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2010-03-09T15:02:00.001-06:00

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Question

2010-03-09T08:35:00.002-06:00

Question:

quixotic

How do you pronounce it?

(I know how I'm supposed to pronounce it, but I want to hear how you pronounce it.)

Entering the Workforce

2010-03-03T21:38:00.002-06:00

Ok, so I'm not sure signing on to be a research assistant actually qualifies as entering the workforce, but close enough, right?

Anyway, that's what I'm doing. Barring any serious changes in circumstance (UChicago turns around and says "actually, we're not giving you health insurance" or NYU says "hey, we really want you, we'll pay for your tuition and housing and everything!*") I'm taking the job at the lab here on campus and telling NYU "sorry, maybe next time" yet again.

Why?

Grad school will always be there. The reason I applied to NYU (and the other education grad program I applied to) in the first place was that it was the only way I could get into the classroom and teach. Now I'm looking at other options. Grad school is not the only thing I can do after graduation, so why rush it? And I mean, won't two years of work experience help my grad school apps and not hurt them if it turns out I do want to go that route?
It's in Chicago. I'll be perfectly honest: I don't want to pack up and move to New York. I didn't like it that much when I was there for that summer in high school and I don't want to try a huge transition like that to a place where I know exactly one person (hi Sreya). I want to stick around here where I know I like it and hell, where my boyfriend is. I can even keep up with UBallet if I want to. (Oh God, now there's a thought.)
It's incredibly interesting stuff. I was way into education as I was applying to schools, but when I think about it compared to linguistics, it's just boring - especially the ling I've been doing this year, the ASL, the semantics, the language development. It's crazy fascinating. This project that I will be working on is all of that rolled up in a neat little package. No, I won't be doing any groundbreaking research myself, but I'll be working on coding some really interesting projects. And if you don't think it's interesting, I don't particularly care. I do.

I'm happy. I really really am. I expect hours of tedium. I will, after all, be a lowly research assistant plugging away at a computer transcribing and coding and correcting programming errors. But I don't care. That's exactly what I want to do. :)

I'll let you know if anything changes. In the meantime, I start working part-time at the end of the month. This is going to be awesome.

*No mean comments about how they already did that once before!

Recap

2010-03-01T17:29:00.003-06:00

Week in Review (skip down to Friday if you want to see where it starts getting good):

Monday 2/22/10: Wander about from class to class with deep feelings of guilt and shame. Unable to write research paper, pull together ballet, or have a life beyond college. (Be very thankful for Nick at this point.)

Tuesday 2/23/10: Turn in crap response paper to professor I'm trying to get to hire me. Go to appointment at CAPS where some idiot spends an hour telling me not to give up on education while I try to explain to her that I just want to explore jobs in linguistics. Spend most of day in tech rehearsal. Fear that the ballet will never actually happen. Research paper will never be written. Life will never happen even if graduation does manage to come about. Smile and put on a happy face for Lauren, because being a good roommate has got to take priority here.

Wednesday 2/24/10: Table for Coppelia. Sell exactly 7 tickets, including two to a grad student who tells us he and his friend just want to see us fall on our asses. Go to class and sound like an idiot. Meet with professor prepared to hear "sorry, but you just don't have enough experience." Instead, listen to her talk as if I already have the job. Be very, very confused. Be shuffled out of her office after only five minutes. Get home and bang out ten pages of research paper. Stare at my computer utterly stunned.

Thursday 2/25/10: Class. Tabling, sell exactly 3 tickets. Help prep for dress rehearsal instead of work on my research paper. Teach warm-up class. Watch as 25 dancers shoot daggers at me with their eyes as I apparently give the worst class they've ever taken. Endure dress rehearsal. Wait...what? Dress rehearsal went well? Give notes! Be super picky about stuff. Give lots of compliments! Go home and collapse. (Note no working on research paper due tomorrow.)

