[ Ut Oh - May 22nd, 2012 ]

Hey there guys, I know this is going to be short but I really wanted to at least update you guys on why I haven’t been updating!

Well for starters I promise updates will return to normal either this Friday or next Tuesday!

Now that that’s out of the way, I’ve been having some health issues on top of the fact that I’ve got a wicked 8-9 hour Friday field lab that involves digging… for a very long period of that time or sifting (sifting is a lot more taxing then one would imagine!) oh did I mention the 10 page paper of Pathology and its uses in identification of victims of war or genocide? Oh and that 10 page paper on my ethnography topic? Oh and the 3 page sculpture paper? Oh and my final sculpture for the quarter? OH AND THE FACT THAT I AM AWFUL AND FRENCH AND DOING AWFUL AND AM GOING TO HAVE A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN OVER IT. Seriously, I am utterly hopeless with other languages – I’m quite sure I have some sort of mental block on them.

Either way, I’ve got just a ridiculous amount of stuff on my plate right now and its just made it far too hard to be responsible and keep up with updating. But after this weekend I’ll be in the clear besied my French mid-term and then its time for summer! So things will return back to normal and you’ll get to be elated that I’ve started my Tuesday personal updates and Fashion Fridays back up once more!

[ Fashion Ethnography - May 1st, 2012 ]

We started our Ethnography projects last week, or well I suppose we had our write-ups do before them but we actually had to start going out in the field to do our preliminary research which is due on the 4th.

I’m really excited about mine, for someone whose not interested in Anthropology, Fashion, or Marketing you’ll probably start gagging and wondering how the hell I could be interested in such a thing. My project is going to be looking at the Collegiate idea of Fashion. More specifically I’m going to be researching how important image (and I mean on a Fashion level) is the the Collegiate and how important they think it is to their every day lives. Do they think its important to look presentable for their advisor? How do they dress when they go to interviews? How do they dress at school? Do they think its appropriate to wear whatever they want infront of a teacher they may want to write a recommendation for a job or graduate school for them? I want to answer all of these questions and I’ll likely come up with a few more along the way.

We’re in the Preliminary Observations stage right now – that means I get to go and wonder campus and take notes on the type of outfits and style I see. I’m trying not to go into this too biased with too many pre-set categories of ‘dressers’ and ‘Fashionistas’ at DePaul, but I already have a generic idea of how the chips may fall as far as categories go. I want to add a lot of visuals (photos, possibly sketches) but the project doesn’t really call for that, because of the topic of my Ethnographic project I’m hoping the Professor will let me include at least a few pages – at least in my final report. Doing a project on Fashion, after all, is really nothing without the visuals.

The Colligate Life by relevantsurroundings featuring canvas shoes

Joseph skinny leather pants, £424
Current/Elliott low rise jeans, $200
Victoria’s Secret activewear pants, $47
Dolce Vita platform sandals, $179
UGG Australia heavy boots, $150
TOMS canvas shoes, $44

After this portion of the project, we move on to the interview phase. Now normally this wouldn’t freak me out – I mean after how long I worked for CollegeFashionista I’m pretty used to talking to random strangers, but finding someone to sit down and talk with me for the required 30 minutes? That freaks me out a bit, I feel like its where I’m really going to run into problems. Now, that’s not because I don’t think people will be willing but I’m going to be pulling aside students who are rushing between classes and I’m just a little nervous its going to be really hard for me to pull off. If anyone is interested or feels like they know someone who might be who would have the time between classes I’d be glad for the opportunity to speak with them/you! I’m trying to keep this as random as possible by not asking people that I at least know their opinion on how important image is, but I know its going to be hard to get people to interview.

[ To Dig, or Not to Dig - April 24th, 2012 ]

I’m super excited this week – despite an awful cold I’ve had since Friday plus side effects for a new medicine to treat my Fibro Myalgia, plus Pickles (poor thing) is also sick, its not winter what’s going on! – well okay anyway! We start doing field world in the Archaeology Field School this week at DePaul!

