TIGRESS KROSSING

I hope anyway. I've decided to stop stressing and try to get back into writing...phew!

"Well...now you are a week behind" My thesis advisor says while staring at me with dark emerald eyes that divided between being impersonal magnetic. I do not stir but involuntarily tighten my muscles. "So your choice is to turn it in [the literature review you neglected] to me tonight, or lose 10 points and hand it in next week". I nod and, our brief discussion over, I turn to my backpack and desk, and fight not to cry.

It's been a stressful two weeks. Today I found I flipped our thesis seminar schedule and had prepared in a hypothesis not due till two weeks from now, instead of a preliminary literature review. During the week, I was not exactly slacking off- I have done hour upon hour of research, many times hitting a blank wall. Further, I continued to have problems with creating a snazzy social media resume, which I badly needed for job applications I wanted to submit two weeks ago. That, of course, did not happen.

To make matters worse I had neglected my writing and reflecting, which I consider part of my education and my growing process. I am disappointed that I have not been able to blog as often as I have intended, or even launched my podcast of speech and story recordings successfully. I am feeling very overwhelmed, and am literally overwhelmed. Tomorrow I must spend my whole day in the library-- and then bringing up my desktop post-it notes, I discoverthat there was an e-job fair that I registered for yesterday-- and completely forgot to prepare for!And, now, I am debating whether I should attend, given that my research is so very important.

I have been dreaming of being able to undulate a bit during the semester, be tidy and eloquent with the things I had wanted to do. But now, it seems to get a bit messy. I don't know what I had done wrong to lose a little control- I suppose I should not have concentrated two weeks in trying to make a good social media resume (don't worry, I did other work, too, but this bothered me so much I could not think of much else admittedly). I had trouble with that project, which I wanted to finish badly before applying to jobs. Now...I just have frustration.

I am trying to take a deep breath now, however. Trying to return to a stable schedule of research, study, and writing . This blog post should be about technology and politics, or microfiction, or a response to one of the colorful blogs I follow on Netvibes and Bloglines. But isn''t.

And I must apologize and ask you all to bear with me. I hope to pick up my pen, or voice, to do some thing worth reading tomorrow!

*Crosses fingers*

 I was 9 or 10 and  lived in Long Island then, in a suburb called Farmingdale. We lived in red-brick apartments, the first set of apartments we had since we touch-landed six or so months before at John F.
Kennedy Airport,from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. They were the the circular- arranged apartments that I had described in the essay on my dream. Because it was winter, I toddled out in a thick downy green jacket that extended to my knees and my boots crunching softly on crispy, feathery snow.

I met up Mom down the walk-way and I told her I was done with the book I started yesterday. She looked at me, half-staring in skepticism, and said, "You understood the book?"

"Yup" I said monotonically. 

She frowned some more and then started walking slowly ahead of me, and I trailed not too far behind.

It is now 2009 and I am now 22. That young girl who read a teen paperback in a day, in fact many things, in a day? For years I had not had her...and now I do.

Ever since the 12th - this past Monday- heck days beforehand- my feet  have been swirling on wood grain and feathery snow, carrying myself between the door of my room, to the doors of the campus library and  classrooms. I have class twice a week- but the virgin walls and ceilings, sturdy desks and swivel chairs,  wobbled in their essence and spilled over in shimmering, joyous waves to the rest of my week, painting my plans for each day, making me think of little else. It has been difficult to write consistently, being bogged for time now, and I managed to only release the following pieces (and then just short notes of papery consequence):

Change Congress.Org: Great Goal, But Adjust the Goals of the First Project

Obama Has the Right Idea to Start with New Economic Stimulus Plan

FOCA is Against Our Children, Our Country-- and if these dont pursuade you, OUR FREEDOM. PLEASE READ BELOW & TAKE ACTION
(This is actually very important...please consider joining in!!! I am sad and unhappy that such a law proposal exhists!!)

McCain May be a Republican and a Bipartisan Leader, Thank You

At night I am some times lonely; and it has increased, but I try not to be. It is a natural consequence, I guess, of my Depression and also my recent break-up with a man who I  still have a teensy bit of feelings for. But...otherwise I have not been happier. Last semester had glazed my brain in a thin euphoria that I could not see through till now, and the year before that has been much of the same.  In a way I am grateful, though I begrudge her my thanks, to my mother who had forced me out of my hallucinated state. Now, I am like a bright, blazing, flame....for thinking...for writing...for living!

Why, hello, Brain.

Wow. I started classes again this past Monday, and I am ever super-busy! And managing two blogs is amazingly challenging-- Sorry for neglecting you guys!

Speaking of blogs......I'd love some help! I joined the" Network Blogs" blog network on Facebook, and I can't  verify my Vox blog via the Javascript code, due to Vox's strange way of handling widgets. The only other way to confirm this blog is mine is if 9 people say it's really me!!

So if you love (or just use) Facebook and love helping out a Neighbor, please help by clicking this link:

http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/tkrosing/ 
[yes, I know I spelled my own domain wrong >.>...will correct it once I've claimed it!]

I dont know if you have to join the network itself to give your confirmation or not, but if so, please join the network too! It's a great exposure tool!

