After 5 years of college, I am FINALLY done. I gave my presentation last Tuesday and it was wonderful! I still stuttered every once and a while, and I felt liking fainting right before my talk, but I did a phenomenal job (according to everyone) and am so excited to be done.

If you are curious about my paper, check it out on my professional webpage.

FREEDOM!

I love my boyfriend for so many reasons. One of the current reasons are his poo haikus that he sends to me in text messages (while he is pooing). These are his best, please feel free to leave comments saying which one you like the best.

Pooin’ at the zoo
People pee all around me
I edit photos

Pooin’ is lonely
I text for your eContact
How will you respond?

Here I poo again
The rhythmic plopdrops echo
Instant fecalpeace

My stomach bloated
Filled with gas, holding it in
I’m turtle-heading

And I suggest you all read John’s post about Morgan’s text messages!

Okay, so throughout my many years of schooling, I have prided myself on having the ability to pay attention and not fall asleep in spite of the material of the class and the tone of the professor’s voice. There are only two classes that I specifically remembering falling asleep in: the first was my freshman year taking Intro to Psychology on a Wednesday afternoon for three hours. Mind you, this was in Florida, so it was extremely hot outside and thus comfortable inside the classroom and this particular professor defined monotone. While the topic was interesting, the professor had a hard time convincing me thus I got a regular dose of sleep every week. The second, which Melissa can attest to, was my junior year (first year at the University of Washington) taking a class in geology (which I can’t even remember the name of the class) at 9:30 in the morning in a warm room with another professor that loves monotones. Everyone fell asleep in that class.

So, like I said, proud of my ability to at least stay awake and alert in classes. Well, the class I am currently taking, Fluvial Geomorphology, has been testing me to the extreme. The professor teaching it is brand new to teaching. She stated the first day of class that she has never taught a class before, only guest lectured…and it is apparent in her teaching abilities. She has a very rough time engaging the audience and despite the fact that this topic is extremely interesting, she cannot convey it. Her slides are dull (always white) and packed full of sentences and equations (which she proceeds to explain every single variable, and read sentences directly from them). When she is asked questions, they fluster her, and she will read through her slides for about five minutes and then provide an inadequate answer. The students have now figured this out, and avoid asking questions.

The only way that I have learned to survive this class, is by bringing my laptop and entertaining myself by accomplishing work while sitting HERE in boredom. If you didn’t guess, I am writing this post in class right now. And…..she just gave some very incorrect information about the Mississippi Delta. Ohhh, that pisses me off. About half of the class isn’t here right now and that is normal, and the ones that are are either working on something else (me and four others), sleeping, or staring at the screen (obviously not really listening).

I don’t know if it is my senioritis kicking in or what, but I can’t wait to be done with this class.

I love my life, but sometimes it really can be a bitch. I have been in college for five years now and that’s three too many in my mind. I have enjoyed my classes and all of the opportunities that have been provided but when the fuck does REAL life get to start?

I live with two teachers and across the hall is another friend who is not in school. This pretty much means that I am surrounded by people who get to do what they want with their free time. I watch them as they play Rock Band, hang out at bars and just plain socialize. While I am tremendously happy for them I am also extremely jealous. There have been so many times that I have had to resist the temptation to join them due to whatever school related reason (paper, midterm, final, field trips) and now after three years, I am so tired of resisting. I have finally had my fill of being the “responsible student.” And while I am in my final quarter of my undergrad, which is generally the time when people are okay with their seniors cutting loose, my graduation is DEPENDING upon my responsibility to work my ass off on my thesis. I knew that this quarter would be hard, but I didn’t realize until now WHY it would be hard.

I’m so sick of the stress. I’m so sick of saying no. I’m so sick of being told how to spend my free time. I’m so sick of fucking field trips…specifically ESS field trips because they are never short. While I love the people that surround me, I have a hard time watching them having a good time while I sit here and do my work. And I do not know what to do. By the time that I finish my work, the jealously has percolated through my veins and I feel that I should avoid them so that I do not ruin their good time with my sulking. The times where they have dragged me over to hang out, I still feel like I bring them down.

