Theory into practice

This week I began the second semester of my adventures in graduate school. Though I really did enjoy digging into the two rhetorical theory classes last semester, I am even more excited about this semester because both classes are application courses. As a technical communication student, I will get my first crack at actually doing some technical communicating.

In my proposal-writing class, we have only one textbook (yes!) to read. We have divided into groups of 4-5 students each, and each group will spend the bulk of the course working together on a proposal for a real need in our technical communication masters program. My group will be working on a proposal for scholarships.

There is no required text for my mass communication PR (public relations) class (YES!). Our professor will provide us with free copies of a health communication guide put out by a non-profit. We have a real live client, the local health and human services department, and we have been given the task of developing a communication plan for raising awareness among college students about the pandemic flu. Lovely topic, huh? (I hope I don't start developing psychosomatic symptoms.)

But I am really, really excited about both of these classes because I don't know a thing about proposal writing or PR and yet I am going to be diving right into practical application, learning as I go. Yippee!! This will be just like freelancing, except without pay of course.

And, as a really thick layer of icing on the cake, I don't have to commute to the south campus at all this semester!! Whoo-hoo!! (I am also a little excited about this.) My PR class is at the north campus, which is still quite a commute from my downtown office but much closer to where I live. This means coming home will be a 20-minute cinch. And my proposal writing class is online, so I can just come straight home, fire up my computer and log on. This will be sooo much nicer than commuting way south and crashing at my parents' motel two nights a week.

Ice!

Reporting from the little outpost I call home...

And what would an ice storm be without ice? Yes, the snow melted away. But in its place were icicles that grew larger overnight and plants completely encased in frozen water. T and I ventured to the Walgreen's down the street, normally a 5-minute walk but more like 10 minutes today because we had to accommodate the ice. We saw so many interesting sights that we had to go back outside with our cameras and record some. Samples are shown above.

The sounds were interesting, too--ice crackling under our shoes, people hacking at cars and sidewalks with scrapers and shovels, the tap-tapping on windows from intermitten sleet.

I'm sure this is a joke for people who are used to plowing three-foot mounds of snow out of their driveways, but for Austinites this is a rare and beautiful phenomenon.

Snow!

ALY'S APARTMENT, AUSTIN--This may not look like much, but for a city that sees snow only once every few years, it's a rarity! And it was especially exciting since I have hardly set foot outside my apartment since Saturday.

The ongoing winter storm watch has kept my roommate and me virtually housebound for four days and counting. It started with the rain on Saturday--a heavy downpour that went on all day long. Late that evening, when the rain had finally all but stopped, T and I made a dash to the nearest Target to stock up on bottled water and other necessities. On Sunday not much happened aside from a light drizzle, but we stayed home just to be safe because there was a flash flood warning in effect. We only drove to the grocery store down the street to get a few more things.

And we haven't gone anywhere since.

The temperature dropped even lower on Sunday night. A major winter storm warning was in effect. Both our offices decided to close Monday, thank goodness, and so we stayed home to watch the sleet and admire the thin patches of frost on rooftops, cars, and under trees in our apartment complex. Since we were stocked up on food and water, and our electricity was working, we were more than happy to stay off the icy roads. Yet a good number of residents, because they had run out of either food or patience, I suppose, put on their winter coats and set to scraping their windshields.

The winter storm warning only increased its admonitions for Tuesday, predicting sleet, snow and treacherous ice on the roads. So once again, our offices closed. And my first class of the spring semester was also canceled. Both school campuses closed. Another day confined to the little outpost I call home.

This morning over a leisurely breakfast (that is one of the pluses of being stuck at home), T and I were watching the sleet fall outside our window. I thought, it's almost fine enough to be snow. But I didn't really believe we'd see any. Later on, I was getting ready to do some cleaning (might as well, this is the longest stretch I've spent at the apartment in donkey's years) when I decided to look out my window.

And there it was...SNOW!!

Tiny flakes at first, scant and hard to see. That was enough for us. T and I pulled on coats and gloves. I grabbed my little camera. By the time we had made our way carefully down the iced stairwell to the parking lot, the snowflakes were falling faster and larger. I snapped a bunch of photos, trying to capture the snowfall. You can see it in some of the pictures if you squint. The thin layer of white on the parking lot would hardly cause jaws to drop. But this photo of the leaf is the most solid evidence that we actually had snow in Austin, right here in our apartment complex.

As of this posting, I'm staying home again tomorrow. No work, no school. And probably no more snow. Most of it had already melted by early evening. But I'll savor the little flurries I saw today for years to come. Because we probably won't see anything like it for years to come.

