Graduation

Graduation was a week ago and it's high time I posted some pictures. Here you go:

Walking down the aisle before things start. The departmental ceremony was held in a church.

An action shot after the ceremony.

Posing with the fake diploma. Actual diplomas will be mailed in February.

What will I do with all my free time now, you ask? That's a subject for another post.

I'M DONE!

Tonight I gave my final presentation and submitted my paper online so I can finally say it: I am officially done with my master's degree. I still have two class periods left to attend (to listen to other peoples' presentations) but my part is over. Two years, countless nervous breakdowns, and a large amount of Coke and chocolate and I finally made it. I'm still getting used to the idea that I am really and truly DONE.

Four More Weeks

I have four weeks left of school. Sort of.

According to the calendar it's actually five, but the last week is just one evening for the final exam period so I'm not counting that. I don't have a final exam, that time will be seven people doing their final presentations. I signed up to do mine earlier so I'll have to go and listen but I won't have to do anything myself.

So that leaves four weeks. I'm giving my presentation on November 29th, and my paper needs to be done before that, so that's only three weeks away. Hubby and I will be in California the week of Thanksgiving. Since my presentation is just a couple days after we get back I need to have at least the paper done before we leave; it'd be nice to start working on the presentation, too, though I have a feeling part of my vacation will be spent up close and personal with PowerPoint. So that gives me two weeks to complete the paper—a paper I essentially haven't started yet, of course. I'm meeting with my professor on Monday to discuss it so I'll have something to say about it by then.

As you can see, what looks like four weeks on the calendar is actually much less in reality. My paper is officially due on December 3rd, giving me a few days to edit it after my presentation. So on December 3rd—if not before—I will officially be done with this class, this semester, and my degree.

I Want a Toad Hole

The other day hubby and I were walking the pooch one evening when it was actually a little cooler and we didn't see many toads; hubby commented that "toading season" may be nearly over and the toads may be settling in their toad holes for the winter. I thought that sounded lovely—a nice cozy toad hole to curl up in. I want one!

Life has been ridiculously busy since I started working and I've barely had time to breathe (or sleep), let alone cook, clean, watch TV, or any of the other things people do in their daily lives. On days I have class I go straight to class from work so that makes for 12-hour days for me; over the past two weeks I had other things going on that made for several other 12-hour days in addition to just class days. (Class days are only two days a week.) I guess a lot of people live this way all the time but I'm not one of them, and I don't think I want to be long-term.

I've decided for the rest of my time at this job (it's only for a few weeks) I'm going to work M-Th and take Friday off completely, rather than work shorter hours all week. I'm not working full-time so dedicating M-Th to work gets the hours in, then I can have a three-day weekend to catch up on other things I need to do, like keep up with my one-and-only-class this semester. (This particular class is on the heavy side and feels like a full-time load itself sometimes.) On the bright side, the extra activities that overloaded my schedule for the past two weeks should be subsiding now; hopefully things will quiet down to a dull roar so I'll have a few hours each week to feel like a normal person again. "Normal" being a relative term, of course.

Back to School for the Last Time

Today is the first day of my last class of graduate school—only 121 days until graduation, if anyone is counting. (Why yes, yes I am.) With only one class I don't expect school to be my entire focus anymore, which will be strange since school has been my LIFE for the past year and a half. And I'm fine with that. School is fun (sometimes; sometimes not) but I'm ready to have a job and go back to the "real" world now. (Still working on that.)

My last class is a required theory (vs. application) class called "Rhetoric of Science and Technology." (I'm working on memorizing the title so I don't have to look it up all the time.) Rhetoric is an important part of writing, and even technical writing addresses the rhetorical situation of the audience. (I actually used the phrase "rhetorical situation" in my capstone presentation last semester; I was so proud.) I wasn't an English major as an undergrad so rhetoric isn't something I think about everyday, and I'll probably learn a thing or two in this course. And get more practice writing papers and doing presentations and reading what others have to say on the matter until my eyes fall out... I can't wait.

