The End of an Era

‎"There are no more horcruxes. It's just you and me. Neither can live while the other survives, and one of us is about to leave for good." -- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

It blows my mind that the Harry Potter generation is over.  I remember when the first book came out - I was nine, and we read it as a class in 4th grade.  No one could pronounce Hermione's name correctly (something J.K. Rowling made fun of in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire), but we were all completely blown away by the magic of Rowling's storytelling.  Jessica and I sped through Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban (Books 2 & 3), and could not wait for the next books to come out.  From then on, we always pre-ordered our books on Amazon, and it never took me more than a couple days to read each new book (including Book 4 which we read right after our move to Virginia, without any furniture in the house!).  I feel like readers of my generation grew up with Harry Potter - even to the point where I was 17 when Deathly Hallows (Book 7) was released and all of the characters were 17.  Each book in Rowling's series is increasingly mature, complex, and intense -- something I could appreciate as a reader who was also maturing and growing up.
The Harry Potter films brought in a completely different view of the books.  While I enjoy the movies, I definitely believe the books present a more complex plot and deeper character development.  Granted, its hard to turn 1000+ page books into movies of an acceptable length, so I understand why a lot of the nonessential plot points and details were left out of the movies.  After seeing the final installment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 2, last night, I thought they wrapped up their shortened storyline very well.  All the same, it was a very surreal experience to see the last movie.  Just like with the release of the Book 7, it seemed so, well, final.  Unlike the majority of the Harry Potter fans today, I grew up with the characters both through the book series and the films.  It's sad to see the end of this phase in our lives -- it's truly the end of an era.

Monroe Research Week Four - Halfway There!

(copied from http://upperclassmonroe.blogs.wm.edu/author/sckyle/)

As the end of week 4 quickly approaches, it occurs to me that I am over halfway through my 7 week timeline!  After the remainder of today’s testing, I will have had 24 participants.  While I was originally hoping to recruit 40 participants, I will be happy if I can pass 30!  Recruiting has been much more difficult than I had originally expected.  I’ve flyered the campus dorms twice, send emails to the Monroe and Research listservs, and even teamed up with two Psychology professors who agreed to offer their students extra credit if they participated in my study!  Talk about a great incentive (in addition to my own participation reward of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream)!  My advice to anyone that hopes to research on human subjects:  start recruiting immediately after receiving approval from the PHSC.  Teaming up with professors is a great way to have easy access to students, but it definitely helps to talk with them as early as possible.  Tracking down professors in the summer can be challenging:  they flit from their classroom to their lab, and are very hard to catch in their office!
So far, I have avoided any major potholes in my methodology.  However, I have had to change the test conditions a bit.  Instead of using video chat as the third communication option, the participants now use a voice chat (like Skype or Google Voice).  It turns out that not many students seem to actively use video chat, and so we were having trouble finding a way around this.  Maybe my time abroad last semester made me more reliant on the use of video chat than the average student, but I definitely thought it was a more common form of communication!  Google Voice has turned out to be a wonderful tool for this project.  Anyone with a Google Account (i.e. any William & Mary student since our WMApps is run through Google) can use this tool to call any phone in the US for free from their computer.  How awesome is that?  I feel like I am a walking advertisement for Google Voice!  With the use of this tool, participants can be put in a “Skype-like” setting without having to have a friend online at the same time.  It’s brilliant!
Looking forward, I have one more week of testing left, and then I start the long, tedious process of converting my videotapes to DVD.  Thank goodness I have the awesome Media Center to help me!  From there, I’ll run data analysis and then sit down to the daunting task of writing up my paper.  Even though I’m past the halfway point, I feel like there is still so much to accomplish!

Eine Sehr Schöne Hochzeit

This past weekend, I had the privilege of attending my friend Jenny's wedding up in Waterford. Jenny has been an integral part of my life at William & Mary - she co-lead my freshman small group, and then she and I lead an upperclass small group together this past Fall.  She is such a kind and thoughtful friend - it was truly an honor to attend her wedding!
This was also the first wedding that I've been to for a friend and not a family member.  Until now, the majority of the weddings I've attended have been for my aunts and uncles.  It's a bizarre reality watching your friends get married.  Throughout college, it feels like we're going to be here forever...that we'll stay in this social bubble.  But as I enter my senior and final year at William & Mary, I am realizing more and more that we're all on the brink of breaking out of this bubble into the "real world."  That's scary.  We'll go separate directions, and take steps to make a difference in the world around us.
As many of us commented, Jenny's wedding is the first of a season.  A season of change, a season of growing up.  I look forward to attending more friends' weddings, but I have to say I am glad that this was the first.  Jenny's wedding was simple, elegant, and radiantly beautiful - the perfect start to this exciting new chapter of her life, and what I have to look forward to.

Monroe Research Week One - Done.

This week has been incredibly busy!  As hot and humid as Williamsburg is, I absolutely love being back.  It's been really wonderful to reconnect with friends, and reconnect with the campus (though it definitely feels deserted).  I'm living in Jefferson, on the same hall as Sophomore year!  It's a bit strange being back in the same building with a different roommate and a different lifestyle - not going to class is definitely a bit bizzare.  But anyways, here is my first Monroe Blog (copied from http://upperclassmonroe.blogs.wm.edu/author/sckyle/):


It’s hard to believe that my first week of research is almost over!  These first few days have been primarily focused on background research and administration-type tasks.  My project really began to take off in late April, when my study was finally approved by the PHSC!  I had been stressed about the approval process, since I wanted to have everything taken care of before I came back to campus to start my research.  On top of it all, I was abroad last semester, and a five hour time difference definitely disrupts communication.  But in the end, it all worked out smoothly, and now I am in the midst of my research!  This week I have accomplished some major goals:  I secured a space for the actual testing of the participants in my study, and a couple of professors in the Psychology Department have been so wonderful as to let me talk about my project to their students in the hopes of recruiting them as participants!  I hope to begin testing in week 3 (around June 13), but that is very dependent on my communication with potential participants, and spreading the word as quickly as possible.

