Chicago!

We're moving to Chicago!!! How exciting is that!?!?!

Actually, I've known this for a little while, but my boyfriend was going back and forth between schools for a while, so I didn't want to say anything until we were absolutely positively 100% sure what was going on. But JonMarke accepted the University of Chicago's offer and will be attending their master's program for a year! Very exciting!

So we're gonna move out to Chicago in June, hopefully somewhere near the university in the Hyde Park area. Any thoughts or advice?

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A job! Oh, and cooking...

So I found a job, and actually, Friday was the end of my second week there. I'm working for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, and it's totally awesome! I sent out emails to a bunch of people over my years at college (or at least I made an effort to) in order to keep them posted on what was going on. So I sent out a final one after graduation saying that I had graduated, but still had no job. And I got a reply from the Senior Director at the society saying they had a position open!

It's really a great job, and I really enjoy getting up every day and going to work. That said, it has absolutely nothing to do with either of my majors, but it's a fun job, it's a great non-profit company, and it's temporary. I have the rest of my life to get on my "career track", I figure I can spent 3-4 months doing something totally fun if I want to!

So, the job thing is taken care of, at least until April. But now I'm looking for health insurance, which is a bit insane. I know absolutely nothing about health insurance because I've always been covered by my mom's plan at work, until right about now. So I'm learning all about premiums and deductibles and coinsurance, and trying to figure out if there is actually any way to figure out what the best plan for me is. I'm thinking there isn't really an objective way to doing this, which just irks the heck out of me. (Damn things that don't have an obvious right and wrong answer!) So I'm getting my parents to help me, and hopefully soon it will be over and I won't have to think about it for a while. And then hopefully I'll have a job that includes health insurance as a benefit, and I really won't have to think about it!

On another note, I realized that when I move out of my parents house (sometime between May and August probably), I will no longer have a) a cafeteria to go to or b) someone to cook for me. This horrible realization hit me about two weeks before graduation, and so I have decided that I have to learn how to cook. (There's no way my wallet or my health can afford to eat out every day...) So as part of my mom's Christmas present from me I am helping her get her recipe binder up to date, both in printed format and in digital format. And as part of her present to me, she's taking me shopping and making me help her cook. So I'm learning all about how to tell if oranges are ripe ("they're heavy" says Mom), how to buy ginger ("get the least knobbly, it's a pain to peel"), and how to cook.

I'm actually finding it rather fascinating because I had always seen cooking as a chore, even though Mom enjoys it so much. But I'm realizing that if there is someone around for me to talk to, I don't mind cooking at all. It's a very economical way to eat; it's fairly cheap and easy to make a lot of food that you can eat as leftovers. (All you people older than me who are reading this and going "Well duh!", you hush up! I'm 23 and I haven't had to think about it until now because Mom cooked or I ate at the caf in college!)

But I gotta go, I have to go "taste this soup and tell me [Mom] what you think"!

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I graduated!

Whee! I'm all done with school, forever! Er, that is, until I go to grad school...

But I'm done with college! Hurray! I graduated on Saturday, and it was awesome. My parents flew out from California, and one of my best friends from high school stopped by on his way back home from DC, so I had a bunch of people there with me.

So now I'm home in California, still jobless, still living in my parents house, still all of those things. Apparently graduation wasn't actually the key to "real adulthood" like I kept hearing... But hey, I'll figure it out. I'm actually only planning on being here (California) for about six to eight months. After that my boyfriend and I are going to move to some other place so that he can get his Ph.D in English. We don't know where yet because he is still sending in applications and stuff and we won't hear back until February at the very earliest. But he applied in Chicago, New York, and Boston, so wherever we end up, it's going to be awesome!

I also applied to grad schools in the same place (gonna get my MBA), but most schools want MBA candidates with 3 to 5 years of work experience, and according to them I have 0. I feel that's slightly unfair cuz I've had some really awesome and totally relevant summer internships, but apparently those don't count. Oh well. So, if I don't get in anywhere I'll just work for a few years and then reapply. Should work out great... I think... hopefully. Nah, it'll be fine.

So the plan is to hang out here in California for the holidays and do absolutely nothing. I've already sent out some feelers for some techy jobs around the bay and am hoping to hear back once people are back at work after the holidays. Then hopefully I'll be working for about six months, and then moving across the country. Whee!

But seriously, the next three weeks? Relaxing! Totally. It's not like I have anything I have to do. Except decorate the Christmas tree. Help my mom cook metric tons of food. Unpack three suitcases and seven boxes of stuff. Organize said three suitcases and seven boxes of stuff into the HOUSE FULL of stuff I already had here at home. Find a job. Find health insurance. No, really, it'll be cake!

Ok so I'm gonna ignore all that stuff for a while. The Christmas tree at least is decorated, so maybe not the next three weeks, or even the next three days, but the next three hours will DEFINITELY be relaxing! Yay!

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Warning: Sick People!

Everyone in our apartment is sick! Stay away! Or actually, Erin is not sick... YET! But she was gone this weekend, and her sister was sick, so she might be in the early stages of it.

JonMarke has been coughing up a lung for a little more than a week now, and still refuses to see the doctor. He seems to be a bit better though. Doug got sick Friday afternoon with apparently the same thing JonMarke had, but Erin had already escaped one hour earlier. And then Saturday morning I went from completely fine to feeling like I was dying within the space of about fifteen minutes. I could feel the sore throat coming on, and then ten minutes later I didn't even want to breathe it hurt so bad.