But it'll all be worth it in December when I can walk down that aisle and say, "I did it!"

The Next Step

Last Friday I finished my summer class (an independent study). With my grade posted today I am officially three credits closer to my master's degree. In just a year-and-a-half I've completed 30 of the 33 credits required; no wonder I'm so tired.

My next (and last!) class doesn't start until August so that means for the first time in a long time I have some free time—no homework or due dates to stress over. So yesterday I made a blueberry pie:

I figured it was necessary.

Of course having free time doesn't mean I don't have anything to do; it just means when I don't want to clean the house now I don't have nearly as good an excuse for putting it off. And there's that ironing I haven't done in, uh, ages... And last but not least there's that job thing. Oh yeah, that.

As I've always said, I didn't go back to school for my health—I did it to catch up with the field of technical communication so I could get a job. And not just any job—a good job that I would enjoy and be challenging and utilize the skills I have. That's always been my goal as I labored away on reading and projects and everything else being a full-time graduate student entails. And now I'm done. Yes, I still have that last class left, but I'm done being a full-time student with no time to think about anything else. So, after I've taken a little time to relax without feeling guilty (well, try to do that, at least), and catch up with things around the house, I'm planning on starting my job search in earnest. As they say, searching for a job is a full-time job; now I'll finally have the time to do it. Wish me luck.

Pass, you're done!

I successfully defended my capstone project last night and got the coveted, "Pass, you're done," from my advisors. (Versus the other option, "Pass, but...," meaning they want you to revise something in your document.) Yeah! I pretty much memorized my presentation so I'm looking forward to forgetting it and freeing up some space in my over-crowded brain.

Now it's onto my next assignment, something for my other class which is due today and turning into a bigger ordeal than I'd envisioned. It's always something!

A Big Day

Tonight I defend my capstone project—seems like the time has just flown by, doesn't it? (The answer to that is no, it doesn't, it just sounded good so I thought I'd try it.) Over the next two weeks the 12 of us doing our capstone projects this semester will be presenting them to the class, our advisors, and anyone else who wants to come. Three of us will be going each night; tonight is the first round. Each presentation is about 20 minutes long with a few minutes of questions from your advisors at the end. The class meets at 7:30 p.m. and I'll be going last, so I expect I won't get started until close to 8:30 p.m. I'll have to be pretty entertaining to keep everyone awake! (Then again, if my advisors choose to dose off that might not be such a bad thing, it could make the questioning session much easier.)

While getting past this is definitely an important milestone, I've still got assignments to finish up for my other class, unfortunately, so it's not quite the finality you like to envision with this sort of thing. And I've got that independent study to do this summer, and one more class to take next fall... Then I'll breathe that huge sigh of relief and say, "I'm done!"

End of the Tunnel

My regular readers have probably noticed I haven't been posting quite as frequently lately. As you can probably imagine, things have just been too busy trying to keep up with graduate school without having a serious nervous breakdown in the process. (And I've had plenty of minor breakdowns along the way.) Going back to school full-time has definitely brought several "What was I thinking?!??!" moments, but I know in the end I'll be glad to have done the program this way.

The good news is I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. After this semester (which isn't over yet, I have to keep reminding myself) I'll have two classes left, and I was originally planning on taking both of them next fall. (One is a required course I have to take in the fall, the other is an elective.) Then I thought it'd be nice to take the elective over the summer if I could, get that out of the way and only have the one required course in the fall. The problem is there aren't a lot of classes offered during the summer sessions and the type of elective I need to take isn't available. In the meantime, though, there is a class I really wanted to take this semester but couldn't due to my schedule and workload, so I'd talked to the professor about doing the work for the class on my own over the summer on a casual basis, just so I could learn the material and not totally miss out. To make a long story short (or shorter, at least), my advisor is letting me do the work for the class I couldn't take as an independent study course over the summer, so I'll not only get credit for work I was already planning to do, but he's allowing me to do this in lieu of taking the other type of elective. This is allowing me to make the most of my program, molding it to my goals and what I want to get out of it rather than molding myself to fit it.

