Noah is at Simchat Torah
I don’t think Madison will be staying because she left the house without pants. She’s wearing a dress short enough to be a shirt, no shoes and has pizza sauce on her face, which leads me to believe that Brett isn’t planning on taking her out of the van.
Tomorrow I’ll be working outside the home as a temp person at an ad agency. I’ll be doing proofreading and either I’ll be really busy or really bored. (Yes, I’m bringing my laptop — she said I could bring something to read and I’m hoping I can work on the paper I’m theoretically presenting. I’m still not clear when I’m actually going to be there so I have no idea what sessions I might get to attend. I’m a wee bit nervous. Just a tad. Just a touch. Ok, I’m nervous as hell but if I’d write the paper probably I would have less to be worried about, right? Tonight I’m going to read academic papers in Families by Law: An Adoption Reader since I’ve been meaning to read it any way. Hopefully that will teach me how one writes an academic paper since I just have a measly BS in Sociology and stuff.)
Now there’s another entry I want to write so allow me to sign off on this one and add another one.
Not that I’m not in the midst of my own writing anxieties at the moment, but I wouldn’t worry about sounding academic for this conference: it has a mix of academics and nonacademics, and I’ll bet there’s going to be a whole range of presentation styles. And my favorite academic presentations are the ones that don’t sound so academic, anyway.
How to write an academic paper in two easy steps. 1) use lots of big words and stilted sentence construction. 2) use twice as many words and sentences as necessary. Voila! You’re an academic!
However, I agree with Susan. Not sounding academic can be very refreshing at a conference.
Oh god, just be yourself and write as you always do. You are already a great writer. Nothing could be a bigger mistake than trying to sound academic if you don’t have to because you can already write better than that!