I'm a jetsetter

Whew. Done.

Well, mostly... I just have a few revisions to make, but anticipate turning in my final paper early next week. I'm going to try to work on it tomorrow when the feedback is still "fresh" in my mind. The whole defending process was much easier than I anticipated. My committee spent more time convincing me to go on and do the Ph.D program than on my current research. Hmm, Ph.D, now that's a crazy concept, right? I haven't even been done a day and I'm actually toying with the idea. I swear this is how it always works. I'm totally content with one idea, then another one gets brought up and I need to inquire about it. I was totally content just getting my Masters, until today, when now I'm wondering if I could continue on. Part of me thinks its absolutely crazy and part of me thinks I could totally do it. Why do I love a challenge so much? Why can't I just be content and call it a day?

Perhaps if I had a job to return to Monday morning, I might be less inclined to continue my education. Maybe I will just work on getting my research published and see how that goes.

In other news... I just booked a flight to NYC to visit my sister! I'm excited to spend one week in New York over my birthday to see my sister and visit some friends. Its also weird that I'm going solo... Adam will be staying home as we don't want to turn it into a "vacation" per se, but just a small trip. I was able to score a pretty cheap flight, so that makes me pretty happy. Just another thing to look forward to and its already 2 weeks away! I've only been to NYC once and it was right before I started dating Adam. I was 20 on a family vacation with my sister and parents, not really the best way to see the city, so I'm looking forward to getting a personal tour from my sister this time. The next three weeks are going to be busy: Vegas this weekend, camping next weekend and then New York.

I think I prefer counting down to travel instead of papers for once!

D-Day

Capstone Defending Day.

In a couple of hours, I will defend my paper. I really don't know what it entails, but I know it will only be 60 minutes. I've opted not to do a presentation and will instead have an open discussion with 3 very established faculty members... No pressure there.

Almost done. 2 years of hard work will all come to an end in 3 hours. Its hard to believe I'm officially almost done.

Saturation point.

I'm finishing up some research for my final paper (2 days to go!) and had been thinking that there's no way I will get to a point where I think I've found everything. Except, I think I just reached that point. I was reading an article and realized all the sources it was citing, I had already read. So here I am nodding along to the article when I realize that I might actually be getting to the end, and have a good grasp on the concepts. Hopefully this will lead to a day of prosperous writing.

Its an odd, but good, feeling thinking these are the last few days ever that I have to do this. Since my classes have been over, I have been relaxed, but I still knew this time was coming that I would have to write this paper. I know I will probably have to make some revisions to my paper, but I anticipate that to be a fairly easy process. I've been looking forward to this time for so long that it seems unnerving that I'm almost there. It has been so stressful the last two years, that I keep thinking in a week, it will all be over.

Is something missing?

I took the last final of my graduate school career last night. Whew, very glad to be done with that! It feels weird right now knowing that I don't have anything to do tonight. I will hopefully meet up with my college roommate who is in town, but I get to relax and be social. Of course I'm excited for that, but at the same time, I'm waiting for it to end. Like its spring break all over again and I only get a week off before I have to go to back to classes. Last year at this time I was putting the finishing touches on my wedding planning so I was so excited to be done with school so I could focus on the wedding. Now, I don't have anything to jump into immediately besides marathon training and my final paper which is due one month after Mother's Day. Maybe that's the other part about what I'm feeling. I'm done with classes, but not officially done with "homework" yet. I know that if it came down to it, I could write my paper in a week, but I don't want to stress myself out with it. I just want it to be as calm of a process as I can make it.

Adam just kept saying "I'm glad to have my Heather back". Hmm, did I change that much while I was in school?!

I see the light.

Checking it off my list...

Case study- printed and put into a cover. Check!
Essays- printed to bring to class. Check!
Final- I will take it in 2 hours. I have 40 terms that I know, okay so roughly 30 that I actually know. And I need to be able to identify 8 of the 10 she gives me. I think the odds are in my favor, but with my luck it will all 10 of the ones I'm iffy on. Even so, once I finish those 8 terms, I will be done with everything for this semester. I still have to turn my paper in on Thursday, but that's the easy part.

