Life as a graduate student, graduate assistant, and teaching assistant is grueling and not glamorous.

I have successfully moved into my studio apartment. It’s nice, spacious, newly renovated and on the top floor of a four-story building with no elevator so you can imagine how much trouble my former roommate and I had getting my furniture up there.

It gets pretty lonely in my apartment, but honestly I pretty much use the space to crash/pass out, so I’m hardly there these days.

I’m behind on my hours as a GA constantly, largely because one member of the faculty doesn’t really need me yet, and my hours as a TA don’t count. Overall though I think they are happy with how I’m doing… I hope. Most of my work is just running errands like copies, etc. I will start cataloging and digitizing video materials soon, but I’m hoping my work will expand to some research work…

My classes are going pretty well, I’m a student in 4 and a TA for 2, so it’s a full load. Thankfully I only have one class with a major paper/writing assignment due, so it’s tough but manageable. My favorite class is Margot’s puppetry class, it’s a lot of fun and a nice outlet for creativity.

My work as a TA for the Women in Theatre class is a lot of work, the equivalent to a co-teacher almost, but I’m enjoying it and Lurana loves what I’ve presented so far. I’ve even got an invitation to guest lecture in a class running next semester about crossdressing in Japanese Theatre… So far it looks like I’ll continue to have great opportunities to expand my teaching experience which I’m really excited about. I might even get the chance to teach a full semester course in the future.

I’ve also decided to bring writing back into my life again.  It’s really been too long, and I’ve forgotten how much I’ve missed it.  I have decided to undertake NaNoWriMo again, only this time it’s simply an attempt to write constantly all month long as opposed to finishing a specific project.  We’ll see how successful I am with this.  In terms of actual writing, however, I’ve tried my hand at playwriting again. It’s still in the draft stages, but I feel good enough about it that I’ve approached a colleague to work on producing it for the student-driven Late Night Theatre here at UH.  We’ll see if our proposal gets accepted.

Last, but certainly not least, I auditioned and got cast in the Balinese Wayang Listrik production that will be running January 22-31, 2016. I’m one of a small team of puppeteers, which basically means I’m learning all kinds of shadow puppetry techniques and coordinating a lot of the scenes, etc.

I also got a speaking role as one of the Balinese clown characters : ). He only appears as a puppet so I’ll be behind the screen the entire time, but that means no need for hair/makeup/costume…so puppeteers can pretty much wear whatever we want (we’re thinking of wearing pajamas one night).