a scholar? who? me?

Last weekend, I was VERY fortunate to travel to my home-away-from-home...TALLAHASSEE!

First and foremost, I have INCREDIBLE friends...Joanna, Beth, Mike, Ellyn, Julie, Liesl, Marie, Kellie, Amanda Ga, Britt, Mary, and Dr. K (to name a few)...you all made my visit amazing. I had/have been feeling so down lately and in the few moments we could all spend together, I remember what I loved about undergrad, FSU, and Tally...
You are all the best friends a girl could ask for (even if some of you had given up gossip for lent...a little less religion, please)!

The REAL reason I went to Tally was to attend/present a paper at the Religion Department Graduate Symposium. Earlier in the week, I had given my presentation on Purity Balls (call for details) to Liz Wilson's "The Question of Marriage" class. It had gone pretty well, but what do they know, they are Honors Freshies?!?!

Unfortunately however, they boosted my confidence. So I began my trip not nervous about my paper. Not being nervous made me nervous...was I too arrogant? Who the heck am I to be presenting here? These people were PhDs and I am a mere mortal - a first year masters student...
PLUS, the respondent to my panel was none other that Kathryn Lofton! For those of you who have not heard me mention her yet - here it is: SHE IS AWESOME...someday I wish to be academically just like her. Her upcoming book is about Oprah, she is funny, articulate, intelligent, and as I would find out, a genuinely kind individual.

Well, I put on my most adorable outfit and just did it...I was the final presenter on my panel (not a good sign for those who know me) but I managed to only be slightly intimidated by the brilliant people around me. My presentation did seem to get the most laughs, even though I spoke way too fast. In her response, Kathryn Lofton even called me a "theorist" and said that my approach - categorizing Purity Balls within the evangelical subculture - was bold and risky, but a risk that more scholars should take...


I'm not going to lie, I was SHOCKED...me, the girl who basically failed her qualifying exam, a theorist? (We can discuss the semantics of failure another time). I just assumed that everyone was going to be addressing those themes. I had no idea you could write anything differently...I'm not certain I want to be a theorist, but my CV will now have the line "Kathryn Lofton called me a theorist" at the bottom of the page.



The rest of the weekend flew by in a whirlwind of reconnections, schmoozing, and walks down memory lane. The weather was beautiful and 1 Fresh StirFry was just as I remembered it, but it wasn't the same.
It never will be again.
My only hope is to re-create something similar here, in OH or the next place I move.

Now is the time to make that happen...I am a scholar now, so I can do anything!

Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day... I have a new way of looking at this holiday from a religion scholar, interfaith-family-member perspective.

Valentine's Day is like Christmas for a Jewish daughter with a Catholic parent. I love the holiday, I love the decorations, the treats, the goodies, the sentiment, but it is not my holiday. I celebrate with others - those who are participants in the religion of "couple-dom." I get cards, I talk to loved ones, but it is not my holiday.

Here's the kicker, though - I want to convert. I have been knocking on the door to the temple of couple-dom for years and no answer. It's worse than Jews making you ask three times, it's as if the clergy of couple-dom know who I am and they are ignoring my calls.

Someday, hopefully soon, I will convert to couple-dom. But for now, I must wait it out, loving a holiday from afar.

And Single's Awareness Day - that is just as foreign and silly to me as Boxing Day is to non-Brits across the pond.