My Introduction to the Academic World...Sorta

You know, I should probably change the name of this blog. Not the post, the entire blog. :) I haven't posted anything crafty in forever. But I am posting something. And not just a throw-it-all-in-there update post.

This past weekend, I presented at the Far West Popular Culture and American Culture Associations Conference here in Las Vegas. It's an academic conference for a different sort than the traditional ones I've heard about. For one, it's a lot more laid back. The sessions were relatively small, and more informal than I've heard about from friends. But maybe I should start from the beginning....

Back in October or so, one of my professors started telling us about this conference and how it would be a good experience for us to submit abstracts of papers we've written or would like to work on, and possibly present at the conference. So, right before the deadline in December, after much prodding and reminding from said professor, I submitted two individual paper abstracts (one on the First Amendment and Virtual Worlds and the other on Social Media in Higher Education (I'm thinking of writing my thesis on the second one since I've already done almost the first three chapters for various classes last semester)) and one panel (I did a foodporn panel with three classmates...yes, foodporn. But I looked at the Got Milk? ads and there wasn't much foodporn-ish stuff to look at.) Little did I know, as long as you submit an abstract, you get accepted to present. I didn't find this out until I came back to Vegas after Christmas break. And by then I was kind of stuck.

If you know me, I'm not too good at public speaking. Sure, I'm okay with one-on-one or maybe a few people, but put me in front of a group, I get flustered and ramble. And talk with my hands. A lot. I have no Potagee blood in me, but the hands start flying anyway. But since I had to do all three presentations because my professor wouldn't let me out of it, I resigned myself to doing them. 15 minutes each isn't bad, right? WRONG!!

I realized that I had three papers, but had no idea how to present them. Should I be "academic" and all serious and professional (which I'm not, by nature,) or could I be a little goofy and more casual? I decided in the end to do a little of both. (And cramming a 40+ page paper into a 15 minute presentation is not easy.)

After weeks of freaking out and indecisiveness about how to go about the presentations and what handouts should I give the people who come (do I give the whole paper so I can get feedback? do I just give an abstract so they know vaguely what I'm talking about? do I give a copy of the presentation? do I give nothing? what?!?!) it finally came to this past Friday. I took the day off from work so I could make sure my presentations were ready and it's a good thing I did. By Friday morning, I was still scrambling to finish the presentation for Saturday (I had one on Saturday and two on Sunday). Not the best thing. So I worked all day on two of the presentations and then went to the reception that night.

Food at the reception. Mostly appetizer stuff. But there were mini desserts. And a MASHED POTATO MARTINI BAR!!! So yummy.

So the next day I was at the conference from 7:30 in the morning, even if I didn't present until 4:30 that afternoon. It was a long day. I ended up giving the people who attended my presentation the abstract for the paper. There was no way I was going to print out 10 copies of a 12 page paper if I didn't know how many people were actually going to show up. And it's a good thing I didn't. There were only like 6 people, and most of them were from my program. But the presentation went well. I think. I was myself and talked with my hands, and got flustered, and read a little too much from the powerpoint and my notes, but I think it went okay for my first academic conference presentation. I got some pretty good feedback from not only the people who attended but also the professor who moderated the session and I knew what to work on. Unfortunately there are no pictures because I forgot to give someone my camera to take any for me. But I did take one of the screen before the session started:

Oh, and my nametag:

because you just have to, right? So you know who you are. And prove that you were there. LoL.


Sunday was an early day. I got to the conference at 8:15 even if the session didn't start until 9. I didn't expect anyone to be there because Hello? There were only two sessions that day anyway and oh yeah, it's Las Vegas. But, the first panel was the foodporn panel. The room ended up being full. And the conversation afterwards lasted almost the entire hour we had after the presentations. (Well, when you're talking about sex and food, what do you expect?)

 The sign in front of the room for both my panels. Yes, the first one was called Eat Me. 

 Our panel.

 Getting ready to present. No one told me they were taking a picture. LoL

Presenting. And people walked in late.

The final presentation I did went well too. By that time I was so glad it was almost over, I wasn't very nervous. Still, I talked with my hands, but I wasn't as flustered. And I knew the material because I had rewritten and edited the paper more than 5 times last semester. The room wasn't as full, but there was still a decent amount of people there. More than I expected.

 Presenting. Yep. 

I'm done! Time to let down my hair!!