For the independent study I'll be compressing a 16-week course into a 5-week summer session, but I've already put together the schedule I'll follow and it's doable. I took a summer course last summer so I'm familiar with the 5-week concept, which helps. What this all means is that on June 25th—the day my independent study will officially end—I'll have only one course left in my graduate studies. I probably won't have much time to breathe between now and June 25th to get it all done, but being able to see the end of the tunnel there definitely helps motivate me now.

Last but not least, finishing the program this way means I'll be able to start my job search several months earlier than I'd originally planned. Living on one income and our savings has been so much fun, of course (or not), but I'm ready to start earning money again sooner rather than later. More importantly, I'm more than ready to put what I've been learning into practice, which has been the goal all along here. If I was taking two classes in the fall I wouldn't want to work full-time while I did that (many people do, I know, but I wouldn't want to), but having just one evening class will allow me to go back to work full-time if the opportunity arises. I definitely hope it will arise and I'll be working toward that. Just last night I got a possible job lead that would be the right timing and could possibly turn into something, so I'm already keeping my eyes and ears open for that perfect job.

If you don't see me much over the next couple of months now you know why. (Well, more specifically that you probably guessed already, anyway.) As part of my independent study I'm also going to be putting together a new blog, which I plan to host on my own Web site. (A Web site I don't have yet, but will.) My goal for that blog is to focus on topics in the field of technical communication; I'm not exactly sure what topics yet, but something where I can contribute to the technical communication community. I'll probably still maintain this blog as a purely personal blog; after all, I need a place to post pictures of the pooch!

Lazy dog.

Spring Break

Spring break is coming up next week and I've been making plans. Wanna hear them?

1. Take one entire day off from school work to go shopping with my husband. We both need clothes. Really. We've been putting it off way too long.
   
2. Clean the house. ('Nuff said.)
3. Have lunch with a friend.
4. Write the majority of the content for my capstone project and put together a 30-page document for my other class.

I really wonder why they call it spring break; "break" is such a misnomer when you're a grad student. There's really nothing "break" about it.

Headed Toward Employment

Even though I'm still a little while away from graduating I've started thinking more about getting a job. My focus this year is to have a job next year, and you have to sow your seeds before you can harvest them, right? For me, that means working on networking and establishing relationships now, while I'm not looking for a job, in order to have those contacts available when I am job searching later on.

One thing I've found is that people in industry are generally very receptive to students, or at least people in my field are. My theory is that students are less threatening; especially in today's economy, people who have jobs are used to being asked for help by people who don't have jobs. Students in the middle of their program generally aren't asking for jobs, so there isn't as much pressure involved in talking to them. I've taken advantage of this numerous times already, talking to people in my field about various projects I'm doing. It's made my projects more relevant and contributed toward that all-important networking, getting my name out there as someone who takes initiative and has the drive to succeed.

Recently I've had another reason to think about employment more closely. Last week I was notified that the Society for Technical Communication selected me for their Sigma Tau Chi Award, which honors students with the potential to distinguish themselves in the technical communication profession. I'm told only a few students are selected each year. Besides being a great boost for my resume, receiving the award (or being inducted into the honor society, as it's also put) helps affirm the direction I ultimately want to take into leadership roles when I return to the working world.

Finished!

Last night I finished my last paper for the semester and turned it in. All 7,000 words of it. 41 minutes before it was due. For a professor whose wife was about to go into labor (if she hadn't already). I am completely wiped out.

