Well, I have my MA now, and that means it's time to move on to my new identity.
The new blog is all spruced up and ready for business with three whole entries waiting for you at:
http://psychelogical.blogspot.com
Hope you all move with me and start reading over there!
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Saturday, May 12, 2007
I Did It!
Today was my graduation day! [I had a friend in high school who spent the entire week prior to the big day referring to it as "gradu-madu-ficuation" and now every single time I think of the word "graduation" I think of his dumb word. It kind of drives me crazy, but I cannot get my brain to stop making that association no matter what I do.]
I'm glad I decided to walk and attend the ceremony even though my family couldn't be here to see me do it. I'm glad I did it for myself and to be with my other friends who were graduating. Being at the ceremony helped me to acknowledge that it IS a big deal to get your masters degree. This whole graduation has been feeling sort of like just one more step to me, one of the many things I have to do on the path to the Ph.D. As a result of the fact that half of my mind is already on the east coast and I'm already feeling so focused on the work I'm going to have to do in the future, I keep sort of forgetting that becoming an MA is a big deal in and of itself. Not a whole lof of people in the world get a masters degree, and of course I'm scared that I never will get the Ph.D., and if that's the case this degree will become even more important to me than it already is. So I needed the chance to slow down for a second and go, "Wow, I did two years of work to earn this", and today helped me to do that.
I'm also glad that I went to the ceremony because they recognized several of my achievements. I think when I graduated at TCU they just had everyone that was graduating with honors stand up and be recognized, but I don't think you weren't recognized individually other than having some sort of mark by your name in the program. Well, they do it differently here and they announce "summa cum laude, magna cum laude", etc. after the name of every undergrad earning honors. They also announce the recipients of the most prestigious school-wide scholarships. So when I picked up my name/number card this morning, my name had this LIST after it. The guy next to me in line was like, "Wow, are you going to read something?" and I laughed and said, "I'm not, but I guess somebody is!" And sure enough, when it was my turn to get my hood and walk across the stage to get my diploma, they said my name and then followed it up with, "Ms. D is an X Classic Scholar, an X Foundation Scholar, and the recipient of the 2007 award for Outstanding Graduate Student in the Department of Fine Arts." It was quite the little spiel. The dean hooded me, I got my diploma from the president, I walked across the stage and shook hands with everyone on the other side, and they were STILL rambling on about me. I'm proud of myself, sure, but I was also thinking to myself, "Oh my lord, how pretentious do I sound right now?" Especially when absolutely nobody else had more than two item mentioned after his/her name. Nobody else had a freakin' list. You'd think that SOMEBODY would be as big a nerd as me but no, apparently not. Apparently I win.
The most fun thing about graduation was that I got a front row seat since they graduate all the masters students first and my name is at the beginning of the alphabet. I was the seventh person to graduate today, which was nice because everyone was still really excited then and no one was bored yet. (The thing is, they got through this graduation ceremony extremely quickly. I remember my last graduation just drug on and on and on and by the end I was overheated and had a terrible headache and couldn't wait to get out of there. This morning, right about the time I thought to myself, "Okay, this is boring", it was over! Sweet.) The other benefit of the front row was that I got to critique everyone's shoes as they walked across the stage. The guy next to me was taking bets on whether or not each girl would fall in her heels. And I have to say, there are some really terrible shoes out there right now. When did Lucite become an acceptable material for Saturday morning shoes? Because I don't care what Marie Claire is telling me, Lucite still screams "stripper stacks" to me and always will.
So yes. It was a big day for me. I'm a master! Now it's onward and upward to the Ph.D.!
I'm glad I decided to walk and attend the ceremony even though my family couldn't be here to see me do it. I'm glad I did it for myself and to be with my other friends who were graduating. Being at the ceremony helped me to acknowledge that it IS a big deal to get your masters degree. This whole graduation has been feeling sort of like just one more step to me, one of the many things I have to do on the path to the Ph.D. As a result of the fact that half of my mind is already on the east coast and I'm already feeling so focused on the work I'm going to have to do in the future, I keep sort of forgetting that becoming an MA is a big deal in and of itself. Not a whole lof of people in the world get a masters degree, and of course I'm scared that I never will get the Ph.D., and if that's the case this degree will become even more important to me than it already is. So I needed the chance to slow down for a second and go, "Wow, I did two years of work to earn this", and today helped me to do that.
