4'33" contest

Today Miriam drove into campus with me. She is quite happy to be chauffeur, now that she knows exactly what coming to campus with Mom entails (peace! quiet! spacious office! desk snacks!).

"No wonder Rachel liked coming to campus with you!" she remarked.

And it's true. We do get a lot of uninterrupted work accomplished when we go into campus. 

We just have to offset it with the commute time. Is [[x hours of uninterrupted work] - [y hours of commute time]] > [z hours of Phoebe-infested work time at home]? 

I'm really not sure. That's why we also like to stay home sometimes, too. 

But today I needed to go in because I was one of ten presenters at the 4'33" contest!

I spoke about religious literacy (which is what I usually speak about) and awkwardly used the word "Mormon" in place of "member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" because...when you only have 4 minutes and 33 seconds to describe your entire research project (and your research project necessarily involved you talking about your subjectivity as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, saying The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints a billion times really eats into your talking time). So I made a little disclaimer and just went with a good ol' nickname.

Patrick and Hadis watched from Austria (super last minute, too—I was like, "Hey! This is starting in 7 minutes. I'm the second presenter!" and they hopped on) and sent me this picture:

Andrew and Zoë watched from home and sent me this screenshot:

My mom watched from Utah. In total there were about 50 viewers online and the room was filled—so a pretty good turn out! 

I didn't win (wasn't even a runner-up), but it was an honour just to present—I got rejected last year!—and it was wonderful to be surrounded by so many people who are passionate about keeping the arts in education. 

And as an added bonus, Andrew said the kids had such a great homeschool day! They texted me to ask me to send them the entrance code for their science lesson while Miriam and I were struggling to get gas (so many pumps wanted us to pay inside but we did not want to pay inside), and then while I was on campus I got notifications about the kids starting and finishing their math lessons. Zoë sent me a draft of her presentation on Hungary (which we will hear from her tomorrow; the boys sent me their reports on Romania on Friday). The kids watched the documentary I asked them to watch. They did their free writing. They did their chores. They played outside. They practiced the piano. 

They were golden. 

And I emailed Amanda to ask her if she'd talk with our kids about life in Bahrain. We're starting a unit on the Middle East because Grandpa and Darla got their mission call to...somewhere...in the Middle East/North Africa region of the world (we're not entirely sure where yet). 

So, it was a pretty good and exciting day. I'm happy to have the anxiety-inducing parts behind me (I do not love public speaking, actually), but this presentation also counted as my final for my arts-based research class...so phew. 

I still want to get my piece ready to send for publication somewhere (which is why I'm not including much of my presentation here), but the end of this semester has been pretty hairy with multiple out-of-town conferences for Andrew, an out-of-town conference for me (as well as a little jaunt to Utah to see Rachel and my parents and Josie and conduct some interviews!), plus Thanksgiving, Christmas party preparations.

Oh, and why not have Phoebe get pneumonia in the middle of it all?

Like I said, I'm just glad the anxiety-inducing parts are behind us. Or at least those anxiety-inducing parts because there are a few more anxiety-inducing parts yet to come.