Unfortunately the NYU application was due the next night, but I wanted to get it done. Luckily, the essays were pretty much ready, so I submitted the application and then went to bed at like 9pm and didn't wake up until noon on Sunday. Also luckily, I had mostly written the term paper that was due today at 11am, and had only left a basic concluding paragraph that still needed to be written. And, no one wanted to work over the weekend so we did the group project that is due on Tuesday after class on Friday. So that just needed to be put together into one document. So I spent the weekend in sweatpants and a sweatshirt watching TV, but it was all ok because I got my homework done in advance.

And actually, I woke up this morning feeling pretty crappy, but now my sore throat is mostly gone and I just feel all sorts of stuffed up and headache-y. Maybe it'll be gone tomorrow. (But I'll still have to fend off JonMarke and Doug's long-lasting cough stuff. Bleh.)

The semester is still relaxing though. I have a 6 page Spanish paper, a 10 page Spanish paper, a final report for Strategic Management, and a few final tests, and that's basically it! The two papers I can easily get done during Thanksgiving break (which thankfully is next week!) and the rest of it can be done anytime before the last day of finals, December 17th. I've got tons of time.

I've gotta get all my stuff packed up and shipped home over break too, so that hopefully there is very little to do when my parents show up for graduation!

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Now it's relaxing!

So I finally got around to having a relaxing semester! Every year I think "Oh this semester will be fine, I only have such and such classes, and two of them are such and such, and the first one starts at 11am, etc" but then I'm always wrong. There is always something or another that I just completely didn't expect or plan for and somehow taking six classes is actually stressful!

Well I did it again at the beginning of this semester. I thought "I only have four classes, only one on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and it starts at 11. This semester will be cake!" Well I forgot about grad school apps, and of course those were insane! But, I've gotten to the point in the semester where I'm more than halfway done with grad school apps, and my classes are actually really easy this semester. So while all of my friends are freaking out ("We only have three weeks of class left!") I'm actually feeling pretty relaxed.

I'm almost done with my third application, which is due November 15, and then I just have one more to do, but it's not due until January 6, so I've got time. The most stressful thing I have to do right now is figure out how to get everything I own from Tulsa to California before I leave here for good on December 20th! Luckily my parents will be coming out for graduation so we'll have six suitcases worth of space to put stuff in. But that doesn't help for things like my mini fridge and furniture. That stuff will probably just have to go to a good home here in Tulsa.

And then I get to re-move all of that stuff across the country to either Chicago, New York, or Boston at the end of the summer so that we can go to grad school. Whee! But that's stress for another time. Right now, I don't have to deal with it. And it's been in the mid-70's all week, so I'm happy!

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Aaaahhh!

I found three long silver-grey hairs on my head yesterday! And I've only finished one out of four grad school applications so far. Crap, I'm way too young for this!

On the plus side, I am getting close to having my second application finished, and the other two aren't due for another month so I will have a bit more time to finish those up.

Luckily school hasn't been super duper crazy. It's busy, cuz it's school, and that's what happens, but it's seeming mostly manageable. I even find time to do some fun things every once in a while. Tomorrow my friend Elizabeth and I are going to make sushi for a bunch of friends and have a little dinner party. We went shopping last night (in the freezing cold rain, yes, winter has come early!) so that will be a nice break from grad school apps and paper writing for my Spanish classes.

JonMarke is diligently working away on his study abroad applications, but it seems like the world is against him right now. His transcripts are on hold because one of his scholarships hasn't come through yet, his adviser is on sabbatical this semester so he's having problems getting his class list signed off on, and he's also very busy with school because it's about time for midterms, which for an English major means a bunch of ridiculously long papers. So hopefully he'll be able to pull it off (I would love to go visit him in Ireland!), but it might not work out, which would be too bad. We'll see...

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Grad Schools!

So I'm back at school (have been for just over three weeks) and everything is going kind of crazy! I had all of these grand delusions of having a peaceful and relaxing semester because I only have four classes, and none of them are MIS classes. Hah! Not true...

I decided that I am going to apply to grad schools this year instead of working first. So my boyfriend and I and our friends Patrick and Karissa drove up to Chicago (yes, from Tulsa) over Labor Day weekend under the premise of looking at grad schools. Or at least, grad schools was the cover story we gave our teachers so that they wouldn't yell at us for skipping class on Friday. It was also about having fun! But the trip started out pretty disastrously. About three hours into the drive we were in the left lane on Route 44 when someone merged into us! JonMarke was driving and to avoid being hit full on by this car he was forced to swerve into the ditch between the two directions of the highway where we spun around and skidded for about a quarter mile before coming to a stop. Luckily, no one was hurt and the car wasn't damaged at all! Like, no cosmetic damage either! It was a pretty scary experience all in all, but the rest of our drive was fairly uneventful.

The rest of the trip got steadily better from then on (I mean, how could it not!). We spent Friday visiting grad schools (University of Chicago and Northwestern), we walked all around downtown Chicago on Saturday and ended the night at an improv comedy club, and JonMarke and I got to have brunch with my cousin Alison and her husband Kirk on Sunday. So all in all it was really great. We loved the University of Chicago and the city itself, and we really liked the Northwestern campus but unfortunately the admissions woman who did my info session was having a bad day or something. I was really unimpressed and she seemed very haughty and uptight.

The visit got me into the 'grad school mode' though and I have spent the entire week since being back working on applications. I've started writing essays, which is by far the hardest part for me. But luckily my boyfriend is an English major so at least for "englishy" type things he is super useful. And my mom has looked over a bunch of stuff for me too which is really great.

Unfortunately the first application is due on October 1st, which is just two weeks away, and I found out today and yesterday that all of my classes are at the point where large projects and tests are coming up, you guessed it, within the next two weeks! So it's a bit hectic trying to get my essays finished in time to have my mom and teachers and friends look at them before submitting them and study for tests and research industries for Management class and try to have a life all at the same time. But I'm sure I'll figure it out!

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