Sunday, May 28, 2006

1 week out.

so it's been exactly one week since graduation and what do I have to show for it? Um... not a whole lot. No big accomplishments, but then again I wasn't really trying... But those things that did happen were quite good nevertheless.

I spent most of the week with Kayla and Krista so that of course is always a joy. Most of the time we spent together was in coffee shops and watching movies. We felt that we still needed a break from going out. :-) After Kayla left us we didn't do anything very different. Krista and I spent the days drinking coffee, reading and watching movies, with a short shopping trip in there. THe shopping trip was actually probably a good idea since I have yet to unpack which also means I have yet to do my laundry. Plus it is getting bloody hot here in MN and a couple tank tops are needed. Speaking of the weather...it is crazy hot here today! the high is 92F !! The high around this time is usually only 74F according the the weather lady this morning! Gotta love the crazy weather of the midwest.

From our reading/coffee/movie watching endeavours i accomplished a few things. MOstly in reading. Finally finished "The Dharma Bums" which I put down at the beginning of second semester and finally picked up again. Very interesting book. I have since then picked up "Pride and Prejudice" so that I can get the FULL effect of the story. About 12 pages in (probably) I was already greatly excited from reading it...I'd stop and read a line to Krista and relate it to the movie..."oh yeah...this is that part...where this happens... oh this is different, but i like it!" :-) It was a slow start but I'm getting there. krista and I also learned not to always trust a Mandy Moore movie. "How to Deal" not her best work. I'd definitely go with Saved over any other Mandy Moore movie.

Krista and I then spent Thursday afternoon with her sister Lindsey. It was great! We went to Como Park/Zoo. Walked through the conservatory which was so beautiful and interesting and then walked through the zoo which was cool but also SO sad! I was happy to hear though the next day in the paper that the Polar bears are getting more space and so are the gorillas! But still it's kind of sad to go to the zoo. The Orangutans were the most fun to watch, they were actually very playful and just SO interesting. Looking at their hands, arms, feet, and legs it was just like WOW they really are SO similar. Not only that but they have HUGE arms, legs, hands and feet. Plus you can tell they aren't that stupid, and that they are thinking about something. We then made it to an afternoon movie to see The DaVinci Code. THere was a lot to explain but i enjoyed it still the same, minus the kids who ran around the theatre at the beginning... People were PISSED! haha. We then went for burgers and malts at Annie's Parlour and had a great time hanging out there.

I dropped krista at our friend Katie's on friday afternoon and then I spent the rest of the weekend with high school friends. Natalie and I got together to watch a movie, good old "Playing By Heart" which I hadn't seen in forever. :-) Good times. Saturday (yesterday) was spent getting ready for our friend Zoe's wedding. A group of us went to our friend Amy's graduation party first and then to Zoe's wedding which was very lovely and of course she looked amazing! It was quite a small wedding and very short. The ceremony was very beautiful. Being the psych major that i was i kind of sat there listening very closely to what the pastor said marriage really was. Thanks to Dr. B's counseling class I kept thinking of the things we had talked about in class. At least i know i learned something. It brought me back to this segment that was on the Today show the other day about marriages and relationships. I just remember the guy being a total dumb ass and the woman clinical psychologist saying waht I had learned in class this past semester. I don't even know if the guy had any professional background.. anyway.. he was kind of a doof and I hope he never counsels people on marriage... so the wedding...The dinner was great and the dance was fun. it was a bit of a high school reunion but fun still the same. THere were two tables of us fridley high schoolers and i barely talked to any from the other table. It was fun to share stories of gossip about people from high school that we had heard. Some stories a bit awkward, but overall a good time. We drank a lot of beer, danced, talked went home. Overall a good day/evening.

Now it's sunday. One week since graduation and nothing really to show for it. Britta is in town and I'm looking forward to seeing her today. Tonight is the Gay 90s i think... and that's about it. I wish our pool was full and clean cuz I'd love to go swimming! SO hot out, which also makes me want to do nothing and just sit and read all day. This is my life so far...post graduation...:-)

Sunday, May 21, 2006

Graduation!

