"it's fun while it lasts, and it's faster than walking"

Sunday: Had a lovely lunch with Jonah and then watched Gosford Park, which was okay. Was more underwhelmed by The Royal Tenenbaums (which i watched on Saturday). Oh, and i washed a whole bunch of dishes as they had been piling up. Gee, do we think i was getting burnt-out on grad school research? I have a statement of purpose, though:

I’m interested in how the stories people tell are influenced by the culture/society they are in, specifically how this affects the retelling of stories, and am particularly interested in representations in contemporary media. The particular story tropes i am interested in are fairy tales, vampire mythos, and Christian narratives (specifically the depiction of key figures, e.g. Jesus). Ultimately i want to be a college professor teaching courses on contemporary narratives such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, particularly fan participation (e.g. fanfiction).

Obviously an actual essay would be longer and include discussion of relevant courses i’ve taken and suchlike, but i like having an actual articulated statement of what my interests/goals are because in my researching i keep getting distracted by the shiny things professors/students are working on and have to keep reminding myself to focus on the people whose interests match my own. Was very encouraged that the first student on the graduate student directory at Rochester’s English program had Research Interests including revisionist fairy tales, children's literature, new media. (Father down is one with Fields: 20th century American studies; Youth culture; Film studies; Bitch theory. Another one has Personal Interests: [..] gender isssues; religious issues; [...] fairy tales; folk lore and myth. And one person has Research Interests: Romantic and Victorian literature; Holocaust literature; Personal interests: [...] "Buffy the Vampire Slayer")

Right now i'm near drowning in all the info about programs/courses/faculty/students, so i can't actually offhand differentiate between programs. (I have learned that CLT programs have cool offerings but the whole "you must be proficient in 2-3 languages other than English for a PhD" is rather off-putting. I’ve also learned that cultural memory seems to be a popular field of study.) I currently have a plethora of information on Brown, Rochester, Duke, UPenn, UC-SanDiego, UC-SantaBarbara, Illinois-Urbana, and there are still programs to be investigated. This, children, is one of the major reasons why it is not recommended that one decide in April of one’s junior year at college that one would like to pursue grad school-- it takes a damned long time to research programs.

"you must be the only person who I'm tempted to ask why she's on aim" -hedy

Had signed on to point trijinx to this. She wasn’t on, though, but Emma was, so that was yay.

Have lots of posts in the works. Will get them done eventually. If anyone’s interested, someone on academics_anon has an idea for a project on blogging (and other cyberculture) and identity.