Week 1 of freedom from Facebook...
Apr. 30th, 2013 02:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pheloniusfriarWell, I have been without Facebook since April 23 at around 11:30PM (I deleted my account) and it remains something I'm happy about. I have not been tempted to stop the deletion process (they provide 2 weeks to change your mind). I have found myself going online and not having anything to do there and then having to wander off and find other stuff to do... which is what I was aiming for, so that's working too. What's probably important to note is I have been too busy to post here even, so I know if I had still been reading/interacting via Facebook, I would have been spending too much time there still for sure.
So, what's up? Well, I had a friend come over on the weekend and help me clean the house... I did the grunt stuff that just piles up (laundry, dishes, repairs, tidying) while they did the actual cleaning. This last time, it definitely went beyond the call of whatever governs that sort of thing, heh (thankskweenbee!!!). I still have some stuff to repair, and I need to file a semester's worth of school stuff and paperwork piled in my room, but it feels good to have an otherwise clean house!
I have started on the contract to disassemble and pack the electronics for the CRIPT detector as we prepare to move it to the Chalk River nuclear facility. I'm not sure how things are going to proceed with the contract as there are a lot more people working on it than I expected, so the job is going to be done in a couple of days, rather than a couple of weeks... there might be a few more days trying to ready the detector layers (this might actually go into weeks given their fragility and the fact we need to use heavy equipment to access some of the layers, so maybe I will have the work I was hoping for after all). I just found out yesterday that my name will be on another published paper, this one to be presented by AECL at the 54th Institute for Nuclear Materials Management (INMM) Conference in July in California (I won't be attending though). Very cool for an undergraduate such as myself :). Hmmm... just noticed that there was a news article at the AECL site about the CRIPT project: "A closer look at CRIPT: Commissioning of Canada’s first full-scale muon tomography imaging system". Again, very cool that I got to work on something this boffo for the past three and a half years!
My summer term classes start Monday... ugh... I posted the schedule previously if you are wondering where I am (and when). I will be taking three courses (one full summer and two half summer): two feminist studies (1.5 credits) and one physics (0.5 credits). A single course for one term is 0.5 credits at Carleton... I know most other universities use a different counting system. To get a B.A. in Women and Gender Studies requires that I take 3.0 more credits of women and gender studies courses, and I'll be taking 1.5 of those this summer. I will be slogging through the required 1st year 1.0 credit course WGST1808 "Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies" which goes all summer (which I'm hoping will be easy credits for me as I've done 3rd year courses and gotten As in them). The course summary is: Overview of the major issues in women’s and gender studies. Topics include the social construction of femininity and masculinity, violence, sexuality, representations of women, the treatment of women in the workplace and in education, women and the arts, and women’s health. I will also be taking a 3rd year 0.5 credit seminar course WGST3812 "Selected Topics in Women's and Gender Studies" which this summer is "Gender and Health" and goes for the second half of the summer. This course, however, sounds like it is going to be both very difficult and utterly unpleasant: Using feminist and social-critical lenses, this course will examine eating disorders and their impacts on the physical, mental, emotional, and social health of individuals, especially women. Particular emphasis will be placed on understanding the ways in which gender and its intersection with social class, race, culture, sexual orientation, and other structural factors may predispose subjects, especially women, from various sociocultural backgrounds to eating disorders. The focus will, however, not only be directed toward an explanation of eating disorders at an individual level but also at a structural level, in order to discover the dominant societal discourses and institutions that sustain women’s preoccupation with the shape and size of their bodies. To do so, various feminist perspectives about the causes/determinants of eating disorders in our contemporary culture will be explored. Sigh... last summer I took another "selected topics" seminar (WGST3005), but it was "The Monstrous Feminist: Gender and the Horrific in Popular Culture"... and while challenging and certainly upsetting in places, there was certainly a fun element to it (I've previously posted here some essays I wrote for that course, and the group I was in had to present the movie "Tokyo Gore Police" from a feminist perspective... definitely a deliciously messed up, if challenging, situation, heh). I can't see how there will be any fun to be had in WGST3812, ugh, it's gonna be a downer (useful and powerful I'm sure, but not a lot of sunshine and bunnies). Once the summer is over, I'll only need 1.5 more credits, 0.5 of which is a required course (WGST3810 "Feminist Research") and is only available in the winter term. I'll try to finish the requirements for the B.A. this coming fall/winter school year, but I will be taking 2 more years to finish my physics undergraduate degree (hey, it's hard and I'm a bit of a mathtard, heh!). If I can take another 1.0 credits the following summer in women and gender studies (it really depends on what's offered), I might even be able to get a B.A. Honours instead in the same timeframe (obviously more work, but it might allow me to take post-graduate studies in the subject and I actually have something in mind to do with intersectionality and immigrant populations, sigh... so much to do, so little time).
I'm also taking the 0.5 credit PHYS3606 "Modern Physics II" in the first half of the summer. This promises to be a bag of laughs as well (not), but in a very different way from WGST3812: Elements of condensed matter physics, semiconductors, superconductivity. Elements of nuclear physics, fission, fusion, power generation. Introduction to particle physics. Ionizing radiation: production, interactions, detection. Medical physics: radiation biophysics, cancer therapy, imaging. The best part, I'm sure, will be the six hours of lectures and four hours of laboratory work per week O_o. Shoot me now... but it's a required course, and I think the only 3rd year physics course offered in the summer. I am also (once my contract with CRIPT is over) planning to start proper studying of physics by working through stuff on my own rather than just doing the required coursework. I'm also starting to work on a new project to help Carleton integrate North America's first EUDET Telescope this summer (I had won an undergraduate research grant called I-CUREUS last term, but the telescope is still at DESY in Germany waiting for beam time so the team building it can finish its testing). This may translate into part time work this summer, but possibly not (and even if not, I plan to volunteer to help to keep my toe in the door ... I'm working on the official Carleton web site for it now).