Off to Dig by relevantsurroundings featuring an opi nail

Denim top, $55
James Perse long top, $38
J Brand slim leg pants, $245
Frye kitten heel shoes, $215
Frye kitten heel shoes, $215
Burts Bees lip treatment, £3.49
Opi nail, $8.50

Its 5 weeks of digging on possibly historical properties out in Maywood, Illinois trying to help the city really find its history – its supposed to be a long running thing in the department if Dr. Gregory has his way. This is the second semester DePaul has been out in Maywood. I’m just excited because, well, I was that little girl who read Egyptology books and loved studying about old stuff and Mythos even as a kid, I mean I was never set up to be who I was trying to be at the beginning of my collegiate career – and my parents certainly weren’t shocked I made a complete 180 back to my childhood obsessions. Digging up sites and trying to figure out where old houses may have been, where someone dumped their trash, what type of nails and what not they used in their buildings (great for dating things!), who lived there… these are all interesting to me, even if they might be boring to someone else.

Yes this is one big ramble, for that I apologize, its the migraine and sniffling puppers.

Its not the most exciting project, but I’m excited regardless, having field school experience will be great for grad school applications as well as trying to find internships.

I’m afraid this’ll be another boring personal update. I’ve spent all weekend just trying to relax and… in the process watching all four seasons of Parks and Recreations, I’m sincerely glad I finally gave in and just watched the show because even though, yeah, the first season was kinda blah and sucked – sticking it out was totally worth it the third and fourth seasons are pretty universally hilarious.

Now starts the ridiculous time of the year. Catching up a chapter in French, doing my field study for Ethnography, starting field work in Archaeology, my 10 page paper for Forensics (which I still need a topic to research or book to review – eek!), and starting a realism project I’m really stoked for in Sculpture. Its certainly going to keep me busy for the rest of the quarter, thankfully!

[ Bonjour! - April 10th, 2012 ]

Bonjour! Things are starting to get quiet busy again, school has really started to get going.

My proposals for my Archaeology and Ethnographic research projects are both due within the next week and I still have yet to find a proper book to do my Forensic paper on! Sculpture is going well, brilliantly so really. Instead of doing the regular course because of my issues with weariness and what not me and Susy decided on me doing it as a sort of independent study where I can work on my own time when I’m feeling well and I get to work souly with clay! Instead of working with plaster which is a huge boon to me, I’ve missed working with clay so much – I really do love it. I only wish we had a kiln so I could permanent my projects (especially this first one, my Dad would really love it). French is… well its going. Language has never been my strong point and going back to studying a language when I’ve barely spoken it in a year is proving to be just as tough as I thought it would be.

I’m most excited about the little changes I’ve made in my apartment. Its funny how a few cheap little wooden items for my kitchen and rearranging my living room have given it a fresh new look! I’m about 70% done with all the rearranging and major spring cleaning (two years of school papers and random junk mail really adds up after awhile, and apparently I had a whole section of my cabinet just full of grocery bags, apparently I am a hoarder of the useless and mundane!). I’ve already snapped some photos to show off the changes once I’m done. I’m trying to ‘adult’ up the place. Getting rid of shoddy little plastic items and putting my beloved stuffed panda collection into storage, getting rid of cruddy looking candles and all the little other odds and ends that have cluttered up the place over the last two years. Oh and finally – FINALLY, once my Dad pays me back some money I’m getting a real couch, not the awful, cheap, uncomfortable Ikea one I’ve had for over 3 years now – a real couch that I can actually sit and relax on and not feel miserable about 30 minutes in.

Next weeks Tuesday post’ll be all about my apartment and revamping it so I’m pretty stoked to write that entry needless to say, as well as my next two Friday posts! This Friday is going to be about my latest freebie snag from JewelMint (I love sites that give away free credit for promoting to your friends and stuff, its the only way I’ve been able to treat myself to these little jewlery purchases, free stuff ahoy!) and the following week is gonna be a review of this new skin care/cleansing/mask set I got at Target on a whim to try and clear up how awful stress has turned my skin lately.