Thanks to all of you who commented on my last post about the cell phone dilemma. Even with my small, couldn't-possibly-apply-to-a-larger-population sample size, it's interesting that none of you really do the smartphone thing. I had lunch with a friend this week and asked her about it, too; turns out she lives in the '90's as far as cell phones are concerned, too, just like me. I even made it to a mall this week (first time I've been to one in months, I think), and I went to a Verizon Wireless store and looked at the phones and asked about the whole pricing thing. The salesperson was very helpful and answered my questions without pushing me at all (I was really impressed with that, by the way), but the bottom line is we've decided not to change our cell phone situation at this time. I just can't justify the monthly price and I'm not "plugged into" things enough to really make it worthwhile, I think. So we'll stick to our basic plan and our phones that we use just for calling people (and frankly I hardly even use mine much for that). Maybe we'll revisit the issue again in another year.

I'll try to post more updates over the next few days, but given that Christmas is only a week away and I haven't had time to do much about it yet I'm expecting to be kind of busy for the next week. (When I'm not sleeping, which I may be doing a lot of due to being totally exhausted.) For example, you know that wonderful Christmas tree we got over a week ago? It still isn't decorated. Writing papers took precedent and hubby was out-of-town for a few days so we've just had a pine tree living in our house. It's pretty sad. The plan is to finally get it decorated tonight.

"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!"

Presentation Day

I'm giving my presentation on user interactivity with documentation to my class this evening. Students will be doing their presentations over the next two weeks. I volunteered to go today—the first day—ostensibly to get it over with; in reality I have so much else to do that taking longer to do it wouldn't have helped me, it's just a matter of what I juggle when at this point. Going today also means I'm not expected to have my associated paper together at this point so that helps me. I think a lot of people in the class are working on their papers and presentations simultaneously; normally that's how I'd do it, too, but it just wasn't an option this time. The presentation is due today so I focused on that; the paper isn't due until December 17th. I have a lot more due between now and then so the paper will have to wait.

I ended up framing my presentation around the following questions:

• What is user interactivity?
• Why is it important?
• What are some issues?
• What are companies doing it?
• How is it redefining documentation?
• What are some implications for technical communicators?

I have quotes from technical communicators throughout my presentation to support my positions. Several are from Twitter: Some of the things I'm talking about are definitely hot topics right now. I think the screenshots I have of tweets are a nice touch. Hopefully the class (and professor) will think so, too!

The presentation is supposed to be 15 minutes long and I have 34 slides... Several are title slides but I'm still hoping I can get through them all fast enough without it looking like I'm rushing. And on that note, off to practice!

Three More Weeks!

Hard to believe I only have three weeks left of the semester...Well, sort of. Three more weeks of classes, that is. After that comes final exam weeks; I don't have any exams, thankfully, but I do have several final projects, two of which are due during the final exam period. So in reality only one of my classes will be done in three weeks; for that one the final project is due on the last day of class. I guess the professor doesn't want to draw things out.

In addition to finishing up projects for this semester I'm also still working on coming up with an idea for the capstone project I'll be doing next semester. Proposals are indeed due the Tuesday before Thanksgiving—at least that's what the e-mail from the professor teaching the class said. I replied and "suggested" making the due date the Tuesday after Thanksgiving might be better than the Tuesday before. He agreed that was reasonable so I, at least, will be doing my proposal over the Thanksgiving break. (Ok, what I really told him was if I had to do anything more before Thanksgiving it would be the straw that breaks this camel's back. At any rate I got an extension for this particular assignment for a class that hasn't actually started yet...) I'm still looking around and waiting for that epiphany of a project that will be really interesting and exciting to do over the semester. Next week I'm going to look at previous projects in the hope that will give me some ideas. (They're stored in a particular bookcase in my department, behind a locked door that not everyone has a key to, I've discovered. I've now talked to a professor who has a key who will make sure the door is unlocked when I plan to be there next week... And to think this is the easy part!)

