Have been in one of those funks where rather than write, or read, or be productive, I nap for six hours a day and try not to be hit in the face by the children who live in my house. So that’s been fun. (Study abroad: I am the worst at it.) So, in lieu of actual, structured post, here’s some interesting things that have happened recently:
Thesis, oh god why: So my thesis adviser’s suggestions and my wordiness led to a thesis proposal that was roughly twice the length it was supposed to be. Whoops. Hatcheted it down, and the entire time I wept for killing my babies. (“Don’t you want to know about theoretical frameworks for death? Or blogging? Or my love for danah boyd? No? Okay.”) Need to get it sent in by the end of the week. Am somewhat terrified. Then realized that I would happily not do a thesis if it wasn’t a Prudent Thing to Do, and stopped caring as much. (Also, did you know that GDocs now has MWord comment support? It does! This is the best thing ever.)
Senegal has a new president: So that’s pretty neat! The night he was elected there was a spontaneous parade in the street near my house. It was pretty fantastic. This also means that a) we’re not going to be like Mali and b) I can stay in the country without fearsome emails from the embassy. Yay!
My niece thinks my toubobitude is my most important attribute: She’s five and only speaks Wolof. When I greeted our maids and her mother the other day, she announced (in Wolof), “She’s a toubob.” I’m unsure why she thought this had escaped the notice of the house’s other adults, but it was pretty great. She’s figured out that I really don’t speak Wolof, and so now when she wants me to do things she just grabs me by the hand and moves me where she needs me. It’s much better than her little sister, who doesn’t quite grasp that I don’t speak Wolof and so who just pokes me when I don’t respond right.
Mangoes!: Are in season now! Yesterday for lunch I bought a mango for $.40 and ate it on the school lawn with my hands. So that was great.
Wolof!: Continues to be terrible, but I took a test without crying today. Progress.
Dances With Nerds 
What is the thesis about? Frameworks of death aren’t really my thing, but blog theory is pretty cool.
The thesis is an outgrowth of the paper on college students and grief expressed through Facebook a few years ago. My hope is to be able to establish what it is that characterizes grieving culture on Facebook (among Emory undergrads) and to see what happens if the norms of that culture are violated (death trolls, etc.). There’s also going to hopefully be a look at how this ties into changing American funerary practices in general.
The blog thing is really just going to be an attempt to blog the process–both to talk about what I’m finding out and to talk about the process of writing a thesis. It’s a topic that makes much more sense online than in a thesis that no one’s going to read, ever.
Gotcha, that makes a lot of sense. Seems like it will be really cool.
I’m hoping it’ll turn out alright!