well it's official..as long as I have passed all of my classes this semester I have graduated from Luther College. Wow... a crazy thought but also SOOO cool. Commencement was this afternoon and luckily it was a very nice day out. There were about 500 of us graduating and it was a good solid 2 hour ceremony. The speech was pretty good and not too long which helped. it was pretty weird, but so very cool. I now have a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. I got to sit next to Shannon another psychology major and although we were never friends it was nice to have a semi-familiar face to sit next to and chat with during the ceremony if we got bored. She's quite a nice girl. Anyway, we made it across the stage, shook hands, and got an evelope with no actual certificate inside yet, but whatever... I think overall I was very happy but I was also so sad and a bit stressed. Probably more depressed that I should have been but I guess I just had a lot on my mind. Whew... I apparently get annoyed easily. After the ceremony, as we all walk off we go through all the professors, and that was pretty cool... Shannon and I searched out Dr. Bishop and then Dr. Breitenstein, of whose test we passed. He had two sayings that he wanted us to remember, which we confidently went up to him to recited. Both Dr. Bishop and Dr. Breitenstein are great professors and I really enjoyed them. It's so nice to have two people tell you to 'let them know if you ever need help with anything and good luck' which is said with a smile and hand shake and a quick hug:-) And of course after all of that i found the family, took photos and went home to pack, which seemed SO rushed and with which I got REALLY annoyed. Again, packing is NOT my strong suit. i'll not get into that...but yeah basically I felt bad for being such a pain, and well after a little while in the car I finally lightened up. The ride home then wasn't so bad. I tried sleeping which felt soooo good. We almost got into an accident outside of the cities (damn people who can't merge!) but safely made it home. I finally ate some real food, and have just been relaxing every since... the stress is gone, it's done, it's over. Life is moving forward. Now to begin something new... Resumes need to be sent and hopefully a job will soon enough present itself :-) Onward i go...breathing a sigh of relief, and giving myself a pat on the back for a job well done. I made it! Oh what a feeling! I made it! I feel accomplished :-)

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

finals update: DONE!! :-)

I'M DONE! took my last two exams today and now I am done with my undergraduate schooling at Luther! oh god! it probably won't really hit me till I actually find a job and realize I'm working.

My exams went just fine. NO worries i think. Also got my grade back from my big paper/project in sociology... w00t ! got a B bitches! yes!go me!
Had a really nice chat with Dr. B the other day. he's great, and I'm going to miss him. He helped me figure out some graduate school stuff, so maybe I can figure out what it is I want to do and find a good school for me! YAY!
I still have to find a job... oh well...but I'M DONE!
to celebrate... didn't do anything crazy... came home... relaxed watch some P&P , did dinner, got some beers, got a movie, drank a beer in the library, watched the movie with Justin...hanging out again. I have nothing to do! well i do have to work tomorrow and am going to go talk to another professor about life, but I'm done! Senior week festivities began tonight and I am SO looking forward to the rest of them this week. THe family comes down on saturdy and I have much cleaning/packing to do. kris is already beginning to pack up her stuff. It's really sad. i had quite the 'moment' with her after i read her little letter she left me. Needless to say i cried ("Now that was a moment" --name the movie!)
anyway...that's all. I'M DONE!

Monday, May 15, 2006

finals update: dashing, short skirts, & tp

Two finals and a paper completed! Saturday did not feel like one. It felt more like a Monday. And the gross weather did not help. But after all of that... It was senior dinner night! YAY! So we got nicely dressed and headed to the caf for a 'nice' dinner. It was pretty cool to have most of the senior class in one room hanging out. Such a difference from when we were freshmen and they courted us into that same room to have dinner and make friends. :-P Lets just say that I don't talk to any of the people I sat with at that freshman dinner, except Krista. Although i do remember everyone who was sitting with us that evening. Anyway, the food was actually pretty tasty, and the people a whole lot of fun. People were quite amazed to see me with very long straight hair and wearing make-up and pink! i'm surprised more people didn't try to take my photo! ;-) haha. Anyway, the speeches were decent and it was the first time I had really thought about how I will be leaving and not coming back to Luther. I hadn't had any time to think about it before, i'm still just kind of going through the motions and not thinking about how I will be leaving. So at least the senior dinner provided that for a little while. Again the speeches, not bad. Funniest parts... President Torgerson's speech title "Doin' the Dash". Refering to the dash that you would see on a tombstone between the birth date and death date. we were all confused as to where he was going with talking about a cemetary, and then he got into the whole dash thing. Which we laughed at for the most part. There was some dirty conotation in there that we seemed to find and chuckle at. it didn't help that Krista was giggling. the other funny speech...Prof. Craft and his joke about putting microphones under the beds in Baker. Ha! we all looked at Krista...or rather i looked at her and my other housemates ;-)

