Jennifer Learns Something Everyday

I wasn't lying...Please let me intern for you.

2009-09-01T13:20:00.000-07:00

I just got back from the internship interview of a lifetime with the Family and Work Institute. They do studies on, well, family and work on a very large scope. A lady named Sharon asked me what I've been doing this summer and I told her I'd been catching up on the reading I felt obligated to do as an Anthropology student, i.e., my Darwin reading. Yes, I really do read Darwin on my free time. I really hope she believes me because I was absolutely not lying. In fact, I'd been finding time to do it for 3 years now.

I get so nervous and rant and bumble bumble and rant during things like this. I don't know why. I'm fairly confident about getting this position because, I'm pretty sure this internship was made for me.

I prepared and practiced and anticipated, but nothing can help my jitters. I hope they saw through it... I really do. I'm just such a nervous wreck sometimes.

Boo. Wish me luck.

Oh, Silly Botanists...

2009-08-17T11:09:00.000-07:00

I've been (very slowly) reading Charles Darwin's Origin of Species. There are a multitude of reasons as to why his work is spectacular, namely the obvious holy-crap-you-are-a-genius-and-changed-our-scientific-world facet. As a budding social scientist, I'm reading it because it is possibly the most major work in the field, but as a reader, it is ridiculously engaging for 700 pages on bird's beaks, bees and pollen and cabbage seeds.

There's a passion that exudes from those pages. Other than daring to tell 19th century scholars that God didn't quite do it all, there exists a passion for life in every page. He was (literally) able to be inexorably fascinated with every natural microcosm that he encountered. Seriously, this guy talks about pollen for pages and you're still excited.

This poses a few questions as I read:

1) Does passion drive knowledge and, more importantly, curiosity?

2) Would it have been really fun or boring to sit for a pint with Darwin? (Me likies a half pint.)

3) Will I ever be this great? Will I ever be able to articulate with such simplicity such grand concepts, contribute to learning, fulfill my curiosities?

As I've been applying non-stop this summer for a worthwhile internship (as well as some that would serve simply as jobs) without any responses from any potential employers, these questions burn in the back of my head. I've always thought that passion could get you anywhere, and I'm sure that this is what I'm passionate about. It's led to hard work and good grades and a drive unlike any other, but what's preventing these people from understanding my potential?

What, if not being a scholar, will fulfill both love and life? Alas, appropriately in the words of Darwin, "...I have not space here to enter on this subject."

Tamagotchis. Hell yes.

2009-08-13T12:44:00.000-07:00

Lessons: 1) I am easily amused. 2) There are few things more instantaneously rewarding than fixin' shit.

I don't really remember how this came about, but Joshua and I decided that we needed to bring my Tamagotchis back to life. The original 1997 Bandai Tamagotchis that started the short-lived, but ever so rampant trend have in fact been sitting in the desk that was formerly mine since we've become uninfatuated with them.

I drove over to Toys 'R' Us (where I had trouble parking in an empty parking lot because that's the type of driver I am) and they "haven't been selling them for awhile," according to the nice lady that worked there. So, determined to get this done, I went to CVS and picked up the appropriate batteries.

I couldn't get one of two opened, which made me ever so sad:

But only because it was the awesome green/yellow zebra stripe one:

But there was success since this household doesn't throw anything away; My sister pulled a newer one out of no where.

Let me tell you, they're way more annoying now than when we sort of had the tolerance for them in childhood. But for its nostalgic value, they're pretty priceless...even though they won't stop beeping.

Now for something completely different!

2009-08-12T20:13:00.000-07:00

Not really.

The title of this first post is pretty ironic considering it's been coined and made famous by Monty Python and become such a cliche, first-post sort of message. But then again, this entire blog is based on a cliche notion: that you learn something everyday.

I know it's cliche, but cliches are really cheesy and crude descriptions of complex realities. But therein lies the reason why they are so widely understood and appreciated. It points to a common human experience. Everyone in their life encounters going 'one step forward and two steps back', hopefully everyone falls in love and finds new meaning to that Top 40 Station love song, and every person experiences the nostalgia of the 'good ole days' (though we may not phrase it that way).

So, while the blog itself is cliche, maybe we'll all get a kick out of it.