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 Normally, on Sundays, my friend and I go to The Cup, but today we decided to mix it up. There is another café farther up the street called J Café. It was awesome! I am so glad we went!
On the outside, it looks more like a house or a bed and breakfast. We went inside, and it had a cozy set up. We sat in a room full of windows. It was nice to have a lot of natural lighting. It helped to improve my mood before finals week.
The food was really good. I definitely recommend their potatoes. They also had the best hot chocolate I have had in a while. I ordered a Panini and my friend got an omelet. Our server was also very nice, so we gave him a nice tip.
All in all, I had a great time. Maybe we have found a new favorite café?
Image via TripAdvisor.
 I presented my senior sem to a packed house on Thursday afternoon. It was a phenomenal success! On Thursday afternoon, I had the absolute thrill of presenting my senior seminar, “Comicking Depression: Shaping Depression Discourse Through Autobiographical Web Comics.” It was the last of 11 English senior sem presentations spread out over four nonconsecutive days, and I was so happy to be able to finish things out strongly.
Because this topic is so important to me, it was also important to me to invite as many people as possible. Including my 10 senior sem classmates and my professor, at least 40 people came! Some of them had even stayed from having seen the girl before me present her project about how nature writing has evolved (which was a cool presentation), which was a huge compliment to me.
Prior to presenting, I had practiced several times — to an audience of empty chairs. While this definitely helped me become more familiar with what I was going to say, practically shouting at chairs was not nearly as satisfying as talking to 40+ people. Throughout my presentation, it was clear that people were very interested in what I had to say and entertained by the comics that I chose to talk about — there were plenty of laughs.
Each senior sem wraps up with a Q&A session, and my Q&A session ended up lasting 10 minutes (about twice as long as the typical Q&A, but permissible because I was the last presenter). People asked some thoughtful, excellent questions, and I was able to give them some informative, honest answers.
Once I finished, I had about a dozen people come up to me and hug me because they were proud of me and glad to have seen me present. I also had people message me on Facebook to let me know that they appreciated the sincerity with which I presented and how effectively I was able to convey a large amount of material in layman’s terms in the span of a 20-minute presentation (which ultimately lasted more than half an hour when so many people asked questions).
To have such turnout and support as I presented the project I’ve been working on for more than a semester was such a gift. To have been able to present so successfully to so many people made me feel like I was on top of the world!
 I’ll be presenting my senior seminar about autobiographical web comics and depression. For the entire semester, my life has revolved around working on my senior seminar. All McDaniel students have to complete some sort of senior capstone project, and in the English major, students have to write a 25-30 page paper and give a 20-minute presentation about that topic.
Since last week, I’ve been working on synthesizing and summarizing information from my paper in such a way that I can squeeze some good content into my presentation. Because our papers are so long, we’re clearly not expected to talk about everything we’ve written about in the 20 minutes we have to present. In creating my own presentation, I’ve been trying to strike a balance between presenting a breadth of information while also giving a little depth. As a result, even though I’ve written about three different web comic artists in my paper, I’m only going to talk about two of them in my presentation — which is tomorrow. But using those two artists, I’m going to talk about web comics and depression from a variety of angles so people can see a lot of the many ways that we can look at comics about depression and how they create knowledge about depression.
I’m really happy with how my slides have turned out. I designed my own PowerPoint template so that I could have a visual theme for the presentation that didn’t look like one of the standard PowerPoint designs. I created my template so that it would match the Tumblr that I created over the summer to help myself collect comics that I wanted to use for my project. The people who see my presentation tomorrow won’t know that, but I have the personal satisfaction of knowing that I’ve paid a cute homage to my blog.
I’ve also worked on writing out notes to guide what I’m going to say tomorrow. Because this topic and presentation are so important to me, I don’t want to accidentally forget to say anything, so the notes I’ve written are fairly detailed. Hopefully, it won’t sound too much like I’m just reading off of a paper. A few more rounds of practice will hopefully make things sound a little more conversational.
The most fun part about getting ready for my presentation has hands down been shopping for a new outfit to present in. Because I’ve been crunched for time, I had to break up my shopping into two trips — one at home during break and one here in town today. I bought a new blazer and a new top to wear underneath because having clothes that look professional and I can feel good in will help give me a much-needed confidence boost when I present.
Even though I’m somewhat nervous about presenting at this point (I’m a lot less nervous than I was at the beginning of this week), I invited lots of my friends and professors to come see the presentation, and a lot of them are coming. It’s exciting to have so many people who are excited about my topic and who are excited to watch me succeed.
 Presenting “Monumental Memory: The Contributions of the Living Memorial to Post-Memory in Budapest, Hungary” McDaniel College in Budapest recently hosted its first Human Rights Conference. The conference was a one day event where students from Budapest, Westminster, and Bratislava presented research from topics ranging from “Multicultural Education in the Biology Classroom” to “Migration and Art Movements.” In addition to listening to the fantastic presentations, I had the opportunity to present my own research on the Living Memorial — a citizen-created memorial that protests the Hungarian government’s memorial in Liberty Square.
The Living Memorial is not a strictly physical structure, and instead is “composed” of people. The Living Memorial focuses on dialogue and interactions in order to form a memory that commemorates survivors and remembers Hungary’s role in the events of 1944. This is a very brief description, but you are more than welcome to read my twenty-page research paper with the complete analysis!
I think my presentation went well. Of course, there were some points where I could have improved, but for my first conference, I was relatively happy with my work. The most exciting aspect for me was listening to the research from other students. The topics were extremely diverse and I learned more about policies in Europe while meeting students from different universities.
The final conference session was a panel discussion which featured experts from four universities (McDaniel’s own political science professor Dr. Leahy was able to participate with the assistance of Skype!). After the panel, the group headed over to a restaurant which featured an open mic night where we were able to listen to McDaniel students perform.
I think it is fair to say that the conference was a success. Everyone seemed to enjoy the presentations and the atmosphere fostered intriguing discussions throughout the day. Hopefully, McDaniel will continue to host similar conferences and increase the amount of participants each year.
Visit the McDaniel Human Rights Forum page on Facebook to learn more about the event and the presentations.
 Yay! Sweet Frog! Being from the Sacramento area, I eat a lot a frozen yogurt. I actually didn’t realize how big of a deal it was until I came to Westminster, where they did not have any places nearby.
Now sure, I could get ice cream, but it just wasn’t the same. However, within the last year, a Sweet Frog opened up locally! My life is now complete. My friend and I will often go there when it’s hot (or cold) to enjoy their delicious selections.
My favorites so far have been the sorbet ones, but they always have interesting flavors. I love all the different topping options. Fro-Yo is always a great time!
It’s just nice to have something that reminds me of home here in Westminster.
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