I got an A in my first grad school class! I was excited, but mostly relieved. Turns out I can do this!! When I was an undergrad, I never would have posted my grade in a class for the whole world to see. I wouldn't have even really talked about it with my classmates. But now, hey - I have a full-time job and a family, and that A feels WAY more valuable than any of the As I got as an undergrad.
We went out to dinner last night to celebrate. We like to celebrate things around here. :)
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Done!
Sales meeting is done.
Group paper and presentation are done.
Research paper is done.
Final exam is done.
First class of graduate program is done.
My brain is done...I'm going to go read People magazine and try very hard not to think about anything at all for a couple of days!
Group paper and presentation are done.
Research paper is done.
Final exam is done.
First class of graduate program is done.
My brain is done...I'm going to go read People magazine and try very hard not to think about anything at all for a couple of days!
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Random update
The status of stuff at home:
Hannah has a cold. So do I. She is (as usual) dealing with it much better than I am. She is just not a whiny kid, or she hasn't learned yet that you can totally milk it when you don't feel so hot. Either way, she makes me feel like a wimp. *chuckle* We've gotten to spend some time together the past few days, though, since we had all that time in the car over the weekend AND I actually left work more or less on time yesterday and today. Brock is not sick, which is good, and is currently, at 9:35 p.m., at the grocery store buying milk because we are almost out. He takes the best care of us.
The status of school stuff:
My research paper is done; that is to say, it's as good as it's going to get. It is not the best paper I've ever written, but it'll have to do. I don't have time or energy to make it any better, so I surrender. My group paper is also pretty much done; I felt like I had to do a lot more work on it than I should have, but I think it, also, is as good as it's going to get. Someone else in the group is responsible for finishing the PowerPoint, my part of which I already gave her, so I am choosing not to worry about that. So now I think I just have to study for the final - but in super-happy-oh-so-great news, we get to have a cheat sheet for the test. This is fabulous because, while I get all the concepts, memorizing everything is just more than my mucus-addled head can handle. So if I can just have something to remind me of things, I think I should be okay. I still have to study, though. And make my cheat sheet.
The status of work stuff:
My presentation and handouts for our fall sales meeting are pretty much done. I haven't practiced my presentation yet, but it's pretty much a variation on the theme I do every year, so I don't anticipate anything too weird happening. Usually I just practice it in the car on the way there the day I have to present (it's an hour drive from home), and I'm good to go. Luckily, I really like giving presentations, so I don't freak out too much about them.
Random other stuff:
While I have a fond place in my heart for our Dell laptop, as it was a Valentine's Day present from Brock four years ago, it is also four years old and slow as molasses. And I hate the space bar, which has always been a little funky. I have to use it for school stuff because it has Word and PowerPoint and all those Microsoft tools of domination on it, whereas our cute little Macbook doesn't. And just so you know, I tried Google Docs, and it totally doesn't work for papers that require a lot of formatting. So I tried to "stick it to the man," as it were, and couldn't.
I am so excited that it's not yet 10:00 and I am actually done with a bunch of stuff. I may go to bed early tonight. I should probably start organizing my notes to study, but I don't feel like it...and I have to stay late at work tomorrow, anyway, since I have to kill time before going to the sales meeting's opening dinner. So maybe I'll do it then.
Hannah has a cold. So do I. She is (as usual) dealing with it much better than I am. She is just not a whiny kid, or she hasn't learned yet that you can totally milk it when you don't feel so hot. Either way, she makes me feel like a wimp. *chuckle* We've gotten to spend some time together the past few days, though, since we had all that time in the car over the weekend AND I actually left work more or less on time yesterday and today. Brock is not sick, which is good, and is currently, at 9:35 p.m., at the grocery store buying milk because we are almost out. He takes the best care of us.
