Tomorrow we give our second year presentations. That means we stand up and talk about some research that we did during our second year of school for 15 minutes, conference style. Yeah, that is all I know about it. There are no guidelines other than that. I don’t know if it’d be ok to present something that’s essentially incomplete, or if people will complain that my talk doesn’t have a point or real findings.

I’m fairly certain there will be no real evaluation (or feedback even), because that is how first year poster presentations were last year. You’d think that at a school of education they’d try and do a little better than just throw something like this at us. The irritating part of it is that I’m losing sleep over this thing even though there are no academic stakes.

I guess it’s a pride thing, because I’ll be publicly representing a year of work and I want people here to think that I’m worth their time and their funding and that maybe I’ll become something someday. Even if deep down inside I think it might be a sham and I might not really.

Frankly, the whole celebrity phenomenon makes me slightly uncomfortable. At the same time, there are people out there whom I really admire for whatever it is that they do that makes them famous. Generally I think it’s fun to have celebrity sightings and to talk about it. I’m not, however, the kind of person who goes out of her way to meet celebs. That’s why I was so uncomfortable the other night when we were at City Hall for the Brandi Carlile show, and we noticed Amy Ray in the crowd. I’m a huge Indigo Girls Fan, and have been pretty much since I started owning CDs. Their music got me through my brooding in-the-closet angsty teen years (and even many embarrassingly angsty adult years).

Well, one of our New Little Buddies spotted her standing a little in front of us during the concert, but she slipped away through the crowd after a few songs. I figured that she’d gone backstage (and hoped that Brandi would get her to come up and sing), but when the lights came up I saw her walking toward the back of the venue. So she was practically standing right by the door as we walked out, and The Little Red Haired Girl insisted that I go say hello. I didn’t want to, because I knew I’d just feel stupid about it later.

At the same time, I knew (as did The Little Red Haired Girl) that I would regrett letting the chance go by. So I went over, waited my turn (at this point there were three or four others who wanted to say hello to her), and shook her hand. I said something totally inane like, “I really love your music,” and walked away. I’m really glad that I approached her, but at the same time I feel a little cringe-y about it. She was totally nice and greeted everyone with a lot of patience and grace, but it is just such a weird thing. Is there ever actually a good way to approach a celebrity?

Anyway, I’m glad The Little Red Haired Girl pushed me to do it. Otherwise this would have been a very different post, wouldn’t it?