I am now an alumna of UCI.  I hold a B.A. in anthropology and European Studies (with an emphasis in medieval studies) and I don't know what I want to do with my life or with careers or anything.

Whatever.  I'm done with undergraduate studies and it's a kind of bittersweet feeling, personally.  I spent three years at community college and three years at UCI and I'm just going to miss that feeling of being a student.

Although I do know I want to go back for grad school in the way-off future, hopefully (maybe for something medieval?  It is a favorite subject of mine...although I wouldn't say no to a language program, preferably in Russian, or IDK.  I'll deal with that in the future).

These past few weeks have been hectic for me and so I just haven't updated a whole lot.

The important things that happened:

-I finished my European Studies thesis!  It's called 'From Geoffrey of Monmouth to Geoffrey Chaucer: The Political Portrayal of Knights and Chivalry in Medieval Literature'.  I must admit that I didn't see the paper to be ending up the way it did when I started thinking about the thesis--I mean I knew from the start that I wanted to focus on knights in medieval society, but the fact that I ended up analyzing how knights were represented in literature was something I honestly did not see coming.

I kind of blame the professor who guided the whole seminar for leading me down the path of analyzing literature.  Seriously.  Because otherwise I wouldn't have even looked at literature at all.  And I did.

The paper is far from perfect, but it's my own paper and I got to shape its argument and battle with it and have writer's block over it and I'm proud of it.  (I swear I had writer's block!  Seriously.  My original argument: Chaucer's represenation of knights and chivalry is different!  And then one night I had an epiphany and the argument became 'knights and chivarly were portrayed for political and religious purposes!'  And after that the paper became easier to write.  Before that it was causing me a lot of stress and grief.  So, yeah, I discovered that it's possible to get writer's block on a research paper.)

The one thing that amazes me is that this whole idea of a thesis started last year in around October and back then I knew I wanted to write about knights and the crusades, but I didn't know how much it would change.

-I had to give a presentation of my thesis in front of faculty members 0_0 professors, mainly, and some of my fellow classmates who also had to write a thesis.  But still OMG it was just too scary and I just hated it and I didn't like it and I don't like speech presentations...although at least it wasn't in Russian, so there's that.  (At UCLA last year for my Russian class I had to give a presentation about a city and the speech had to be in Russian.) (Although, TBH, I would totally prefer to give a presentation in Russian.)

-I had too many final papers to write.  That's because I had no midterms but, hindsight being 20/20 and all, I would prefer midterms over final papers.  Although I only had one final test to really study for and the rest I just had to do mad-dash researching and writing and, you know, NaNoWriMo taught me how to do a lot of focusing on writing things and so the writing was relatively easy.

Except for the anthro paper--I just had trouble with arguing that and the whole format of that paper.

-I'm hoping I got good grades this quarter

So, now that school is out of the way, now it's time to talk about fandom news:

-still slightly obsessed with Star Trek (AOS only) and everything Kirk/Spock.
-made an Odd Couple music video

I think this one turned out quite well.

-made a Star Trek music video:

This one was is one of my favorites :D

-I need to get caught up with Psych
-I just finished watching season 2 of Gilmore Girls and I need to watch more.  (Yes, I like that show.  I like the writing--the writing is witty.  If it wasn't for the writing, and the insane amount of pop culture references that I adore, then I wouldn't watch the show.  And I like the characters.  And I don't know why I'm listing reasons to defend myself for liking a show...)
-Jared Padalecki being in Gilmore Girls made me want to start up my re-watch of Supernatural, so I'm doing that again now.  I'm onto episode 4 of season 1.  I forgot how bad some of the plots were--especially in episode 3--it's like the father just shows up out of the blue at the end when Dean and Sam find the bike--how did he know they were there?  And, yeah, the episode has Amy Acker in it but the episode isn't all that good.
-James Donald and Richard Attenborough starred in another movie together!  It's called Conduct Unbecoming and I don't know how good it is but I just got it on Netflix and I can't wait until I watch it because it's James Donald and Richard Attenborough! :D
-I'm donating platelets again on Thursday.  I asked if I could bring my own film and they said yes so I'm going to bring The Great Escape.  I've got nothing against all the amazing films the center has (they have Avengers, Inception, The Hobbit, Toy Story 3...).  It's just lately The Great Escape has become my 'time to unwind and watch a film to calm down' type of film.  (I'm not overly obsessed with it anymore but maybe only slightly obsessed with it now.)
-Much Ado About Nothing.  Amazing.  I watched it earlier this month in LA and it was one of the screenings that Joss Whedon, Clark Gregg, Amy Acker, Tom Lenk, and Alexis Denisof were doing a Q+A at and I was in row D at the theater (they had assigned seating) so I was closer to Whedon & co. than I was when I was at Wondercon.
-I saw Whedon live in person twice this year.  Wow.  I don't think I'll ever have a chance at getting his autograph but still :D it's mind blowing.
-I'm watching a movie called Charade (or Charades--I don't remember the name).  It stars Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, but the main reason I'm watching it is because it also stars James Coburn and Walter Matthau.  I'm hoping they interact at some point in the film--that would be awesome.  (Also, apparently my grandparents used to live in the same neighborhood as Matthau back in the '70s/'80s because they saw Matthau walking his dog in the neighborhood.

They also lived across the street from Ronald Reagan.
-I also started watching Twin Peaks.  I've never watched it before and Amazon Prime has the episodes and so I'm watching it on there.  So far I find it slightly funny--maybe it's just slightly cheesy.  And I can't believe it was made in the '90s.  It seems like it was made earlier, like in the '80s.
-my cousin is a boom operator in the entertainment industry and he's worked with Mumford and Sons and I'm slightly jealous of him.  I mean it.  I think it's mostly because I really want to see Mumford & Sons in concert someday.  (Also on my list of 'bands to see in concert' would be Sigur Ros, Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and Cat Stevens/Yusuf.  So far the only singers/bands I've seen are Ian Anderson/Jethro Tull and Mika.  And actually I'm planning on seeing Ian Anderson again in July in LA because just to see him perform the entirety of Thick as a Brick only one time wasn't enough to satisfy me and I wanted to see the entire performance again.)

Hopefully I'll update more this month now that I'm done with stressing out for school.  I do need to start doing something, though, even if it's volunteering.  I would prefer a job, though, I just have to make the effort to apply (I'm really lazy at the moment).  Or an internship would be good.  The only thing that's stopping me is that there's a possibility I may move to San Diego later this summer with a friend, so if I happen to get an internship now, then I would only be there for at least a month or two, and this one I have my eye on requires a person to stay in the internship for three months, so...

I'll get to work someday on replying to all the messages left on the past journal entry.