If anyone has any suggestions, I am all ears.

Okay, so obviously I am extremely bitter towards all grad students right now due to my lack of making it into the programs they were able to but these two particular students seriously piss me off.

Currently I am enrolled in a class called “Fluvial Geomorphology” which for you non-scientists means the geomorphology of rivers. Considering the programs and topics that are offered to the grad students in the ESS (Earth and Space Sciences) department at the UW, they can study the great rivers on this planet (Amazon, Ganges, Brahmaputra, etc.) and get funded for it thus they need to understand the particulars of how to study these particular rivers. This means that despite the fact that this class is 400-level (i.e. a class for undergrads) there are a few grad students that have been told to take this class by their adviser in order to understand their topics better.

Anyboo, this class is graded on three field reports based off of three field trips and due to the fact that this is my 5th year of college, I have had enough of these all-day field trips that the ESS department loves to give, and so I was extremely cranky the night before and the morning of the first trip. But what did I do? I fuckin’ sucked it up, went on the field trip, and even borrowed my TA’s hip waders so that I could get in the fuckin’ river, do a pebble count for my group, and help with the data collection. Did I complain about how EXTREMELY fuckin’ cold the water was (since it had snowed the previous day and hailed that morning)? NO! I jumped on in since that is what education is about, and smiled as my arm went numb after the 30 minutes it took me to help collect that data. But what did these two female grad students do…they stood there, in their protective gear that went all the way up to their chests and complained about how they would not go into the water anymore because it was too cold……..too cold……Fuck you! You are a fucking grad student and you chose to continue with science and a massive part of that is data collection! I really wish that our professor would have forced them into the river, but no such luck.

And then they walked into class 30 minutes late today. What is the point of coming to class when you’ve missed half of it? Oh how I despise them.

There was a chemical spill in the University of Washington’s Ocean Sciences Building today and unfortunately I was in it at the time. A man on the basement floor spilled sulfuric acid into liquid chlorine and what resulted was extremely toxic fumes. No one was hurt, and the man who had the accident was conscience and breathing but this made life quite difficult for all other oceanographers that work in that building.

I had just arrived on campus about 15 minutes before all of this happened, but it was just long enough for me to put all of my stuff in my locker. I was sitting with Jaqui and we were discussing my methods when the fire alarm went off and the building started to lock itself down…and when I say “lock itself down”, I am completely serious. Metal panels on the windows and open areas slammed shut as did the doors for the stairwells. Jaqui and I assumed that it was just a drill (since this building has drills all the time) and so we left all of our stuff inside as we went outside. Once we exited, we realized how large of an incident this was since there were at least three cop cars and one of the officers was talking into his radio saying, “The subject is conscience and breathing but we are not letting anyone else in the building.”

In the end, there were at least 6 fire engines, 6 of those red SUV’s, and 10 police cars blocking the roads, and those are only the emergency vehicles I can describe. They put DO NOT CROSS tape around quite a few of the buildings and would not let cars exit from this side of the hospital…they were all directed to the other side. Needless to say, this was an event…and if only I had realized that before leaving my stuff in my locker.

All I can say is, lesson learned. I will never leave a building again without rounding up everything I need and unfortunately I wasn’t able to get any pictures of all the activity since my camera is also locked up in that locker.

Since John and I have stopped playing WoW for the past couple weeks, we have been taking weekend trips around the area. Our latest visit was to see the “Fremont” Troll.

I think that it is really funny that the troll is called the Fremont Troll despite the fact that it is not underneath the Fremont Bridge, but underneath the George Washington Memorial Bridge (click it!). Anyboo, since John had never seen the troll before, I thought that it would be a great idea for him to see it for the first time! I know that it is a little boring, but I still think that it is a cool piece of Seattle culture.