I could just be suffering from over confidence, but I feel pretty good about the work that I've done this semester, so hopefully my grades will reflect that. I've certainly worked harder this semester than I have in a great while. It's been challenging and its been hard, but I am glad that I did it and that I know what I am capable of doing. That said, I hope I never have to challenge myself this much again, and if I am, I hope its concentrated on one area. I can throw myself into work or I can throw myself into school, but juggling both is not easy.

Right now, I'm just getting really excited to relax a little and hang out with some of my classmates and family this weekend. It's weird to think about all the time I've spent with some of these people over the last 2 years and that suddenly it will be over. Granted, the people that I do want to see, I know I will still see, just not twice a week with the occasional weekend study group. At least we can see each other socially. I think there is a reason graduations are held in the spring. It feels like a new beginning, its finally comfortable to be outside and it seems like everyone gets more social and are happier. Moods are so reflective of the weather and everyone is happy in the Spring. I, myself, am ecstatic.

No, I haven't seen...

Why are women the keeper of all things? As I child, I vividly recall asking my mom if she had seen (fill in the blank item), and she always had. Very rarely would she not know where something was. I have come to realize, Adam is doing this to me. No Adam, I have not seen your headphones. Yes, they could have gotten washed with your clothes as I didn't check your pockets, but I have not seen them. In between writing an 18 page paper, 7 pages of essays and studying for a final, I didn't take your headphones. Of course something is lost after the house was cleaned yesterday.

SO close to being done. This evokes just a small amount of excitement that I'm feeling right now...


I need to re-read my case study before I turn it in just to make sure it is grammatically sound and checks out ok, format my references and add my appendix. But those are all pretty easy things and I can probably get them done tomorrow. Whew. What a feeling.

Of course, I still have my final- final paper due June 10th (with the defending June 17th), but since that is the only thing I will have to work on outside of work for the next month, I think I can do it. Its hard to divide attention between two classes and several work projects and keep them all straight. Last week I went to a meeting thinking it was for Oxygen when in fact it was for Bravo, oops.

4 More Days!

This is my week.
Tuesday- Final
Thursday- Turn in paper
Friday- GRADUATION!

While the whole graduation part is sort of bait and switch seeing as I still have to write my final paper for the program (due June 10th), it does signify the end of having to attend actual classes. It means that Tuesday and Thursday nights are now MINE! I can do whatever I want with them. While the wise choice for the next month will be to use them for researching/writing-- I don't have to. But I'm going to try to keep at least two week days set aside for homework so I can keep my momentum going and work toward getting my paper done with the least amount of stress possible. While it has sucked to spend the last two weekends only doing homework, it has made me not feel as stressed/crazy which let's face it, is a good thing for everyone involved.

The one thing I have been slacking off on- running. I signed up for the Marathon the other week and haven't actually run since. I'm justifying this with a fact that I read in Health magazine- if your choice is sleeping or working out. Choose sleep as working out with less than 6 hours of sleep isn't a wise choice. I am "officially" starting training next week, but I need to make sure I get a couple of good runs in this week so I can build my endurance back up, otherwise next weeks workouts are going to be mighty tough and not fun. I'm not going to think too much about this now and just enjoy may last week as a student.

Just waiting for coffee to kick in.

I'm not intentionally procrastinating this time. I'm just waiting for my coffee to kick in and take effect.

I went to my weight watchers meeting this morning. I'm was hoping I could loose 3 pounds this week (mostly because my scale indicated I was) but at my meeting I was only down 1.4 pounds. I'm not complaining at the loss, just noting that each week I can think I'm doing one thing, but it doesn't translate to the "official" scale. I'm still happy with where I'm at and how far I've come. I'm 4 pounds away from my goal weight, so that's really exciting. I really wanted to make goal next week, but it looks like I will be at least another 2 weeks before it happens. So far, I'm down 16 pounds and have lost 11% of my starting weight. I've also started to notice how much my clothes don't really fit anymore, which of course leads to shopping. I'm really trying hard to refrain from that as hardly anything is on sale and I refuse to pay full price for most things. But, I have continued to just go into stores to try a bunch of stuff on, and then not buy anything. It's sort of fun, except I feel like I'm running out of places to go or things to try on when I go on lunch. I like to try things on that I might actually buy, but since prices are much more than I want to pay, it's taking some of the fun out.