Friday 2/26/10:
11am - Skip class to table. Sell exactly 2 tickets. Do not work on research paper at all.
1:30pm - Run off to meeting at my prof's lab. Act super flustered and feel certain that I just lost any chance at this job. Talk about my interests and my computer skills. Meet Max, who I actually already met back in first-year through ballet, who is going to train me.
2:30pm - Have it suddenly dawn on me that I got the job.
3pm - Go to EC meeting. Get happiness and congratulations from everyone there (thanks, guys).
4pm - Turn in research paper that magically got done before my meeting (yes it really did!) and return home full of an unreasonable amount of excitement. Nick comes over for celebratory dinner.
6pm - Attempt nap out of happiness exhaustion.
6:15 - Nap interrupted by Ariel with "letter from NYU." Instruct him to leave it on table. He comes into my room instead. Letter is very big. Have it suddenly dawn on me that I got into NYUSteinhardt.
6:20 - Desperately try to get in touch with my parents for the remainder of the evening.

Saturday 2/27/10: Wake up with no burdensome research paper following me around, and with not only a future after graduation, but OPTIONS! Lounge about (or rather, pretend to lounge about while actually being terribly nervous) until 3:30 when it is time to head to Mandel Hall. Prep for and then proceed to run sound for Coppelia. Suddenly know what it must feel like to be a mother (Lauren I am so proud of you). Hope that feeling isn't too creepish.

Sunday 2/28/10: Coppelia again, and then tearing down everything and returning home, ballet completed. Feeling a little empty without a ballet to fuss over, and a little lost with two fantastic options to choose from for my post-college days.

Monday 3/1/10: Mazurka music stuck in my head. Do I really want to move to New York? If I stay here am I being a wimp? Suddenly I don't want options. And now that Coppelia's over, I just want to sleep!

Good Day

2010-02-26T19:01:00.002-06:00

As I was trying to take a nap this evening (I was all worn out from the fuss of job potential), I was interrupted by my roommate Ariel telling me I had received a letter from NYU. Oh right, NYU. I had forgotten about NYU. Assuming it was a little envelope, I told him to put it on the table. He did not do that. He brought it to be in bed instead.

That was not a little envelope.

In fact it was a rather large envelope, and when I opened it up, there was a letter inside in front of a packet of information. The letter was headed and began:

NYUSteinhardt
Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development

Dear Miss Jerkins:

Congratulations! On behalf of the Admissions Committee, I am delighted to offer you a place in the Fall 2010 entering class...

It is not important what the rest of the letter said.

Holy crap I got into NYU's Steinhardt School of Education!!!!

I applied on a total whim. It never occurred to me I'd actually get accepted. But I did get accepted. I got accepted the same day I got a job. This is a good freaking day.

All I can think now is Shit, Coppelia is going to be so awesome if I can keep this luck going.

Not Coppelia

2010-02-26T16:58:00.002-06:00

I'd like to take a brief interruption from talking endlessly about Coppelia to say...

I think I got a job?

Next quarter I'm going to start working in Susan Goldin-Meadow's lab training to be a research assistant working with transcription and syntax coding. I will just be volunteering my time, but provided I enjoy the work and am relatively competent, I will begin working full time in the summer.

So yeah, I got a job. :)

Dress Rehearsal

2010-02-26T10:24:00.002-06:00

"You didn't just finish a chapter from a mystery novel. You're reading the Bible. You should look bored."
-Me

That was not a very popular note. (It was to Steffi, who dances the role of "Prayer" and comes onstage reading a book, presumably the Bible.)

Anyway...
So if a bad dress rehearsal means a good opening night, we're in bad shape. Last night was great!

Tech stuff worked except for the banging of some pots and pans (yes I'm serious, it wasn't loud enough).
Pantomime was bigger, clearer, and funnier.
Large group numbers were clean and together.
Variations were smooth.
The Wedding Pas looked super strong with in-control lifts.

I was really impressed all around.

AND THE DOOR WORKED!

That last part is critical.

You probably want pictures, don't you? Yes you do!!!
Click here to see the facebook album with a whole bunch, but I give you a taste below, too.

