In the Spirit of Collaboration

By Christina Lamson and every fellow who participates

I thought it’d be fun to have an ongoing blog post that we can all collaborate on. Let’s have some fun with this. Either comment with the idea you’d like to add, or send me an email with your thought and I will add them.

You know you’re a NWPNH fellow participating in the summer institute when…

1. exhaustion completely takes over and you begin to work on autopilot

2. you become so good at arriving to class on time that you begin to think lunch ends at 1:00 instead of 1:30

3. you are so tired that when you try to talk, only gibberish comes out, and everyone around you has apparently learned to speak and understand gibberish too

4. you are always trying to make connections from what you learned during the institute to the conversations you are having, even if it has nothing to do with the institute

5. the printer has become your best friend, and your worst enemy

6. while having dinner with your husband, you begin to ask him probing questions

7. you can laugh at something as simple as edamame

8. your leg muscles ache due to walking up all those Plymouth hills and all the stairs in Rounds

9. you have already used of all the ink in several pens
10. you begin to personify inanimate objects, such as a toilet to find some thing to write about

11. you fear all the weight you’ve gained eating the delicious snacks brought daily

12. the community is so strong that you can share very personal stories with one another

13. you are prepared to write a morning prompt, even on the weekends

14. you feed a dog called sarcasmo
15. trying to take pictures of a few fellows can be a whole production
16. you start speaking Spanish in your sleep
17. other fellows begin to think you are speaking to them in Spanish, when you actually talked to them in English
18. when you are told that you have one more minute to write then everyone panics and says what...it is followed up with a repeat of "you have one more minute, just louder...just to get a laugh
19. you've burned your Dead Poet Society poster
20. you begin to analyze everything, including all the photos you appear in

21. you begin planning a design for a t-shirt which features the phrases: What’s your hunch about that? And have you had your epiphany today?
22. the phrase "trust the process" has become everyone's mantra
23. you write in English, but you end of finding random Spanish words throughout your paper
24. when the sound of the lawnmowers outside the windows melds into the constant buzz of information in your brain
25. you constantly utter the phrases: I wonder, to what extend, what would have to happen, what is the impact, what do you assume to be true
26. you become so tired that you keep tripping over furniture that is right in front of you
27. Sarcasmo becomes your spirit animal
28. you begin to quote research to friends
29. questions tend to begin with, "What's your hunch about...?"
30. you begin to have hunches about everything
31. the voice you create for yourself, begins to take on a "shape" of its own

32. you enter week 4 and your are already becoming incredibly emotional, knowing that very soon you will not be with these amazing people in the institute, daily anymore

Last But Not Least: you go out for lunch everyday on week 5 (and even for some beers), because you realize that after the last day, you will not see these same people everyday anymore

Now it's your turn!