Makeover

Happy 2007! As you can see, dear reader (or readers, if I'm so blessed), though I neglected my blog for a couple of months, I have just given it a makeover for the new year. Not an Extreme Makeover. Just a little rearranging here and there. But oh! the difference to me, to quote Wordsworth loosely. I absolutely love playing with colors and design; so imagine my delight not only at discovering that the new Blogger enables more customizing, but also at happening upon a great site called HTML Station, which is beginning to unlock the mysteries of hexadecimal color codes for me. Whoo-hoo! (And I know I am the biggest nerd for being excited about this.) There's no telling what I might do next--maybe I'll actually learn how to write some of my own HTML code in the not-so-distant future! For now, I'm just happy playing with hex colors. (It sounded a bit like some kind of witch's curse to me, until I remembered that "hex " also means "six," as in, an alphanumeric code of six characters, based on the RGB color spectrum.)

I'm not just hexing around, though. I've also worked hard to create a color scheme that is (hopefully) more visually stimulating and appealing to the eye than the original. In addition, I've changed the typefaces to improve readability. *I* think Arial is a much cleaner typeface for body text than Trebuchet, its default predecessor; and Georgia gives the headings a bit of classy pizazz. However, it is my hope that even if you could care less about all this typeface babble (yes, I am a typeface geek as well), it will translate into better readability for you. So let me know what you think of Becoming Aly's new look--leave a comment. Constructive criticism is welcome. Rotten veggies or other forms of libel are not. As I become more HTML-literate, I will do more renovating.

And now I'll try to set aside my refurbished cliches and be serious for a moment. This is about more than just a visual makeover. The beginning of a new year is a popular time to reflect on what one has accomplished in the last year and what one hopes to change in the future. For one thing, I hope to establish some sort of regularity with my posts. I regret that I failed to post even once in December. But I have to remind myself that life isn't Hollywood cinema. I won't always have the time or energy to record every single discovery or achievement that excites me; forget the breathtaking orchestral score and the enhanced visual effects. Therefore, my blog will never read from beginning to (current) end in a perfectly seamless sequence of events. Rather, it's more like the pewter ashtray your Uncle So-and-so (who never remembers that you hate pewter and don't smoke) gave you for Christmas three years ago: it's just a hold-all for keys, after-dinner mints and spare change.

Keys, after-dinner mints and spare change have their place, though. I would like to share a few things I learned in 2006, which for the sake of my dear reader(s) I'll summarize:

About rhetoric
My first two classes of graduate school were surveys on rhetoric. I could go on and on about all the (truly) exciting nuggets I took away from them; but I'll spare you. The broadest, simplest definition of rhetoric is that it is the art of communication; and after reading all sorts of takes on it, from the philosophical to the sociological to the literary to the technical, I've learned to examine words and images in an entirely new way. My new favorite word is intertextuality. I can relate everything to intertextuality. Human existence is intertextual. And now I can see that I'm beginning to frighten you, so I'll leave it at that.

About working and going to school
As far as I can tell, there are no magic formulas for making it as a working student. The number one principle is perseverance: NEVER GIVE UP. I could tell you that I've learned the dummy's guide to slapping together a website, shooting and editing a video, writing a coherent paper about methodological and philosophical hermeneutics, reading 200 pages a week and commuting to night classes twice a week, all the while rolling out of bed and dragging myself to work five days a week. But the secret to all of those great mysteries is very simple and very boring: STAY UP LATE.

About myself
I am not as objective as I'd like to believe. Both personal experience and my study of rhetoric have taught me that no matter how much knowledge and insight I may have acquired, I can still turn up a blind spot the size of the Western Hemisphere.

Also, I have had no success at pigeon-holing myself. Maybe this is a good thing; but I'm slightly obsessed with naming and identification. Therefore, I get frustrated when I can't seem to fit all my scattered interests into one hat box and tie it up with a pretty ribbon. I've tried and tried, especially after my study of rhetoric, to find the one magic word that sums up my talents/interests/career direction/whatever. Communication, maybe? Or interpretation--not lingual translation, but interpretation of life through art, interpretation of cultures through diplomacy... I dunno. I'm almost as lost as you probably are, trying to make sense of this existential drivel. What I've decided for now is that I cannot and should not pin down my future. All I should focus on, as I said in my very first post for Becoming Aly, is learning to be myself. And this includes learning to be an artist, learning to be a communicator, learning to be, rather than aiming to produce art/communication/whatever and getting frustrated when I fail. As one of my former pastors has said, we're human beings, not human doings. Mainly I should just learn how to be alive. Living and being alive are two different things, I think.

And so, in conclusion...
If I can't change my situation or my circumstances, the only thing left to change is myself. Namely, my attitude. There's truth in the saying that life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond. So, I hope to make over my attitude in this new year.

Both myself and my blog are works in progress. Stay tuned--but don't hold your breath. I'm just growing like a blade of grass. Slowly.