Grad School Postmortem

Okay. I dropped out of graduate school. I was really sick of working on my thesis (seriously. I would get stomachaches and things). I was to the point where I was worrying about it all the time and procrastinating all the time and then when I did work on it it felt like I wasn't going anywhere. I thought about it a bit, and I decided that for the things I think would be really awesome to do in my life (be a video game journalist, make a video game, be a freelancer, be a mom), I don't need an MA. I would need an MA to teach composition, and I don't like teaching composition. It was a good experience to finish all the coursework for the degree--learning about feminism and aesthetics has been really helpful to how I criticize books and video games. But in the end I don't really need a master's degree in English.

So I'd like to do a postmortem kind of thing and maybe if you ever write a thesis you can avoid the mistakes I made.

Mistakes I Made:

-I was distracted with taking Japanese my last year in coursework. I liked studying Japanese a lot more than working on my thesis, which maybe says something about what I should have gotten a degree in.

-I sat on drafts. Early on in the drafting I pestered my adviser too much and he chastised me. Ever since, I was worried that I was bothering him. I would finish the things he told me to do and then try to anticipate what the next revision would be, instead of sending him back a draft quickly and waiting for a response. I should have worried less about being a bother and more about getting my tuition money's worth of feedback.

-I chose a professor on my committee who I had never worked with before, and she turned out to be kind of scary and have more sway over my other two professors than I thought she would. I wish I had had a professor on my committee that I felt better friends with--someone that I could have complained to a little but would also have been able to explain the weirdness of thesis-dom. I also would have liked someone on my committee who had read either House of Leaves or Portal. As it was, I felt like I could say anything about the works and no one would care whether or not my analysis rang true.


Frustrations with my Adviser (who is a nice person and a scholar and this isn't meant in a mean way, more as a retrospective, "I wish this had been different" way):

-Sometimes I would meet with him and he wouldn't have looked at my latest draft. Once he told me to make changes I had already made. This combined with my habit of sitting on drafts was frustrating.

-He had a vision for my thesis revision procedure that he didn't share with me from the beginning. Each time he gave me feedback, I was thinking "I'll do this and then it will be done," whilst he was thinking something like "after she reorganizes it, I'll tell her to reintegrate secondary criticism." When I found this out I was upset that our communication hadn't been clearer.


It was bad enough writing papers for one professor, but writing one for three was too much for my politically-anxious mind. I probably could have gone on and graduated, but I feel a lot better now for having made this decision. I feel like I can focus on what I want to do and not what I have to do. I have a plan for dinner every day this week and a cleaning schedule. I want to learn CSS and Javascript. Life is just better now.

Koko: Confused by whistling

I actually worked on my thesis today, and then sent out a draft to my committee! So, much thanks to those of you who commented on my last draft, it was somewhat helpful (as was the feedback from my advisor). I'm not really sure if I will defend this semester, and I'm not really sure if I want to give it another semester if I don't.

Other things: We are going to Minecon next week! Let me know if you have swag requests or anything. Koko got spayed and she has been teething it up really bad, so we've been trying to be extra patient with her while she grows up. Also, whistling confuses her:



Oh, I finally finished watching LOST. I read up on some of the explanations for stuff. I feel kind of meh about the whole series, and I think there's some more potential for magical realism in TV shows.

The Domo-kuns of Japan

I bought this folder in Japan and felt like sharing it. Please enjoy the many Domos of Japan.

Magic: the Gathering Treasure Hunt

Back when my brother and I had our birthday party together I made him a Magic: The Gathering treasure hunt with clues I made to look like Magic cards (using this set editor). I tried to vary up where the "hint" was--from the picture to the flavor text I wanted to make it exciting to read the card (and not too hard). Making them reminded me of the Unglued set and now I am wishing that there were more humorous cards in Magic. Anyway, it was fun, and here are the clues. Feel free to steal them for your own treasure hunt, but making them is so fun that I recommend that.

Our deck

Koko's crate

The dryer

Some Miracle Grow

Bread

Toaster

The anxiety of the undone, and an invitation to help

I feel like when I was in college classes, I could do a ton of different things and still have a social life and time for goofing off. But now that I'm in charge of scheduling my own days, time seems to shrink and I procrastinate things I need to do. Like put up the curtains we bought or clean the kitchen floor.

I'm still struggling with my thesis. I am so sick of it, but I can't forget that it's there. I try to get inspired by reading video game criticism but I feel like I really have nothing more to say about the postmodern journey myth. It's hard to feel very productive if I don't work on my thesis, even if I vacuumed/cleaned the kitchen/prepared to have an awesome party/blogged about GEEX. There's always in the back of my to-do list this huge looming mountain that is my thesis and I feel like it will never go away. Any fun I have playing a game is eventually turned into procrastination of the inevitable.

that sick cycle

Day 1: Okay, fine, I'm sick. Day off! Video games! Try to stay away from people so I don't spread germs!
Day 2: I can do this. Wait, what the heck is going on in LOST? I've lost to this boss in Persona how many times? I am just not with it. That's it, I'm going to run around in Assassin's Creed.
Day 3: Maybe I'm feeling better. I might as well finish reading this book. Okay, I can do video games, yeah.
Today: I'm better right? How about I get dressed and everything, that will convince myself.

But no, I'm still weirdly sick. I feel like the master of a marionette which is my body, which I can't decide if it is a side effect of my decongestant or a symptom. Time stretches and shrinks. I feel dead tired and I almost fell asleep, but it felt really strange. You know sometimes when you're falling asleep you feel like you're falling and give a little hypnogogic jerk when you hit the bottom? Well, not like that at all, but the same semiconsciousness. It was like dreaming without any of the images, only the feeling of gradually getting higher or maybe falling out of bed, but not actually falling. When I think about my thesis I think of how neglected it is and resolve to write many pages tomorrow when I'm feeling better. Everything seems unsurmountable, but irrelevant. Stupid things like "Andrew Void-Webber" seem hilarious. You know, viruses.

Book projects in the last year

I wanted to document some of my bookbinding projects from last year, and I only just now got around to uploading photos. I can't remember this binding type's name, but the entire cover is made from one expensive piece of paper. The endband is hand-sewn. I gave it to my older brother for Christmas last year:

 This was a regular hardback I made with my mom's tastes in mind. It has yellow inside paper things and only got a little glue on it.

Below: This wasn't a bookbinding project, but it was a little book I made for a friend I was missing. I entitled  it "Activites for Adults and Children Alike." I'd like to see a real book like this, with cutesy drawings and stuff. I took a signature from some paper I had cut and just sewed in together with some yarn.

I also made a Minecraft cookbook, which I put over on my gaming blog. I know that I'm no expert at bookbinding, but it was fun to make some books.

Children in Japan: Have They Ever Had Fun?

The art of child raising in Japan generally has high expectations of children, but with a high amount of indulgence (and that’s not just anecdotal: see this study and this discussion).

Make Wise Mothers

The focus on children and their mothers began in the late Meiji period (1900s), when men’s jobs kept them away from home and women had the responsibility to become the family’s “supreme ruler.” Many of these women learned how to be “wise mothers” from their education; the last two years of girls’ high school was devoted to becoming a good mother. That makes sense--it takes time to learn how to make tempura and learn to teach children morality (girls’ morality classes were twice as long as boys’). While the samurai lifestyle expected children to be little adults, the turn of the century saw a heightened sensitivity to children’s needs. It’s this emphasis on mother-child relationships that, in my opinion, led to its idealization and spillover into non-maternal relationships (referred to as amae, but that’s a discussion for another day).

Expectation of the Superior Student


So as not to cramp the child’s energetic nature and individuality, mothers started giving their children more practical clothing and their own self-decorated rooms. This included in one instance, hanging the bookshelves crooked at the child’s request. The child was to have the most spacious, sunniest room (as referenced in Real World: "We'll make Ryo's room the sunniest one on the second floor"). Along with these indulgences, mothers expected their children to be “superior students.” The pressure on boys and girls to be at the top of their class so as to get a good job later on remains to this day. And it wasn’t just for men; the higher and more prestigious a woman’s education, the higher her desirability as a wife.

Mothers and Children In Japan Today


Many mothers are also working, though they do not receive the same seniority pay raises as their male counterparts, and about 40% of Japanese people think that women shouldn’t work while they have children at home (my source is from 1999). There’s still this incredible pressure on children to do well in school, but Japanese people are recognizing that sometimes kids need a break from studying. Indeed, one magazine found that children who had time to relax in the summer got better grades (so... they want children to relax so they can do better in school, basically).

I think it’s great for a mother to stay home with her children if she is able to and desires to do so. I don’t think I would raise a child in the indulgent style, but it appears to work alright. What do you think of traditional Japanese child rearing practices?

Most of the information in this article came from Children as Treasures.

Another Koko vid

Here's Koko tearing apart a thistle. She's 12 weeks old now, and she's getting even more energy and chewing on everything. Thanks to Koko, we've been going for more walks, and I've been trying to get up earlier (although for a while I was waking up to let her out and then crashing for another three hours).

I'm trying out new ways to study Japanese. I've started yet another blog, mostly for myself, where I take clips of anime and write out what they're saying in Japanese. It's a little harder than I thought it would be! So, I'm looking for anime with good examples of daily speech and especially polite speech. So far I think I have plenty of material to work with. I'm also thinking of getting a conversation partner through livemocha or something. Maybe I'll start out with a blog on lang8; chatting to friendly strangers is scary! But I guess the worst thing that could happen would be that I have to block someone (or get taught the wrong things).

August rain and lunches

Koko snoozing

Koko at 10 weeks looks out the window

I think it has rained every day for the past two weeks. It even hailed a ton one day:

It's the first August in Utah I've had where it is possible to be outside at 3pm and be comfortable in pants. I love the cooler weather, and I'm sure there will be a hot day somewhere down the road that really feels like summer. I got super-soaked by a four-year-old and Koko did nothing to protect me. She fled, not even barking a threat. Maybe when she's older she'll be less bitey of me and less scared of everything (last week the vacuum was nothing, this week it's a monster about to eat me). 

We got a breadmaker, and even though I've messed up the last two recipes, the products have been delightfully edible. Oh, and I picked up some old bento boxes from Balgram, which renewed my vigor in making them (also, I promised I would use them, so this post is in part proof). I've been looking to Bento Love for inspiration; I love all the photos. Here are all the lunches I've made in the past week (also, sorry about how Blogger and photos never get along):

Zuccini, cabbage, mushrooms, and ground beef. I forgot to salt the beef. 

Steamed cabbage with blanched bean sprouts and bonito flakes on the right. The left is shrimp taco leftovers: Red onion, corn, and shrimp combine with mango and cilantro (thanks to my Aunt Melissa for the idea)

Barley salad from Shana's recipe sharing circle; that stuff is rice pudding. Two tiers is especially nice for this kind of setup.

Spaghetti with green beans, chicken, mushrooms, and spinach

Spinach, sweet omelet, and ginger garlic chicken over rice (pickled ginger garnish)


Having leftovers like the chicken and spaghetti made making these lunches a lot easier. It also helped that I was getting up earlier to take Koko out (although I've simply gone back to bed some mornings). It's a way I show my love for my husband, and also it helps me experiment with new food stuff in a low-risk situation. I'm still content with a bagel and an apple for lunch, but I think making myself a portion beforehand is a good way to make sure I actually eat something other than pieces of bread (the laziness of the afternoon!).  Anyway, that's what the last two weeks have been like. 

Ethnic Food in Japan

Now, another Japanese culture post! Tufugu has even more Japanese cultural bizarreness.

You’ve heard of the uncanny valley, right? When a robot is really lifelike, but just different enough to be creepy and unsettling--that’s uncanny. That’s how it feels to eat some Japanese ethnic food. It’s just... not quite right. What’s so weird about it?

Italian-Japanese Food


Pasta is kind of like noodles, so it makes sense to put shrimp and crabs in it, right? Lasagna is pretty much the same, except with the seasoning toned down to perfect blandness. And the pizza... well, as you can see, toppings at this restaurant were arranged in a sakura-blossom pattern, and the pizzas were tiny and made with minimal cheese. Patrons ate everything with chopsticks. Makes perfect sense for Japanese people, just kind of unsettling for me.

French-Japanese Food

Most bakeries in Japan have French/European influence, but with modifications for Japanese tastes. The most popular bread is snow-white and fluffy, but sourdough and cinnamon-raisin bread are available. About 90% of the bread is sweet, but there are sausage rolls (yes, including fish sausage rolls). I’m actually a big fan of anpan and melon bread. Probably the weirdest thing in Japanese bakeries is how perfectly iced the cakes are. Crepes, available from street-side vendors, are offered with the usual fillings (strawberry, chocolate, and custard) with the occasional exotic place offering savory fillings. Probably the weirdest thing about crepes is that they’ve been made into food you can eat on the go: wrapped up with a paper cone like an ice cream.

American-Japanese Food

If you ask for a hanbaagu (ハンバーグ) in a restaurant, you’ll get something that looks like the above. It’s kind of like meatloaf, and due to the insane price of beef in Japan, it’s a good way to stretch out hamburger meat. There are McDonald's in Japan, which are very popular with both adults and children; if you want an actual hamburger it’s hanbaagaa (ハンバーガー). This ad suggests that children are indeed, wild about McDonald's:





And now, for the most unexpected interpretation of an eggroll:

Yes, that’s a roll with a mashed-up boiled egg on top. Yum!

There are tons more hilarious versions of ethnic foods in Japan (soy burgers, sardine pizza, oh and no one knows what a taco is). What’s the weirdest/most uncanny ethnic food you’ve come across?

Koko video

This is Koko running around our backyard. She loves pouncing on anything moving (flies included), so I think we'll have to include waggling shiny things around her as part of the playtime routine.

In other news, I went to the Decemberists concert in SLC and it was AWESOME. Seriously. They had dueling guitar solos and everything. Keep the classical cadenza tradition alive through rock!

PUPPY

We have a puppy. She's a shiba inu named Koko and she's 8 weeks old, and she is super-adorable. And it's a good thing too, because she is basically a patience-testing machine. I'm learning what kinds of chew toys she likes and how to get her so worn out that I have some time to not worry about her while she's sleeping. She's doing very, very well with housetraining (probably thanks to her excellent breeder). She also wants to chew our chairs and dig through the last stair. So if you have tips on helping puppies chew the right things I am game.

NHK’s Efforts to Teach a Nation English

A little background here: I wrote some posts on Japanese language/culture for an internship application. I didn't win the internship (no surprise), but I'd still like to share the posts, because I worked hard on them and I think they're interesting.

Japanese people really, really want to learn English. as evidenced by the sheer amount of English learning material produced and consumed in Japan. Most of us know the problems with traditional English learning in Japan: too heavy reliance on kana pronunciations, overly focused on rules and not focused enough on fluent, self-generated speech. While they may not be famous for good oral proficiency, most Japanese people do pretty well with written English, and they’re trying really hard to get better at speaking. What are they doing right?

Trad Japan



NHK, Japan’s public broadcasting company, has a large English-teaching empire. One facet of this is the monthly Trad Japan. The magazine is a collection of short essays about Japan in Japanese and English, with explanations of tricky phrases.


To round it out, they’ve transcribed some interviews with a proper-sounding British person (you know, to get conversational English in there). The website has English audio samples of the material, and it really looks like they’re doing their best to keep adult learners interested by discussing Japanese culture from a westerner’s point of view while using real English.

Little Charo 2

From the same company comes English education for Japanese children. The cartoon Little Charo 2 (リトル・チャロ２) is set in a universe where animals speak English (humans still speak Japanese). English becomes a cipher to decode; the key to understanding the fantasy-like “middle world.”
The series has a website where children can test their knowledge with quizzes and role-playing video clips (completing the “scrambled scenes” rewards you with the Japanese of the English sentences). Little Charo even has his own DS game: (embed this youtube video here)

Along with Little Charo 2, NHK has a variety of bilingual shows for adults. Personally, I’d love it if we had some bilingual shows other than Dora the Explorer and more language learning DS games. NHK has the right idea: make language learning part of your daily entertainment, and make it fun with good design and interesting content. What aspects of Japanese English-learning material do you admire?

Moving Along

Okay. Most of you probably know that I had a miscarriage. The fates have given men an enduring heart, etc. I have since watched most of the Adventure Time cartoons and beat Pokemon White. It was painful, but it was also wonderful to see the support everyone gave me.

This might be weird, but I feel like now that I don't have pregnancy as an excuse to be lazy anymore, I'm starting to expect more of myself. This week I dug grass out of the flowerbeds in my backyard every morning (thank you, brainygamer podcasts, for making this process relevant to my aspirations). I worked on my thesis every day, though some days were more productive than others. I sent in an application to be an intern at tofugu.com, and I pitched an idea for an interview with a game composer to the Killscreen. I made a profile on Deseret Connect that I haven't done anything with, but I feel like I can at least keep myself busy with my aspirations to be a freelance writer/blogger.

I also hung out with a new friend and her kids today and biked to her house and back. I feel like I don't really belong in a place unless I've biked there, so it was good to get to know my neighborhood better. And I can bike to the library if I really want to. I started playing Ocarina of Time with the vintage game club. I'm planning to host a Japan party in a month (let me know if you want an invite). And I want to get a puppy (displaced maternal instinct be darned).

Adventure Time!

I love "Adventure Time." It's a cartoon series by Cartoon Network, and it makes me want to give American cartoons another chance. Finn is a 28-year-old dog and Jake is a 12-year-old boy and they have adventures. Sometimes I feel like a 12-year-old for watching it, but sometimes there are nerd jokes or plain funny things. I also like the art style. It's not trying to be anime, or trying to be some edgy artsy thing--it just feels fun and maybe a little silly. The world is similar to the ones I used to imagine with my siblings, minus Orcs and Ents and plus the candy kingdom and an awesome tree house. I think you can watch it streaming over at the Cartoon Network website. Also, am I missing out on other awesome American cartoons? Let me know.

I also love pastime books. I think I have about six I Spy books now, and some of them are really hard! I like that I can say I'm equipped to keep any 4-15 year old occupied for a half hour. I also got my copy of Fun for Boys and Girls that Genuine Draft suggested, and it's kind of hilarious and odd (envelope people, how to speak pig Latin, ransom notes actually called "paste-up" notes, etc.). It was published in the 1940s, and some of the items in the book reveal weird fashion trends. For instance, it appears that the cool thing to do was to wear skull caps and jackets with things people wrote on them embroidered on. Weird!

I think it's because I'm pregnant, but I just feel like a little kid sometimes. I'll be cranky or hungry and not even realize it, and I get all emotional sometimes. I think it's a good reminder that children aren't fully aware of themselves and have less control over their emotions. And, well, maybe pregnant women too.

My gaming blog and links

Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention this, although you probably already know. I want to become a game journalist, so I made a new blog called The Ludi Bin at thepretentiousgamer.blogspot.com.

Also, I added some more links to my sidebar, because Google integrated their analytics into blogger and now I have no excuse for not seeing stats about page views and such. I noticed that some of you were referring people to my site and I decided to return the favor. If you're disappointed that I didn't link you, just drop a comment and something might happen.

Biking and Diets

I tried to do some maintenance on my bike today, which I found kind of cool and also frustrating. Armed with this book, I was happy to find that gear-shifting failure is supposedly super easy to fix! Unfortunately, I don't have the same patience with books when I'm hunched over my bike with a screwdriver (it turns out some of the screws on a bike are not supposed to be screwed in all the way).

In other news, I am pregnant, and I have been looking into nutritious diets. The past few weeks I have been just kind of eating as much as I can and hoping the best (and taking folic acid, don't worry Mom!). The book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration is a kind of outdated but thorough study in what happened when white flour and other Terrible things were introduced into traditional diets (invariably, tooth decay and tuberculosis set in). I'm intrigued by the benefits of cutting down on white flour and refined sugar, but I haven't been able to find much modern research on the subject (but I have found plenty of people who want to rebel against "politically correct" diets). I'm also not sure if I could give up cereal and white bread; I suppose I could eat oatmeal and rye or wheat bread. Anyway, I've ordered a cookbook of traditional cooking methods, and I hope they are accessible enough to try out in a modern kitchen and good-tasting. It's not just raw foods, it has bread and stuff in it. I'm a big proponent of moderation, but I'm also open to trying out new things.

Packing lunch

I've been inspired by bento-style lunches and decided to try my hand at it. Last Friday I packed half-hamburgers:

Monday was salad, leftover mashed potatoes, and egg salad sandwiches:

Tuesday was 2 onigiri (rice balls; they're the triangle-shaped white things), Asian salad, lemon yogurt, instant miso, and beans (which Adam returned with. Apparently you need bread with baked beans).

Wednesday was Asian salad 2nd try, with leftover potato salad and vanilla pudding with a cookie. I also gave him some bread to have with yesterday's beans.

Thursday was company lunch for Adam, and Friday was just leftover bean soup and steamed potatoes/carrots. For dinner tonight I made sushi:

I tried making sausage sushi for the first time. It's... definitely American. The other rolls are permutations of crab sticks, shrimp, sweet omelet, and carrot. The only thing raw was the carrot. They were good with soy sauce and mayo! I was really proud of trying to make new things for lunches. In the past I've had the same thing every day: bagel, apple, granola bar, and yogurt. Adam is helping me see the virtue in variety, and while sometimes it's a struggle for me, I think it's very rewarding to think of good food to make with what food is available. 

On tourism

Being in Japan made me painfully aware of my status as an American (complete with huge suitcases). It reminded me of some David Foster Wallace essay (I think) about how tourists are ruining the thing they are there to see: culture unsullied by their influence (this blog write out a quote on the topic, but it isn't quite what I was remembering). Adam attributed this feeling to some depressing hipster vibe, but I don't think it's a new idea. 

It was a weird feeling to see other foreigners in Japan. It was at once a feeling of comradary and defensiveness ("I thought I was the only white person who knew about Japan!"). Of course, both feelings are ridiculous. Nevertheless, among the excitement of being introduced to a new country is also the feeling that I could never fit in perfectly, as I am not Japanese and was not raised in Japan. I think that's something America has over Japan: even if you don't know all the social rules and don't speak American, you can still feel like an American.