csi_sanders1129 (
csi_sanders1129) wrote2012-03-10 08:43 pm
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So, today was eventful. Today was the Phi Alpha Theta (History Honor Society) Conference at Towson University. Which, while being blissfully close to where I live, did not allow me to go home for a bit - but, whatever, I'm going home on Tuesday for Spring Break.
Got up at 5, left the house at like 5:40 - I never want to be walking across campus under the eerie light of an early morning full moon ever again unless I haven't been to bed yet (not that the 2 hours of sleep I managed should count as such) - and we planned to leave at 6. There was a minor set back in that we were given the crappiest van the school had available - it was short a row of seats, so the 8 of us all had to squash in, the radio was wonky, heat control was limited, there was no gas in it (it's supposed to be filled up before it's returned to the van lot) and the oil change light was on. Took ten minutes to try to argue for a van switch, to no avail, and then to resign ourselves to being cramped. Had to stop for gas, so got on the road about 6:20. I have no idea how he managed it, because I was convinced we were going to be late, but we got there by like 8:40 and got checked in easily.
The first panels were at 9. I was in one and Kyle, our PAT President was in another. His family showed up, so the gaggle of Frostburg-ians came to mine. First up was some dude talking about Pirate stuff. He actually used the phrase 'So why is the rum gone?' and his display pic was the POtC logo. I was next, and I was misinformed about the technology available and therefore didn't have fancy powerpoints like the others in mine. My paper was 'Anti-British Propaganda in the Era of Revolution' and it was basically just an off-shoot paper of my Capstone that was designed as a Primary Source Analysis for my stupid Revolution class last semester. I was pretty freaked out about presenting - I hate it, I would typically be more apt to claw out my own eyes than to willingly present - but it wasn't that bad. I had some of my long!quotes memorized so I could look up more often than I thought I would. The third paper in my section (which was entitled TOO MANY REVOLUTIONS! (which sounds kind of bitchy)) was something about Union sympathizers in the South during the Civil War? I don't know. I'm really tired. Anyway. There was supposed to be a fourth person, but she never showed. So then we had a Respondent, who'd read all of our papers (and considering Kyle sent out a rough version of mine because he's an idiot it went well). Pirate dude got criticized for using a lot of secondary sources and virtually know Primary Sources. This flowed nicely into mine, given that it was the complete opposite, though not as critique-able given that it was a Primary Source Analysis. Civil War dude's paper did well, too. Then audience questions. Pirate dude got one: "Is that what Blackbeard really looked like?" Civil War dude got a bunch, but it was all "Why didn't you focus on this area in the South? There were Union sympathizers there!" that were really just all over annoying. I got two questions: One was "Which of the forms of propaganda mentioned in your paper would you consider most effective?" and "Did you run across a lot of Pro-British propaganda?" I don't feel like answering them and I'd have to explain way too much of my paper for the first one, so I'm not going to. And then it was done.
I was the only one of the Frostburg gang to go to one of the Second Panel presentations. Everyone else went to explore the campus a bit, which was totally cool. Most of them have been to conferences before, but I haven't. I sat in on one I thought would be interesting but was really just woefully boring. First was something about Ireland, which interested me and prompted me to see it - turns out it was some boring thing about Home Rule and land stuff and all based on a bunch of bland periodicals. Second, which also sounded interesting, was something about World War II and the British Home Front, but it ended up being about art depictions of WWII Britain. Third was some dude talking about how Operation: Eagle Claw resulted in a specialized air force (I'm a little hazy on this, as I said, I'm tired, but it was the most interesting of the three).
Then was lunch which was unimpressive. Then the keynote address, which was pretty interesting. It was about the Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals. Sadly, it wasn't terribly informative if you'd ever seen the play/movie 'Bent'. Which I have. Still, it was interesting.
Third panel was up last - my roommate, Jenny was in this one. The first girl in her panel was awful - she took goddamn forever to read her paper and she was damn quiet and boring and monotone and her paper was about Russian something or the others not really existing and I could not have cared less about the content of her paper. She also went over the time limit by like 10 minutes and clearly our moderator sucked (dude who keeps us on track). Jenny was up next. Her paper was on the Muslim Brotherhood and while I know nothing about that either, she made it entertaining and interesting. Last up was some dude with a paper equally as long as the first girls, but slightly more interesting. His was about gender roles in the Quaker population during the American Revolution. Their respondent sucked. His specialty is Russian stuff so he was fawning all over the Russian girl and asking these really in-depth questions. Moderator did he back on track for a bit and he offered quick stuff for Jenny and the Quaker dude. His comment to Jenny was pretty much 'So, can you please define the Muslim Brotherhood?' Apparently there were some awkward audience questions - some woman rephrased a bunch of stuff that Jenny said in her presentation bracketed by the word 'actually' to make it sound as if Jenny were wrong, even though she was saying the exact same thing.
Quick awards ceremony after that - the girl with the annoyingly long and boring paper was apparently a grad student and won first place. Ugh. Another grad student, who'd been in with Kyle's group, won second. 3 Undergrads won, too, but we didn't know any of them from the panels.
