new beginings

School is up and running and i'm trying to keep up.
A quick cap of whats happend so far:
*Moved into my new apartment "The Seahawk Landing"
*Learning how to feed myself without parents or a meal plan and loving it!
*Done some major grocery shopping
*Got a job at The Landing coffee shop right outside my appartment building (worked a couple times; made sandwiches, smoothies, fancy coffee drinks and worked the register)
*Was named Jr "class president" for the social work department
*Made my first stencil (with help from oliver)
*Made guacamole with oliver
*Grew and ate first batch of sprouts (seeds and jar given as a gift from oliver)

Whats on my mind: Being as it is my Jr year i thought "hey, i'm an upper classman, i've got this whole college thing under control" well, not so much. I had an extremely frustrating time with my schedule and have spent the last week running around trying to find the "right" people to pull the "right" strings to get me in the "right" classes. I attended two English classes that i am no longer enrolled in and i have now replaced English entirely with a sociology class (which i am actually quite happy about). This week also brought some discouraging and disappointing news. After meeting with the secretary of the social work department to talk about studying abroad i was informed that if i wanted to both graduate with a degree in social work and study abroad it would take an extra year. The money aspect of staying an addition year in school is a bit anxiety provoking, but for the most part this information just caught me off guard. For the past two years of my college career i've been working with a four year degree in mind and, of course was looking forward to graduating with the friends i've made along the way; this part is just plain disappointing. But, after spending a good half hour in the SWK department today, feeling down, an encouraging word came my way. Dr. Blundo, a proffessor in the SWK department i had never met before, noticed me with my head resting on the secretaries desk and degree audit in the other hand, "whats wrong kid?" he said. I explained that i was struggling with weather to study abroad or not because the academic set backs. He then took my degree audit out of my hand, began waving it around, looking the the complete ex-hippie im sure he is, and made a speech that went something like this..."ten years from now when your telling your kids about your college experience do you think their going to jump up and down and want to know more when you tell them you graduated in four years? NO! But they will when you tell them you studied for a year in London! So do it! So what if your class ring has a different year on it!" A seed of confidence was planted.

So here i am, my complete and hopefully final schedule for fall semester 2007 by my side, and my application to Roehampton University in the United Kingdom in front of me. Now that i have said all this it is important to remember, myself included, that i haven't yet been excepted to study abroad so nothing is set in stone.
FLEXIBLE is the word of the week.



Despite the complications and frustrations of school i am so thrilled to be here. I am so grateful for everyone who supports me in all the different ways i need it.



After thought: While riding down chancellors walk from my class, at 6:45 this evening, the world was breathtakingly calm. The bright blue sky screamed mid day heat, but Summer is fighting the inevitable Fall. Autumn crept in amongst the pine trees and i could feel it... always on time.

After dinner Oliver came over with a present he said he had found for me the other night, it was a flier from down town advertising a restaurant across the top it read, "The last evenings of late summer are among the sweetest times one can spend."