After we saw the troll and had lunch at Taco Del Mar, we decided to continue our fun at Gas Works Park. There were tons of people at the park enjoying the weather and both John and I got some wonderful shots. We really came to Gas Works at the perfect time too, since it eventually started to downpour on us as we were heading out.

I definitely had a great time and so did John!

With summer approaching, Seattle’s weather tends to be very temperamental. Some days it will be wonderful, bright and sunny (which makes everyone excited and heading out-doors) and then other days it rains uncontrollably and then snows. Believe me, it happens. It did a week ago.

This last week the weather was incredible until the weekend started. John luckily had heard weather reports and knew that that was going to be the case so we decided th enjoy it while it lasted and on Wednesday we had dinner at Rosita’s and then walked down to Green Lake. It was a nice to have some alone time with John since this will most likely be the hardest quarter of my life, forcing me to spend less time with John and more time on my thesis…which will invariably leave me missing him all the time.

Anyboo, we went down to the lake, and found a posse of birds right next to the water which provided a great opportunity to take pictures. John really wanted me to the see the feet of this bird since they are quite different from ducks’ feet. I thought that they were pretty cool. Our opportunity for pictures was cut short however due to these snot-nosed little boys launching themselves at the birds and yelling hysterically. They so knew that they were ruining it for us and their mothers just stood by laughing. Luckily we got a fair number of good shots before the incident.

We were also able to get some wonderful shots of the cherry blossoms in bloom. I love this season in Seattle!

It is the last quarter of my undergraduate college career, so I wanted to start it off right by doing something tremendously fun on my last free Sunday. John had previously stated on the weekend before finals, “Let’s do a day-trip!” At the time, there was nothing I could do but say no considering that I had so much school work to complete that there would definitely not be any time for play. We hadn’t spoken about the idea again until this last week and thus decided that this weekend would be perfect.

Apparently, what he had read was that a very cool day trip for this area is to take the ferry from Edmonds over to Kingston and then wander around the island so we decided to do that. I have taken ferries all around this area since I grew up here but for some reason I had never taken this one, so it was even a new experience for me. Unfortunately, the weather was not the best during the beginning of the trip however we were still able to obtain some great shots from the “poop deck”!
Once we got to Kingston, John immediately asked me where I wanted to go and since I had always heard horror stories about “Foulweather Bluff“, I said that I wanted to go there. We drove all the way over there with no problem, but once we got there, we realized that the bluff was composed entirely of private property so we parked in a turn around, and wandered on their beautiful beach. I found lots of take-home worthy “samples” and John found some greats shells and photo worthy scenery.

We then decided that we wanted to head over to the “Point No Point Lighthouse“. I know, retarded name, but it had a wonderful beach which we explored accompanied by sunshine and more people. On the way back, we found a bench which had daffodils at its feet. I decided to take a few pictures, and then messed with my features on Picasa to make this shot which I think turned out really well.

At this point, we came to terms with the fact that we had a great day and now had to go back to the reality of preparation for school tomorrow, grocery shopping and laundry….ah, life. I had a great time and I am pretty sure that John did as well. It was a phenomenal day.

I should have seen this coming, I really don’t know why I didn’t prepare myself more. I will not be going to graduate school next year. I have been rejected from the programs I’ve applied and I really don’t know why I am so hurt and surprised. I constantly kept telling myself that it was a long shot and here is my proof. Rejected has so many meanings. Was it because of my GRE scores, my grades or what? Did the professors I asked to write my letters say things that I did not expect? I really thought that my Antarctica trip would have more pull but I guess that was a flight of fancy. I guess that means nothing to the geniuses that sit in their chairs and pass judgment on people like me thinking that I am not worthy to study beneath them.

Whatever, now I understand why so many people don’t seek higher forms of education…they don’t have to put up with rejection because they have difficulty with tests or teaching styles of professors. The sad part is that I really thought I had a chance. I guess I was wrong.

Now I have to find a job.