I think the coffee is starting to kick in as I just had an epiphany about my paper and why it has been so hard for me. I'm doing a case study, but I already knew the outcome of it before I started. So, I've been writing about trying to find results and trying to hypothesize about them when I already knew them! Basically, I need to think about my data in a different way so I can make the conclusions that I need to. This probably only makes sense to me, but is probably the most helpful thing I have thought of all week.

Procrastination

Yeah- I should be finishing my case study paper, but I'm just getting tired and bored with the idea, that I'm probably just going to go to sleep after very little progress. I've thought about it a lot, but have also managed to distract myself with the internet for way too much time. I wanted to pick up a couple of things from the mall tonight, so I convinced Adam that we should have dinner at Punch (his favorite place of all time) and then go to EP center. When we got home, I wanted to try on all of the things that I bought and pick out something to wear for graduation next week. Hmm, wouldn't my time have been better spent working on my homework that needs to get done so I can graduate?

I have 11 pages written so far and I think I still have a fair amount to say, but I have to be under 20 pages, so I may end up having to edit more than write. Either way my plan of finishing my paper tonight so I can work on my take home essays tomorrow is thrown off. I still have Sunday to study and do essays for my final on Tuesday, so that will work (I hope). Just knowing that I do have time makes me want to take the time. But I can't keep working like that. It only serves to stress me out. I also have a finite amount of time to work tomorrow too as I'm going out to celebrate a good friend's birthday's. Thus, I have now talked myself into going to bed now, so I can get up early and get started on my paper first thing tomorrow. After all, I need to be well rested in order to be able to focus tomorrow.

Ahh, procrastination strikes again.

I will finish my case study tomorrow

2 weeks to go!

I've been insanely busy the last couple of weeks. My uncle Terry passed away after the Twins home opener on April 6th. He was a huge twins fan, so I was only fitting that he would want to wait until after the game was over. My family was looking to me to help out with a lot of things for the service, which I was happy to help with everything. But, with school and work, it took a toll on me and my time. Last week, I was beyond busy at work, but it also reminded me why I like advertising. I really like the rush of finishing a project and seeing all the pieces come together. Of course, in this economy, and layoffs abounding in advertising, I'm more than thankful to have a job and a job that I really like. About 18 people were laid off from my company this week, ugh. It's never fun to see your friends and co-workers go.

Last weekend I road tripped with 2 friends to Tecumseh, Michigan. We stayed with my friend Katie's family and got to see all the wonderful sites of Tecumseh, Saline and Ann Arbor. Driving through Chicago on the way there and back just made me want to go to Chicago. I don't know what it is, but I am just drawn to that city. I am hoping that I can make it to NYC and Chicago this summer. I have a trip planned to go to Vegas in June to celebrate my graduation and our one year anniversary. It just feels like so many things are going on I can't even keep track anymore.

The best news is in 2 weeks, I will be walking across the stage of Northrup Auditorium for the 3rd time. My high school graduation was also held at the U of M, so the only place I have ever donned a cap, gown and tassel has been Northrup. Of course, I still have to finish my major paper to "officially" graduate, but I will be done with classes in 2 weeks! Quite exciting!!

I really don't know where the month of April went, it really flew by. I'm hoping that once graduation is over I can keep myself motivated to get my paper done quickly. I have a feeling I'm going to utilize my free time with a whole lot of sitting and not thinking... actually... I'm going to be spending a lot of time running since I signed up to run the Twin Cities Marathon in October! 3 years ago, I ran my first 5K the weekend of the Marathon (they have a lot of shorter, family friendly races the day before the marathon and then a 10 Mile race at the same time as the marathon). At the time I thought, wouldn't it be cool to run, but I never really thought I would commit to it. This is a complete test of my endurance and ability. At the end of the day, I want to say I ran a marathon-- or at least tried. If I don't finish, I don't finish... but I'm going to do as best as I can. I also signed up for the Urban Wildland 1/2 marathon in my hometown of Richfield, so that should be fun and hopefully give me a good idea of how the marathon will go. If nothing else, I should end up being in the best shape of my life.

Holding Pattern.

