So I spent most of spring break going "hey I should really update dw/lj/etc and like, let people know I'm alive/what's been going on in my life" and then getting distracted by something shiny or going back to attempting to get homework done or what have you so now its the end of spring break and I probably should be in bed but I'm trying to get better at this whole updating thing damn it :l So here we go :D

( Cut to save people's flists )

tl;dr - Life is busy but okay, summer is looking busier all the time, I can't wait to be done with classes and I STILL NEED MY COPY OF WILD AT HEART DAMMIT

Oh and I saw The Artist. It was really good! :D A bit darker than I'd expected, but good :D

I AM OFFICIALLY DONE WITH MY THESIS. FUCK YES.

For those interested in reading it, I am actually quite proud of the damn thing and would love to hear your thoughts :D It is about 50 pages long, I should warn you, but not terribly dense? Or at least not to me, but then, I wrote it. Here's the abstract, if you're wondering what its about:

In recent years, manga, anime and other elements of Japanese pop culture have gained increasing popularity in the United States. This has led to a wider awareness of Japanese culture through the appropriation these pop culture materials as a source of cultural information. Manga, in particular, provides visual as well as linguistic examples of Japanese culture, and thus has the potential to be an excellent source of cultural knowledge, perhaps even suitable for classroom use. However, as with any cross-cultural text, manga's ability to serve as an example of Japanese culture depends heavily on how it is translated.
Currently, most manga is translated for the purpose of entertainment, not scholarly discussion. Consequently, there is considerable push from publishing companies to gloss translations with Western ideas and cultural norms, on the assumption that the stories will then be more accessible to readers and have higher sales. Unfortunately, with growing awareness of the Japanese origins of manga, rewriting can instead lead to widespread misunderstanding of Japanese culture as being very similar to Western culture, especially when the series' pointedly retain their Japanese setting. This loss of cultural context and the misconceptions it encourages on the international stage are here exemplified through a case study of the English translation of the sports manga, The Prince of Tennis.

Yes, I used The Prince of Tennis in my thesis. Yes, I passed around books at my presentation. Yes, it was beautiful.

( Link under here )

The file is a pdf, if anyone can't read that let me know. Also, there will be a proper life update entry at some point, but right now I have too much to do, so all you get is yes I'm alive, yes I have my JET interview information, yes I have too much homework and no I am not getting enough sleep.

So about that updating every two weeks. Um. Didn't quite happen, but one month later is still a lot better than 3 or 6 months later so...partial success? :DD?

My thesis is I think starting to come together, at least by way of what order I'm doing things in and how I'm going to tie everything together. I'm starting work on the tenipuri analysis bit since I'm a bit hesitant to start on anything else without further feedback from my adviser and it's a pretty self-contained aspect of the paper. I'm not terribly far yet since I have to start with the awkward summary-introduction thing and those always take me ages, but I've got Inui done and Momo mostly done from a close reading we turned in a few weeks ago, so it's a start :D Other planned characters are silver pair, Eiji, possibly Taka and Akutsu and characters interacting as groups - we'll see if anyone else crops up/gets cut.

Other than that, Lit is going well, my grad student teacher continues to be awesome and our class discussions rarely remain on the book we're supposed to be talking about but that's ok. We're moving into more fiction/fantasy-esque novels and so I'm starting to get glimmerings of final project ideas, which is good. Our Japanese teacher seems to have suddenly remembered that she's supposed to be testing us on kanji and vocabulary, so that's a bit of added work I wasn't quite expecting, but she seems to have gotten more organized so I'm pleased, and she listened when we asked her to cut the list of kanji down a bit :D Also I have finally learned the word for confused and it will make my life SO MUCH EASIER. I feel like that needs to be in chapter 1 but for some reason it never showed up in our books. Physics continues to be boring and frustrating, but either the class is seriously curved or It's just really been that long since I've taken an intro course because I somehow am managing to do well despite not really getting the material at all. Not that I'm complaining, but it is a bit odd

JET application is done, done, done except I need the letter from Glassman and, oh yeah, for them to open the online bit of the application already >> I have an interview for the museum internship, which would be highly time consuming but awesome and useful for both JET and vet school, so here's hoping. I'm still waiting to hear back from the Zoo to see if I have an interview there, but they said it would be a few weeks so I'm not overly concerned yet.

Arashi continues to own my soul, soul and now that I have an external hard drive I have far more videos to watch than I actually have time for XD but it's ok, because they remain wonderful stress relief even if it does occasionally result in my staying up till 3:30 AM on a saturday night. I preordered their new single (even though I couldn't even finish the first episode of the drama it was for, sorry Sho, but it just wasn't working ) so that will be a pleasant day in November, whenever it arrives. I have also managed to corrupt one of my friends here at school which is lots of fun :D Unrelatedly, Magic Power continues to display its ability to be more catchy than any song has a right to be and is #17 on my top 25 most played list. I just can't skip it its so catchy gdi Johnny

I could give the speech about how I don't think my life is very interesting and thus never bother to update this thing but I think everyone's heard it before. Could someone start, like, poking me if I've not said anything in two weeks? Text, email, something - maybe if I have someone actively badgering me to update I actually will >>

( On to the general summary )


tl;dr life is life, faded_lace got me into Arashi and they are slowly taking over my soul, I am a senior and have a thesis which is terrifying, also too much other stuff to do, and I now have a shiny new tumblr mind the arashi spam.