So, what's up? Well, I had a friend come over on the weekend and help me clean the house... I did the grunt stuff that just piles up (laundry, dishes, repairs, tidying) while they did the actual cleaning. This last time, it definitely went beyond the call of whatever governs that sort of thing, heh (thanks
kweenbee!!!). I still have some stuff to repair, and I need to file a semester's worth of school stuff and paperwork piled in my room, but it feels good to have an otherwise clean house!I have started on the contract to disassemble and pack the electronics for the CRIPT detector as we prepare to move it to the Chalk River nuclear facility. I'm not sure how things are going to proceed with the contract as there are a lot more people working on it than I expected, so the job is going to be done in a couple of days, rather than a couple of weeks... there might be a few more days trying to ready the detector layers (this might actually go into weeks given their fragility and the fact we need to use heavy equipment to access some of the layers, so maybe I will have the work I was hoping for after all). I just found out yesterday that my name will be on another published paper, this one to be presented by AECL at the 54th Institute for Nuclear Materials Management (INMM) Conference in July in California (I won't be attending though). Very cool for an undergraduate such as myself :). Hmmm... just noticed that there was a news article at the AECL site about the CRIPT project: "A closer look at CRIPT: Commissioning of Canada’s first full-scale muon tomography imaging system". Again, very cool that I got to work on something this boffo for the past three and a half years!
My summer term classes start Monday... ugh... I posted the schedule previously if you are wondering where I am (and when). I will be taking three courses (one full summer and two half summer): two feminist studies (1.5 credits) and one physics (0.5 credits). A single course for one term is 0.5 credits at Carleton... I know most other universities use a different counting system. To get a B.A. in Women and Gender Studies requires that I take 3.0 more credits of women and gender studies courses, and I'll be taking 1.5 of those this summer. I will be slogging through the required 1st year 1.0 credit course WGST1808 "Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies" which goes all summer (which I'm hoping will be easy credits for me as I've done 3rd year courses and gotten As in them). The course summary is: Overview of the major issues in women’s and gender studies. Topics include the social construction of femininity and masculinity, violence, sexuality, representations of women, the treatment of women in the workplace and in education, women and the arts, and women’s health. I will also be taking a 3rd year 0.5 credit seminar course WGST3812 "Selected Topics in Women's and Gender Studies" which this summer is "Gender and Health" and goes for the second half of the summer. This course, however, sounds like it is going to be both very difficult and utterly unpleasant: Using feminist and social-critical lenses, this course will examine eating disorders and their impacts on the physical, mental, emotional, and social health of individuals, especially women. Particular emphasis will be placed on understanding the ways in which gender and its intersection with social class, race, culture, sexual orientation, and other structural factors may predispose subjects, especially women, from various sociocultural backgrounds to eating disorders. The focus will, however, not only be directed toward an explanation of eating disorders at an individual level but also at a structural level, in order to discover the dominant societal discourses and institutions that sustain women’s preoccupation with the shape and size of their bodies. To do so, various feminist perspectives about the causes/determinants of eating disorders in our contemporary culture will be explored. Sigh... last summer I took another "selected topics" seminar (WGST3005), but it was "The Monstrous Feminist: Gender and the Horrific in Popular Culture"... and while challenging and certainly upsetting in places, there was certainly a fun element to it (I've previously posted here some essays I wrote for that course, and the group I was in had to present the movie "Tokyo Gore Police" from a feminist perspective... definitely a deliciously messed up, if challenging, situation, heh). I can't see how there will be any fun to be had in WGST3812, ugh, it's gonna be a downer (useful and powerful I'm sure, but not a lot of sunshine and bunnies). Once the summer is over, I'll only need 1.5 more credits, 0.5 of which is a required course (WGST3810 "Feminist Research") and is only available in the winter term. I'll try to finish the requirements for the B.A. this coming fall/winter school year, but I will be taking 2 more years to finish my physics undergraduate degree (hey, it's hard and I'm a bit of a mathtard, heh!). If I can take another 1.0 credits the following summer in women and gender studies (it really depends on what's offered), I might even be able to get a B.A. Honours instead in the same timeframe (obviously more work, but it might allow me to take post-graduate studies in the subject and I actually have something in mind to do with intersectionality and immigrant populations, sigh... so much to do, so little time).
I'm also taking the 0.5 credit PHYS3606 "Modern Physics II" in the first half of the summer. This promises to be a bag of laughs as well (not), but in a very different way from WGST3812: Elements of condensed matter physics, semiconductors, superconductivity. Elements of nuclear physics, fission, fusion, power generation. Introduction to particle physics. Ionizing radiation: production, interactions, detection. Medical physics: radiation biophysics, cancer therapy, imaging. The best part, I'm sure, will be the six hours of lectures and four hours of laboratory work per week O_o. Shoot me now... but it's a required course, and I think the only 3rd year physics course offered in the summer. I am also (once my contract with CRIPT is over) planning to start proper studying of physics by working through stuff on my own rather than just doing the required coursework. I'm also starting to work on a new project to help Carleton integrate North America's first EUDET Telescope this summer (I had won an undergraduate research grant called I-CUREUS last term, but the telescope is still at DESY in Germany waiting for beam time so the team building it can finish its testing). This may translate into part time work this summer, but possibly not (and even if not, I plan to volunteer to help to keep my toe in the door ... I'm working on the official Carleton web site for it now).