Coppelia Tech

2010-02-24T09:53:00.003-06:00

Coppelia tech rehearsal was last night. Hey, Steffi and Derek, how did it go?

I agree!

So of course, I'm completely on the technical side of things this show, which basically means I'm running sounds (pressing play) and being Sheila's bitch. This is sort of awesome because Sheila knows exactly what she wants and how to get it and also is really nice. Yay for Sheila. You just have to love a competent production manager. We shall just have to see how dress goes tomorrow! Everyone will look like this the entire time:

(Thanks to Patricia for the pics.)

UCDancers - Human/Nature

2010-02-19T22:18:00.004-06:00

Just got back from the UCDancers' show Human/Nature. I will tell you...it was so good! I will also tell you (maybe this is mean but it is honest) that I did not expect it to be "so good." I just hadn't seen it from them in the past. UCDancers has always been able to shine through the cracks. You know, their shows are never exactly fantastic, but there are always great pieces among the not so great. Well if I was going to argue that that's all they could do, this show would have proved me very wrong!

It wasn't perfect, I'll admit. There were a few serious question mark moments, and some serious technical difficulties (with the music, and that was completely NOT their fault). But this was not a show where the talent was trying to raise its hand from the back of the class. The majority of the pieces were very strong, both in choreography and in execution.

Special shout-outs to Jessica Hester and Erica Cartmill, who stole the show with some brilliant choreography and the dancing to match it! Also much love to Persephone, Tiffany, Celeste, and Kacy, who will be dancing (Erica, too) in Coppelia next weekend and looked great tonight.

SO the good news is they've got two more shows! Tomorrow (Saturday) at 8pm and Sunday at 1pm, all in BARS. Tickets are $5. Well worth it! GO!

What I Did In School Today

2010-02-19T17:15:00.002-06:00

Hi Mommy, I'm home. Wanna see what I did in school today? Well today in ASL, we got into teams of three and drew funny looking people on the board. We tried to make them as funny looking as possible. For an hour.

OMG AISHA!

2010-02-19T17:00:00.002-06:00

HUGE congratulations to Aisha, who got a job teaching English in Turkey!!

That is incredible! Aisha, you are going to a) be an exceptional teacher, b) have so much fun, and c) have to host me when I come to visit you in Turkey next year!!!

Congratulations!!!

Too Good To Be True

2010-02-19T14:03:00.003-06:00

Turns out that research assistant job in my professor's lab might be too good to be true. I already knew that it was something I was incredibly interested in and that it was here on campus, both things I really wanted. But I thought it was a part-time summer job.

Turns out...

1. Full-time.
2. Benefits eligible.
3. Two year commitment.

This would be a real job. And let me reiterate that it would be something I'd love and it would keep me in Chicago close to (among other things) Nick. Yes, I'm willing to admit that I'd like to stay close to Nick.

Oh, one other thing. Turns out the lead coder, the guy I'm set to meet a week from today, is Max M. from Sleeping Beauty. Like, Carabosse Max. And Bluebird Max. Max who I have officially seen in a bright blue unitard covered in feathers. Yep. He's the guy who gets to hire me, I think. That's just funny.

Coppelia Posters!

2010-02-18T18:30:00.003-06:00

It's that time!

It's time for me to seriously start plugging Coppélia.

While the reality of the situation is that if you're reading that and you are in Chicago you are probably either actually IN Coppélia or Nick who is forced to go no matter what, I would feel empty if I didn't at least try to use my blog as a publicity outlet for this show.

SO here's the basic info:

University Ballet presents Coppélia
Saturday, February 27th, 7pm
Sunday, February 28th, 2pm
Mandel Hall | 1131 E 57th St.
$5 Students |$10 Adults
More information at http://uballet.uchicago.edu

What that doesn't tell you is that this show is starring my roommate Lauren. This is the second time I've been roommates with the star of the show (remember back when Olivia was Medora) and I just couldn't be prouder of either of them. And as much as Liv was made to dance Le Corsaire, Lauren was just absolutely created for Coppélia. She is not only a stunning technical dancer (and she has even shown great improvement in the short time she's been rehearsing this part!) but she has the character down like no one's business. She's just so much fun to watch. I love watching her, and you will, too.

