Graduate Awards and Recognitions Event

 

This past December I was awarded the Carol J. Fisher Award for Excellence in Research (in memory of Hugh Agee) and today was our awards banquet so I got to receive the award there. I'm two years into this program now, which means I've spent about five years in the department as a graduate student...with a few more years to go before I'm finished!

Rachel arrived home last night so she and Miriam drove into Athens with me (for me). We spent a few minutes walking around the botanical gardens before the awards banquet since we were a little bit early. 

We saw some beautiful flowers, like these foxglove...

...and three snakes. This has been a very snake-y time in my life. They just seem to be everywhere. We saw two rat snakes and one that was probably either a garter snake or a ribbon snake (it had beautiful yellow stripes running down its body). I didn't catch a picture of that one, but here's a rat snake on the steps.

And some more pretty flowers:

Here are some pictures with some of the wonderful faculty I've worked with extensively.

Dr. Misha Cahnmann-Taylor, who has helped me learn so much about poetry and arts-based research:

Dr. Jenn Graff, my master's advisor and PhD advisor:

And Dr. Katie Sciurba, who has been a wonderful writing mentor:

I've been working with Jenn and Katie (and Xenia, but she's up in Pennsylvania) as the editorial assistant for the Journal of Children's Literature this past year.

And here are some of my fellow PhD students—Lu and Ashley (1st years) and Shriya (2nd year)

Shriya's interests in children's literature align quite closely with mine so we've taken several classes together. She's wonderful!

I also met (but did not take a picture with) the distinguished alumni winner, Dr. Stephanie Tolliver. She has published extensively and they mentioned that she has a family as well. So I had to talk to her about how she balances academic work and motherhood (this is a topic I will never get tired of because it's a topic I'm always trying to figure out). She mentioned that Dr. Heidi Hadley (also a UGA alumna and once a Mormon) had five kids so I should ask her.

"Oh, I have!" I said. "I talked with her at LRA in December and she asked me whether my kids were feral yet because...that's how she balanced her motherhood and academia."

And, the thing is, I think perhaps they might be a bit feral. 

Rachel flew in last night and we stayed up too late talking. And then Phoebe woke up (as she's prone to do). Rachel volunteered to put her back to bed, so they went upstairs together and then Rachel came back down and said that she laid down beside Phoebe for a minute and Phoebe...pulled a brick out from under her pillow.

"We are lying on my brick," Phoebe said. Then lifting the brick into the air above Rachel's face and seeing Rachel kind of cower away, said, "Don't worry. It's not that heavy."

So...apparently my four-year-old is sleeping with a brick. 

And that's how well I'm balancing motherhood and academia.

I was even the one to tuck her in initially last night because Andrew was (a) teaching an evening class and then (b) picking Rachel up from the airport. 

I don't remember seeing a brick in her bed...but apparently it was there. 

Anyway...

After the awards ceremony we had a few errands to run on campus. I had to return some keys and make a stop at the registrar's office. Altogether those errands cost us about 10,000 steps (including hundreds of stairs) so that was fun.

We also stopped by the plant science building to look at my poster from my graduate teaching seminar (which is required before you can be a teaching assistant). We had the entire semester to work on this project and I couldn't get my group to do anything until Saturday last week (it was due on Monday). I finally was like, "Guys—look! I wrote an introduction, I wrote a conclusion, I wrote a section discussing one activity. All you have to do is write about 175 words describing one of three other activities and we can turn it in!" 

And they finally got their stuff to me. 

It was a headache.

So I figured I deserved a picture with it.

Here are Miriam, me, and Rachel at "The Arch":

"The Arch was built in the 1850s and originally served as part of a larger iron fence securing the campus. It is considered to be the gateway between the University of Georgia and the city of Athens.  The Arch's three pillars stand for Wisdom, Justice, and Moderation which is the state motto of Georgia" (source). Somehow my daughters knew (thought I did not know until they told me) that it's tradition to avoid walking through the arch until graduation. 

I've never walked through it, though I have walked by it several times (that's the Holmes-Hunter building behind me, where one of my classes was this semester) and from watching pedestrian traffic around the arch it seems to be true—students walk around the arch rather than walking through it.

The Red&Black reports:

As a freshman, Daniel H. Redfearn was reportedly “so moved by the symbolic meaning of the Arch that he vowed to never pass through it until he had his diploma in hand,” said Steve Armour, a University Archivist of the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

However, according to Darby Miller, a senior marketing major from Arkansas and tour leader of the visitors center, walking around the Arch at that time wasn’t as easy as it is today.

“The fence on north campus actually used to go up to the Arch so not only was he walking around it, he was hopping over the fence,” Miller said.

I thought about taking a picture with it today (since I did graduate once...) but there were so many students graduating this year taking pictures that I figured I'd let them have their moment. We did snap this one as we were walking away (Holmes-Hunter is also where the registrar's office is, which is why we were up at the arch...1.3 miles away from Aderhold, where I dropped off my keys...which is about half a mile from the parking lot...).

Here we are at Herty Fountain:

Miriam kept sticking her head up between Rachel and me...which then would block whatever was behind us. First the arch, then the fountain. I think I meant for her to be on my other side, but she kept going between me and Rachel or, here, on the other side of Rachel.

I'm lucky to have had these sidekicks—and brave chauffeurs—with me on campus the past couple of years! They've both finished up some brilliant (and tricky) semesters of their own and did great!