Freedom!

Yay! I am officially finished with my first year of graduate school! The end of the semester was absolute madness between trying to do all the reading and writing for a 20-page paper in less than a week's time, grading my kids' exams/figuring out their final grades, and other end of the year requirements. It the end of it all came on Sunday. It felt very strange to finish with all that on the same day. I was so hyped up from it all I keep having to convince myself that I am truly done and that I didn't forget anything. Its been several days since then and I still feel like I'm missing something.

The first three days of my vacation were spent in front of my computer watching Heroes seasons 1-3 via Netflix, cooking (which I've hardly done this semester), and doing a little reading for pleasure. I even did some painting for fun the other night! The idea of not having to do anything academic for three months is mind boggling and wonderful. Christmas break was nice and needed, but I knew I had stuff to work on during break. For this lovely summer I now have ahead of me, I feel weightless!

I am also excited because I leave for Turkey in a month! Yay! This also means I'll be home in less than a month to see my family! Double Yay! I can't wait!

Can't remember the house situation last time I posted. I think I said I offered on a house and was waiting to hear... Well... The company who owned the house started to be really inflexible/ bossy and started trying to jerk me around with extra costs -- not to mention I didn't get the Truth in Housing report until after I already put an offer in (my mistake), which showed a lot of really required and expensive repairs. I withdrew my offer and abandoned the house. I still really love the house and think it would be awesome once fixed up, but alas. It was somewhat satisfying too because I stuck it to the man in a small way. Now, they are still sitting on the house and have had to lower their price because no one else wants it. It would have been off their hand already if they would have been decent people.

I had all but given up for the summer when another cute one came on the market. I put an offer in, but they decided to go with another offer instead. I must have been outbid since I offered full price on that one. Again, alas. I've decided this is the universe's way of telling me I am not meant to own a house this summer. Hopefully I will find something in the fall so I can get in there and get settled before winter hits. Another downside to waiting is that Minneapolis is one of the few places in the USA where the housing market is supposedly bouncing back. Bad luck.

Let's see...what else... I finally heard about my article that was supposed to be published some time this year. I saw a semi-final version a week or so ago which allowed us to make any revisions. The final, in-print version should be out in a few months. Yay! If I get a PDF copy of it I will send it via email to whoever is interested. Its full of science and statistics, some of which I could barely comprehend at the time, so if you aren't interested in reading it you can at least look at my name on the title page! :)

I've also notified my professor that I had the artifact analysis class (the weaving tool project I have mentioned) with this semester that I wanted to see our project through to publication. Bad because this means I have more work to do, good because it will solidify my authorship position, which means I'll have at least two publications before I get my PhD --- which is pretty rare! I have a few things I'm doing with that tomorrow. We photographed a bunch of the artifacts for that last week and tomorrow I am photographing the modern equivalents for these. Its pretty neat.

I met with the prof for this class last week too and she gave me a lot of praise about what a great job I did on the project and what a great contribution to this field of study it will be. I was super pleased with this and a little shocked because she seemed to think most of what I did was crap earlier in the semester, haha! I definitely needed the support though, it was a good way to end things. I also had to meet with my adviser at the end of the year and he too thought I made great progress overall. Yay!

I've definitely learned a lot this year, about my field and myself. I wont go into inner reflection via the Internet, but I spent a good deal of time pondering what exactly I want out of life, how I will get it, and what kind of person I want to be in the end. It was disappointing to me to realize I lost so much of my positive self this year (it felt like I was eating lemons/limes without salt or tequila), but I've figured out how to make and enjoy lemonade instead of attending lonely pity parties and I feel quite relieved as a result.

In close to this week's ramblings, I hope everyone has a safe and happy Memorial Day! I'm going to the zoo finally so I know I will enjoy mine!