And so ends my introduction to the academic world. I presented my first three papers at a conference as a graduate student and got pretty good feedback for all of them. One conference attendee even stopped me on my way out of the conference on Sunday (I was heading to Johnny Rocket's to get a hamburger, fries, and a milkshake to celebrate with some classmates) and told me that she enjoyed my presentation the day before and that it was well-done and I spoke well. That made me happy, that someone liked it. I don't know if I'll do the conference again next year, but we'll see. But it was a good experience and I'm actually glad I did it. (But shhhhhh....don't tell my professor. I still like to grumble about being tricked into presenting three papers.)

If you want to read about the conference, you can visit the UNLV online newspaper, the Virtual Rebel,  here. Yes, I know they got my name mixed up with someone else in the photo caption. I'm having that fixed. :) I was quoted!

See you later!!

~Jeni

Uh...yeah...so...I'm Alive?

Yep. I'm really bad at keeping up with this thing. LoL. I can't believe the entire semester passed before I realized that I didn't post anything since just after I got here.

I survived my first semester of graduate school (and did a lot better grade-wise than I thought I ever would do. If we're FB friends then you'll know.) We're about a month into the Spring semester and it's going pretty well. I'm only taking three classes this time, but two of them are a lot of work. Lots of reading and making sense of what the professors are trying to teach us. LoL.
I'm currently putting together three presentations for an academic conference that I'm presenting at this weekend (AHHHH!!!!). One of the presentations is almost complete (because I already presented this paper during the class and just need to make a few changes to the presentation to shorten it), one is half complete (I just need to reorganize a little and add the images), and the third I haven't started yet. Oops. But I have until Friday to get them put together and finalized since I don't present until Saturday afternoon and Sunday. Mom says that this is a good experience and I should take advantage of it. All I can tell is that I have to present these papers in front of large groups of academic people. Freakout will commence on Thursday, I'm telling you that.

I did go home for the Winter break. I was home for about a month but didn't get any crafting done whatsoever. Pretty much the entire break was spent being a bum around the house and making my way through my bookshelf. LoL. But I did make sure to pack two boxes of craft stuff this time and one already came. My mom is going to mail the other one eventually, but this one has all of my tape in it so I'm good. (You can't find any of the Merikan d/s tape here. I looked EVERYWHERE!) Once the other box with my stamps and other stuff arrives, I'll be able to start working on stuff.

Let's see...what else is there to tell you? Oh, I got a job. It's an on campus job at the enrollment services center so I only work three days a week for a total of 20 hours. When we're busy, we're busy, and the rest of the time we're talking or online. LoL. But the people there are awesome and I'm having a great time.

I guess there really isn't anything else to write about. If anyone's coming to Vegas any time soon, let me know. I love seeing people I haven't seen in forever.

I'll post again soon when there's finally something to post about. LoL.

Take care!!

~Jeni

So...I'm Here....

I've arrived!
Okay, so I actually arrived two weeks ago, today. But still...

I'm finally pretty much settled into my apartment in Las Vegas. I've resigned myself to knowing that I have to stay for at least a year and a half. I'm hoping that I can stick to the 2 year program that I want to and that my thesis committee chair will allow me to work on the bulk of my thesis from home and I can move back to Hawaii next December. But that's probably wishful thinking at this point and I shouldn't be thinking about moving home right now anyway since I just got here.

Anywho, if you haven't been following me on Facebook or Instagram, a lot has been happening over the past couple of weeks. Here are some highlights:
* I didn't even turn my computer on from the time I left Hilo on August 12 until last night. (I know, SHOCKER!)
* I bought my first new car (a 2014 Nissan Versa)
* I freaked out when I realized that I had really signed the papers for said car and will be paying it off for the next 10 billion years. (Okay, only 60-something months, but that's like forever!)
* Realized that I never budgeted for all these little things that have been coming up recently. (Like car registration, who knew?)
* Started school yesterday and hunted for parking all over campus for OVER AN HOUR! How ridiculous is that? Completely. And I still had to park across campus from my last class and it took like almost half an hour for me to walk back to my car. Crazy.

I also realized that I never finished packing my craft box at home for my mom to send up. I guess I'll have to make do with whatever they have at Michael's. When I get my happy butt over there to go look. Once I get a job so I have the money to go over there and go look. *sigh* Technicalities.

