Tuesday, April 27, 2010

My baby had surgery yesterday

So Mere Bear had surgery yesterday. I had originally made an appointment with the SPCA Saving Lives Clinic for May 20th, but then I realized that I would in fact no be here on the 20th and we had to bump up her appointment. I was glad that someone cancelled their appointment so that I could get her in there (I dont want to deal with puppies!). She had to stay there ALL day long and then she was finally able to come home around 5 yesterday. Katy had to pick her up as I was tutoring at the time and when I got home, the poor girl was refusing to move from in front of the door! She looked so scared and pathetic with her cone on around her head. I finally coaxed her to come into the living room but she refused to lay down or anything. They did send her home with some medicine so I coaxed her to take that with some food and she seemed to perk up a little bit.
It has been trial and error since then as I have never taken care of a sick dog before. She's mostly been laying around, which is good but very sad to see when you are used to seeing her run around like crazy. She does refuse to go to the bathroom with the cone on, so I have to take it off when she goes outside to potty. I thought that maybe I could just leave the cone off but she wants to bathe herself and her energy has somewhat returned when she doesn't have this huge foreign object floating around her head, so the cone stays on except when she goes outside or she is eating.

Poor baby :(





Sunday, April 25, 2010

The Battle of the Thesis

So over the past week, I have been severely battling my thesis. I was struggling to get my full draft written (it had to be 25 pages) and I had set a deadline of Friday at 11:00 I wanted to turn it in. I ended up having my full draft done a day early and turned it in on Thursday. Score: Hilary-1, Thesis-0. Later that day, I was smugly re-reading my thesis and thinking about how awesome it was, much to my horror I realized that one of my sections had been inadvertently left incomplete! Score: Hilary-1, Thesis-1. I was still able to get that section written and turned in by the original deadline, which was good. After turning in the full thesis, I get a not-so-pleasant email from my thesis advisor basically telling me my thesis was a piece of crap, had no original thought in it, and the like. Score: Hilary-1, Thesis-2. I cleared my schedule for the weekend and set out to re-write it. I managed to hit all of my thesis advisor's points and give her 14 re-written pages on Saturday. I hadn't received notes on about 10 pages of it, so I didn't want to touch those and felt pretty good about myself. Score: Hilary-2, Thesis-2. I got an email back from my thesis advisor today and her comments were more manageable and less "your paper sucks" and I think I may be able to actually finish this thing and come out in the end with a pretty huge accomplishment under my belt. Score: Hilary-3, Thesis-2. Hopefully things wont take a turn for the worse, because I am liking being in the lead right now!

Monday, April 19, 2010

A pared down list....

So this weekend has been quite productive weekend. I worked on Friday night, afternoon, and Sunday morning. I did homework on Friday afternoon and night, Saturday morning and nights, and Sunday afternoon and night. My list has gone from a huge, daunting, nebulous thing to:
* a 5-7 page myth paper on Pandora
* a 5-7 page paper on population (in conjunction with another girl)
* a 5-7 page paper for Modern Drama (I'm thinking on How I Learned to Drive and maybe one other?)
* a 5-7 page paper for Core (group has already done the research, I just have to finish it
* Reading The House of the Spirits (I am about 1/4 of the way through)
* The rest of my thesis (I have about 20 pages/25)
* 2 finals (bio 105 and bio 205).

That is all that is left of my undergrad career! While all of those 5-7 page papers look daunting, never fear because I am an English major and writing papers is my specialty! I have two weeks to produce 25 pages, on 5 different categories... I CAN DO IT! I think I will actually enjoy writing the modern drama one, and maybe even the Pandora one if I can ever get into it. I am just having a hard time actually getting into it because it is very overwhelming at the moment. I will not enjoy completing my thesis. If I were in a comic right now, it would be my arch enemy.

Well, off to knock some of that Pandora paper out!

