I'm really annoyed by this new version of Firefox. While it remembers passwords (at least some of them), it refuses to have them automatically entered anymore, and so I still have to go through the login page for most of my sites. *sigh*
Tomorrow night I have to go to a party. I KNOW, right?
But this one is different. It's being held at a professor's house, and all faculty, staff, and graduate students from my department are invited. And apparently EVERYONE is going. So obviously I have to go. It'll be a great opportunity to meet everyone, and, as the department isn't really all that big, it's not going to be overwhelming. I'm also looking forward to meeting one person in particular there. I saw him at the graduate student orientation, as he was the vice president of the grad students' union. I noticed there that he was an anthropology student. When I was assigned my mailbox, I discovered that we shared a mailbox, and, subsequently, we share an office, as well. Not to mention that he's probably the only other symbolic anthropologist in the department, and his supervisor is the same as mine. So I really want to pick his brain.
Class the other day, by the way, was pretty good. I met everyone in my class, about 4 MAs and 3 PhDs, plus me, and I managed to remember all their names. The class looks pretty easy, actually, just going a little further into the theory of fieldwork and employing a few more methodologies than I had previously done in my other degrees. Some of the projects we're doing I did in my BA, but they have a few more complexities to them here that I think I will really enjoy. Especially because now that I'm a doctoral student, I have a lot more freedom in choosing where I want to focus my energy.
I am definitely the grizzled veteran in that crowd, however. If I am not the oldest student there, I'm the second-oldest, and it seems like I've done a lot more work, research-wise, than the rest of them have. For instance, I've already done field research (in my BA, no less), I've gone through the Research Ethics Board not once, but twice, have extensive interview experience, etc., etc. Plus my project is much more developed at this point AND it's the most original by far. But enough about tooting my own horn. It's so easy to become egocentric when you're a grad student.
The majority of my classmates are taking other classes, as well, so that puts me at a bit of a disadvantage in terms of getting to know them better. The ones I seemed to get along with better are also mostly MA students, so they have a different office from me. Granted, it's just next door, but you'd be surprised at how isolating a single wall can be.
I think this year is going to be fun, however. I'm looking forward to it.
Here's an instance of how small a world it is, by the way. There's this professor in my department who just graduated with his PhD. He's one of the first doctorates that the department produced, so they turned right around and hired him. I was told all this when I was meeting with people back in January, mostly because this new professor is from Ottawa, and everyone thought we might get along stupendously. I didn't meet him that time around, but when I was helping my brother move into his place in Michigan he told me he wanted me to meet this guy who was a friend of this professor. I remember thinking at the time, how weird is that? How does someone out here know this person? How many more coincidences am I going to encounter here?
Then TODAY I was meeting with the professor whose class I'm TAing for, and I noticed that the young prof's door was open, so I popped in and introduced myself (everyone already knows who I am, by the way. There's only a handful of graduates admitted every year and the entire department - a total of 7 or 8 people - decides who's admitted). Anyway, we shot the shit for about half an hour and he was super nice - I guess they were right when they thought that we'd get along. Turns out he's on my committee solely because he found my project interesting (that's a first!). We were talking and I mentioned that weird circumstance back in Michigan. Immediately, the prof was like, oh yeah, that's my best friend - I remember him mentioning one of his friend's sisters was doing a project on hockey.
HOW. WEIRD. IS. THAT?
What a small world.
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