Tonight is my last night in Dallas--crazy! LB, Sarah Welch, and Amy are all on their way over to help me load up my car. Tomorrow begins Phase I of moving: driving to Houston. From there, I'll pick up Mom and Dad and all my stuff to begin Phase II: driving to Scottsdale, a three day journey. I don't think I can accurately process everything right now...having to say good-bye to my friends, etc. so you'll just have to wait for the next post for that. And I'm off!!
While not having school work to do has been amazing wonderful, I've found that my evenings are busier than ever. I'm constantly making plans to hang out with people or go to dinner or who knows what else. Lately I've been thinking of all the little things I'm going to miss in addition to the big things (i.e. my friends). It slowly is becoming a reality that I am about to move away to a new adventure. I'm stuck in between wanting the big move date of July 18th to be here already and wanting more time to be surrounded by the familiar. Guess three weeks is a happy medium remedy for that.
I put on some shorts today that I hadn't worn in a while. I just reached into my back pocket for no good reason and found a movie stub from...August 7, 2006.
I've noticed that there always seems to be a whirlwind right as my life is changing. I went to my last class of grad school on April 25th, had put all of my belongings in my parents' cars to be sent to Houston on April 30th, and was in an RV on a road trip on May 2nd (it was a great trip that I'll have to post about later). I got back to Dallas on the 8th to leave town again for Mother's Day weekend to return to a week-long conference. I don't think I've really had time to process everything: being completely done with school work, having my classmates move to various places to start their externships, not living with Sarah anymore. It's a very odd feeling that I can't quite explain yet. I will say that it was great when I woke up this morning and realized that I had nothing to do today that was related to school. I can definitely get used to having that feeling!
22 more days! It's a surreal feeling. I still have things to do before then but I don't think it has really set in that I will be completely done with school work soon. I can see it on my calendar and it definitely doesn't help with trying to read speech science articles, but it still isn't real yet. Neither is the fact that I have to be out of my apartment by May 1st. To do list: finish papers/projects/presentations, pack up entire apartment. Deadline: April 30th. Guess I should go be productive :)
Not a whole lot from my end. My mouth is recovering nicely from surgery. I've been sick but I'm on the mend. Thankfully school hasn't been very busy lately. I have a project, a presentation, and two papers left and then I am D-O-N-E. I will be finished with doing school work and it will be glorious! I could definitely get used to not having homework. Life is movin' along.
The first half of my spring break was spent driving around Scottsdale and looking at apartments. I think I'm going to really like living there but there's still a ways to go before all my stuff will be settled in one of the (many) apartments we looked at. The second half of my spring break will be spent sitting on the couch with an ice pack to my chin. I had mouth surgery this morning (or "oral surgery" as my classmates like to refer to it). Skin was taken from the roof of my mouth and grafted onto my receded gums. Awesome, right? The procedure was fine--Novocaine is fabulous for that kind of thing. The ice pack helps a lot with the swelling and with some of the pain. And besides throwing up my last round of pain meds, it's been okay today. Back to watching TV with my ice pack.
Apparently this is going to be the semester of writing papers--which feels like really annoying busy work. I wrote a paper on Friday night (yes, I stayed in on Friday night to do school work and I am so ready for these days to be over), re-wrote my research project paper on Saturday, and I am now reading 6 speech science articles (that take forever to read since it's like I'm reading a foreign language and don't understand most of what I read the first three times I read it) so I can write a paper for my mid-term. I've discovered that I'm ok with not knowing exactly how infants learn speech; I'm okay with just thinking "that's neat" and moving on with my life. But alas, I must read a bunch of theories on infant speech perception. Guess I should stop blogging and get back to reading.
I found out today that my research paper is due by March 1st. Just a few more days/nights of looking at all this silly research stuff!!
Yucky research presentation is OVER! Hurray!! I think it went well on Friday but more importantly, it is done. All I have to do now is write the paper but things are definitely looking brighter all around. Now, I'm going to go watch the Oscars :)