After all of this we got 'slutted up' for a party of which we were supposed to dress like our friend Sarah. She tends to dress in short skirts and low cut shirts. So we tried our best, but none of us in the house really have revealing clothing. Marissa had to pin her skirt to make it shorter and really the only short skirts britta and I had were our frisbee skirts. What i learned from this event was that if i put on a bit of make up, change my hair and wear short skirts and halter tops i can attract quite a lot of attention. I have to say that most of it came from one friend though, and it got a bit uncomfortable :-P it was lovely to have friends compliment me on my stylings, but quite another thing to have random persons look at you. It was also a bit disheartening to know that I am noticed most when I change my appearance from my every day look, which I don't find so bad, to make up, skirts and revealing shirt. hmmm. makes you wonder doesn't it?

On Sunday I began studying... again. :-P and I have been since... Sunday was rather funny in that while I was there, the toilet paper in the restrooms was starting to dwindle. The library was running out of toilet paper. It was quite sick in the sense that there had been so many people in the library all weekend for that to happen. i have never seen that happen before in my four years here. :-)

well it is now early tuesday morning and I should either study or just go to bed. My last two finals are in the afternoon. But i must not end this post with out stating what a good day I had even though it was mostly studying... My conversatin with Melissa was amazingly good. I am happy to say that I have found out how much more we have in common and it also makes me quite happy that we can still talk about so many great things even though were are in different hemispheres and on opposite sides of the world. :-) I look forward to seeing her again soon, and hopefully it is as we have planned with backpacks in tow, running around Europe together. :-)

lastly, instead of studying like mad this evening...of which I wouldn't have been able to do because I was so bored with studying by dinner time... I took the time to just relax a little and watch a movie with Krista. I can't express how much I love Pride and Prejudice. It is such a wonderful story and definitely my favorite love story. I feel Romeo and Juliet have nothing on Elizabeth Bennett and Marc Darcy. :-)

Saturday, May 13, 2006

finals update: who the hell put finals on a saturday?!

well, i can't wait for tomorrow (actually today...saturday) to end. Who the hell puts finals on a saturday?! argh! I have two tomorrow plus a paper due. All I can say is that I will be happy to finish those. I have been in the library most of the day today since about 1 or 2 and now with about half an hour left of the library being open, i get restless...

I still have about two sections of my paper to type up, one of which hopefully will be small, but I'm almost to 8 pages already! gross! I have yet to study for my sociology final at 10:15 am, which should be interesting... I guess I just have a really laid back, not caring attitude about that class and so I'll probably review the article tonight, stress out, look at it again in the morning, along with reviewing some terms and such and just go take the stupid thing. I really don't even want to waste two hours on it. I could be studying for my psych exam and fixing up my paper instead. oh well. by 12:15 that class will be OFFICIALLY OVER! thank god! I probably could have done more last night but with the housemates getting a bit drunk, and getting phone calls from a drunk sister, and being woken up by a neighbor being locked out of his house... not much got done.

I am really hoping that my psych exam tomorrow will not be too horrible. I think I have most of it down.. whew. It's only about 50 points so it's hard to imagine what exactly will be on it.

Anyway it looks to be a long night still. once home I will glue myself to a chair to finish the paper and to study that stupid article. Oh I don't even want to show up for that soc exam! augh! Ok ok, i'm done bitching, but again...who the hell puts finals on a saturday..?!

Thursday, May 11, 2006

last day of classes

today was my last day of class at Luther.
I kind of wish it had been more exciting. I had my one class, Soc Research Methods.
Today just made me realize how much I really did not like this class. Overall it was kind of an anticlimatic day. Yesterday had more feeling. Anyway I went to class with a beer in me and some gin and soda in my hand. Class didn't go for long but after discussing the final i felt like wanting to hit our professor. Needless to say, i came home in the crappy weather and went to bed for a bit. It was SO windy today! So really... a "meh" kind of day. Not that i was hoping for a song and balloons or something, but having the one class made it ... eh... not that cool. Oh but it should be celebrated that I am done with my undergraduate education here at Luther college! w00t! Tonight you'd think I'd be out getting quite drunk but with a paper and two exams scheduled for Saturday...ummm... yeah I should get working on that. Granted I have all day tomorrow to do stuff... I'm also being good and getting up for work in the morning. I really should have said i wasn't going to be there, but I'm going...:-P Might as well get as much money as I can from this college.