For those of you who read my post on my user interactivity project I'm happy to report that it's coming along. I'll be giving my presentation to the class on Thursday. I talked to my professor about my concerns and he agreed that my revised focus is a good one. That means I'm looking at how companies implement user interactivity but I'm not trying to assess how well companies incorporate user content into official documentation or how effective their efforts are, since I would need inside knowledge to determine both of those. I also talked to someone in my field about the project: Sarah O'Keefe is a leader in the technical communications industry and just happens to live and work in my area. (I initially contacted her via Twitter, believe it or not.) I met with her at her office and got valuable insight into how she views user interactivity with documentation and what companies need to do to embrace it.

Is It Worth It?

Soon it will be one year since I went back to school to get my M.S. in Technical Communication. While I'm enjoying the academic environment and definitely learning a lot, I wonder everyday if it's worth it. Of course my answer is, "I sure hope so!"

I went back to school because the opportunity presented itself and it's something I'd been thinking about for a while. Quite a while, actually: I remember in 2003 after the Columbia space shuttle tragedy being struck with the thought that those people died doing what they loved. At the time I didn't love what I was doing (far from it, actually) and I wished I could figure out what I wanted to do and pursue it. The realities of modern life made staying in my comfort zone more appealing, though, so I stayed in my job and did what I could with it until circumstances gave me the chance to change.

I can't say that becoming a technical communicator is my lifelong dream, as becoming an astronaut was for some of the Columbia flight crew. I was a technical writer early in my career and I enjoyed it, and I think I'll enjoy it even more now as the ways documentation is created and presented have progressed in the digital age. Do I need a master's degree to excel in the field? No. I don't know the statistics but I'd guess less than half of the people who call themselves technical communicators have a master's degree in technical communication. However, times and the economy have changed since I was a technical writer so I'm hoping the degree in addition to my experience will give me that "edge" with employers, bringing my resume to the top of the stack and putting me on that short list for an interview. Since I'll be graduating in December, 2010, I'll probably be looking for that perfect job at this time next year. Hopefully I'll find out then that it was all worth it.

Enabling Interactivity with Users

I imagine to most of my readers today's title doesn't make much sense. I've decided I'm going to talk about some struggles I'm having with the hope that it will clear my mind. No, not personal struggles, I'm talking about struggles I'm having with a particular project for school. My struggles range from figuring out how to frame the project in the first place to determining how to go about actually doing it.

The project involves looking at how companies enable interactivity with users when it comes to documentation. (Thus this post's title.) I don't know about you, but when I'm trying to figure out how something works I often can't find the answer in the online help. (I haven't seen a printed manual in a while now so we won't even go there.) So where do I turn? To Google, of course, to search the plethora of information known as the Internet for the answer. More often than not I'm successful (though depending on the complexity of the problem it may take a few hours of searching), eventually finding the answer I need on some obscure Web page where someone somewhere had a similar problem and thankfully shared it in a public post. But what if companies—or more specifically technical communicators—harnessed the vast amount of user knowledge out there and integrated it into the official documentation for products in some way, providing users with a more central place than the untamed Internet to find the answers they need? Just think of how much better this would make users' experiences with products, knowing there was a single place they could go to solve their problems!

This may sound like Utopia but some companies are using social media tools today to engage users and interact with them. This is primarily being done in the realm of marketing and public relations but it's also spilling over to customer and technical support forums. What I'm not so sure about is whether that knowledge is being captured effectively and integrated in a manner where people with the same problem can easily find it. I don't really have the means to investigate that aspect of things with this particular project so I think I need to stop at the point of determining how companies interact with users and look at its potential value. I'd really like to close that loop (as I see it, anyway) of evaluating whether any of the user-generated knowledge is incorporated back into the documentation, but without insider knowledge I just don't know how I'm going to do that.

So that's where things stand. As I've been working on this post I've been looking on the Web and reading some articles, trying to put some structure around whatever I'm going to do. I'm also waiting to hear back from my professor regarding an e-mail I sent him yesterday on all of this. The bottom line is in two weeks (yes, two weeks) I need to have a 15-minute presentation put together that answers my questions and describes what I found. And, as with all projects I do, I'm determined to do it well. I'll let you know how it turns out.