I've only gone to three of my classes. I still have one more on Thursday. But I've come to realize that I may not have as much downtime as I think I will. All of the classes I've gone to so far will require papers that are around 15 - 30 pages done by the end of the semester. And I'm thinking that the last one will be the same. Plus the content of these classes are completely crazy. Why am I taking a class on the First Amendment and Society again? Oh yeah, because it's the only 600-level class that was open that I was even remotely interested in.

Anyway, I guess I should go read for class tomorrow. I need to read the Constitution and be ready to have suggestions for changing it ready by class tomorrow afternoon. Great. Since I have no crafty stuff with me, I may be gone for a while again. We'll see. If you don't hear from me in a month, send a search party. Grad school may have killed me.

~Jeni

It's (Almost) Time to Say Goodbye

Apparently I'm not so good at this keeping up with blogging thing. LoL. And, no, I'm not deleting my blog or anything drastic like that. I'm actually relocating in a few months. Back in January, I took the GRE while I was on Oahu (I think I mentioned that) and got my scores a few weeks later. Just like I thought, I didn't do very well in the math portion, but on the verbal and composition portions, I did better than expected. I applied to the American Studies graduate program at UH Manoa, but unfortunately I didn't get in. I thought that was going to be the end of my graduate school applying season for this year, but I remembered that I had asked the two professors from UH Hilo that were writing my recommendation letters to write me one for UNLV as well. I seriously debated about whether or not to apply and almost wasn't going to, but decided to chance it since they wrote the letters for me. After weeks of finger crossing and hoping and wondering, I checked online (since they don't mail you an actual decision letter) and...nothing. Then I get this e-mail from the Journalism and Media Studies graduate program at UNLV saying that they look forward to seeing me in the fall. WHAT?! I originally thought it was fake because my last name was spelled wrong, but after waiting 24 hours and checking the status of my application again, I realized that it wasn't a fake.
So what does that mean? In August, I'm heading to Vegas. I debated whether or not to accept the admission, but in the end, my mom made a good point. What if I don't accept it and later on decide to apply again because I change my mind and want to go. And what if because I declined it they don't want to accept me again? So I might as well go. It's only 2 years.
It's strange knowing that I'm going to be leaving a job that I've had practically since I moved back from my one year at UNLV seven years ago. My last day of availability at work is July 25 even if I don't leave until August. There's a lot of stuff that needs to be done before I go.
I'm taking some of my crafting stuff with me (quite a bit actually if my estimates are anything to go by) but I'm also going to be selling quite a bit of stuff. Mostly paper and things that may become damaged or not usable within 2 years of not being touched. My off-line friends are going to get first crack at the stuff but after that I'll be taking pictures and posting them on here to see if anyone wants anything.
So I might not be around much until after the move. There are a few things I still want to blog about, but I'm not going to be crafting much between now and then. But if you want to find me, you know where I'll be. :)

See you soon!

~Jeni

Vacation Time!!

HI!!!! 

Okay, I know it's been like forever since I last blogged. But things have been a little crazy and I haven't really even had time to go into my craft room and do anything. (Well, especially since it's kind of a mess. Okay, not kind of a mess. Really a mess. It looks like a bomb exploded in there or something. I really do need to go clean.) 

January was fun and I'm sad it's over. I went to Honolulu for a weekend and had an amazing time. I haven't been on a decent trip in over a year. Sure, the hotel wasn't amazing (I stayed at the Pagoda Hotel. Should have spent the extra $15 a night and stayed at the Ala Moana Hotel.) But I got to see some friends, took my GRE (it's like the SATs for Graduate School), and, the best part, got to see Wicked!!! 

But the trip began when I flew to Maui. LoL. Yes, Maui. There was a flight with a stopover on Maui and I decided that I wanted to do that instead of flying straight to Honolulu. Wasn't the best choice. The flight from Maui to Honolulu was delayed for almost an hour. But, I did get Maui Cookies!

But then I finally got to Honolulu and got to the hotel. Took a taxi to Ala Moana to do a quick little bit of shopping because I had some downtime before my aunty came to pick me up for dinner and then to see Wicked. There were already a ton of people in front of the theater when we got there so we couldn't take a picture in front of the big banner thing, but we took a picture in front of the smaller poster. XD

I did some damage to my shopping funds (they had some cute stuff that I wanted to get, but everything was so expensive!) and then went in to find my aunty because she had already gone to our seats. OMG I was SO happy with the seats we had! Picture of the dragon and the screen on the stage from where I was sitting. 