(that's Lauren^^!!)

I mean...ok the rest of the ballet is great, too. Don't get me wrong. My Czardas girls have worked their little butts off for example, and the piece is looking great. Overall, it's important to remember that this ballet is a comedy, because it definitely reads like one. Come to this show ready to laugh, because you will, and because you are supposed to! You'll also enjoy lots of beautiful dancing and hard work from about twenty-five highly motivated dancers.

Finally, I'm guessing if you've made it this far you're probably coming to the show (or wish you were!). If so, would you be interested in a free ticket? We're in desperate need of ushers for both performances. The deal is if you usher (that means sell tickets, flowers, and merchandise before and during the show) for one performance, you get a ticket to the other performance for free. You can probably also stick your head in during the performance you usher for, but no guarantees there. Let me know if you'd be interested!

Did I Just Get a Job?

2010-02-17T10:25:00.002-06:00

I think I might have gotten a summer job. Not a permanent gig, but at least a full time summer thing on campus. It's actually a slightly amusing story.

As I'm desperately searching for jobs, Lauren's boyfriend Ian sent me this job here on campus that looked awesome:

We are seeking a research assistant to participate in a longitudinal research project examining the development of communication, both language and gesture, in a sample of young children and their families. The incumbent will be responsible for language and gesture coding of interaction between caregivers and young children. This position is especially appropriate for candidates who are interested in pursuing graduate studies in psychology or linguistics.

Gesture coding? Totally cool. I hear ASL in that. Anyway I get all excited (especially because the online form says it's full time with benefits) and fill out an application. Right before I submit it, I realize that there couldn't possibly be more than one person on campus doing gesture coding in young children - this job has to be in my language development professor's lab.

So I shoot her an email. It's really polite and over the top enthusiastic. I ask if the job is in fact in her department and if so, could we make take to meet and discuss my application.

I don't hear back for days, and when I do, it's a curt reply of basically "Well I'm not sure. Sorry."

Lame!

I sort of give up on that front, and regroup my efforts someplace else. I made an appointment with my other crazy (and wonderful wonderful) professor (of semantics) to talk about options for the future with my degree in linguistics.

When I met with her yesterday, the first thing out of her mouth is, "Do you have any interest in language development? Because I work with Susan Goldin-Meadow (my other prof!) and we have a job opening for coding.)" I enthuse about all three of my classes (semantics, lang dev, and ASL) for a bit, and then she insists on getting me this job, though she informs me it's only a summer position. (I can live with that. It's still way cool!) Her plan is to talk to Susan Goldin-Meadow tomorrow morning (i.e. this morning) at 9am and say my name so many times she won't be able to turn me down. Thanks, Anastasia. You're the greatest. :)

When I got home, absolutely bubbling over with happy, I have an email from Susan G-M. Remember that the two have not talked yet. She says YES the job I emailed her about is in her lab and...

Would I like to volunteer some time this spring quarter to see how I take to coding?

Now I'm sitting here thinking, "that's not a job offer" and "I want to work not volunteer." But the implication of her email is very clearly that if I am any good at coding she will then hire me for the summer, and that will in fact be paid. And really, isn't this job interesting enough to volunteer some time to anyway? Hell, it's even a resume bumper-upper.

So what I'm really thinking now is "I wonder what Susan G-M thought this morning with Anastasia bombarded her with my name."

Also I'm thinking, "awesome!"

The Hedgehog and the Fog

2010-02-14T13:31:00.004-06:00

The Russians are disturbing. If you are not already certain of this fact, watch this short animated feature from 1975. It is about a cute little hedgehog who gets terrorized by some creepy ass fog on his way to count the starts with a bear cub. Ah yes, the classic story. For the record, the filmmaker who made this has been working on his current project since 1981 and is only 30 minutes into it. This one is only ten minutes, and it's worth a watch.

