Montreal

I just got back from Montreal last night for the ICA conference. When I went to Florence I seemed to have a ton of time to just wander around the city. I walked around for 2-3 hours a day and made it to all sorts of areas. But I hardly saw Montreal at all, which was disappointing. I only saw Old Montreal at night and didn't even make it to the water. But it seems cool and I should go back. I knew they spoke French there but I didn't realize everything was in French and then subtitled in English. Greetings always started in French ("Bonjour, hi"), and if signs only had one language it was always French. Oh, the picture to the right is of the view I had from my 17th floor hotel room! Pretty great right?

So I didn't get to wander around much because I somehow was always back at the conference, but it was a good conference. Met many important people, received a great compliment on our research by a leader in the field, and saw some interesting new work.

In 2010 this conference is in Singapore! So hopefully I'll be there. And my advisor (who is Indian) said that sure we could just go up to India then too and he'd show me his old town. He better not have been joking because I would love, love, love to go to India.

Over the next few days I will continue to add my photos HERE.

Academic burnout

Classes ended 2 weeks ago, yet all my work carries on. This won't be a restful summer at all, but I really need some rest. I've been going with classes non-stop (that is, including both summer sessions) since Fall 2006 and this is my first semester without class since. But with so much funded and group and independent research to finish and my goals of having a dissertation topic by Fall, this summer won't provide much relief!

I still feel so mentally tired from this last semester that I can't get anything done lately. Nothing works and nothing helps anymore: not caffeine, not naps, refreshing jogs, TV time, getting up early....I don't know what to do right now but take the chance to focus on other things. But my advisor will still expect a draft of this Presence conference submission before I go to bed tomorrow night.

Thursday several of us are driving to Montreal for the biggest conference in our field where three of us will present our study of Facebook as a social support venue. Hopefully I'll also get to see the city! I wish the trip wasn't right now because I feel like I've been traveling so much; I'd like to just stay home for a weekend. I'd also like to see less money moving around so I could get a grasp on where my savings for the wedding are.

Also, Brian starts an internship at Merck in New Jersey next week so he's moving there for the summer this weekend. What stupid timing. I wish he could just live here for a summer finally. This of course also stifles our wedding planning a bit--we still haven't even picked a location for the reception.

The only thing to do now is go to bed and see if I can get up at 6am to work in the coherent hours of sunrise.

I finally met the in-laws!

This past weekend Brian and I drove down to Williamsburg, VA to meet up with his parents who flew there from Dallas, TX. Why Williamsburg? I'm not sure. But we went to Colonial Williamsburg which is a permanent reenactment of Williamsburg circa 1774. As you can see in the picture on the right, people in costume go about their daily lives in the town as though it were still during the time of the Revolutionary War and put on shows in the street (on the left are Brian's parents, watching). You can also hear important figures of that time, such as George Washington, speak about the current government. Plus there are shops and restaurants, all kept in the theme.

Meeting my future in-laws went well, much better than Brian or I had expected! Of course some talk of the wedding came up including talk about how his mother would like it to be. It was a time to just smile and nod and then know that we're going to do what we want. But that was a minor moment at dinner; overall they really seemed to take great interest in me and were quite gracious hosts. All in all a good weekend.

More pictures from Colonial Williamsburg HERE

Surviving my teaching semester

I just graded my students' final reports and tomorrow I will be submitting their final grades. Still strange to have authority over a college class. But the important thing is I made it all the way through a semester of my own class! I almost can't believe it. There were days when I thought I should just have someone else take over my class. Nothing was ever going badly but I'd have moments where I realized I had no authority to teach advertising/public relations research! If only I could have taught a media effects research class, I would have been so comfortable.

Ah well, I made it through. My students were good and all received good grades in the end.

I still don't know if I'm teaching this again in Fall but I assume so. And hope so! I know I wouldn't want to do this level of weekly preparation all over again for a different class!