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.