A good thing though.. The presentation is done, and it went pretty well even though I was so scared I wasn't going to be able to explain anything very well. Joanna, my partner, told me that we got full points! YES! so I am pretty sure I can pass this class even if the test doesn't go that well and the paper.

it's all so crazy... life at Luther is ending soon... I'm excited to go home and be near people i haven't seen in awhile, and I think it will be so great to come down to visit sometime... that is all. Maybe I should start my studying now.

Sunday, May 07, 2006

quick weekend

so a quick one.
-there are medlers in my midst. people who keep suggesting i do certain things. I feel like I can't please them. They had a new idea for my future...future love life again today! it's weird, i don't know what to tell them. except to worry more about their future than mine. ANd I STILL maintain that I will NOT be the first to get engaged/married!

-the weekend was great. Some fun frisbee, great weather, great friends, great partying along with all of that! YAY! I played a beer point! what a crowning moment in my frisbee career! i can die happy now! (I even caught the frisbee one-handed while playing with the beer in hand!)

-the whole homework thing didn't really pan out for me. Nodding off while reading doesn't really work. It was a bit discouraging, but my senioritis tells me not to care.

-Amber is going to Adelaide again in June. I'm so happy for her, but SO jealous at the same time. Not fair! sigh... she gets to see everyone! That will be so much fun and I wish i could go with her, but probably won't be able to. But to look on the bright side of things, I might be going to NY to see Blair, that is more feasible for me than Australia again. i miss Australia friends!

-class ends this coming thursday. I don't know what to do with myself! ekk! excited, but sad. i really enjoyed my psych classes this semester and I will miss those professors. It has been a good end to my college career. Senior week is what I look forward to now after finals are over. Then moving back home, zoe's wedding, hopefully NY, and finding a job. Oh and I get to play ultimate in a league this summer too! SO pumped!

well life must go on.

Monday, May 01, 2006

could the rain please stop now?
well after a weekend full of rain and frisbee... i'm pooped. Oh regionals...
we played all day saturday in the rain, wind, and cold. What an experience. One of the frisbee girls was awesome enough to let us stay at her place, which we basically trashed, but no worries we did clean it up. But a group of 16 girls with wet, grassy clothes? that makes quite the mess. The weekend was good besides crappy weather. We played quite well but there were some upsets. Happily i got to see Will and he is always SO calm about frisbee so that made me feel ten times better, plus it was just nice to see him again.

well before the weekend, exciting things happened...like... turning in my senior paper. I almost can't believe it's done. It wasn't as crazy and stressful as I thought it was going to be, which is nice, but yeah, it's done. WOW. I turned it in Friday afternoon, after realizing I probably needed an abstract which I quickly typed up and then print, and off to the registrar to turn it in, sign the posterboard, and grab a sticker. Oh sweet day. After that? celebration! well first it was off to two more classes, but whatever. I took a drink right after I turned in the paper and kept on doing so the rest of the day. I was hitting the 5 o'clock by 11! Oh cheap vodka... One of my favorite memories from the day.. 4pm. I met up with Leah and Britta to hang out on the steps of Main to watch kids turn their papers in with in the last hour... nothing too exciting happened, but it was still pretty cool. We sat and drank and visited with friends who came and went. Watched some of the frisbee guys burn their rough drafts. That was exciting. i lent them some vodka to get the fire going. What was my favorite memory by far though was at 5 o'clock when the papers were due, out came the 5 o'clock Vodka and Leah, Britta and I all took shots on the steps of Main. That has got to be one funny memory.

And that is my life for now. Have a project due tomorrow that I'm finishing up tonight. Well basically doing all of it tonight, but it's alright, nothing else due tomorrow. Two weeks of class left, then it's reading day, finals for me on saturday and tuesday and then I'm done! I feel like this went by SO Fast! crazy crazy year! I am hoping that I will find a job, but that hasn't happened yet, have some resumes to turn in this week and hopefully I will hear something. But if not, the plans are to take a couple weeks off after graduation. Go to Zoe's wedding the weekend after graduation and then maybe out to see Blair! I hope these plans work out!!!! I miss Australia friends so much! It's almost been a year since I was there and it's kind of hard to believe. whew!

oh and Mel and Mike... I'll do my best with the England thing... I'm actually planning on talking to a professor about it and maybe the study abroad office to see what they have to say. i think it would be sooo cool. :-) much love