The Light at the End of the Tunnel

You know, it might be the weather, but I'm in a great mood. I have an almost incomprehensible amount of work to get through before the end of the semester (how I am going to write my thesis proposal by the middle of May is beyond me), but I'm feeling pretty good about my prospects for passing the comp, and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I have a lot of big plans for this summer, but one thing that I'm especially looking forward to is presenting a paper I've been working on at a conference in June. My abstract was just accepted last week, and, although it means putting together a poster and ten minutes of remarks, it's an exciting opportunity to meet some important folks in Emergency Management. It's also an extremely convenient excuse for me to hop down to DC for a week or so, where I'm looking forward to catching up with people, eating some vegan soul food, going to mass at Holy Trinity and generally soaking up the city life in one of my favorite places in the world. So that's going to be good.

Fargo itself is presenting me with some interesting opportunities that I'm pretty excited about. On Thursday night, Sam, Sam's friend from college and I went to a showing of Robert Reich's movie Inequality for All, which was followed by a panel discussion by the head of the FM Homeless Coalition, an econ professor at MSUM, a state rep and a poli sci professor at NDSU. The poli sci professor talked a lot about how we need a constitutional amendment to help get money out of politics, which I happen to agree with. I went up to her after the panel and we discussed some of our common interests, and she gave me her card and told me to get in touch after finals. It would be really nice to get involved in some kind of political organization here, especially after attempting to volunteer for the ND Democratic party and getting deluged by emails asking for money (not happening folks). We'll see how that all pans out, but I'm feeling optimistic at this point.

So yeah, I'm doing well, and I'll be doing even better one focus group, one oral comp, and about 60 pages of writing from now. Wish me luck!