Night at the Museum

Tonight I am surely going to dream about the movie "Night at the Museum" because I've been thinking and writing about museums all day in preparation for my presentation about Henry Watson Kent tomorrow. For Museum Administration, we were all assigned a "museum master" to research and make a presentation about. I happened to end up with the most obscure of all museum masters! It took me a while to understand why exactly Henry Watson Kent was so important, but I guess he is. He was the secretary to the Board of Trustees at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for about 30 years. During that time he developed systems for organizing collections and really stressed educational programs and public outreach. So I guess he's cool. The trick is that I need to speak about him in front of the class tomorrow for 10 minutes--and I only have about 5 minutes-worth of info., but I have a wonderful solution. Everyone likes games, right? So, I devised this way to play concentration, or "MET Memory," as I call it, in my Power Point presentation. It's pretty neat--you can click on a box, and then a painting from the MET's collection pops up, then you can go back, click on another box, and try to match the painting with its title and artist. Mrs. Miller was very specific about our 10 minute time limit though, so I didn't make the game very large or complicated, and I can cut it short if need be. The best part of the presentation will be the candy! Since I will be talking about HENRY Watson Kent, it is only appropriate that we will be eating "Oh Henry!" candy bars. :-)

This morning we had our Historical Interpretation class with Dr. Barnhart. When he got to class, his voice sounded really scratchy. He announced that he wasn't feeling well and that in order to save what he could of his voice for his two classes tomorrow, we would "only meet for a couple of minutes to touch base on things," and then he would let us go work on stuff. Well, in typical Dr. Barnhart fashion, the "couple of minutes" turned into an hour. We were all kind of smiling at each other in class because he would get started talking about something, then he would totally change topics and remember something else he wanted to say, so he ended up talking for 60 straight minutes. Poor Dr. Barnhart--hopefully he can get his voice back. I'm quite impressed though, that even with no voice, he can still talk for an hour! I really like all of our professors--they're all cool and have funny senses of humor.

This afternoon I helped Dr. Hardeman grade some papers. He was very tired today and kept falling asleep, but the crazy thing today was that even when he would stand up, which usually keeps him alert, he would fall asleep--standing up! It was amazing--I didn't know that people could do that and still keep their balance.

Tonight we had our weekly HA meeting. I forgot to say that last week our meeting only lasted for one hour--it was incredible, and I fear that we will never have that short of a meeting again. Tonight's meeting went from 8:00 until almost 10:00, and I think that the only thing we accomplish at these meetings is making ourselves more stressed out. Theoretically the meetings are supposed to keep all of us on the same page, but I think we actually all end up in different books! When I think of everything I have to do between now and Sunday, I get totally stressed out, so I'll try not to think about everything all at once. I tried writing down a "To Do" list last night, but it got too long, so I gave up. There is not enough paper in the whole world to contain this week's "To Do" list, let alone a list for the rest of the semester! Would anyone like to volunteer to come cook for me, eat for me, do my laundry, grocery shop for me, exercise for me, balance my checkbook, and, most importantly sleep for me? That would be wonderful and very helpful :-) I could also use some help getting through some books and writing some papers. I'll just do as Mom and Dad say and take everything one day at a time--then it all seems more doable.