You won't make a monkey out of me!

After months of whimpering about how unsuitable Tumblr is for blogging, I finally woke up with a snap! yesterday morning and promptly remedied the situation. I've returned to blogger. Hello again, it's very refreshing to be back. Sadly, I lost a lot of really great comments in the move.

In other news, I somehow managed to weasel myself into a really nice college senior situation. I have two classes where, instead of being confined to a room and a lecture, my feral self has been released into the world to complete two missions:

Mission #1: read numerous trans-related research articles, then write a paper about said articles.

Mission #2: write about my research on belief in a just world, anti-transgender prejudice, and the blaming of innocent victims that I just might be able to get published. Or, at least, I'm going to try.

Aside from these two lecture-less situations, I have two lecture-packed class situations: Personality Theories and Social Psychology. I'm also a student instructor in a Quantitative Research Methods class, where the room is filled with a handful of little wild-eyed faces, pale with terror. I'm not sure if it helped, but I relayed to everyone on Day 1 that I did well in Statistics and in Research Methods, and I still use my fingers to count and have a serious math phobia.

So yes, school is plucking along. When I first transferred from the community college to a 4-year institution, I definitely didn't anticipate that the train I had hopped on was barreling across the Everglades so fast that there's absolutely NO chance to stop, even for potty break. Since I started my undergraduate journey I haven't had a summer off. Summer #1? McNair research, then surgery during my two week "break" before classes. Summer #2? McNair research, then working on graduate school stuff during my two week "break". And for Summer #3, coming up in the not-so-near future here? I'll be moving to Bethesda, Maryland to intern for the NIH, and will then work there for a year.

It's definitely strange, but exciting, to have things so... pre-destined. Prior to hopping on this train, I'd never experienced something so solid and planned. It's not a bad thing by any means. Just, foreign. So is the fact that I now have to own a suit, because I have to wear them so often.

Somehow, I'd gotten through the first 27 years of my life not having to even own a button-up, let alone an actual suit. I would actually think to myself, "Why do people own suits? They look hot and stuffy". While I'm still not quite sure what the answer to that question is, I do know that I now need to own at least one. I've been perma-borrowing my brother's suit for, oh, two years now? I most recently had to wear it a couple of weeks ago for a meeting with Congressman Jim Matheson regarding the unfortunate McNair funding crisis, and will have to wear it again next week to a meeting with the Department of Education.

So, uh, my brother won't be seeing this suit again in the near future. Although, fortunate for him, I will finally have enough to actually buy my own suit soon. As a vegan, I've learned that finding a suit that isn't made out of wool can be somewhat challenging. After clicking and digging, and then clicking and digging some more, I found numerous vegan suits.

Check this vegan pimp $hit from Men's Wearhouse out:

BAM!

I should probably also invest in some random business casual attire for the NIH.

So me.

I hear it's humid out in the east coast. Hmm.