There's nothing worse than just waiting for a call... the call. The hospice my Uncle is living at told us this week, that the end for him is near, they estimate he will pass by the end of the week. It's hard to continue with the rest of the week and wonder, when? We did a prayer service for him on Tuesday. It was so nice to be surrounded by family and all get a chance to be with him and begin our goodbyes. I find that I am reaching out to call my mom more just to see if anything has changed and what the latest status is. This also feels counter productive as I know she will call as soon as she has news. Its just an emotionally draining time.

Too add to that, its been a week of midterms. I had a presentation on Tuesday and a midterm tonight. Hopefully I will remember all the content that I need to.. it's hard to work all day and then switch gears for a test without any transition time in between.

36 days left till graduation. That honestly can't come faster. Once I'm done with the test tonight, I have a big paper to do and one final left, both happening the first week in May. It seems manageable but also means I need to maintain motivated to work on my paper throughout the next month and not rush at the end. But that's the story of my life.

My head is all over the place today, I can't focus on this anymore...

Rule of 3.

I can handle 3 things at once: School, Work, Me. Work, me, Adam. Adam, school, work. It seems to be either I take care of myself, or I spend time with Adam. I can't seem to figure out how to do all four. Since I only have a month and a half to deal with it, I'm not overly worried about figuring it out. But at the same time, now that I have re-discovered how important it is for me to take care of myself, I don't want to give it up, not even for 50 days. Sadly, looks like Adam ends up on the side of least attention. Case in point: this morning I got to work early to use the company gym. I knew Adam would be relying one me to make sure he got up, but at the same time, what can I really do when I'm not there. I called him around 8:30 to make sure he was in fact awake and out the door. He told me he got up late and that I shouldn't be responsible to wake him up. Breakthrough!

Of course, then he joked that it was in fact my responsibility to help him wake up... so close, so close.

I'm also extremely happy that I got out of bed and worked out this AM because my day, week and potential weekend might have just gotten a whole lot busier!! I love that I never know what I'm going to be working on at work, but I also had no idea Fall planning was getting kicked into high gear today. A little warning is nice.

Hump Day.

This is one time when I do not want the week to fly by in anticipation of the weekend. I sort of just want to keep having Wednesdays. Not have I have tons of homework to finish, but I have enough and I pretty much only have tomorrow to finish it. This week is just flying by and I don't want it to. I want to continue spring break forever. I know I'm less than two months away from graduation, but still, it's just nice to have the time off. We also have a very busy weekend ahead of us. We have to go to a wedding, 45 minutes away- at 2:30 on Saturday. So, that means leaving by 1 to guarantee that we get there on time, etc. Then we have a couple hours before the dinner, which is fine, but I'm not really sure what to do, I guess this is when people go to the bar. Since dinner is at 6, I'm not sure how late the evening will go. Either way, most of Saturday is non-existent for homework time. And then we have Adam's Grandma's birthday at 2:00 on Sunday, and I'm going to a study group on Sunday evening. So my homework time is pretty much just limited to the weekend mornings. Awesome. I have to finish a paper (what I'm trying to work on now, obviously, I'm doing a great job with that) and I have to finish a book for class and do my study guide before I meet my study group. Yikes. Of course I'm also trying to work out regularly, so that's an extra element of things to plan into my schedule. I'm getting to the point that I might try to get up at 5/5:30 am on Friday so I can go for a run (trying to work up to running for an hour) and then be downtown by 8am so I can hit up likemind before work and then be to work by 9am. I think in this scenario I need a nap by 11am. I know I have an issue of over planning. I'm not sure what I can do about it. Homework, work, and workouts are hard to balance and I'm not sure how I'm going to keep doing it all, but of course, I'm going to try.

So this is what its like.

