Goffman versus Gottman

My ridiculous ebay item arrived today! If for no other reason, I should continue to shop at ebay because of the excitment a package brings to my day. And the daschund ring fits like a charm. (You read that right, I assure you.)

So I've decided to apply to McGill University as well as Carleton, Western, and U of T. I was in contact with a professor there, inquiring about the program's suitability in relation to my interests, and he responded very positively, so that's that. I'm happy to have another possibility to add to my list, though they, like U of T, are intimidating on their admission requirements. I just hit the cutoff for their 'generally accepted GPA's' but with TAing and a grad level stats course under my belt I think I have a fighting chance. I will not be intimidated!

Montreal would be nice - my granparents and brother and sister-in-law are all there, and it's my hometown. In fact I'm already a graduate of McGill, though it was daycare, not grad school, I was accepted and did quite well there. And not because my mother was the director.

Also I've had positive feedback from my previous professors about the appropriateness of those five page papers I wrote about the other day. One professor said that page length is less of an issue (at least at McMaster) and that papers on theoretical topics will be impressive. Another said that he thinks they're fine as long as I clarify that I had no opportunity to write a paper on demography because of the course offerings at my school. It's funny because one of these papers is about how qualitative research is better than quantitative - a view that's not exactly in line with my area of interest. Maybe you don't find this funny. I find it funny.

I also find my papers damn funny (and brilliant!) after re-reading them this afternoon. One is on Goffman's views of self presentation, written in the fifties, related to current online self presentation. The next is on Goffman's famous analogies of social life as a drama, a game, and a ritual related to the 'party', and the third is Goffman's research methodologies (haphazard and hardly described) versus Gottman's - a crackpot psychologist who claims he can statistically analyze how and why marriages fail. Gottman verses Goffman. I love it. The last is about how Goffman's views can be related to racism, but it sucks, so I won't use it.

Alright, back to work. Eleven days 'till Thailand!