The show was amazing! It went by SO fast. I was disappointed when it was over. I wish I could have gone again, but I went on the Thursday before the run ended. And tickets were sold out for the remainder of the shows so it didn't happen. I've been listening to the soundtrack almost constantly since I got back to the hotel from the show. (Yay for friends giving me the soundtrack and me putting it on my iPod but never listening to it!) If anyone gets a chance to see it, GO! 

I took the test the following morning at 8a.m. Yes. 8a.m.. Thought it was a total fail but it turns out only the math portion was a total fail. LoL. But I'm not a math person anyway. Totally did not get that Asian gene that gives you super math skills apparently. But oh well. 

The rest of the weekend was pretty much spent shopping. I blew the rest of my money in Waikiki (where I went to karaoke with a couple of friends for a couple of hours and then went went to lunch and then I did more shopping) and at Ala Moana. 

Went to this tea place at Ala Moana and bought macarons. I think the red one was red velvet and the pink one was strawberry guava. They weren't bad. The ones I made before were crunchy on the outside and squishy on the inside. These for some reason were squishy all the way through. Not very crunchy. But they were yummy. 

I kinda forgot to take pictures from the rest of my trip. But I did buy yummy cake at Shirokiya. It was from this little place called Kulu Kulu on the second floor. It was really light cake and I wish I had bought it on the first day so I could have gone back and bought more. LoL. 

But now I'm home and back at work and school. Things are back to normal. I finally put my UH Manoa Graduate School application in and now it's a waiting game. And work on my UNLV application. But I'm hoping to get my craft room cleaned up on my next day off and get back to working on stuff.
Okie dokie, back to my homework that I've been procrastinating about for the past 45 minutes while I wrote this blog post. ^.^. It's not due until Sunday, so I still have time.
See you later!!!

~Jeni

Duct Tape Bag!!

Hi!!! Look who's back!!!! I know I haven't blogged in like months, but between work and school and work I just didn't have any motivation to do much crafting at all. I didn't even experiment with new cupcake recipes. :*(  But I was at Target a couple of weeks ago and was browsing through their Back to School section and came across the cutest duct tape! It has monsters on it! So of course I bought it. And it was sitting in my room until this past Friday night when I realized that I needed to learn how to make a duct tape bow for Saturday and fast (since we had the Hello Kitty day make & takes at Ben Franklin)!! So I hunted for duct tape and just grabbed my roll of monsters since I didn't want to use the fast food duct tape I also bought.
ANYWAY, yesterday I decided to take the roll of tape to work with me, hoping that I'd be able to work on a bag that I had been hoping to make. I did get a bag done...it took me all morning but I did get it done. I also got a bag done made of pink, red, and Hello Kitty duct tape that you can see if you visit the store. (It's by the TV display with all the duct tape by Make a Memory.) I ended up not liking the first bag very much, so today I worked on a second one once I got all the work stuff done. So...here it is!!:

The inside is red duct tape and the outside is monster. It's not a very big bag. I wasn't even able to put both rolls of tape into it. But I think it'd be cute for a small gift bag or something. All in all it took me about 2 hours total to finish it. I had to stop and go while I was working on it at work and when I got home I finished it. It only took a while because I kept taping my fingers and making air bubbles.

I think I may have to buy more duct tape and make a few more of these. I'm going to try some other bags too. Just probably not at work because I think I've played with the duct tape enough there. :)

See you later!!!

~Jeni

Please Donate to Relay For Life!

Okay, so this post has nothing to do with crafting, but something more personal.

The University of Hawaii at Hilo hosts their own Relay for Life each spring and I've participated in it for the past three years (well, with the exception of last year...it was the three years before that.)

If you don't know what Relay for Life is, it's a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. The event is held all over the country on different dates. It's an overnight event with teams of people walking around a track or a specific route. For more information on Relay for Life, you can visit this site.

This year we got a little late of a start because our team didn't know if we were going to actually have a team.

I've participated because cancer has affected my family as well as hundreds of families all over the country and the world. My dad is a cancer survivor, having been diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2008. Thank goodness it was only in the early stages when the doctors caught it and he has been in remission since. But I always think of what could have happened. We didn't need the services that the American Cancer Society offers, but there are many families and individuals who do.

Please donate if you can. Relay for Life is this coming weekend but the ACS can use donations any time of the year. My personal donation page is here if you'd like to help my team reach its goal.

Thanks for reading!