Just in time for me to come home and render this irrelevant (this is what happens when you take 17 credits and work 3 jobs, things like blogs and sleep get neglected!), here’s an update on what I’ve been up to for the past 4 months …

Courses in a nutshell:

Multicultural U.S. Literature was interesting but basically a cakewalk, which was what I thought it would be so no problems there.

Arabic as a second language is for masochists. I’m set to take another 3 semesters of it. Yay.

Intro to International Relations was amazing, and basically covered everything that I was originally interested in when I chose my major, so real yay for that.

Intro to Sociology was fine, easy work and very nit-picky professor pretty much evened each other out.

Environmental Science was very cool, and I got to do my final project on the Kyoto Protocol … you can take the girl out of the wonky political science/law classes, but you can’t take the policy geek out of the girl

Jobs in a nutshell:

Early on this semester, I started peer tutoring at Trinity, meaning I tutor other Trinity students in classes I’ve already taken. Signed up mainly to be an English/humanities tutor, ended up almost exclusively tutoring math because that’s what they needed. The fact that I actually despise math doesn’t seem to bother them, and they are paying me, so that’s OK on balance.

Mid-semester I started also working with TU’s athletics department, mainly doing things like videotaping basketball games, because I needed to supplement my tutoring hours so as to avoid bi-weekly paychecks under $20. All of those extra hours became slightly trickier to juggle towards the end of the semester, because …

At the beginning of November, I started an internship with the Department of Commerce! Unpaid, but still basically awesome because I’m accruing some nice resumé material while working in a fun office with cool people. I’ll be continuing with the internship into next semester, and should be getting credit for it as well, which means I’ll be breaking my personal record and taking 19 credits. Caffeine donations are always welcome.

House/Life in a nutshell:

Somewhere in the middle of all this I’ve been living in a house off campus, which equals making my own food (yay!), living with my three awesome roommates (who I adore), and having free laundry and and a couch for people to crash on and fun stuff like that, so basically I’m a happy person.

I’ve also been doing my usual non-school stuff; going out with my girlfriends, doing Aikido and my karate practice, etc etc. Despite it all being somewhat insane and hectic and occasionally a bit overwhelming, I wouldn’t give any of it up; as long as I get some sleep, some coffee, and the occasional vacation, I think I’m set. And so we go!

1. 18 credits is great. 18 credits is also a lot of work.

2. Be thankful for not having had Friday classes up til now. Starting next semester, I have an Arabic lab every Friday at 10 AM. Bah.

3. Springtime in DC = rain. Every day. Yes, the flowering trees and whatnot are all lovely. But they are also wet, because they are in the rain, which is not something that they tell you in touristy literature.

4. Turning work in early makes professors really, really happy for some odd reason. Happy professors write nice rec letters

5. Math doesn’t suck … at least, stat doesn’t suck. Calc and trig are still on the list of things I do not wish to do, ever, thanks very much.

6. Less than 6 hours of sleep makes me stupid. More than 8 may never happen again during a semester. Looks like 7 is about it.

7. DC housing is OMG EXPENSIVE. But so is living on campus, so yeah. Guess we can just change that to COLLEGE is OMG EXPENSIVE.

8. Holding down 1500 things at once is not something you do alone, it’s something that is only made possible by having awesome people supporting you and making you laugh and making sure that you know when stuff isn’t really as serious as you think it is. By the same token, the right people do not always just take you as you are, but push you and challenge you when you need that.

5 years of karate training, help from the parents, huge amounts of support and training (and basically everything else) from my incredible senseis, a plane and a bus to get up to NH, a 2-hour drive down to Atkinson, Mass, and a little over an hour of testing, and I’ve just passed my black belt test. Huge thank-yous to everyone involved! And now on to registration and my final 5 weeks of school, before going on to my summer break and black belt graduation