Go Gators! (Seriously?)

2010-02-13T15:00:00.002-06:00

For the moment, I am a UF fan. Why? My little brother got in!!! Yay Gabe!

Of course, I do not want him to go to the University of Florida at all. He's destined for the University of Chicago, like his big sister, not UF like his big brother and dad and uncles and all of those losers.

Still, gotta congratulate the kid on his first college acceptance. Princeton and UChicago on the way, but it doesn't hurt to have the #1 state school in your pocket. :)

Go Gabe!

Buzzz

2010-02-10T22:37:00.003-06:00

What is this Google Buzz business? Is anybody buying into it? I'm more inclined to buzzzzz than I am to twitter. Seems like the same thing really, though - the difference being integration into gmail, which could make or break this thing.

Anybody up for giving it a shot with me? I'll try it out. I mean, technically I'm already following most of you. That's actually pretty cool, Google...or pretty creepy.

Three Gee Ess

2010-02-09T21:43:00.003-06:00

New phone! I got one! It is a 3GS!

My iPhone was on a slippery slope towards becoming completely nonfunctional. It was one of the original iPhones, I'd had it for more than two years. It lost the ability to make Genius playlists many months ago, and gradually lost more and more little abilities until finally, last week, it stopped texting and receiving texts. Unacceptable. Simply unacceptable.

I looked at venturing into Google phone land, but it was too scary, so I stayed in the great realm of the iPhone.

And now I have a 3GS. Or is it 3Gs? Or 3G S? s? I'm confused. Any way you write it (and that's a free choice any, not a negative polarity item any, yes this is how I think) it's way faster than my old phone, AND IT TEXTS. :)

New phone = Happy Natalie

Put the Spark Back!

2010-02-07T22:04:00.002-06:00

Hi cat lovers. Here's a great video (courtesy of The Onion) on how to put the spark back into the relationship with your cat. Gilroy and I will be trying some new tricks tonight. Maybe even Audrey will join in. Who can say?

C Me Dance, or Not

2010-02-05T22:12:00.002-06:00

Holy crap world, you need to see this:

C Me Dance

Ballet, cancer, hanging out, stigmata, and Lucifer, all rolled into one film. Yay!

No Such Luck

2010-02-05T13:27:00.002-06:00

So no UTEP for me, not this year anyway. Unfortunate. I was really hoping for it.

Interestingly I am not bitter at all. When I got rejected from TFA my immediate reaction was "yeah well they suck anyway and I hate them and they're stinky and whatever nyeh nyeh nyeh." I can't actually get mad at UTEP or hold a grudge against them. I figure if they rejected me I'm probably not the right fit for them, but I still think they're a totally awesome program.

And on that note, major congratulations to Annemarie, Cindy, and Sasha, all of whom got the less lame version of the letter I did.

Not the Time

2010-02-02T19:10:00.001-06:00

Just as I really need to go searching through my old texts to dig up somebody's number who I don't really know on the off chance I might get in touch with Nick that way...

...my phone has deleted all my old texts. Except one. From my birthday, June 7th, 2008. Not useful.

Not the time.

Look at the Mido!

2010-01-25T17:56:00.005-06:00

Quick! Look up there at that mido! Where did you look, at 1 or 2? I presume you looked at either 1 or 2, and I'm going to be so bold as to say you probably looked at 2, unless you were being purposefully difficult. Why? Because 1 is a dog. What's 2? I don't know, and you probably don't know either, so it might very well be a mido. If mido means "funny little squishy orange thing with saucer eyes and tufty hair in odd places," you would have been correct to look at 2. But what if mido meant "hot dog that has sprouted legs and head and likes being rubbed on the tummy?" Then it would have been better to look in 1's direction. After all, the word "dachshund" does exist. Similarly, the word "creature" exists. If I had said "look at the creature," looking at either 1 or 2 would be equally correct.