Oh and I live in a tower. There will be pictures. Eventually. maybe.

Holy god in heaven I'd forgotten how much Bryn Mawr eats anything resembling life. Whew.

( Where the hell I've been the last...oh...6 months? @.@ oh my life )

So about that whole updating more often thing. Yeah, didn't happen. Who's surprised? :DDD So, we'll be going through the semester in bullet-point-summary-mode. I would like to point out that these are not necessarily chronological order, I apologize for the confusion.

( Semester abroad cliff notes yaaaaaay )

But I'm home, and despite being rather cold (heating vents to my room are closed when I leave for the semester, and they've not been opened up yet) and pestered by cats am enjoying myself. I have four days to unpack, finish an internship application, do laundry, see HP7 and repack for two weeks in Europe which I leave for on the 18th. Which means I need to find out where Dad moved the sweaters in the top of my closet to when he was doing stuff in the attic, because I kind of want to bring those...

We have a snow day and I'm delaying doing my bio reading, so we finally get a post! XD I swear I was intending to update this more often.

As far as classes go, things are pretty ok - orgo is becoming significantly less stressful, now that I have a decent lecture teacher. We're switching books in Japanese though, which is kind of traumatic, because the new one is, well, >.> scary. But we'll get through. My chinese history class is boring as all hell, but the teacher is entertaining. I just wish I was better at analytical reading/writing - three grades in the whole class and all of them papers sldkjfskld.

Study abroad has hit that lovely, inevitable waiting period where Bryn Mawr hasn't approved me yet and Temple can't process my application until Bryn Mawr approves me. I'm fairly confident in my chances, but like all things it would be nice to actually know.

Katsucon went wonderfully, once we actually got to the hotel - major props to faded_lace for not freaking out at how long it took us or the multitude of times we got lost. That being said, we are never using that gps again. Ever.

Cosplay was made of utter awesome, and we did manage to get it done - largely due to poor moonlightlady14 staying up until 4AM to finish hemming and attaching things and a lot of safety pins once we were actually wearing them. But they looked great and we couldn't go more then like 10 feet without being asked for photos - which unfortunately meant we didn't see much of the con, but it was fun anyway. That reminds me - sailor moon crew, we need to do a meet up and mass picture exchange at some point, because some people didn't have cameras and not everyone's cameras were used for each shot.

Alright, I think I've procrastinated long enough. To work! *dives into pile of readings*

So...about how I haven't posted in 2 1/2 months? XD um, yeah, sorry about that. I swear I used to update this thing more often but then organic chemistry and lioncrest and real life kind of ate any incentive to post that I had.

So, hello to new people from LC *waves* Like I said, I used to update this more often and I'll try and work on that next semester XD

And now it's time for the 'what the hell happened in the two and a half months in which Brit was not posting' report. \o/ yay! (I'm sure most people have heard bits and pieces of this except for hyoutan who was in australia and genicheerios and jackalackala with whom I do not speak anywhere near often enough T.T)

Classes went okay - Japanese teacher turned out fine, Bio was alright, Calligraphy turned into life drawing halfway through which was strange, but I managed to throw together something resembling a final project that my teacher liked and now it's over. whew. Orgo was a general cycle of reading, practicing, reviewing and then walking out of the tests/quizzes realizing I knew a hell of a lot less than I thought I did >.< I could write pages of bitching about orgo but again, most people have heard it already, and when it comes down to it I don't really want to write it.

Real life was busy - drama with Scottish dance club cause we're having issues with the teacher, and losing people because of it and >.<, but Bryn Mawr hosted a dance which was a rousing success :D and I have new dresses, and am going to the New Years Ball. Oh, and my ballet slippers finally coughed and died on me (and by that I mean developed a second hole in the bottom and the beginnings of a third) so I now have Lizz's 7-year-old competition gillies which are still in decent shape and somehow fit me, despite our having very differently sized feet XD.

Anime club is (to my knowledge, which given my incredible ability to not notice drama, is questionable) going well - we have a huge turnout for Katsucon (probably something to do with the fact that hotel rooms are free >.>) and we're in the process of figuring out rides and cosplay stuff which will hopefully get done on time and work o.O

So, currently, I am at faded_lace's house - originally we were going to use this time to style my mercury wig, but then there were supply issues and it didn't come in so now we're just hanging out - with a crap ton of stuff that I am taking home for winter break and it's snowing. And I slept till noon :D yay.

So...first day of classes, yay. Rant teims startiiiiiiiiing....now!

( The good )

( The bad )

( The irritating )

In other news, I asked the mail room today if they were hiring students and they were ambivalent about me until I said I could work Saturdays. Then he seemed more eager, and told me to come back thursday. So I may (hopefully possibly pleasepleaseplease) have a job - now granted one that would require my working tuesday and thursdays before I go to japanese and possibly every saturday for the rest of the semester, but damn it it is a job and a paying one and I'm sure I could find a sub for the one time when I think I wont be here on a saturday which is katsucon.