The status of school stuff:
My research paper is done; that is to say, it's as good as it's going to get. It is not the best paper I've ever written, but it'll have to do. I don't have time or energy to make it any better, so I surrender. My group paper is also pretty much done; I felt like I had to do a lot more work on it than I should have, but I think it, also, is as good as it's going to get. Someone else in the group is responsible for finishing the PowerPoint, my part of which I already gave her, so I am choosing not to worry about that. So now I think I just have to study for the final - but in super-happy-oh-so-great news, we get to have a cheat sheet for the test. This is fabulous because, while I get all the concepts, memorizing everything is just more than my mucus-addled head can handle. So if I can just have something to remind me of things, I think I should be okay. I still have to study, though. And make my cheat sheet.
The status of work stuff:
My presentation and handouts for our fall sales meeting are pretty much done. I haven't practiced my presentation yet, but it's pretty much a variation on the theme I do every year, so I don't anticipate anything too weird happening. Usually I just practice it in the car on the way there the day I have to present (it's an hour drive from home), and I'm good to go. Luckily, I really like giving presentations, so I don't freak out too much about them.
Random other stuff:
While I have a fond place in my heart for our Dell laptop, as it was a Valentine's Day present from Brock four years ago, it is also four years old and slow as molasses. And I hate the space bar, which has always been a little funky. I have to use it for school stuff because it has Word and PowerPoint and all those Microsoft tools of domination on it, whereas our cute little Macbook doesn't. And just so you know, I tried Google Docs, and it totally doesn't work for papers that require a lot of formatting. So I tried to "stick it to the man," as it were, and couldn't.
I am so excited that it's not yet 10:00 and I am actually done with a bunch of stuff. I may go to bed early tonight. I should probably start organizing my notes to study, but I don't feel like it...and I have to stay late at work tomorrow, anyway, since I have to kill time before going to the sales meeting's opening dinner. So maybe I'll do it then.
Monday, October 15, 2007
A lot (and sometimes nothing) can change in 10 years
Saturday was our 10-year high school reunion. Since Brock and I were "high school sweethearts," we have the great advantage that we only ever have to go to a reunion for one class at one school, and we both know everybody because there were only about 87 people in our class.
We drove down to Indiana Saturday afternoon. Thankfully, I got out of class early on Saturday, so we didn't end up being as late to the reunion as we thought we would be. It started at 7 and I think we showed up about 8, after dropping Hannah off with my mom and dad for the evening.
You have to understand that we're from very small towns, and a very small high school. I started school with some of those people in preschool when we were four. What's kind of odd about that is that you can know somebody for 14 straight years, and then completely and utterly lose touch with them in a matter of months (or days or weeks) after graduation. What I really understood from this reunion is that there's a big difference between friends of convenience and friends of choice. When you're from a small town, your pool of potential friends is automatically smaller; there may not be a whole lot of people just like you, so you just do the best you can with what you've got. When you get away from the small town and meet more people, you have more options, and you can find the people you have a lot in common with, who will probably be lifelong friends.
I only have a couple of those "lifelong friends" from high school, and we're not even that close. We manage to stay in touch sporadically and I like to know what's going on with them. But I didn't have a lot in common with most of the people I went to high school with while we were still in school, and it seems like I really don't now. They're all nice people; I think I always did a pretty good job of getting along with everyone. But we weren't ever really great friends.
That said, we did have a good time at the reunion. There were a lot of people I really enjoyed catching up with, swapping kid pictures with, etc. I got to see one of my best friends from high school (one of those I manage to sort of keep in touch with), who I hadn't seen for a long time, and she and I had a lovely time getting really drunk on a bottle of Crown Royal she brought with her. I think this, alone, did a good job of redeeming my reputation as an uptight smart girl with a lot of the non-uptight people I graduated with. :)
Brock had a good time talking to some of his old friends from school, and a depressing time talking to others - that's where the "a lot (and sometimes nothing)" can change comment comes from. Some people were exactly the same, which was fine - they were pretty cool in high school and seem to be doing well. Some people were a bit different, although I wouldn't say anyone had changed enough that there were any shocking developments. And some people were exactly the same, and it wasn't so good. You hoped people would kind of get it together and do well in life...and they didn't.
There were a lot of people I would have liked to see who didn't come, so that was disappointing. And there were a lot of people there who I never talked to much in high school; so I talked to some of them at the reunion, but I would have felt weird running up to a lot of them just because I recognized them and finding out how they were. I was curious, but it's an odd relationship dynamic. It's kind of like, "After 10 years, would you think it was stupid if I came up and talked to you?"
