the fruits of May

May has been a quiet month. There's been very little badminton, as the gym hall has been carpeted over for exams. My classes finished a few weeks ago, after we did our thesis presentations. I rather apathetically wrote and handed in my final essay. My program had our annual conference, this year's theme being 'Irish Feminisms and the Future.' It was alternatively inspiring and incredibly frustrating (long story short: I don't think that title was representative of the content of the conference). Other than that, I've just been working.

As for how my thesis presentation went, I presented first--I was really nervous, and late (I thought we were in a building across campus). Nevertheless, it turned out okay. Everyone seemed really impressed, including my thesis supervisor. Apparently my fear of public speaking doesn't show at all, thank goodness. For anyone who's interested, here was my presentation (if you go to the 'open in a new window' option, you can expand to see my talking points/notes as well via the small icon in the lower right-hand corner, so things may make a bit more sense):



(Mind you, the presentation was really informal--more to serve as an update on what we've been doing so far. It was just my classmates, my supervisor, and a few other professors associated with the program. So I didn't have to worry too much about proper citations, exact formatting, etc.)

Perhaps most exciting for those of you in California, I bought tickets for a visit home in July. Yay!