Friday, November 22, 2013

The Glorious Creature That Moved Me To Tears

This is a Coquerel's sifaka (pronounced shi-fahk or shi-fah-ka depending on who you ask), once considered to be a subspecies of Verreaux's sifaka but since elevated to its own species. Its scientific name is Propithecus coquereli.

Last semester, I took a class called Explorations in Primate Anatomy. The overarching assignment of the semester was to select a "chosen species" and investigate, in detail, its distribution/habitat/behavior, cranial morphology, dental morphology, and postcranial morphology.

I spent three months immersed in this animal. (Well, sometimes I was looking at P. verreaxi bones but that's just because we didn't have the Coquerel, and besides they are extremely closely related and primatologists are notorious splitters anyway...)

Two weeks ago I went to the Bronx Zoo with my mammalogy class. We happily went around looking at geladas and giraffes and sea lions and brown bears and polar bears and tigers and then we walked into the Madagascar building and this is the FIRST THING I SEE.

I teared up. Not joking.

I was SO EXCITED AND SO HAPPY to see this little guy and I can hardly tell you why - I just spent so long with his species that I feel this very close affinity and to see one in person - the real, living creature to which the skulls I spent so much time with belonged - was just incredibly moving. And then he looked right at me and I pretty much did cry, looking at his adorable little face.

It's a good thing that I'm not likely to ever run into a living Neandertal. I think if I ever met a Neandertal in person I'd expire on the spot.

Friday, November 15, 2013

Because I am Made of Insanity

I am Ridiculously Busy. No, I mean it.

These are the things that I do:
  • Go to school. Take 7 classes.
  • Attempt to not fail those 7 classes.
  • Participate in extracurriculars. I am the chair of a club and an editor for a journal.
  • Nutcracker! That's 5+ hours of rehearsal every week. Plus additional time dealing with planning the schedule/writing emails/other assorted tasks.
  • Volunteer at a hospital. Incredibly interesting, incredibly rewarding, incredibly time consuming.
  • Teach ballet to little ones. Also rewarding, also time consuming. Plus involves getting up quite early in the morning.
  • Sometimes do other fun things, like take ballet class. Or go to the zoo for my Natural History of the Mammals course (coming soon: a post on the animal that made me cry).
 So those are a lot of things.

Now, I'm not listing them out like this to complain, or even to boast. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who do this much and more. And if I was really feeling overwhelmed I could drop a few of these things. My intention here is to give you an understanding of how nice and full my schedule is right now, so you can fully appreciate the insanity that is about to happen.

So Many Things! Let's Add Another

The reaction of any sane person to the above would be to stop adding more things. Of course, I am not a sane person. So what did I go and do? Add bullet point number 8:

  • Write 50,000 words in a month.

Yes, I'm doing NaNo. Or rather, I'm pretending to do Nano.

My Insanity Has Its Limits

Yes, I am crazy. I think we've pretty well established that. But I'm not that crazy.

I fully recognize the fact that I am not going to be able to devote as much time and attention to each of these as they need. Unless I never sleep, there simply aren't enough hours in the day! And unfortunately while I would like to write half a novel in a month, the 60+ pages of essays I have to produce must take priority. (As an aside, if anyone has a great interest in the Neandertal cranium or bone histology or reproductive strategies of Marsupials, let me know).

If you go peek at my NaNo profile, you'll see that in half a month I've written one day's worth of words (really it's a little more, as I haven't counted handwritten pages). I'm not going to get to 50,000. But if I write a little every day, even if it's just a sentence scribbled in my notebook during the fifteen minutes between classes, I'll call it a win.

Who's With Me in the Nuthouse?

We've all got our own special brand of crazy. Mine is apparently trying to do EVERY SINGLE THING all at once. What's yours?