The point is that we as language learners (and yes we are all language learners on a daily basis whether we like it or know it or not) enter into a situation with certain constraints. There is this pretty nifty article by Au & Glusman (I'd link to it, but I only have access to it through my class's course reserves through the library here) on mutual exclusivity published in 1990. The paper details a number of studies designed to figure out when we honor the principle of mutual exclusivity (because in order to learn to words at the most basic level, we must honor it) and when we don't honor it (because there are so very many times when learning new words requires that we do not honor it). I'm not going to get into the details of the studies they did - though they were kind of cool experiments, but I am going to mention some situations I think are pretty interesting.

Hierarchies. They're neat. They are! Why? Well, because you came into the mido situation thinking well, I know that's a dog, so it can't be a mido. You assumed whatever a mido is it's on the same hierarchical level as dog. It didn't occur to you that it might be on the more general level of animal/creature or more specific level of dachshund. Granted, there is already a word for animal, and one for creature, and one for dachshund. Ok, so how about...

Synonyms! There's no way mido could have meant the same thing as dog? Our first response to a new word is to assign it to a new item. If an object already has a label, why give it another one? But of course, no language has perfect one-to-one mapping of words and referents. Though I'm not giving a list of synonyms here, a dog might also be a hound, a beast, a furball, a mutt, a cur, a puppy, a pooch, a mongrel...and whatever else. Those are all (except maybe puppy) on the same hierarchical level as dog, but they are secondary (or tertiary or further). You learned the word mongrel years after you learned doggie, I will bet money and/or yarn on it. So at what point did you say, "Ok, mutual exclusivity out! Synonyms in!"? I bet you don't know, because researchers don't know either.

And what about an even cooler and more complicated case: bilingualism? Specifically bilingualism in kids young enough to still be acquiring the basics of both languages. The situation gets so much more complicated! Think about it. I'm a bilingual (French-English) baby in my first critical language-learning months (in other words, I'm moving past mama, ba-ba (bottle), no, and picking up words for animals, small objects, people, etc.) and here comes this four-legged furry thing that barks and chews bones and lives in my house. I can't make out most of the words my mother says, so I hear "Gobbledygook DOG." I have to look at the dog. I hear "Gobbledygook CHIEN." I have to look at the dog (chien in French, of course). I hear "Gobbledygook MIDO." I have to look at SOMETHING ELSE and attach mido to the cat that just walked in (or whatever). I have to be able to apply mutual exclusivity within each language but not cross-linguistically. Is it based on phonological features? Do I have to be able to tell that dog sounds English while chien sounds French and mido sounds, well, I'm not so sure. Somehow, I have to catch on pretty freaking fast!

Somehow we both honor and choose not to honor this principle of mutual exclusivity, and I just think it's fascinating how and when we do and do not, and that the whole thing happens without our being aware of it. Tell me that isn't at least a tiny bit cool.

TFA Fail

2010-01-21T16:09:00.003-06:00

OK. Teach for America? Rejected. Not like I didn't see that coming.

(I won't lie. It still stings a little.)

At least I didn't have to wait till 8 o'clock.

After 8pm

2010-01-21T13:01:00.005-06:00

It is 1:01pm as I begin writing this. I am waiting patiently for my rejection email from Teach for America. It will come today, but I just checked the website and it said results may not be posted (and therefore emails sent, I presume) until after 8pm.

Really? You're going to make me wait that long?

Yeah, I know I didn't get the job. I remember that day back in December. The legendary "TFA INTERVIEW DAY." I blew my chances. I think I'm actually well qualified to be a part of this program, but I know (yes I know) that I ruined any chance I had with that disastrous interview.

And yet...I wait by my computer for the email. Why? Is it because maybe, just maybe, it will say "Congratulations!" instead of what I know it will actually say? No. That can't be it. I think I just need closure. It's been months since I began the application process to TFA. It's time to accept that it's over, and I need someone besides the little elves in my head to tell me that for sure.