I'm also glad that I went to the ceremony because they recognized several of my achievements. I think when I graduated at TCU they just had everyone that was graduating with honors stand up and be recognized, but I don't think you weren't recognized individually other than having some sort of mark by your name in the program. Well, they do it differently here and they announce "summa cum laude, magna cum laude", etc. after the name of every undergrad earning honors. They also announce the recipients of the most prestigious school-wide scholarships. So when I picked up my name/number card this morning, my name had this LIST after it. The guy next to me in line was like, "Wow, are you going to read something?" and I laughed and said, "I'm not, but I guess somebody is!" And sure enough, when it was my turn to get my hood and walk across the stage to get my diploma, they said my name and then followed it up with, "Ms. D is an X Classic Scholar, an X Foundation Scholar, and the recipient of the 2007 award for Outstanding Graduate Student in the Department of Fine Arts." It was quite the little spiel. The dean hooded me, I got my diploma from the president, I walked across the stage and shook hands with everyone on the other side, and they were STILL rambling on about me. I'm proud of myself, sure, but I was also thinking to myself, "Oh my lord, how pretentious do I sound right now?" Especially when absolutely nobody else had more than two item mentioned after his/her name. Nobody else had a freakin' list. You'd think that SOMEBODY would be as big a nerd as me but no, apparently not. Apparently I win.
The most fun thing about graduation was that I got a front row seat since they graduate all the masters students first and my name is at the beginning of the alphabet. I was the seventh person to graduate today, which was nice because everyone was still really excited then and no one was bored yet. (The thing is, they got through this graduation ceremony extremely quickly. I remember my last graduation just drug on and on and on and by the end I was overheated and had a terrible headache and couldn't wait to get out of there. This morning, right about the time I thought to myself, "Okay, this is boring", it was over! Sweet.) The other benefit of the front row was that I got to critique everyone's shoes as they walked across the stage. The guy next to me was taking bets on whether or not each girl would fall in her heels. And I have to say, there are some really terrible shoes out there right now. When did Lucite become an acceptable material for Saturday morning shoes? Because I don't care what Marie Claire is telling me, Lucite still screams "stripper stacks" to me and always will.
So yes. It was a big day for me. I'm a master! Now it's onward and upward to the Ph.D.!
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
The Final Countdown
I'm graduating in three days! And I found out today that I got my 4.0! Like I said, nobody will really ever know that since I can't imagine it coming up much in casual conversation, ("So, what was YOUR GPA in your masters program? Oh, really? That's so interesting!") but it makes me feel proud.
Life has been fantastic lately, which is why I haven't posted in a whole week. I get pretty neglectful of the blog when I'm busy having fun. Thursday night was grad student dinner #1, where we invited some of our profs to have dinner and drinks with us at the local Irish pub. The other grad students gave little going away presents to the graduates. Kelly got a ponytail holder with our mascot on it, Amanda got earrings featuring our mascot (called "spirit ears", humorously enough) and I got a shot glass with the school name on the front and lines on the back labeled Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior, and Grad. Richie helpfully pointed out that there's not a line for Ph.D. and therefore I'll have to fill the shot glass to the very brim. Let's not think too much about what the fact that the other girls got accessories and I got a SHOT GLASS says about me. Hahaha.
On Friday Mandi, Richie, Debbie and I took off for the weekend and spent a couple of days in Galveston. It was basically the most perfect weekend ever. I laughed from the car ride on Friday afternoon (where I literally cried with laughter--real tears, running down my face!) until 9:30 on Sunday night when we were fifteen miles from home playing MASH in the car and I determined that Debbbie's future pet is going to be a hammerhead shark. I think Galveston is more than worthy of its own entry, so as soon as I get a good stretch of free time I'll tell you all about it, although frankly I think only about 1/10th of the fun of the weekend is actually going to come across in writing.
Last night we had grad student dinner #2, where we all went up to Austin and had dinner at a nice Vietnamese/Indian restaurant and then we came back down here and hung out at John's house for a few hours. I had to say goodbye to the guys that live in Austin since I doubt I'll see them again before I move.
Tonight I'm going out for dinner and drinks with Debbie, Richie, and hopefully some of the rest of the group since Richie is leaving tomorrow to go home to Canada for the summer. I'm going to miss him so much. Luckily he and his fiancee are supposed to be in New York at the beginning of August for a concert, and since I'll (hopefully) have moved by then I'm hoping that I'll be able to make a trip to the city and see him then and meet his boyfriend for the first time.
I know I'm going to cross paths again with all of my grad school friends, hopefully many times. The world of academic theatre is pretty small. Still, I'm going to miss us all being in the same place. I'm going to miss it a lot.