Just a heads up, my posts will probably continue to be quite late in the day posted for the next few weeks as I’m coming off of Lyric for my Fibromylagia and hopefully going on to another mode of treatment because it made me feel all woosh and spacey even 6 weeks in when initial side effects should have been gone – so needless to say my body is all sorts of out of whack as is my sleeping pattern!

Au Revoir!
Until Friday!

[ Grasping at Straws - April 3rd, 2012 ]

I’m grasping at straws to think up a post for this week! This isn’t because I’ve done nothing but nothing I’ve been doing is finished to have something to show for it! I’m in the process of doing a major cleaning and rearranging of my apartment, the living room is allllmost done and then I’ll show it off. Its also that time of the quarter when I have nothing to show from school or talk about really, we’re just choosing topics for my Archaeology and Ethnographic Research classes and I’m still desperately looking for a book to do a write-up on for my Forensics course.

So yes most of my weekend has been spent on Imgur, Tumblr, and doing a Spring Cleaning of sorts to my house (though its more like, there’s 2 years worth of school work and stuff that has accumulated that I’m just binning).

This is why I hate this part of the quarter and this part of the year! Its not quite warm enough for me to really go out and do anything and I always seem to rabbit hole myself into solitude the first few weeks of the quarter – making my usually quiet, boring person even more so quiet and boring.

Oh and I have sketched some things on my new grahpics tablet, just for fun, most of what I do is utterly dreadful or for a jokes but sometimes my little doddles come out cute – but hey! I’ve only ever been proud of one thing I drew and that was when I drew a mouse peeking over a brain on a Congrats card for one of my good friends getting into grad school.

I’m still learning and adjusting to using it and honestly, most of what I draw would be considered a bit odd anyway its definitely nothing I’d ever sell or call art or anything like that, I just do it because I enjoy it, there’s something really cathartic about sketching even if the end result is wonky or poorly done – it just takes my mind off things and lets me concentrate on something else for awhile which is lovely.

I hope you enjoyed the post today brought to you in special thanks to: rambling.

[ Jason Wu for Target - March 15th, 2012 ]

So I was being a bit of a tease when I said it was a preview of this weeks Friday post! I’m sort of in love with these sunglasses and this dress, they’re definitely new staples of my wardrobe! The sunglasses are from Primark and were a lovely Christmas gift from my best friend, Zarah – my favourite gift by far. The weather here in Chicago has been really fashion friendly – warm, but not hot, and breezy, but not gusting. This is a great season for fashion since you can still make use of layers, but you don’t have to plan your whole outfit around keeping warm or wearing outerwear.

I apologize for the wonky awkward photos, jumping back from photobooth in 6 inch heels? And trying to make it look at least semi-attractive? Yeah not exactly the easiest thing I’ve ever done! I really need to invest in a new tripod.

I tried this dress with a few blazers and sweaters and ended up just deciding to simplify it by wearing it with a pair of heels I don’t get to wear often – hey its not easy to walk in 6 inch heels even when you’re a heels girl like me! The blazers I own just didn’t sit right or fall into the right colour shade and it was just far too warm out for my chunkier sweaters. I’m a little torn on the sleeves of the dress – I don’t like nor hate them but they do push me toward wanting to wear something over it to avoid having to think about them (at least they aren’t ugly H&M style capsleeves that awkwardly show my armpits).

I know I’m late on the blogging about the Jason Wu for Target line but I didn’t get my dress in the original sale. I lucked out on this dress, it was completely fate so of course I had to purchase it. It was the only Jason Wu item left besides one size 14 pleated black skirt and another size 12 dress and lo’ and behold it was also 75% off. Why was it 75% off? How did I luck out and get a $39 for $10? Because some silly person bought an online-only dress and returned it to the store not the website! So BAM, instant savings for me! I fell in love with the playful dotty pattern, but the lace piping is really what sold the dress for me. All the little details in this dress are what make it fantastic. Honestly, if it were just a plain blue dress of this shape I probably wouldn’t have even taken a second glance at it. But who could turn down such a perfect amount of subtle daintiness?

