Wow, what a lapse between my previous post and this one. That seems to be my way, though. I seem to be less-than-successful when it comes to blogging on a regular basis.
I just re-read my last post, and realized how much has happened since the middle of February. Then, I was talking about things like putting together the graduate symposium and organizing my parents' twenty-fifth wedding anniversary party. Now, all of that seems a bit like a distant memory.
Overall, I'd say the symposium, "(Re)membering, (Re)collecting, and (Re)creating: Memory, an Interdisciplinary Forum", was successful. Having the opportunity to meet and get to know Alicia Kozameh was amazing--I'll probably remember it as the highlight of this semester. Though I have only read one of her novels and a couple of her short stories, I know that going back to reading her work will be a completely new experience after having shared some time with her. I heard lots of compliments and good things about the symposium, so I'm most happy about that. The only thing I'm not that happy about is the lack of attendance. There was a surprising (perhaps not-so-surprising) lack of attendance, especially from my own department. After all the hard work that went into organizing the symposium, that came as a bit of a disappointment.
About my parents' anniversary party--I'm so happy the family had a chance to come together and celebrate. My parents were, to say the very least, surprised. They both seemed a little overwhelmed to me; I don't know if anyone has ever thrown a party in their honor or not. There were lots of smiles, tears, and hugs. It's hard for me to think that my parents were only about a year older than me when they got married. I can't imagine myself being prepared for that sort of commitment at this point in my life. Of course, their marriage was hastened by the fact that my mom was already pregnant with me.
I also had the fortune a couple of weeks ago to meet and share some time with Noni Benegas, a lesbian poet from Argentina now living in Spain. While we'd read some of her poems from Burning Cartography (Cartografia Ardiente) in one of my classes, I didn't really appreciate her work until having the chance to hear her speak and listening to her read her own poems. It's quite a different experience having a poet read her own work to you.
The end of the semester is only a few (three, maybe?) weeks away, and I have a significant amount of work to accomplish in that period of time. At least I'm feeling motivated, which is more than I can say for the state of my mood over the past semester/year. After two years of graduate school, I think I'm finally beginning to understand more about how I work, and how I have to be able to shape my work habits around my own personality. I'll finish my M.A. in the fall semester, and then immediately begin work on my Ph.D. My adviser suggested yesterday that I use the summer to begin thinking about dissertation topics. Wow. If all goes as planned, I'll be writing my dissertation in a couple of years. Scary much? I really don't know how to begin--I know the fields I want to incorporate (contemporary Latin American literature, feminist/queer theory, gender performance...), but I don't have any specific ideas. My first task in all that will be to familiarize myself with the bibliographies relating to those topics, and then I'll go from there.
For now, my focus is going to be on finishing the semester. That's seems like a sufficient challenge for the time being.
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