A Confused Kitty

I have a lot of reading to do this semester and my favorite place to read is sitting on the downstairs couch. The light is best there and it's pretty comfortable, but more importantly my dog and cat often join me, one on each side of the couch.

Today while I was eating lunch the dog got up on the cat's side of the couch. We have a towel there for the cat to sit on and the dog decided to sit on the towel. It wasn't a problem until I sat down to finish my reading for class today. As usual, the cat came over to sit on the couch with me—and she noticed the dog in her "spot." Twice she jumped up on her usual side and kept finding the dog there. So she tried to find another spot—the other side of the couch, the top—eventually settling on the arm for a little while, where she sometimes sits. In the meantime the dog stretched herself over my lap, making it very difficult to read. (Of course I didn't move her; she was all settled and snuggled in, after all.)

Thankfully the dog and cat have had some experience living in close quarters together and neither is too fazed anymore when the other one gets too close. When we moved from California to North Carolina they spent five-and-a-half days together in my car: The dog stayed in her seatbelt in the back and the cat roamed around. (The cat used to travel between Oregon and California with me so she's an old hand at long car rides.) I think the uniqueness of that event changed their dynamic; the dog still teases the cat once in a while but not nearly as much as she used to. (Age may have something to do with that, too, since they're both older now, but I'm gonna stick with the drive-across-the-country theory myself.)

I'm happy to report that today's couch story does have a happy ending for the cat. Eventually the dog got tired of balancing on my lap and rolled off the couch to go lie on the floor. (I think she heard a squirrel outside, too; she had to go to the window to check it out.) As soon as the dog left the cat promptly came over (seriously, it took less than a minute), settled in her spot on the towel, purred and went to sleep while I finished my reading. My cat's world had been restored.

Change in Plans

Another Friday, another post—anyone besides me sensing a pattern here? I really think I'm lulled into a false sense of security on Fridays about how much I need to do... especially right after a Thursday when I've had something important due (which probably means I stayed up late Wednesday working on it and still rushed to finish before the deadline on Thursday) and I feel like I need a rest. Since I never have anything actually due on Fridays I seem to think I can "relax" and not be as productive as I should be. Assignments for my online class are usually due on Sunday so I do have that to contend with, but since Saturday comes before Sunday it seems to provide a buffer for Friday.

This week I registered for spring semester. When I started my program last January I wasn't sure how long the program would take; eventually I decided on 2.5 years, so graduating in spring 2011. If you go full-time it's designed to be a two-year program, but starting in the spring throws things off because of when the required classes are offered. In particular, a course called "capstone project" is offered only in the spring, and it's designed to be the last class you take before you graduate. (The capstone project is in place of a master's thesis; as the name implies it's really just a semester-long project, not a real thesis.) It's also recommended that you take the capstone project course alone if you possibly can since it requires a lot of work. I'd be done with the majority of my classes in spring 2010 so I decided I'd start looking for a job starting in summer 2010, then just take the two classes I had left (one class in fall 2010 and the capstone project in spring 2011) while working full-time. They're both evening classes and plenty of people do the program while working so that was my plan.

Until about a week ago. While thinking about what courses I need to take next semester my plan of waiting until May 2011 to graduate started sounding a lot less appealing than doing the program in two years and graduating in fall 2010 (Dec. 2010). The only way for spring starters like me to do that, though, is to take the capstone project course the semester before you graduate—so you still have at least one course to take afterward (the required class only offered in the fall) and possibly other courses, too, depending on how much you've done up until then. To make a long story short (or maybe it's too late for that—oh well) I've decided to do it that way and take the capstone project course next semester in order to graduate in Dec. 2010 instead of May 2011. It means I'll put off my job search for six months longer than I'd planned but that's a relatively minor detail for us at this point. (When I went into this we expected I'd be out of the workforce for two full years.) It also means I won't be taking the capstone project course on its own and will be taking another required class with it, but since it'll only be two classes instead of the three I'm taking this semester that still sounds like a huge relief to me right now. I'll need to take two classes instead of just one in fall 2010 but that's ok, too, since I won't be trying to work at a full-time job then.