I really wish I could wear these shoes more often, there is something just really awesome about being 5’6″ temporarily and feeling like I’m a normal-sized person, but really 6 inch heels just aren’t practical for every day life. Beware: stairs without anti-slip are very dangerous in these shoes, as are curbs, oh yeah and cracks in the side walk. These shoes are more ‘hey I’m going out to a lounge’ or ‘hey I’m going to a fashion show’ or ‘hey I’m going to such and such event’. They’re special occasion shoes – and what is more of a special occasion then turning in two final art portfolios and an anthropology paper?

I should have forseen the fact that I had to walk up and down three flights of stairs… then two flights of stairs… not including the fact that I live on the second floor of my building. Lets just say by the time I got home, my feet were in much need of pampering and were promptly soaked in my sink with lovely salts for 10 minutes as they cried and moaned over the fact that I made a poorly planned (though sexy looking, I mean come on – look at those calves! thank you 8 years of soccer, thank you.) shoe choice.

[ the results are in - March 13th, 2012 ]

I will admit when I got my results I was a little let down, though its not in a regretful way. You can learn a lot from DNA, a hell of a lot, and I was hoping my results might be a tiny bit more conclusive as to giving me some insight about myself that I couldn’t have other wise guessed. Being adopted is a weird thing – especially being adopted from the US and being caucasian. Because honestly? I may not know much about myself but I of course could have surmised a few things, I was European or Russian – based off most of my features and the particular olive tint to my skin we always guessed Russian or Eastern European. My adoptive parents briefly met my Mother and her Grandmother (whom was raising her) and could fairly close to 100% guarantee me I wasn’t from a recently-Americanized family. But this is all still fairly vague information, and its always bothered me to an extent to never be able to pinpoint these things.

Like I mentioned previously, it was always kinda weird to be the one kid in Middle and High school, doing genealogy projects in Biology classes who really had no idea what they were. I mean most of my friends or classmates probably couldn’t list specific cities or region of a country, but they at least knew if they were French or German or Austrian or not – something I never shared.

Well back on topic, unfortunately for my curiosity (and the fact that I’m female is to blame!) I happen to belong to the most common haplogroup that makes up, well, a majority of Europeans! Oh great, I totally couldn’t have already told you guys I was European, right? I mean come on! It was almost comical in a way to refresh the page and see my results, and how generally unhelpful or inconclusive they were for my needs. Does this make it less cool that I had my mtDNA tested? No, not really, just a little bit of a let down in so far as finding something out about myself.

40-60% of Europe shows markers or belongs to haplogroup H and its fairly evenly spread out – something any and all of my googling has agreed upon. On another sucky note for me this doesn’t rule out anything! A pretty big portion of the populated portions of Russian is included in the large frequency area of the haplogroup – as are Germany and Eastern Europe (what most people also guess). On the good end this does pretty much confirm our thoughts about where at least half of my lineage is – Eastern Europe, France, or Russian; on the other end? I didn’t win any bets!

When I started to look into other information and mappings of other H sub-groups that more definitively give a location it does make it look like I do have more of a chance of being French/Eastern European then anything else. If you were to ask me, I’d honestly guess French based off a lot of charts I’ve seen, they seem to pretty commonly be the one lineage that sticks in the close subgroups/main grouping of haplogroup H, though that could be completely wrong and is 100% based of me likely half-misreading charts at 8am while drinking a Bloody Mary.

Friday’s post may or may not be an outfit post or may be something else entirely! As I have a rather annoying 11am flight where I have to get all the way to Midway after dropping my puppers off at 9am, well, I’ll be cutting it close! But at least I’m seemingly back to keeping on schedule!

