I’m happy to announce that Naomi Frandsen will be joining Times & Seasons during the next two weeks as our newest guest blogger. Naomi is currently a graduate student in English at Georgetown University, where she works on her thesis in the many spare hours between managing mentoring and tutoring programs, playing harp gigs, volunteering at the temple, taking excursions around the Atlantic seaboard, organizing visiting teaching in her ward, making perilous bicycle journeys to and from campus, and sending love poems by email to her friends and family. Naomi served a mission in Romania from 2000-2001, and later returned to conduct original research on Romanian poets and poetry. She graduated from BYU in English in 2003 , where she wrote her honors thesis on the Women’s Exponent, spoke at the College of Humanities convocation, and won too many personal essay competitions to mention with modesty. Naomi is a gifted and dedicated teacher, and a talented maker of family culture: Naomi is responsible for many of our sweetest family traditions and memories, my personal favorite being the Christmas haiku she composed for each of us two years ago. She’s also my long-suffering (and indefatiguably supportive) sister. Welcome, Naomi!
Excellent! I’m looking forward to reading her posts. We’ve had excellent blogging from Frandsen women thus far.
(Our track record with people with five-letter trisyllabic names ending in “mi” has been mixed, thus far; hopefully she can help improve in that area too! :P ).
The family pressure in the Frandsen family to get an advanced degree in English must be a bit overwhelming at time.
I’d like to hear Ms. Frandsen’s analysis of the popularity of the “Numa Numa” dance (as long as she’s a former Romanian missionary).
Great to get an update on your adventures, Naomi. I look forward to reading what you have to write.
Ah, so your interests and gifts in language run in the family. Is this a product of nurture or nature or both?
Thank you for that great introduction, Rosalynde. What she didn’t tell you is that everything I have done, Rosalynde has done first and better :). As for your question, Jack, I think linguistic ability developed as a survival skill in a family of 11 children where competition for the spotlight corresponded with talking fast, talking persuasively, and talking a lot.
You know, I don’t usually give much credence to urban legends, but based on Rosalynde’s and Naomi’s posts thus far, I think there may be some credibility to that rumor that Frandsen is a Danish word for “someone who writes really well.”
Naomi:
Bine ai venit! Bofta!
And: what is your area of emphasis and thesis topic in your English program?
Okay, okay, okay. I can see you are all getting a very stilted view of the family. It’s true that we have two stellar English scholars in the family. That’s more than most BYU singles wards can boast. But, so far, they are outnumbered. There is one molecular biologist, one physicist/economist, and one larval developmental biologist (she doesn’t have a degree to her name yet). On the other hand, Rosalynde’s doctoral and Naomi’s imminent masters degrees just might swing the balance in their favor. Did you all know that Rosalynde is coming to Utah to present in a conference? She probably hasn’t informed you all, so I take the burden of bragging upon myself.
Re #1: Is her full name Naomipono?