Overall, our reunion was...interesting. I had a lot of fun. I'm really glad we went. And I especially want to thank Lindsey and Amanda, and whoever else worked on planning the reunion, for getting it together so we could actually have one (I don't know if it would have happened otherwise)! But I think I can wait another 10 years before we do it all again.
We drove down to Indiana Saturday afternoon. Thankfully, I got out of class early on Saturday, so we didn't end up being as late to the reunion as we thought we would be. It started at 7 and I think we showed up about 8, after dropping Hannah off with my mom and dad for the evening.
You have to understand that we're from very small towns, and a very small high school. I started school with some of those people in preschool when we were four. What's kind of odd about that is that you can know somebody for 14 straight years, and then completely and utterly lose touch with them in a matter of months (or days or weeks) after graduation. What I really understood from this reunion is that there's a big difference between friends of convenience and friends of choice. When you're from a small town, your pool of potential friends is automatically smaller; there may not be a whole lot of people just like you, so you just do the best you can with what you've got. When you get away from the small town and meet more people, you have more options, and you can find the people you have a lot in common with, who will probably be lifelong friends.
I only have a couple of those "lifelong friends" from high school, and we're not even that close. We manage to stay in touch sporadically and I like to know what's going on with them. But I didn't have a lot in common with most of the people I went to high school with while we were still in school, and it seems like I really don't now. They're all nice people; I think I always did a pretty good job of getting along with everyone. But we weren't ever really great friends.
That said, we did have a good time at the reunion. There were a lot of people I really enjoyed catching up with, swapping kid pictures with, etc. I got to see one of my best friends from high school (one of those I manage to sort of keep in touch with), who I hadn't seen for a long time, and she and I had a lovely time getting really drunk on a bottle of Crown Royal she brought with her. I think this, alone, did a good job of redeeming my reputation as an uptight smart girl with a lot of the non-uptight people I graduated with. :)
Brock had a good time talking to some of his old friends from school, and a depressing time talking to others - that's where the "a lot (and sometimes nothing)" can change comment comes from. Some people were exactly the same, which was fine - they were pretty cool in high school and seem to be doing well. Some people were a bit different, although I wouldn't say anyone had changed enough that there were any shocking developments. And some people were exactly the same, and it wasn't so good. You hoped people would kind of get it together and do well in life...and they didn't.
There were a lot of people I would have liked to see who didn't come, so that was disappointing. And there were a lot of people there who I never talked to much in high school; so I talked to some of them at the reunion, but I would have felt weird running up to a lot of them just because I recognized them and finding out how they were. I was curious, but it's an odd relationship dynamic. It's kind of like, "After 10 years, would you think it was stupid if I came up and talked to you?"
Overall, our reunion was...interesting. I had a lot of fun. I'm really glad we went. And I especially want to thank Lindsey and Amanda, and whoever else worked on planning the reunion, for getting it together so we could actually have one (I don't know if it would have happened otherwise)! But I think I can wait another 10 years before we do it all again.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
STRESS
Some disjointed thoughts about why I am stressed, and think my hair may be falling out faster than normal:
I have a research paper, a group paper and a group presentation due, and a final exam, 9 days from today.
Group members 1 and 2 (one of those is me) have completed their portions of the group project. Group member 3, for unclear reasons, has not. We were all supposed to be done yesterday; the idea was that then we'd have a couple days to put all the pieces together, we'd review it as a group before class on Saturday, and then hopefully be more or less done with two things a whole week before they were due - leaving a week to work on our research papers and studying.
I don't think it's going to work that way.
Our high school reunion is this weekend, so I'm losing my weekend to nostalgia. I am really looking forward to the reunion, but bummed about the timing. I could use Saturday and Sunday for schoolwork instead of driving.
And the last three days before all this stuff is due is my company's fall sales meeting, which I have to go to and prepare a presentation for.