[ as per the usual - March 7th, 2012 ]

Its the end of the quarter so of course my life has become even more ridiculous then normal. Thankfully this is another quarter of mostly final papers, not final tests. I have one test next week but I have a slew of written stuff I need to churn out this weekend. A 3-5 page paper, a colour analysis with corresponding 3 page paper, tweaks on my portfolio for Professional Practices, then of course my final exam for Intro to Biological Anthropology. Thankfully I already took my oral exam and handed in my final paper for my Christian Ethics course, so 1/5 down! This of course means I may look cute in the clothes department but my skin is all sorts of broken out and I’m in a continuous state of looking absolutely exhausted. I can’t stress enough how glad I am to see this quarter coming to an end and the next beginning, its like starting new for me really. I feel good again, I’m still tired a lot but that I can manage (even if it means severe caffeine intake). Not being in pain any more except for spotty moments of it, being able to walk up stairs properly, my legs not aching to the gentlest brush, its kinda beyond amazing and I can’t say it enough – it makes me glow with happiness. Next quarter will be a new start, the weather will be warmer – I can get back to walking and taking public transit to class. I won’t have to worry about being so sluggish and taking 2 hours to really be ready to go in the morning any more. I can just focus on school instead of the extenuating circumstances in my life.

It will sincerely be a relief.

I did get my results for the DNA tests back and I’ll be pre-writing next weeks post sometime this weekend after my inaugural style post, assuming I can kick this mini cold and don’t look so much like death from finals! That way starting next week I can truly get back on schedule! If I’m not quite up to posting an outfit post yet on Friday you can look forward to another JewelMint post because I splurged (when I most certainly shouldn’t have but whatever, can’t change my silly decision now!) and the results were fantastic! I definitely adore their little Oscar grab bag and I certainly made out pretty well! I ‘d actually been eyeing two of the pieces I got, and the third – while not my type typically – is still wearable for special occasions or the odd night out!

Actually, its quite likely that’s the post you will be getting – but I ought to stop spoiling the fun of what my next two posts will be!

I apologize that this is another short, uneventful post but after finals I’ll be ready and roaring to go again!

[ round 9 - February 17th, 2012 ]

My schedule for next quarter is going to be moderately ridiculous. I’m taking three Anthropology courses: Ethnographic Research Methods, Archaeology Research Methods, and Forensic Anthropology (!!!!!!!!), one studio art course: Beginning Sculpture, and I’m retaking French 103 as a refresher course for having to take 104-106 last year and knowing quite well that it’ll be a bad idea to go back into a French class when I haven’t been in one (by that time) for a year and a half. Plus that was the quarter I started having my pain issues and, well, lets just say my grade suffered. I’m quite excited regardless, well except for this whole Friday class thing but its an Archaeology lab so at least it’ll hopefully be fun!

I’m mostly excited about Forensic Anthropology. And by excited I mean beside myself – I squealed when I got my e-mail from the department chair approving me for it. I think my favourite part is the professor, M. Aiello who I’m taking this quarter for Intro to Bio-Anthro told me that I should prepare for the course with a -colouring book-. Yup, he at that moment became my favourite professor in existance. I really hope he lets me TA Intro to Bio-Anthro Spring or Fall quarter, I think I’d die of happiness. I made sure Spring quarter I’d be able to TA time wise but I dunno if he’ll let me cause he knows I have a sort of ridiculous schedule and thinks I should drop one of my classes so I doubt he’ll be up for putting even more pressure on me.

I really am truly excited for this quarter though, beside French which is an unfortunate necessity I’m stoked on all the classes I’m taking. All of them are of interest to me or something I find myself at least curious to learn about.

I know I’m putting too much pressure on myself, but I really want to graduate on time and to do so I’ve gotta commit to 5 classes a quarter. It won’t be as bad afetr this quarter – I’ll be done with my major lab courses and done with my studio art classes so that’s a big relief as far as difficulty and time consuming as far as my courses go.

I’m just going to power through it. I could moan and cry and let it defeat me and just throw my hands up and add on an extra year of school but I won’t. I will beat it, I will get out of here, I will get myself on the path to where I want to be and I will be happy – because I’m getting there, I am. I’m getting back to really being happy and that, in itself, makes me happy.

I really slacked on a post this week and I’m sorry but it’ll get better next week with the new posting schedule! I know I don’t have a huge following or anything, but writing is cathardic to me and I like doing it even to keep my friends and family up with whats going on in my life.

