that grades don't matter. i know they REALLY don't matter in life, and they REALLY REALLY don't matter for me. so alas. my new commitment to not being so intense is working so far as i am posting to my blog instead of reading some of the many pages that i should be reading for my noon discussion section.
Posted by christina at 10:42 AM | Comments (2)
October 14, 2006
do you love me question mark
Finally, there has been a resolution to the math camp saga. The administration agreed with my assessment. It was unfair to the people who did not go to math camp and did not know about the multivariable question. The people who did go to math camp did know. If everyone had the same information, i.e. that everyone did not know about the multivariable problem, then the scores would have been lower across the board and the percentage required for passing would have been lower.
They ended up throwing out the multivariable question for the people who did not attend math camp, and so I've officially passed the math exam. It was an interesting experience. I had expected to have to compromise (i'd take the exam again, but not have to take the review class that is required for those who fail the exam), so i am quite pleasantly surprised to not have to compromise.
Posted by christina at 1:37 PM | Comments (1)
October 3, 2006
counting blue cars
The probability (from one source) of transmission of the AIDs virus is 1 out of every 500 unprotected sexual encounters between an infected person and uninfected person.
The probability of transmission after 500 encounters is 0.63.
Your first reaction is that I must be wrong. From the first statement it seems that you are guaranteed transmission after 500 encounters. But that's not true. There is not some magic bag where there are 499 blank slips and 1 AIDs slip and you just keep using them up until you are done. Every encounter has the same chance and therefore the probability after 500 encounters is 63%.
Not that you should play these odds. But I thought it was interesting. I am a product of a generation in which they scared you so bad that you thought that the probability is 100%, so I was surprised. Of course, as many people can tell you, it only takes once, so use condoms oh single populations!
Posted by christina at 5:29 PM | Comments (1)
September 28, 2006
life is a highway / i wanna ride it all night long
Today we are going to discuss all the interesting things I have learned this week. My classes are so interesting. So much more interesting than quantum mechanics, though in realitity it and my stats course are all about the probability of things (electron locations, getting AIDs)
I just read an interesting paper for my Policital Economy course about car theft preventation precautions. Say you put a club on your car. It is big and visable. A theft comes along looking for a car to steal. He sees your club and moves on to the car behind you. Though you have increased the benefit to you, you have passed on the cost to the collective by increasing the probability their car will be stolen.
Say you put in a lojack, which is an unobservable tracking device. Your car may be stolen, but the recovery rate is higher. More over, the lojack tracking results in the break up of chop shops and arrests of professional theives. Becuase thieves don't know which car has a lojack, they decrease their car stealing. These are positive effects for everyone.
From the paper:
"Lojack appears to be one of the most cost-effective crime reduction approaches documented in the
literature, providing a greater return than increased police, prisons, jobs programs, or early educational interventions."
Because the lojack indivual cost is low, it will be undersupplied by the market, though it results in a large collective good. Therefore insitutions (govern'ts mostly) try to encourage lojack installation by law mandated insurance discounts.
Next on.....
The probability of getting AIDs through a single unprotected sex act. It is lower than you think.
Posted by christina at 10:13 AM | Comments (1)
September 26, 2006
rooftops and invitations
The sunrise is amazing, especially over the water, specifically this morning over Lake Michigan.
I couldn't do it.
I am a failure.
I couldn't give up my morning runs. I just love having them done and not looming over my whole day. I ended up getting a parking permit, which i was on the waiting list for and didn't expect for a while. So i don't have to worry about parking, and I have a nice spot in a nice gated lot. I pulled myself out of bed this morning in time to be running by 6:15. Yeah it was dark, but it was almost dawn and the sun rose half way through my run. It is a beautiful sight, coming up over the lake.
It was tight, but i made it out the door by 7:45 in time to get down here for my 8:30 class. I am NOT a fan of traffic. Stupid traffic. Though it is just bad trying to get on to lake shore drive and driving the 5 miles between my place and downtown.
The math exam saga continues. I did take it up with the dean of students. She seems open to my solution of throwing out the last problem. She has forwarded it along to other people in charge. It seems hopeful.
Posted by christina at 10:06 AM | Comments (1)
September 20, 2006
sometimes you feel like a nut
so i failed the calculus part of the math exam. turns out that how to do the last problem was in the lecture notes, i just missed those pages and since a similar problem wasn't on the practice exam, i missed missing those pages. it just makes me laugh. the exam wasn't easy, i concentrated my studying on algebra and the calc test asked things that have nothing to do with applying math (which is what i thought it was going to do), but asked picky things. it is going to be interesting to go over the exam with the instructor. I have issues with how the exam was given. I have issues with notation on the test. Not that it matters at all. i just have to retake it in dec.
the best part of it was because of failing, i bonded with two girls. they are both engineers. and really they made me not hate being at orientation. and i was hating it. it was seeming all the people i was meeting where young, single, and way interested in going out to the bars. one of these girls is a smige older than me and married. We have a lot of the same issues with science and careers and family and not wanting to stay at parties until 3 in the morning (like the chick next to me this morning did). so as it is said, everything happens for a reason. if i got a cool friend out of failing the calc part of the math exam, then it was totally worth it.
Posted by christina at 5:19 PM | Comments (2)
July 26, 2006
it will rain sometimes
cuz i'm tired of editing:
current counts:
chap 1&2 3,896 words 24 pages
chap 3 5,936 words 39 pages
chap 4 6,634 words 51 pages
Posted by christina at 1:20 PM | Comments (0)
April 10, 2006
glints in the night / commas and ampersands
I’ve officially made my decision regarding the next year (probably two) of my life. I mailed in the form and the deposit this weekend after visitation Friday. The policy program gave us way better swag than any engineering program. I received a shoulder bag with a long sleeve t-shirt, garret’s caramel corn, a pen, a coffee mug, and a random tool thingy.
The policy program is bigger than I expected (I’m a product of a small major). There are 250 people in the master’s program (125 per year). This is actually a good thing as there are more class choices (unlike small materials departments). The other “accepted students” were surprisingly old. I expected most of the people to be undergrads, but all but 4 or so were at least 3 years out of college. The vast majority are working in the non-profit sector. I was the only strange person in a Ph.D. program. (I had to say, yes, I like school, multiple times.) It was a really interesting group.
I have to admit that I did not do much researching of policy school. I knew I wanted to stay in Chicago. U of C is an amazing school. They had a program that would enable me to get a masters in a year (because of my phd). So I applied. Turns out, it is a perfect match. The program is heavy on quantitative analysis. It was interesting to see how many people were afraid of the math component of the degree. Math is not scary I told people. A quantitative analysis of anything is perfect for me (hence my aforementioned obsession with data). I am quite excited.
Turns out that it is also the perfect match as it gives me choices. I can either do the 9 class option and have a degree in 3 quarters (by May) or stay another year and do the “regular” two-year masters. I was, of course, leaning toward the 3 quarter, but turns out that your second year is ALL electives that can be taken from any school at the U of C. I am not sure that I could pass that up. There are so many interesting electives in the public policy school alone. Plus there is an internship in the summer between the two years. It is just all so interesting. The amazing thing is that I don’t ever have to decide until I petition for my degree. If in May I am tired of school, I can be done. But who am I kidding? Of course I am going to stick around and take advantage of the amazing opportunity I have to learn and study and be. I am lucky that I don’t need to be earning money to eat (ah, an advantage of being married), so I can learn.
As much as people joke about me being a professional student (and BOY have I been hearing that one a lot), learning is what I love to do.
Posted by christina at 4:05 PM | Comments (5)