Got out of there just after 4, piled back into the van and stopped in Hagerstown for food (not as awesome as usual (typically we stop at a restaurant) as some people we were with didn't wanna wait around were like 'let's just get fastfood from the mall food court' so yeah). Got back to Frostburg just after 8 and fucking fuck I am so tired.
Got up at 5, left the house at like 5:40 - I never want to be walking across campus under the eerie light of an early morning full moon ever again unless I haven't been to bed yet (not that the 2 hours of sleep I managed should count as such) - and we planned to leave at 6. There was a minor set back in that we were given the crappiest van the school had available - it was short a row of seats, so the 8 of us all had to squash in, the radio was wonky, heat control was limited, there was no gas in it (it's supposed to be filled up before it's returned to the van lot) and the oil change light was on. Took ten minutes to try to argue for a van switch, to no avail, and then to resign ourselves to being cramped. Had to stop for gas, so got on the road about 6:20. I have no idea how he managed it, because I was convinced we were going to be late, but we got there by like 8:40 and got checked in easily.
The first panels were at 9. I was in one and Kyle, our PAT President was in another. His family showed up, so the gaggle of Frostburg-ians came to mine. First up was some dude talking about Pirate stuff. He actually used the phrase 'So why is the rum gone?' and his display pic was the POtC logo. I was next, and I was misinformed about the technology available and therefore didn't have fancy powerpoints like the others in mine. My paper was 'Anti-British Propaganda in the Era of Revolution' and it was basically just an off-shoot paper of my Capstone that was designed as a Primary Source Analysis for my stupid Revolution class last semester. I was pretty freaked out about presenting - I hate it, I would typically be more apt to claw out my own eyes than to willingly present - but it wasn't that bad. I had some of my long!quotes memorized so I could look up more often than I thought I would. The third paper in my section (which was entitled TOO MANY REVOLUTIONS! (which sounds kind of bitchy)) was something about Union sympathizers in the South during the Civil War? I don't know. I'm really tired. Anyway. There was supposed to be a fourth person, but she never showed. So then we had a Respondent, who'd read all of our papers (and considering Kyle sent out a rough version of mine because he's an idiot it went well). Pirate dude got criticized for using a lot of secondary sources and virtually know Primary Sources. This flowed nicely into mine, given that it was the complete opposite, though not as critique-able given that it was a Primary Source Analysis. Civil War dude's paper did well, too. Then audience questions. Pirate dude got one: "Is that what Blackbeard really looked like?" Civil War dude got a bunch, but it was all "Why didn't you focus on this area in the South? There were Union sympathizers there!" that were really just all over annoying. I got two questions: One was "Which of the forms of propaganda mentioned in your paper would you consider most effective?" and "Did you run across a lot of Pro-British propaganda?" I don't feel like answering them and I'd have to explain way too much of my paper for the first one, so I'm not going to. And then it was done.
I was the only one of the Frostburg gang to go to one of the Second Panel presentations. Everyone else went to explore the campus a bit, which was totally cool. Most of them have been to conferences before, but I haven't. I sat in on one I thought would be interesting but was really just woefully boring. First was something about Ireland, which interested me and prompted me to see it - turns out it was some boring thing about Home Rule and land stuff and all based on a bunch of bland periodicals. Second, which also sounded interesting, was something about World War II and the British Home Front, but it ended up being about art depictions of WWII Britain. Third was some dude talking about how Operation: Eagle Claw resulted in a specialized air force (I'm a little hazy on this, as I said, I'm tired, but it was the most interesting of the three).
Then was lunch which was unimpressive. Then the keynote address, which was pretty interesting. It was about the Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals. Sadly, it wasn't terribly informative if you'd ever seen the play/movie 'Bent'. Which I have. Still, it was interesting.
Third panel was up last - my roommate, Jenny was in this one. The first girl in her panel was awful - she took goddamn forever to read her paper and she was damn quiet and boring and monotone and her paper was about Russian something or the others not really existing and I could not have cared less about the content of her paper. She also went over the time limit by like 10 minutes and clearly our moderator sucked (dude who keeps us on track). Jenny was up next. Her paper was on the Muslim Brotherhood and while I know nothing about that either, she made it entertaining and interesting. Last up was some dude with a paper equally as long as the first girls, but slightly more interesting. His was about gender roles in the Quaker population during the American Revolution. Their respondent sucked. His specialty is Russian stuff so he was fawning all over the Russian girl and asking these really in-depth questions. Moderator did he back on track for a bit and he offered quick stuff for Jenny and the Quaker dude. His comment to Jenny was pretty much 'So, can you please define the Muslim Brotherhood?' Apparently there were some awkward audience questions - some woman rephrased a bunch of stuff that Jenny said in her presentation bracketed by the word 'actually' to make it sound as if Jenny were wrong, even though she was saying the exact same thing.
Quick awards ceremony after that - the girl with the annoyingly long and boring paper was apparently a grad student and won first place. Ugh. Another grad student, who'd been in with Kyle's group, won second. 3 Undergrads won, too, but we didn't know any of them from the panels.
Got out of there just after 4, piled back into the van and stopped in Hagerstown for food (not as awesome as usual (typically we stop at a restaurant) as some people we were with didn't wanna wait around were like 'let's just get fastfood from the mall food court' so yeah). Got back to Frostburg just after 8 and fucking fuck I am so tired.