Spring Break, the time in a student's life when you get a taste for what life is like without classes. It's just a taste for what things will be like soon, but not now. Part of me loves it, part of me hates it. Love because I actually get to be spontaneous and have a life. Hate because I'm still thinking about school, but not actually doing it. My weekend is pretty full with celebratory events (friend's wedding, Grandma birthday party), so that means I actually need to do some homework this week since I don't have much time over the weekend to do it. I was going to be lame and just go home after work to get things done, but instead I met up with a friend and ended up in the Minneapolis St. Patrick's day parade. The parade itself is pretty uneventful. I was actually surprised at the amount of people who were there watching. We ended up going out of sushi after. It was so incredibly nice to just get to hang out with a friend and not feel rushed or distracted with thoughts of school. In the back of my mind, I knew I should probably be finishing a paper, but it was such a little worry, I barely acknowledged it. I just couldn't get over the fact that in 51 days, I will be able to do whatever I want whenever I want. Yes, I will still have to set aside some time to write my final paper for the program, but I won't be mandated to Tuesdays and Thursdays. I can choose any days I want! So exciting! As I get into retrospective mode, it makes me realize how hard these last two years have been. At first, it was manageable, but the second year is much more frustrating as we're so close to being done, yet, still have a lot to do. Because of this, spring break feels like a cruel trick. "You're almost done, so we'll taunt you with a week off". But at the same time, the week off is almost a necessity to re-charge and get the last surge of energy needed to get through the semester. The semester would be awful without the time off, so it's completely necessary, I just don't appreciate the mind games it plays on me.

--
Countdown
Graduation: 51 Days
Thesis: 91 Days

Times are changing

It has been a rough month. School has hit its stride and demanding a lot of my time and attention. The last month my mind has been racing evaluating school assignments and thinking about my career. With grad school nearing an end (6 months!) I've been thinking about what my thesis should be (still undecided, but getting closer to a topic) and what I want to do in general. After what feels like a month of stress, I have decided to quit my job at Carmichael and go to a different agency in Minneapolis. My job will remain relatively similar, but I will get the chance to work with some new people on an account that really interests me and also aligns with some things I've been studying in school (go figure). This has been one of the hardest decisions I've made in a long time. Marriage; easy, job change; agonizing. I have a lot of friends at work now, and I think that made it all the more difficult. But ultimately, I needed to think about what was right for me and not what was right for me and my friends. I am only moving down the street, so ideally I will still see them around town. But, let's face it, everything is easier said than done.

Okay, I've been working on a paper for the last 12 hours and I'm still not done, so off to finish and hopefully also get some sleep... Sleep is overrated anyway.

If someone would have said...

"Don't waste your time going to grad school, you'll be miserable for two years"

I wouldn't have listened. I would have said, nah, I can do it. It can't be that bad, right?

It's really not the worst thing ever, I'm just starting to get really sick of being busy all the time, or at least thinking about all the things I should be doing when I'm trying to relax. I swear that I don't really get the chance to relax much because when I try, I feel guilty I'm not doing something else and subsequently get stressed out. And then I blog.

Hearing from others in the grad program that I'm in, it sounds like we're all sort of going through the same thing. We want to be done. I had a friend in the program last year, I thought he was just whiny about it all, now I just realize that it's the second year of the program. The first year was bearable, it's new people you have a tolerance for and the 'fun' of being back in school allows you to ride that feeling out for most of the year. Now, the countdown begins. Last year I was counting down to my wedding, this year it is graduation. Friday May, 8th 1pm (213 days). I am defending my thesis on June 17th at 11:30am (253 days). These are the dates that I am counting down to. These dates symbolize when I get my life back. Or at least when my head will be less mush (unless all of my celebratory drinking has some lasting effects). I hate the fact that I want the next 9 months to just fly by, because I sort of feel like I am just wasting my life away waiting for the unpleasant things to go by and failing to enjoy everything else that is going on around me. Yes, this is my fault for jam packing so many things into so few years, but I do it knowing life will be more enjoyable when I am done. Going to school now means I will never have to deal with kids and school and work. I know that when I finish school that Adam and I will be able to have a couple years to just relax and do the things that we want to do. I know he is affected by school as much as I am because me being busy means that I also don't get to see him 3+ nights a week.

I do know that if I didn't got back to school now, I would think about it and would eventually go back. I think that's just who I am. I push myself to do things until I can't push any further. Often times I get too stressed out to deal with it, but I like juggling things and get bored easily. I'm already planning what to do with my free time this summer... I will actually be able to focus and train for a long race. I was on course to run Grandma's 1/2 marathon spring 07 but hurt my knee and knew that I wouldn't be able to continue "long" runs in order to properly train. So, summer '09 will just have to wait for my 1/2 marathon debut. Richfield Urban Wildland, I'm looking at you.