Also, I should mention that my project has changed slightly since I first posted the abstract.  Instead of describing movement/non-movement situations, the participants are going to tell their partner an exciting personal experience.  They will then repeat this story to a non-participant (because I am not observing them, they are not participants) via chat and video-chat.

In my reading (the primary task of this week), I’ve discovered that there is actually a lot of material out there on gesture and the use of nonverbal communication.  I’ve even found a couple of studies looking at the use of gesture in conversation despite the visual absence of a participant’s partner (usually the partner is hidden behind a screen) – which is extremely relevant to my research!  It’s exciting to know that my research fits into an existing topic, especially in an up-and-coming field!  Gesture studies have really taken off since about 1970, and with the addition of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) studies, this field is very new and exciting!  On entering my research, I did not know so much previous literature existed, and it is so encouraging to know that I can tie my own studies back to a well-developed field of research.

Back to the 'Burg

Hello All!  After a very relaxing week at home, I am now heading back to Williamsburg to complete my Summer Monroe Research Project.  Hopefully I will finish all of my work in 7 weeks, so then I can be back at home for the remainder of the summer!  This week has gone by so fast - it's so hard to believe that I arrived home from Bath just last Saturday!  I'm excited to go down to Williamsburg, but at the same time I don't feel like it's time yet.  I've been planning this project for just over 18 months, and it's exciting, yet strange, to see it finally happen!  All Monroe Scholars have to blog on the Monroe Blog 3 times during the duration of our research.  My blogs can be found here:  http://upperclassmonroe.blogs.wm.edu/tag/sarah-kyle/
I might copy and paste those blogs into this one, but I haven't decided yet - so check back for details!  Also, if you remove the tag/sarah-kyle/ from that URL, you can access all of the Monroe blogs!


So with that, I'm off to finish up packing, and I will see you all in Williamsburg!

A Bittersweet Adventure

I am finally home safe and sound.  And let me tell you, it has definitely been an adventure getting here.  I arrived in Dulles Airport around 2:30, and about an hour later was through customs and on my way home!  But, lets rewind 15.5 hours from my arrival at Dulles, because that is where my adventure really begins.  I got up at 4am this morning (GMT - so 11pm yesterday in EST) in order to finish packing and get everything in order for departure from our flat (we had to pack up our bed linens and make sure all our dishes were clean, etc).  So I got about 4.5 hours of sleep last night, and about the same the night before after we went out for our final night out as a programme.

Our Last Night Out

So with that background in mind, I arrived at the Bristol Airport "bright-eyed and bushytailed" around 5:50am, after a very sad farewell to my roomies and my last taxi ride through Bath and Bristol.  After dealing with the very inefficient system for paying for extra luggage in the BRS  Airport, I met up with two other ASE students on my flight to Amsterdam, and we awaited the announcement of our gate.  Sadly, instead we got a notice that our flight had been delayed 35 minutes.  Originally I did not think much of this, but then I realized that I would be missing boarding for my connecting flight to Dulles.  Trying not to freak out too much, I sat rather impatiently through my flight to Amsterdam (once the airplane finally came).  We arrived with all the other connecting flights in Terminal B, where I located a departure schedule.  At this point it was 11:50, and boarding for my connection started at 11:30.  On the departure schedule, I read the most dreaded words on the screen:  "Gate Closing / Gate Besluit."  Needless to say, I ran from that point on to Terminal E, and to my gate.  Arriving out of breath, the lady running the security check just sort of looked at me, and said, "you're on time, you don't need to worry." Funny, I was not under the impression that the words "gate closing" meant "on time," or that my panting could be instantaneously stopped by not worrying haha.  Of course to make this adventure even better, I had to go through the xray machine and get a pat down at the security check.

ASE Final Tea

As I was walking down the walkway to the plane, I was stopped by another airport employee, telling me that I could take my time now that I was past security.  Only, he thought I was Dutch, so he was explaining all of this in Dutch until he finally realized that I had absolutely no idea what he was saying!  So apparently, I can pass as a Dutch citizen and a German citizen (see notes on trip to Rome)!
All of these insane aspects of my travels were made up for with the Toffee Ice Cream they served as our snack on my flight to Dulles.  THEY SERVED ICE CREAM ON THE AIRPLANE!!!  Why is this not a more common occurence?!?  I was also very thankful that my luggage made my connection as well - I was not expecting them to get my luggage on my AMS-IAD flight, since I barely made it in time myself!
So now I have officially been awake for 22 hours, I'm ready for bedtime!  I am so excited to go to MPC tomorrow - I've missed going to church so much this semester!  Speaking of missing, I miss my ASE friends already, it's so weird being apart from all of them, knowing that we're all going our separate ways.

One Day More!

"One day more!  Another day another destiny..." -- Les Miserables

 It is so hard to believe that today is my last day in Bath.  The semester has definitely flown by, and it is so difficult to imagine not seeing the people in my programme all the time!  The fact that we won't really see each other again hasn't completely hit me yet - but that is going to be so bizarre.  Today is most dedicated to packing (which I have yet to start! haha), but our programme also has our Final Tea, as a final farewell between the students and staff.  Sadly, our tutors are not going to be present, so we already had to say those goodbyes last week.  I just can't believe the semester is really ending, and that we all have to go back to our separate lives back in the States.


Wish me luck on packing!  I'm really dreading having to fit my life back into two suitcases!  I'll see you on the other side of the pond :)