[ realizations for creating happiness - January 18th, 2012 ]

Sometimes you have to come to little realizations in life, mine was that I was not happy. I don’t mean I didn’t enjoy living or that I don’t love my friends and my puppy, nor that I’m depressed. But something was missing, ya know? Something wasn’t there, I wasn’t doing anything I was passionate about or that challenged me, everything was just… neutral. I needed to do something in my life that was going to challenge me, that was going to be something I could do for the rest of my life and love it and enjoy it and not be bored by the mundane aspects. That is what doing PR was for me, it wasn’t exciting, it wasn’t challenging me, it just felt like something I was good at and could succeed at but wouldn’t fulfill me. I needed something that was going to fufill me.

I was already going to graduate with 4 degrees… what else could I really want? I realize though, that after all this time I could not continue with my Public Relations degree so over my time in England I really had to think about what I was going to do, if I was going to switch anything it needed to be immediate upon my return to Chicago. It put me in a hard situation, I didn’t want to lose all the work I’d done in my Public Relations degree, I didn’t want to lose the classes and have them be worthless from my Journalism minor either and I certainly didn’t want to go back to majoring in Journalism…

When I was a little girl, maybe as young as 7 or 8 I wasn’t that girl who played with barbies (though there’s NOTHING wrong with that), I played sports and I preferred being outside and I had an intense obsession with dinosaurs, that was when my interest in history really routed from. Around 9 or 10 this transitioned into an intense interest in Egyptology. By the time I was 12 this has transitioned into my fascination with reading about World War II and Eastern European/Russian history, something that has stuck with me to this day. The thing is, I made a stupid decision when I started college, mostly influenced by the type of people I was hanging out with at the time. I wanted to live a glamourous life, I wanted to wear pretty clothes and go to fun parties and I wanted to be one of those girls who everyone envied. I was already starting school 2 years late and I didn’t want to graduate at 30 with my PhD just to be a teacher… I didn’t want that.

In reality I just wasn’t mature enough to realize that I would be happy doing that, that I wouldn’t have a problem teaching and that that ‘glamourous’ life was just the brain of a 19 year old wanting to be the exact oppposite of what she had been in high school. But I realized at some point that there was ust so much more to life then this, why would I limit myself to what I was doing because of some ‘optimal’ idea of what I thought my life should be. I just wanted money and glamour, I never thought about if that would actually make me happy, if I could do that for the rest of my life. I’m a much different person then I was at 19 when I got accepted at DePaul, I’m almost entirely different in my own eyes. I hardly recognize myself some days, and that’s not just because I went back to my natural hair colour and am no longer platinum blonde.

So I made a choice. I knew what I wanted to do, what would make me happy. I knew that bringing challenge back into my every day life would keep me on my toes and excited for the rest of my life, doing something I’d always been passionate about would be better for me. The only downside is, well, my Dad didn’t exactly take me telling him well. My Dad is unfortunately one of those people that when it comes to money, that’s sort of all that matters. He can ice the cake however he wants, but money is in many ways more important then happiness to him, because he thinks that money is what is going to bring happiness, when for me money has caused way more problems then happiness. I’d rather struggle a bit but not dread getting up and going to work every day then be living in fantastic means but hating what I do. Going to grad school and getting my MA, hopefully eventually my PhD in Anthropology is what I’m going to do. I don’t care if my parents support me or not, all I was ever promised was my undergraduate education and that’s all I would ask them for. I am on my own so I will do what is going to make -me- happy not them.

So I threw out my PR major, condenscend my classes in Communications into a generic Communications minor, kept the Media Arts degree (three classes from completion!) and am going for it, I’m going to graduate with my BA in Anthropology and get my butt into a damn good grad school and be happy with my life if it kills me (it might, GRE books are scary). But its going to make me happy, I haven’t been this excited about post-graduation from my undergraduate degree in a really long time, I was always aprehensive and skiddish about it, but now I feel an odd content feeling.

That feeling is called happiness, and its amazing.