Tonight Hannah didn't want to go home with Brock because she wanted Mommy. I've been staying late at work the past few days to try to get some schoolwork done while I'm actually awake, coherent and capable of rational thought. I haven't seen Hannah much as a result, and it is clearly getting on her nerves as well as mine. We did get to spend some time together this evening, but I have guilt. On top of stress.
Brock has really had to take care of a lot of the home stuff this week with pretty much no help from me. He's wonderful and doesn't mind at all, and is so encouraging I think I'd never make it without him...but I also feel like I'm not contributing as much as I should. Even though I can't contribute anymore because there's just not enough time or energy.
On the up side, we're getting our new dryer tomorrow. So we can at least go back to doing laundry normally. There's a little less stress, I guess.
Okay, back to Paper Writing Land.
I have a research paper, a group paper and a group presentation due, and a final exam, 9 days from today.
Group members 1 and 2 (one of those is me) have completed their portions of the group project. Group member 3, for unclear reasons, has not. We were all supposed to be done yesterday; the idea was that then we'd have a couple days to put all the pieces together, we'd review it as a group before class on Saturday, and then hopefully be more or less done with two things a whole week before they were due - leaving a week to work on our research papers and studying.
I don't think it's going to work that way.
Our high school reunion is this weekend, so I'm losing my weekend to nostalgia. I am really looking forward to the reunion, but bummed about the timing. I could use Saturday and Sunday for schoolwork instead of driving.
And the last three days before all this stuff is due is my company's fall sales meeting, which I have to go to and prepare a presentation for.
Tonight Hannah didn't want to go home with Brock because she wanted Mommy. I've been staying late at work the past few days to try to get some schoolwork done while I'm actually awake, coherent and capable of rational thought. I haven't seen Hannah much as a result, and it is clearly getting on her nerves as well as mine. We did get to spend some time together this evening, but I have guilt. On top of stress.
Brock has really had to take care of a lot of the home stuff this week with pretty much no help from me. He's wonderful and doesn't mind at all, and is so encouraging I think I'd never make it without him...but I also feel like I'm not contributing as much as I should. Even though I can't contribute anymore because there's just not enough time or energy.
On the up side, we're getting our new dryer tomorrow. So we can at least go back to doing laundry normally. There's a little less stress, I guess.
Okay, back to Paper Writing Land.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Either the best or worst customer service ever
So, I have to get a blood test to check how my thyroid's doing (or, more accurately, how the hormones I take to make up for my deadbeat thyroid are doing). Thanks to our new insurance plan, my endocrinologist wasn't allowed to actually take my blood at his office; instead, I have to go to one of the vampire shops where all they do all day is take people's blood and ship it off to various testing facilities. So I called the nearest location today to make an appointment for my test. Turns out, you can't actually schedule your appointment with the person who answers the phone. There's a special number for that, or you can schedule your appointment yourself ONLINE.
Wha?
So I went to the website and very easily chose - and reserved - my very own appointment time. I got a confirmation page to print and everything. No going back and forth with the person on the phone about what time might work or not. No settling for an odd appointment time just because I didn't feel like digging into a more convenient option. But also, no actual person.
I'm leaning toward thinking this is a fantastic development in medical care...but part of me thinks you ought to be able to just call the place you want to go and talk to someone about when you want to come in. Is this awesome, super-convenient service, or just a cop-out so they don't have to pay someone to answer the phone and make appointments?
And if the person AT the testing office doesn't schedule appointments, why does that person even need to answer the phone? Why else would anyone be calling?
This is simultaneously terrific and perplexing.
Wha?
So I went to the website and very easily chose - and reserved - my very own appointment time. I got a confirmation page to print and everything. No going back and forth with the person on the phone about what time might work or not. No settling for an odd appointment time just because I didn't feel like digging into a more convenient option. But also, no actual person.
I'm leaning toward thinking this is a fantastic development in medical care...but part of me thinks you ought to be able to just call the place you want to go and talk to someone about when you want to come in. Is this awesome, super-convenient service, or just a cop-out so they don't have to pay someone to answer the phone and make appointments?
And if the person AT the testing office doesn't schedule appointments, why does that person even need to answer the phone? Why else would anyone be calling?
This is simultaneously terrific and perplexing.
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