Fresh, Hot Wastes of Time

Well, maybe it is, but there’s not much going on lately so I’ll just bore you.

• There’s a huge lice outbreak at the elementary school. Rumor has it that 80 kids have teh boogs. We all hate the nit comb.

• The in-laws made it through Ike okay, although they lost power for over a week.

• I skipped my high school 20th reunion and went hunting instead.

• The mail carrier still sucks. Only both he AND his substitute suck. I just got two things I’d been waiting for in the mail today – one was postmarked 9/26 and one was 10/3.

• I’m really not getting into school like I was before. The class is enjoyable enough, but I just don’t think I’m up for it. I’ll probably take a break for a couple of semesters after this one is over.

And um… really that’s about it. Yay?

First grade of my graduate student career: 97.

Can’t get too excited, because it was on a paper that counts for 5% of my final grade. Still though, not bad.

I graduated from St. Edward’s yesterday, with my BA in Communication. And, I believe, a 4.0 GPA. 🙂

Starting graduate school this fall! I’ll keep going as long as I keep having fun.

Done, done, done. I am done with school. Had my last exam as an undergraduate tonight. I’m 99 44/100% certain I have a 4.0 GPA at St. Edward’s.

I was inducted into Alpha Sigma Lambda, the adult honor society, last weekend. Tonight I got an email congratulating me on being elected a member of Lambda Pi Eta, the communication honor society. I know that a faculty member had to have pulled some strings on my behalf since normally students from New College aren’t asked to be members of LPH.

Things left to do before I graduate:
– Put together my presentation for the school conference
– Revise my thesis (not really needed since I have an A on it already)
– Write a reflective summary for my Capstone course
– Put together my Capstone presentation
– One more short film review
– One more test

Oh, and there’s ironing my gown and figuring out how to wear a hood and honor cords. I asked my prof whether it’s bad form to wear more than one set of cords at graduation. She said “The gaudier the better.”

Invitations went out today. Note that they are NOT me secretly asking for presents. They’re just FYIs.

I ran into people talking about gutta percha three times in the last week. I’d never heard of it before.

I got invited to join the honors society at school.

I also submitted a paper about Disney’s parks and how they relate to Fisher’s Narrative Theory for presentation at SOURCE, my school’s annual conference, and it was accepted. I’ll be presenting it on April 11.

I submitted my application for graduate school and, once I get my degree plan signed, should be accepted with no problem. I also heard back from the new person assigned to evaluate my portfolio for Emerging Technologies and she said to expect to see that on my transcript sometime next week (I submitted the damned thing in November!).

I’m all registered for SXSWi, which ITVS was kind enough to do since World Without Oil is a finalist in the Web Awards. Don’t forget that you can vote EVERY DAY for WWO in the People’s Choice awards. It just takes one click a day.

We made reservations for a return trip to Disney World this August. This year we’re going to try The Polynesian Resort. Staying at the Villas at Wilderness Lodge was just heavenly last year, what with the full size fridge, washer/dryer, and separate living/sleeping areas, but the big drawback was that it wasn’t on the monorail. I think we can sacrifice a lot for that convenience. We’ll see if we end up speaking to each other when it’s all over.

Last, I’ve been bleaching my teeth for the last 9 days and haven’t had one stinking cup of coffee or tea since I started and I’m damned grouchy.

Ok, sorry, that wasn’t last; this is: we finally got an XBox 360 and picked up Rock Band and Guitar Hero III. I can’t remember the last time I had this much fun.

I really love the professors I’ve had at St. Edward’s, but their communication can be the pits.

There was the instance where I waited a year for them to finally come up with a decision on whether one of my transfer credits would count towards my major. I heard back last semester – no, it would not, since they don’t offer anything like that course (basically an intro to film). Guess what they started offering this semester? I’m taking my fourth film basics course at my fourth university this spring.

There was the professor who told me, last spring, that my final paper was “phenomenal” and that I should submit it to the English department journal when they called for submissions. I’ve been waiting… and waiting… and waiting… for the announcement. Finally I called the faculty sponsor for the journal. The deadline was in December.

There was the other professor who told me to submit a different paper to the university conference. Luckily she and I stayed on top of that one. Submission deadline is the 15th for the abstract. I just today got the notification for it.

Then last week I met with my new advisor to sign my degree plan and make sure I’m on track to graduate this spring. Everything seemed just jolly, except that he was going to check on a portfolio I submitted 3 months ago to find out what the holdup was. I got an email on Monday saying I had a NEW new advisor. Whee.

The hassles are annoying, yes, but the instructors (for the most part) make up for it. I just completed my graduate school application (which, by the way, doesn’t have anything in its instructions about where to turn it in… psychic fax?). The biggest class I’ve had there has been about 23 students, and that’s definitely a good thing for me and a far cry from the impersonal instruction of the 300 student lectures at U.T.

Given my history, it’s no wonder that I’m having nightmares about my Capstone course, which is the last required course I need to graduate. One nightmare involved my completely forgetting to go to class – a perennial favorite of the dream machine in my brain. The other one last night had my professor move the class to somewhere at U.T. and I couldn’t find the room until everyone was gone for the night.

In other news, the kid had the flu last week and had over 102 for several days. She finally went back to school today. Her new saying: “I’m going to ring your doorbell” = “I’m going to poke you in the bottom.” Her latest bedtime question: “Mommy, how is glue sticky?”