There are still a few more fun things planned. Friday I think I'm going to throw some sort of graduation party/sleepover (since we graduate at 9:30 AM, ugh!), and tomorrow Chelsea, her boyfriend, and me and a few of my friends are supposed to go tubing on the river if it doesn't rain.
I'm technically supposed to work tomorrow, but I'm so fed up with Applebees right now that I'm going to call in sick and they can just deal with it since I've had to deal with way too much of their stupid mis-scheduling shit lately. I'm always having to fix their problems and I'm tired of it. I've never missed a shift in ten months and I'm a good employee so I am hoping that will work in my favor. And I figure if they want to fire me tomorrow it's really no big deal. I don't honestly think they will fire me since we're horribly understaffed right now and I know they really need me to work my shift on Sunday for Mother's Day. So I'm kind of gambling that they need me badly enough that they'll put up with me calling in sick tomorrow because they really need me for the weekend. But like I said, if they do decide to fire me it really makes no difference to me at all. They're just screwing themselves. I'm only supposed to be working until next Friday anyway, so I'd really only be missing out on four or five shifts at the very most. I don't need the money right now since I just got paid from my real job last week and I have another big paycheck coming June 1st, plus I'm about to go home and not have to pay rent or nearly as much for food/going out for a couple of months. And lord knows I don't need my dumbass managers to ever give me a good reference since I don't even list my Applebees job on my resume and I have enough good references elsewhere to get any restaurant or bar job I'll need in the future (P.S.-I really don't want to need another restaurant or bar job in the future...) So yeah. I'm not going to work tomorrow. I've never skipped out on a job before ever in my whole life, but I don't even feel all that guilty about doing it this time, that's how annoyed I am with the restaurant at this point. I guess I do feel sort of bad for the two waiters that will have to go it alone tomorrow morning, but I've had to do that plenty of times myself and they'll make more money that way anyway. So yeah.
Anyway, I need to go meet everyone for dinner. In short, I'm good. Excited. Happy.
Life has been fantastic lately, which is why I haven't posted in a whole week. I get pretty neglectful of the blog when I'm busy having fun. Thursday night was grad student dinner #1, where we invited some of our profs to have dinner and drinks with us at the local Irish pub. The other grad students gave little going away presents to the graduates. Kelly got a ponytail holder with our mascot on it, Amanda got earrings featuring our mascot (called "spirit ears", humorously enough) and I got a shot glass with the school name on the front and lines on the back labeled Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior, and Grad. Richie helpfully pointed out that there's not a line for Ph.D. and therefore I'll have to fill the shot glass to the very brim. Let's not think too much about what the fact that the other girls got accessories and I got a SHOT GLASS says about me. Hahaha.
On Friday Mandi, Richie, Debbie and I took off for the weekend and spent a couple of days in Galveston. It was basically the most perfect weekend ever. I laughed from the car ride on Friday afternoon (where I literally cried with laughter--real tears, running down my face!) until 9:30 on Sunday night when we were fifteen miles from home playing MASH in the car and I determined that Debbbie's future pet is going to be a hammerhead shark. I think Galveston is more than worthy of its own entry, so as soon as I get a good stretch of free time I'll tell you all about it, although frankly I think only about 1/10th of the fun of the weekend is actually going to come across in writing.
Last night we had grad student dinner #2, where we all went up to Austin and had dinner at a nice Vietnamese/Indian restaurant and then we came back down here and hung out at John's house for a few hours. I had to say goodbye to the guys that live in Austin since I doubt I'll see them again before I move.
Tonight I'm going out for dinner and drinks with Debbie, Richie, and hopefully some of the rest of the group since Richie is leaving tomorrow to go home to Canada for the summer. I'm going to miss him so much. Luckily he and his fiancee are supposed to be in New York at the beginning of August for a concert, and since I'll (hopefully) have moved by then I'm hoping that I'll be able to make a trip to the city and see him then and meet his boyfriend for the first time.
I know I'm going to cross paths again with all of my grad school friends, hopefully many times. The world of academic theatre is pretty small. Still, I'm going to miss us all being in the same place. I'm going to miss it a lot.
There are still a few more fun things planned. Friday I think I'm going to throw some sort of graduation party/sleepover (since we graduate at 9:30 AM, ugh!), and tomorrow Chelsea, her boyfriend, and me and a few of my friends are supposed to go tubing on the river if it doesn't rain.