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Stuff Checked off, Stuff still to do

MAT test- check
Grad School App- check
Out of Africa Presentation- check
Thesis Draft- check

Even with some of this stuff checked off my list, it seems that my list keeps on growing! There is still so much to do and so little time to finish it all before graduation. It is my goal this weekend to try to get basically ALL of my work for the REST of the semester done (minus my thesis) so I have the next two weeks to focus on my thesis. I want to be ready to fully graduate AS a TEACHING FELLOW and on to bigger and better things. Namely, I want to move onto grad school. While no, I am not looking forward to still MORE school, I am excited for the opportunity that this additional schooling will provide me. I am very excited about the prospect of having a different schooling experience. I am very excited about working with students again. I am very excited about doing something for me and making my first, real BIG GIRL decision all on my own.

I am NOT excited about leaving Meredith. It has become my home and I have started to really realize how much I will sincerely miss this place come May 9th, 2010. These next two weeks will surely go by faster than I can possibly imagine because there is so much stuff still to do! Not even in just the homework aspect, but more in all of the different events that are still yet to come.

I think Katy and I finally got our apartment subleased for the summer so that is such a blessing and yet another thing that I can put a big old CHECK beside.

I should go and continue to work on this mountain of homework before it overtakes me!

Friday, April 9, 2010

One Month!

It is hard to believe that in literally in one month I will be graduating from college. Scary to think of the prospect! Here is a glimpse of what is going on in the next month:

Due before graduation:
* Out of Africa presentation
* Myth paper (larger)
* Read 3 more plays and 2 more books
* Write 2 reflections
* 1 overdue paper
* Reproductive health paper/presentation/project
* 1 mini bio presentation
* 1 large bio presentation and paper
* 1 larger drama play
* finish thesis/revise thesis/present thesis
* 2 finals
* plus other daily things that pop up!

Events before graduation:
* spring formal (tonight)
* Katy's bridal shower (tomorrow)
* Meredith's spaying (tomorrow)
* picture session (sunday)
* take MAT for my MAT program (tuesday)
* finish applying for grad school (by thursday)
* Class meeting
* STUNT (15th)
* Celebrating Student Achievemnt Day (22nd)
* Grandparent's Luncheon (23rd)
* Scholarship Dinner (23rd)
* English Majors' Brunch (29th)
* 10th Night (29th)
* Wicked (May 2nd)
* TF senior dinner (6th)
* Class Day (8th)
* Baccalaureate (8th)
* Graduation (9th)

Fun huh?

Thursday, April 1, 2010

It has been awhile...

So I know that it has been awhile since I have posted. There has been a LOT going on and I have had no time! Last weekend all that work was scraped because I found out at the last minute that I had to apply to a program that I didn't even want to attend in order to keep my Teaching Fellows. Whether or not I get in doesn't even matter, its the fact that I applied. Long story.

This week I have had so much homework to do and things to get done before Easter. This week was like what the week before Spring Break usually is, and wasn't, this year. I thought I was getting off easy when I had no midterms or major things due around that time, little did I know that I was going to get kicked in the butt come the week before Easter. Just to give you a little glimpse, for Monday I had to read about a third of the Divine Comedy, not an easy task. I mean, have you SEEN the Divine Comedy? It's no short book by any means and I was reading the hardest part! I also had a bio presentation to do as well as a play to read and a reflection to write. For Wednesday I had a paper to do and two tests to study for. I worked literally all weekend and had no time to just sit and do homework so I was really scrambling on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday nights.

This weekend will be full of lots of fun things... not. I have a full draft of my thesis (which has to be at a minimum 25 pages, but more like 40 seeing as I have to have 40 cited sources... come on!) and I currently have a very crappy 6 page draft that is hardly worth the paper to print it on. So that will be my fun filled weekend.

Seeing as I have become very sleep deprived over the last few days, I have now started to drink coffee, and lots of it. I used to NEVER drink coffee and I feel like I need an IV hooked up to me now... yay for becoming just one step closer to becoming an adult.

Let's see... what else? OH! A recent wrench has been put in my working for the summer plan, but we wont go into details about that. So now there is yet another thing for me to have to figure out. Sweet. My recent debate with myself is whether or not I should go to grad school at UNCW or ECU for my MAT (Masters in the Art of Teaching) degree. I like UNCW's program and the idea of living in Wilmington is VERY appealing, but I dont know all that many people there. Also, if I went to UNCW, I would have to wait till Spring 2011 to start classes. I dont really want to wait. ECU on the other hand has a very competitive program from the looks of it, I know more people in the area, and I can start in the fall. Decisions, Decisions...