Somehow Mothers Always Know...

I spent some significant time at the library Wednesday to get work done on my final paper. Before even looking at any of the books I needed, I decided to organize my papers and look through readings the professor gave us throughout the semester. I was on the verge of a panic attack like no other because what I was expecting this to be a simple and quick 3 essays began looking like an impossible task. Then I get a text. Mum: love u.

Just enough to kick my butt in gear and get those books and say to myself, "Oh, ok this really is as easy as it looked before..."

Thanks momma. <3

Interesting...

It appears that I have equal levels of productivity in paper writing when I am in a library and when I am in my room listening to music and distracted by the internet. This is good to know, for when I am sick of being in one place, I now know I can be at the other location and still manage to be productive! However, I cannot get work done when I am in the living room...

Procastination Post!

I cannot believe I am in my last week of my first semester of grad school. This is ridiculous. And not nearly as stressful as it should be. And by that I mean, I am not stressing out over this paper and take-home final like I should be. GET IT DONE, ALLI!

I have a 10 page outline for my paper that still doesn't include archaeological evidence from Mt. Gerizim, and my paper only needs to be 10-15 pages long. ...I think I've succeeded. Now it's just putting all that into sentences and then making them make sense. If I can finish writing it TODAY then I can have it all ready for the editing process...WHO WANTS TO EDIT MY PAPER! And by edit, I don't mean, "Oh that sounds so nice, good job!", I mean, "Paragraph 5 makes absolutely no sense, fix it; I went through and made all your long-ass sentences into multiple sentences; you don't make enough support for your thesis through your approach in historical critical analysis; etc." Or even really just someone to tell me my paper makes sense and points out all my run-on sentences, because I apparently really like to make run-ons.

If I can finish this paper today, then I have 5 days for my take-home final and I'll feel comfortable taking the bus home on Saturday without worrying about having a crappy take-home final that is evidently my only grade in this class.

Today is my first final: Hebrew grammar! A couple of people from my class joined me yesterday morning for a 2 hour power study session, and we felt really good afterwards! Yay! I can properly conjugate infinitives in all the binyanim and gizrah! That means 7 x 8 = 56 difference ways to conjugate all the verbs in Hebrew. WOW, I never realized that before...AND I CAN DO ALL OF THEM! woot! Hey, I'm feeling pretty accomplished! Now I just need to learn the vocabulary and I'll be a Hebrew MASTA!

Alright, I woke up early specifically so I could work more on my paper. I should stop procrastinating and do that now. Aww... :(

Whoa..too long...

Holy crap, two weeks left of the semester! Really, there's only 6 days left of classes! This is going the fastest school's ever gone for me! This is ridiculous. I'm not ready! I only have one paper and then a take-home final, so there's nothing for me to complain about, but I'm not ready!!

I had a very accomplished weekend: I read through 3 books for my paper and had all my homework for this week completed by Friday at noon. As a treat, Katy said we should see the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Plaza! Rachel had a dance competition (which she did VERY well in!) and her mom came out for it. So last night we all had dinner at our favorite Asian restaurant (which doesn't serve Japanese anymore! so sad...) and hopped the subway down to 50th! UNFORTUNATELY my camera has decided to crap out. I think maybe I just need a new memory card but it's just not working. I couldn't get any pictures of the tree or all the lights and decorations about. We also ended up going to Junior's Most Fabulous Cheesecake and Desserts for dessert and hot chocolate! Super tasty!

All in all it was super productive weekend and I hope the rest of my week goes as well! I'm getting some ideas on how to map out my paper and I'm even getting things together for writing my take-home final. It's silly, the paper is due on the 16th but my take-home is due the 24th. haha. I'm aiming to have my paper done on the 15th so I have the 16th and 17th to do my take-home before going home on the 18th. If not...I'll be shut up in my room desperately trying to finish, but I think I need the library to do it. We'll see. Maybe I can have my paper done by Monday...

Atlanta and ASOR

Despite being a day early in Atlanta, ASOR was awesome, as should be expected. I met up with nearly everyone from Gezer and we all went out to dinner Friday night. I got shrimp and cheese grits. Oh yea. There was even some bacon in it, so I got my non-kosher fill. Our staff meeting got me REALLY excited to go back this summer! I can't wait! I got to see a lot of really interesting papers presented and some ideas of what to do with my focus in archaeology. It's a little difficult for me to try to do that while I'm at JTS, but I can at least clear out all my language requirements for PhD programs. :)

I saw Heidi, which was awesome, too. She's the one who recommended me to come to JTS! She gave me a bunch of professor's name to meet up with and try to get on good terms with. Sweet! She's such a sweet heart, I love her. Turns out she lived the exact same room I do now in her first year! Ha!

Marcella and I also groupied out when we saw a lot of famous archaeologists, like Israel Finkelstein, Dever, Amihai Mazar, Aren Maeir, Anson Rainey, and others. Oh yea, it was awesome. We would just stand in awe. haha.

It was really nice to get back into the archaeology sphere and hear what new things are going on and see who's moving up. I have a new list of places I want to dig at, ideas of neat things to study, and also some things to cross off my list. Like the Amarna letters! What the heck... I'm sad, I wanted to work with them. I guess there's probably still a lot more out there that I could study besides the 400+ ones that someone is working on compiling into a data base. We'll find out...