Old Soul, Young Heart

Things I'm Thankful For And yes, I did change that day's topic to reflect the fact that it was Thanksgiving. :) My husband The rest of my family Having a place to live Having a car My job (that I even like) My health My happiness What I Bought This Week 3 shirts for myself (Eek! Oh well--Black Friday deals!) One Christmas present for Philip A calendar for my dad and some Hickory Farms stuff Cute socks for our nieces for Christmas Earrings and a Monster High doll for Faith Two Diary of a Wimpy Kid books for Briana 30 bolts of ribbon for my bow-making clinic here at work tomorrow :) Other random Christmas goodies for decorating Places I've Lived Normal Cambridge Yesterday was... Pretty typical Kinda busy at work Not as busy as I expected (in terms of emails and phone calls) Bravest Things I've Ever Done Went to England all by my lonesome Faced my mother's death at the tender age of 19 (not all that tender, b...

I think perhaps the most beautiful compliment one could receive would be the following: "You have a wonderful mind." Tonight I watched the movie Sylvia , which is about the author Sylvia Plath. I like movies about individuals who once lived because I love history. Also, one of my favorite movies is The Hours and I thought this movie might remind me of it and it kinda did. Sylvia Plath had a little mental illness like Virgnia Woolf did and she also committed suicide. Sometimes wonderful minds have a hard time living, it seems. I also love watching movies about creative people because it makes me wish I was creative. I think deep down I might like poetry, even though I don't understand it. I took a poetry class in college and enjoyed it; I took a creative writing class in college and enjoyed it very little. So I guess the moral of this story is that I can appreciate creativeness, but I can't harness it myself. Seems about right. Oh and the movie had my attention ...

I got this poster as a gift from my colleagues at the DRC at the University of Cambridge. I was super excited because I had been looking at one similar to this at a touristy shop and was thinking about buying it, but didn't. It's so special to me because it's from them and because I know exactly where this is (inside St. John's College); I sat in this spot and took a picture there (before they gave it to me). I had put off getting a frame because I thought it was a weird size. Incidentally, it is exactly the right size for pre-made frames. I wish I would've known that because I would've bought one months and months ago! In any case, this will be going in my office at work. Yay!

I decided a few days ago that I'm going to make a scrapbook with all of the pictures and stuff that I collected when I was in Cambridge. I found a great website,  Scrap Your Trip , that basically has everything you could ever want and I've been having fun deciding what papers to order. I thought I would stop by the only scrapbooking store left in town, Scrapbook Friend'z, to see what they have before getting everything from the website. I was so sad to see when I rolled up that they're closed! It must have been really recent because I saw people in there moving things around and cleaning. I was pretty sad. :( I was over by Schnuck's, though, and decided to run in and see if they have the ice cream that I've been wanting and looking for all week, Blue Bunny's Red Velvet Cake ice cream. They didn't have it at the ghetto Kroger and it cost me $6 at Schnuck's, but oh--was it worth it! Advisor job at Heartland is posted! I'm so excited and nerv...

I'm currently reading a book (for fun!) that Philip got me for Christmas last year, called "Looking for Class." The author (Bruce Feiler) attended the University of Cambridge in the early 1990s and the book chronicles his time there. I know most of the places and little English nuances that he describes and it just makes me so happy! Here's one of my favorite passages so far: "Among students, tourists, even professors, there is one indisputable manner in which Cambridge promotes love: it is an incredibly, at times overwhelmingly, romantic place. For some, the charm is the setting. Cambridge, wrote Henry James, boasts 'the loveliest confusion of Gothic windows and ancient trees, of grassy banks and mossy balustrades . . . of single-arched bridges spanning the little stream, which is small and shallow and looks as if it had been turned on for ornamental purposes.'" Even though he was there over 20 years before I was, it's amazing to me that th...

Good things are a'brewin'. Yesterday was my last day at Heartland for practicum. Inbetween drop-ins with students, Cecilia, the Director of Advising, came in and asked me what I was doing this summer. Before I even began at Heartland, Cecilia had mentioned that there would be 30 hours available over the summer, but we hadn't talked about it in so long that I just figured a practicum student would be filling those hours. Cecilia essentially told me that I can stay through the summer and that there is a possibility that I could go full-time temporary, which would mean a one-year contract (with or without benefits; I'm not clear on this part). There is also the possibility of one or more advisor positions (possibly even 3-4) opening up within the next year, in which case I could apply and interview for the job I would be already doing. It's super confusing, but Cecilia will hopefully find out all of these things next week sometime. I got really excited about...