I'm technically supposed to work tomorrow, but I'm so fed up with Applebees right now that I'm going to call in sick and they can just deal with it since I've had to deal with way too much of their stupid mis-scheduling shit lately. I'm always having to fix their problems and I'm tired of it. I've never missed a shift in ten months and I'm a good employee so I am hoping that will work in my favor. And I figure if they want to fire me tomorrow it's really no big deal. I don't honestly think they will fire me since we're horribly understaffed right now and I know they really need me to work my shift on Sunday for Mother's Day. So I'm kind of gambling that they need me badly enough that they'll put up with me calling in sick tomorrow because they really need me for the weekend. But like I said, if they do decide to fire me it really makes no difference to me at all. They're just screwing themselves. I'm only supposed to be working until next Friday anyway, so I'd really only be missing out on four or five shifts at the very most. I don't need the money right now since I just got paid from my real job last week and I have another big paycheck coming June 1st, plus I'm about to go home and not have to pay rent or nearly as much for food/going out for a couple of months. And lord knows I don't need my dumbass managers to ever give me a good reference since I don't even list my Applebees job on my resume and I have enough good references elsewhere to get any restaurant or bar job I'll need in the future (P.S.-I really don't want to need another restaurant or bar job in the future...) So yeah. I'm not going to work tomorrow. I've never skipped out on a job before ever in my whole life, but I don't even feel all that guilty about doing it this time, that's how annoyed I am with the restaurant at this point. I guess I do feel sort of bad for the two waiters that will have to go it alone tomorrow morning, but I've had to do that plenty of times myself and they'll make more money that way anyway. So yeah.
Anyway, I need to go meet everyone for dinner. In short, I'm good. Excited. Happy.
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
I'll Post a Real Entry Again Someday
...but in the meantime, here's the results of my Personal DNA quiz
Isn't it pretty? I found the results pretty accurate, too. The only thing that sort of bugged me is that the results describe me as "highly earthy" when what I think they really mean is "down-to-earth and/or grounded" since they have set earthy up as the opposite of imaginative/daydream-y. Earthy and down-to-earth are not the same thing. Or at least I've never considered them synonymous terms before.
Oh, and I also got a kick over how many times the results state that I am "not the least bit impulsive," which is completely and utterly true. I'm pretty much the least impulsive person I know, and the only time I impulsively do anything at all is when someone else is basically forcing me to do it. Ha.
I reserved my move today. A company is going to deliver two storage cubes to my apartment on May 30th and then on the 31st they're going to move my stuff in the cubes to D.C., where they'll wait for me for a couple of months. This is nice because it means when I have to drive 3-5 days in July/early August I won't be doing it in a U-Haul. I can't believe it is already less than a month until my move. I think I'm kind of in denial about the fact that this is actually happening, and soon.
Isn't it pretty? I found the results pretty accurate, too. The only thing that sort of bugged me is that the results describe me as "highly earthy" when what I think they really mean is "down-to-earth and/or grounded" since they have set earthy up as the opposite of imaginative/daydream-y. Earthy and down-to-earth are not the same thing. Or at least I've never considered them synonymous terms before.
Oh, and I also got a kick over how many times the results state that I am "not the least bit impulsive," which is completely and utterly true. I'm pretty much the least impulsive person I know, and the only time I impulsively do anything at all is when someone else is basically forcing me to do it. Ha.
I reserved my move today. A company is going to deliver two storage cubes to my apartment on May 30th and then on the 31st they're going to move my stuff in the cubes to D.C., where they'll wait for me for a couple of months. This is nice because it means when I have to drive 3-5 days in July/early August I won't be doing it in a U-Haul. I can't believe it is already less than a month until my move. I think I'm kind of in denial about the fact that this is actually happening, and soon.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Ten Days Until Graduation!
I took my last test as an MA student tonight! Frankly, the test kind of sucked and I feel like my professor will read two out of my four essays and shake her head and sigh in disappointment at the fact that I really phoned it in the last half of this semester. Hopefully she'll like the other two essays, though, and since I calculated my average and realized last night that I only need to get a 55 on the test to get my "A" in the class, I'm pretty positive I'm going to get that "A". Because I may not have written nicely flowing, detailed essays, but I certainly did enough to get a passing grade on the test. So I'm finished!
