Spring Cleaning & Grad School

First of all, a shout-out to my sister because today is her birthday! It sounds like she was able to make it a fun day, outside of the birthday package filled with our dad's humor. My sister is afraid of sharks and my dad has given her shark-related things on countless occasions; this year, it included a hat, coin bank, and stapler. A silver lining to this cloud is that at least he's being cheeky with his gift rather than the other common option, which is a pile of completely random books. Dad has also poked fun using tornadoes, but the sharks are the item of focus that has lasted for many years. (It's probably for the best that I was the sibling who took a job on the edge of Tornado Alley, however. By the way, Oklahoma City got hit by a tornado today, so I'm sure they would appreciate some prayers to come their way.)

TC

As I mentioned at the end of yesterday's post, today felt like my last full day off before June 2nd, because that was actually the truth even though I included the word 'like'. I am off on Wednesday, but with an on-campus interview and the Senior Appreciation Dinner that night, I will feel like I'm on-duty for at least half of the day. The plus to having Wednesday off is that I can go to bed early since I'll be the host for the woman who is interviewing on-campus on Thursday. As I said a week ago, I'm excited to see the candidates come to campus, interact with the students/staff, and demonstrate if they will be a good fit in our staff for next year.

Oh, and I said June 2nd because the final week of May Session is just "go go go" and everyone will be here in full force. Fortunately, the majority of the mornings won't be allotted to work activities.

As to be expected with a final long stretch of time that's simply for me, I made sure today was R&R. I had a nice conversation with my mom to catch up on life. Pretty much the entirety of my day was spent in my apartment, and I was able to accomplish some spring cleaning. As my family can attest, I have a lot of stuff, so trying to find a place for everything to go feels like a game of Tetris some days. Plus, with the new computer and the big push this year to separate work from personal stuff, a lot of things have been moved into my bedroom. I did re-organize a couple of the standard set pieces, but with spring cleaning comes the process of donations and getting rid of what you don't want. Yesterday, a woman at the church announced the upcoming community rummage sale, so I do want to donate some items to that event.

I have a card table right by my bedroom door that is now covered with stuff to get rid of, if it's for donation, the mail, or simply trashing/recycling. I did find my very first cell phone that I got during my freshman year of college. It has of course, long since died, but it was interesting to compare my current phone to the one I had way back when. (I won't compare my first phone to my work Android, however, because that just doesn't seem fair.) After the students move out, I will probably do some more extensive "spring" cleaning, but I hope to make some progress everyday until then as well.

TC

So, I was pretty deliberate on staying in my apartment today to rest, but I was thinking that I really need to make some area friends and comparing my social experiences in Missouri and Minnesota. Since this was all an internal monologue, I was feeling a little bummed as I drove to Subway for dinner, but the sandwich artist that greeted me turned out to be a classmate from the Advanced Educational Psychology course I took last summer. We didn't talk for a ridiculous amount of time (especially after another customer walked in behind me), but it definitely felt uplifting to have a legitimate conversation with someone from outside the Academy, but still in Missouri.

I took the Ad Ed Psych course as an educational requirement and everyone else in the class was part of a cohort for a Masters in Counseling. Even in the four weeks I interacted with that group of women (yes, I was the only male student in that class), I could tell that it was a good group of people and I was a little envious that they would continue to take classes together for the two-year period and bond as a group. In my Subway conversation, the classmate suggested a reunion of the cohort and since I'm Facebook friends with her, I told her that I'd be fully for it. An unexpected side effect of the conversation was that I had another dose of wanting to start my own grad school journey up again.

Side Note - I do feel like one piece of my struggles in my undergrad was that I didn't feel like a part of some cohort moving through the degree program together. The math program is very much scattered after you take Calculus IV, so everyone was jumping between different requirements that were catered to their own interests and stretches. I like to think of this as a spider web compared to my other friends who were part of a Chem E or AEM cohort who had their degree order set in stone from day one. The friends I knew in math courses were almost always people I knew beforehand because of Middlebrook or church. Unfortunately, since I'm coming into the Masters program with a less common background (pure math rather than education), my courseload won't be identical to anyone else. *Sigh* Alright, mini-rant over.

TC

Tomorrow is Tuesday and while that means my blog will be some new format, I haven't picked one out just yet. I did learn that we won't have an all-staff meeting tomorrow so I will try to make my morning personally productive. Wish me luck! DFTBA.