I just read over the majority of my blog posts from this year... ya know, to kind of reminisce about what's happened, seeing as it's New Year's Eve. That's why I love having this thing; I'm able to go back and see what happened and what I have considered and learned this past year. It's just fun. Clearly, the majority of what I wrote about was the journey to and at Cambridge. I'm happy that I cataloged all of that. (I think if I do a scrapbook of my time there I'm going to include some of my blog entries about it. It will be a useful tool if I decide to do that.) My journey there included much amazement that it was actually happening and I think I still feel that way. I can't believe that I was actually there and did that. I wonder if I'll always feel that way. I wrote a list of the things I wanted to do while I was there in my March 21 entry. Here it is in full, with the things I did do bolded. Things I need to go/see in England: - Burghl...

I got an email yesterday from John Harding, who was my supervisor at Cambridge. He wanted to update me on where the project I worked on has been going lately. Today he presented it to a committee and he's gotten word that the University of Cambridge has been talking about adding a  £ 40,000 budget for international disabled students' needs. Though this is directly related to the work I did, it's not because of my project that this happened. It's still really cool, though, to see that things are happening with it already. If that budget is approved, it'll happen next academic year and I totally didn't think it would move that quickly. Awesome news! I know I've said this a hundred/million times, but I can't believe that I was in Cambridge and I did that. I can't believe that I can look at the picture above (King's College Chapel) and tell you exactly where I sat on the green space next to the river at "Singing on the River." I can...

Whenever I think of England and my adventure there, this is what I hear. It's me riding my bike around Cambridge. It's me marveling at cathedrals. It's me walking through quaint, unfamiliar towns. It's me riding the train in the countryside. It's my heart aching to be back there.

Today was a good day of experiences. Experiences and nervousness and validation. A couple of weeks ago I contacted Kera who works in University College as an academic advisor to ask about shadowing her. She, of course, was super nice and let me do that today for 1.5 hours. I felt like it was really important for me to see an academic advisor in action, especially after all of my recent speculation that I may not be good at it and may be pursuing this degree for no reason. After being there today, I can confidently say that I know I would love it. Today's sessions are exactly how I pictured they would be. I realize that not all of academic advising is what I observed today, but I'm just so glad to know that it's not completely different than I had imagined and that I will be good at it if I get a job doing it someday. It felt good. And then after that I had my first interview for a GA position on campus. It was in the Career Center and I really amped myself up in terms...

So the date is set. FINALLY. Pam, Paul, Peggy, and I (possibly also Donna and Wally) will be going on the 16-day trip of a lifetime together beginning on July 10. It is very exciting! I've begun looking for accommodation in Cambridge and it might actually be a challenge. I'm hoping this Link House Trust will work out--it's a house (two, actually) for international graduate students in Cambridge. It sounds like the minimum stay is 2 months (perfect), but I'm unsure given the lingo. It might more of a long-term thing. I have an email out to them, but haven't heard back yet. There is also a house on Stanley Road that I'm interested in that is right across from the River Cam. The landlady of the one house that looked to be so perfect wants someone with a 3+ month let. I'm sure more places will open up as time progresses, but we all know that I like to have things planned out well in advance! I sent my background check out on Monday and am in the middle of th...

Increasingly disappointed that I haven't heard anything from Cambridge yet, but I know I just need to settle down a little bit because it's only been a week. Not even a week. I just really hope to have something squared away by the end of the month because I can't handle not knowing. It's all I think about. I feel like I should be thinking of different universities but I just don't want to. I'm set on Cambridge for the distinguished factor and the Heather's-been-there factor and the not-a-huge-town factor and I've really just generally fallen in love with it since doing so much research on it. I could always fall back on working in the Community Relations department where Heather did her internship, but I don't like that idea for several reasons--one, it has nothing to do with students and two, I have very little interest in it, and three, I would hate to do the exact same thing that she did. I'll give it another week, I guess, before exploring o...

So... here I am. It's midterm time and it is brutal. The good part is that I'm learning a lot that I actually find interesting. On Thursday I met with Dr. Phyllis, as she is meeting with all of us in the program individually. I felt good about it because I'm pretty okay face-to-face with people. I was there for a good 45 minutes and it was nice because I got to talk explicitly about my perceived insignificance compared to my peers. She asked about my family, so I had to bring up mom. I can never decide if it's a good thing to talk about that because then people really know a lot about you, but it turned out positive. We talked about BroMenn (her husband works there) and we talked a lot about practicum. It's nice because I didn't feel like I really had to impress her, as I often did with professors in undergraduate. I do have to impress her with coursework, but maybe not when I'm meeting with her outside of class. Outside of class it feels more like a colle...