The last step is to then  click on the link  at the top that says some thing like "Help Confirm this Blog". Your support will be tallied by the application.

If you do this...please let me know in Comments here! In return I will review and give kudos to your blog here next month and  give helpful feedback!

THANK YOU SO, SO , SO MUCH!!!

:D

Fr. Richard Neuhaus died yesterday of cancer. I know his works cursorily- many great books about religion and culture, and politics and religion, his many columns in First Things Journal and Blog, the great inspiration he is to the Catholic intellectual movement, to all things orthodoxly Roman Catholic. A very, very, very holy and intelligent man

He was an inspiration and while I am unhappy that he no longer is here amongst us, I am trying to remember that he is at God's side now, where he belongs along with Mother Teresa and all the Saints and Blesseds.

Maybe he will be nominated to be a Blessed. Father Richard Neuhaus, please pray for us.

For a holiday two years ago, my Uncle and his family came to live for a weekend amongst our family's madness. They do this every year at one point or another. Both he and my Aunt are excellent cooks, and better than myself, my dear brother and sister claim . Their two little boys laughed and played and the 5-year-old would grin up at all of us, staring at us with heartthrob eyes and demonstrate an important concept with a car or train.

"See?! See?!" He'd say.

In the meantime, because we all love their cooking, my poor adult relatives cooked and baked. And did they bake! My favorite good by Uncle was a cookie - a cookie made of slightly sweetened dough. It usually came out lightly browned,  plump and lifted up at the center with gentle swells of puckered cookie, the sugar glaze sensuous against the light. It was a pleasant mix of hardness and softness, strong a the bottom and yet increasingly chewy to the top. These cookies had their own fresh spring with which they drew an encore. This spring was the caramel...sweet, home-made caramel. Rolling caramel laced with even more chewy bedding, wrapped enticingly with each other, weaved around, about, and in between. Whenever I bite  into one of these cookies, my tongue scrapes at it eagerly and I am engulfed in the experience.

Speech critics and audiences are like foodies, and speeches are just like food-- and especially like Uncle's best caramel white cookie. I learned this over the years, albeit I know that I did not always give my best shot (my last year of high school I gave dismal performances). Ears and brains of listeners get bored easily and so the presentation must be as tantalizing as a cookie. We must get the audience to moan at our opening line,

"I-Must- Hear...Must-Haz-Ears!!"

It has to have an ear- catcher at the opening line, one which starts the speech with a bam. It also has to have an effective closing line, which will help imprint your words on people's minds- one that alludes to the main theme of the speech and gives the audience some thing to remember you by. All my speech coaches down the line emphasized this. Start with a story that's insightful, funny, or tastefully shocking (but related to the theme).

Speeches must have a speech outline, and beginning, middle, and end. It has to read like a story, and it has to have a focal theme. Whatever way you want to organize it, it has to have those. I subscribe to the Kimble Theory, named after a professor I had last year who taught this to me, namely:

• A Beginning
• A Preview/Outline
• The Body (An Expansion of the Outline)
• A Recap
• A Closing

But there are other ways to organize it too, as Dr. Catherine Zizik taught me in class, so deviations, as long as effective, are great too. Like cookies, speeches need to make a great first impression, to seize the psychological advantage of the first 30 seconds, and to be clear, crisp, and tantalizing. Like the caramel, it has got to woo the audience with words that will resonate with them. And, because perfection is only achieved due to preparation, practice is very important too!

Read about speech preparation on this cool blog here. And then take a look at the rest of the site, which is very insightful and full of great articles. Look especially at this, too.

I love great speech-cookies.


P.S. If you were looking for my podcast today-- well,er, I ran into technical difficulties then finally realized that the only way I could record a podcast was to do it via desktop. By the time I realized this, it was an hour or so after I started having problems and I decided it was enough for the day. Hopefully over the weekend I'll have it working!!

Originally printed at tigresskrossing.blogspot, a domain owned by the author

I am thinking of doing a speech analysis, what do you guys think ? And what should I remember to put in the speech analysis?

Re-post from my Twitwall

 I chewed my gum nervously and spit it out on the ground, and stared at Melina. Shewas rocking on her heels, and I couldnt help but feeling it grated on me, just as her eyes, wide, a bit glassed with lashes that were excessively dewed. The test strip lay forlorn on the coffee table between us. I am 21, she 18; my mind flashed through all the possibilities and closed my eyes to steady myself and listen to my heart. 'My heart', I thought, 'My heartbeat--' suddenly I snapped my eyes open and helped her dry her tears, and held her tightly, decisively. Nine months later, our son was born, and I placed my finger tip between the chubby, downy mounds of his little chest and heard what I thought I needed hear 9 months before: the sound of MY heartbeat...through him.

I wanted to be charitable, but I thought “I need nobody to know.” Back in August, before I unfortunately enslaved myself to my Second Life hobby, I vowed to volunteer more. Due to real-life circumstances I could not do face-to-face volunteering, and so I decided to research net volunteering, which I could do silently and not bring trouble upon myself. Amongst websites that coordinated ‘distance-volunteering’ I had discovered Nabuur. Because the above- mentioned circumstances still exist for me, after recovering from what I humbly admit was my comatose state, I revisited Nabuur......

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