You would think I would have something profound to say about the end of my time here, but I don't. Not yet, at least. It was kind of weird saying goodbye to my professor tonight since I don't think I'll see her again any time soon. She does winter graduation, not spring graduation, and she can't make it to our dinner party on Thursday night. I'm going to miss her. She was my mentor and main advisor here, she is the one that convinced me to apply to Ph.D. programs even though I wasn't sure I would be able to get in, she was the one that made me feel confident about my scholarship while also pushing me to take it further. Tonight I hugged her goodbye after the test and promised her that I would do my best to keep in touch even though I'm terrible at it, and she told me, "Well, I'll still be seeing you at conferences." Conferences! I'm going to have to start going to a lot more conferences! If I stick this out and get through, she and I are eventually going to be colleagues. Wow. I don't know why, at the age of 24, I'm still constantly surprised to discover that I am in fact an adult, but it still catches me off guard every single time.
And now to change the subject entirely...There's a lot I could write about this. At the same time, I don't feel like I can properly articulate everything I want to say right now. Other people have already done it much better than I have anyway. All I can say is that fortunately, I have yet to be in a position where I needed to have this option. But if you need to be convinced that there are HUGE problems in this latest Supreme Court decision, I can point you to plenty of extremely compelling stories. Most importantly, I am afraid that this is the first step down a slippery slope that will ultimately lead to abortions once again becoming illegal in this country. And that scares me. It scares me for myself, it scares me for my future daughters/nieces.
I realize that some of you may be adamantly pro-life. I realize that this is an extremely polarizing topic, and it is not my job to convince you to see my pro-choice point of view right now. With that said, I'm also not going to apologize for being pro-choice. It is a decision I have put a lot of thought into, a decision I am proud of, and a decision I feel comfortable discussing, if you would like to do so one of these days. Or we can just agree to disagree. I realize pro-lifers aren't necessarily crazy religious freaks with no sense of perspective or compassion for womens' lives, just like I hope they realize pro-choicers aren't necessarily callous sluts with no regard for babies' lives. Like I said, I'm not here to try to change anyone's mind tonight (not tonight anyway).
But if you are pro-choice, if you're concerned like I am, I'm going to suggest you sign the Planned Parenthood petition. I'm also going to suggest you pass it along to your mothers, sisters, and friends who will sign it. Hell, I even made two of my guy friends sign it just now. It's important. Clearly, we have all gotten too complacent about our rights.
You would think I would have something profound to say about the end of my time here, but I don't. Not yet, at least. It was kind of weird saying goodbye to my professor tonight since I don't think I'll see her again any time soon. She does winter graduation, not spring graduation, and she can't make it to our dinner party on Thursday night. I'm going to miss her. She was my mentor and main advisor here, she is the one that convinced me to apply to Ph.D. programs even though I wasn't sure I would be able to get in, she was the one that made me feel confident about my scholarship while also pushing me to take it further. Tonight I hugged her goodbye after the test and promised her that I would do my best to keep in touch even though I'm terrible at it, and she told me, "Well, I'll still be seeing you at conferences." Conferences! I'm going to have to start going to a lot more conferences! If I stick this out and get through, she and I are eventually going to be colleagues. Wow. I don't know why, at the age of 24, I'm still constantly surprised to discover that I am in fact an adult, but it still catches me off guard every single time.
And now to change the subject entirely...There's a lot I could write about this. At the same time, I don't feel like I can properly articulate everything I want to say right now. Other people have already done it much better than I have anyway. All I can say is that fortunately, I have yet to be in a position where I needed to have this option. But if you need to be convinced that there are HUGE problems in this latest Supreme Court decision, I can point you to plenty of extremely compelling stories. Most importantly, I am afraid that this is the first step down a slippery slope that will ultimately lead to abortions once again becoming illegal in this country. And that scares me. It scares me for myself, it scares me for my future daughters/nieces.
I realize that some of you may be adamantly pro-life. I realize that this is an extremely polarizing topic, and it is not my job to convince you to see my pro-choice point of view right now. With that said, I'm also not going to apologize for being pro-choice. It is a decision I have put a lot of thought into, a decision I am proud of, and a decision I feel comfortable discussing, if you would like to do so one of these days. Or we can just agree to disagree. I realize pro-lifers aren't necessarily crazy religious freaks with no sense of perspective or compassion for womens' lives, just like I hope they realize pro-choicers aren't necessarily callous sluts with no regard for babies' lives. Like I said, I'm not here to try to change anyone's mind tonight (not tonight anyway).
But if you are pro-choice, if you're concerned like I am, I'm going to suggest you sign the Planned Parenthood petition. I'm also going to suggest you pass it along to your mothers, sisters, and friends who will sign it. Hell, I even made two of my guy friends sign it just now. It's important. Clearly, we have all gotten too complacent about our rights.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)