research project and other dry things such as this

So I am working on my research project for my history class and it keeps alternating between being hella boring and really interesting. Today's most troubling (annoying) aspect is this citation business that has consumed the last 5 hours of my Sunday night. Yes, I know why it's important but I really don't care right now (neither does Fenix, btw, because he's screaming in my ear to let me know just that). I'm hoping that at some point the proper way to cite all of the 100 million different types of sources will become something that I can do in my sleep. But until then, here I sit with Rampolla's Guide to Writing in History, toiling away at my annotated bibliography.

speaking of letters

Well no one was really talking about letters but this being April and the nablopomo theme being letters I thought I might actually talk about something related.

I am taking this class on the history of American immigration and it's been an incredible eye opener. There are so many things that got glossed over in my high school history classes and I feel like I really am learning some important things now. One of my favorite aspects of this class has been some of the reading assignments. There is one book in particular that I am really enjoying - Thomas Dublin's Immigrant Voices. The book is a collection of letters and journals written by American immigrants between 1773 and 1986. My favorite so far has been the writings of the immigrant John Harrower (he came to America from the Shetland islands). His musings about his journey across to the Atlantic and life in his new country are really interesting to read.

I would never have picked up this book had it not been for this class because truthfully it doesn't sound terribly fun to read. But I think that I've awakened some great love of history inside of me because I'm really having an awesome time with this class.

i still love the deftones

That really has nothing at all to do with this post but they put out a song called "Back to School" and it was one of my favorites back when the White Pony album dropped in 2000. That's the winter that I learned how to snowboard (at Killington, VT bitches!) and the year that I started to date my last long term BF (Anthony D.) before I met J. I remember riding (falling) down the long ass green trail on that mountain and hearing that song blasting from the trailside speakers. Wow I thought I was so hardcore with my eyebrow piercing and my newly acquired tramp stamp :-/

/end digression....

So back to school comes to mind because well, that's where I'm going. Let the record show that I do not have a degree of any kind. This is a point of much pain and frustration for me. I don't have enough room on this blog to delve into the how and why but think of it like this: I am a HUGE nerd. I was the valedictorian of my highschool with a partial scholarship and I still didn't go to college. I'll let you dwell on that for a minute and you can speculate about what evil forces must have been at play to keep me from higher learning. I'll save the unabridged version for my as yet unwritten memoir.

Anyways I'm going to school starting this spring.... community college for my AA just to start since I can do that all online. I'll see where it takes me after I get that bit under my belt.

Wish me luck folks. I've taken plenty of classes in my tenure in the Software Development field but it's been awhile since I've been properly graded for my work. Crazy!

Here's the video so you can feel what I felt back in 2000: