School Stuff

So . . . I graduated a little over a week ago. That was exciting.

And now I guess I'm in the dreaded Real World. Yikes.

With regard to grad school, everything is still very much up in the air. I got money from Kansas, but not near enough. I emailed the director who said that there is not really much they can do at this point because their scholarship budget was cut by 50% by the state. There may be more money if other applicants drop out, but I won't know that until sometime in June. And it would take a lot of applicants dropping out to cover the difference between my award and out of state tuition.

So, as Wile E. Coyote would say, back to the old drawing board.

Which means I will probably be delaying my enrollment at KU by a year and in the mean time reapply for scholarship (and look for other means of funding) while also applying to other programs and hoping I catch a break. This actually might be a blessing in disguise, considering I missed the deadline on a lot of programs last fall and now have time to apply to these places.

Of course, this also means I need to, you know, get a job or something to support myself in the meantime.

I'm not sure I like this Real World place.

Amy P-Shaw asked about my thesis, so I will now give you a brief synopsis. Or try to.

Basically, I was using a political science model to analyze the process of identity formation over the course of an episode of contention. Contention being political struggle where there is a claim at stake and at least one government involved and an episode being a particular contentious struggle (think French Revolution, Tianenmen Square, the civil rights movement in the US, etc.).

Identity formation is the process where the identity of a group is shaped by the interaction of all of the political actors involved in the contentious episode. Instead of being hard and set, identity is fluid and shifts to suit the political climate. For my case studies, I used three separate but related indigenous movements in Southern Africa.

Hopefully that made sense. I can clarify if need be. If anyone cares.

Alsooo, this post is my first from my new laptop. In keeping with the tradition of naming laptops after literary figures (my last was Cervantes), I have named her Scheherazade. Only had her a few days, but so far so good. Yay!