I'm not the first person in the program to take the capstone project early and I won't be the last; plenty of people do it so there's definitely a precedence. Now I have to come up with a project a year earlier than I thought I would—YIKES! I talked to my advisor yesterday and found out I'm going to have to turn in a short proposal for my project this semester, probably by Thanksgiving—DOUBLE YIKES! I've had some vague ideas of possibilities for a while but having to think about them concretely now is an entirely different matter. I'd really like to do something Web-related if I can. Redesigning a Web site is a common project; anyone out there have a Web site they'd like created or redesigned? I did one as a semester project for a class last semester (the class was on Web design) that probably would have been a good candidate for a capstone project; that was then, this is now. Apparently my project doesn't have to be "real" (related to an organization that actually needs whatever I do) and I can make it up out of thin air, but I'd really like it to be something real (related to an organization somewhere) if I possibly can. So I'll be giving it some thought. And hoping for a revelation, which is welcome to come any time now.

A Day Off

I took yesterday afternoon off from schoolwork. Here's what I did instead:

• Two loads of laundry
• Swept and washed the bathroom floors
• Vacuumed the house
• Vacuumed the stairs (a separate task from vacuuming the house as far as I'm concerned)
• Took out the trash
• Washed my car, including washing all the windows inside and out (first time I'd washed it since April—it was time)

If none of that sounds like a very good day off you won't get any arguments from me.

I could really use a real day off. Unfortunately, I feel like I'm barely keeping up as it is and if I take a whole day off—really take it off—I'm afraid I'll fall behind so fast it would make your head spin. (Or make mine spin, which is probably more important in this case.) This Thursday and Friday are fall break at NC State which, as far as I can tell, won't mean a whole lot to me. It means the two classes I have on Thursday evening won't meet so I'll get a break from that. I'm planning on using the time to do some group work I need to do for one class, though, so I'll be going to school for that instead. (So I won't even save a trip to school this week.) One of the classes isn't meeting on Tuesday evening, either, since the professor is out-of-state this week presenting at a conference. So I get a slight break due to that, too. I'll still have to go to campus on Tuesday for the other class, though, so I'll still be making that trip to school. No rest for the weary.

Hopefully with the break in those two classes this week—and actually not having anything due during the week (until next Sunday for my online class, that is)—I'll FINALLY have a chance to catch up on some things and maybe even get a little ahead. (If I do it'll be short-lived, I'm sure, but every little bit helps.) Getting some things done around the house would help a lot, too; as much as I hate cleaning and doing it yesterday was hardly relaxing it was a good start. Hubby said he'd vacuum my car this week, too; I'm pretty sure it hasn't been vacuumed since we moved to North Carolina over two years ago so having that done will be really nice.

The reality is I probably won't have a real day off until the semester is done in December. So I have a question for all of you: What do you do for fun on a real day off? Maybe you'll inspire me—or at least give me some ideas for December!

Random Citings

I've been collecting some random musings lately so I thought I'd share.

1. Whenever I do laundry I inevitably forget about it and end up leaving it in the washer (or dryer) for several hours.
2. I only buy chocolate chips in 72 oz. bags. Anything less is hardly worth it. (Have I mentioned chocolate chip cookies are a staple in my house?)
3. Sometimes I like to be domestic—cooking, baking, that sort of thing. Unfortunately my desire to be domestic never extends to wanting to clean the house.
4. I like blueberry-chocolate chip pancakes, as in both of them in there together. It occurred to me once that I liked blueberry pancakes and I liked chocolate chip pancakes, so why not try them all in one? Yum.
5. It takes two people to give our dog a bath. At least. She's a squirmy thing! (But oh so clean and fluffy afterwards.)
   
6. I have lots of freckles. Probably has to do with my reddish hair, which I think was even more reddish when I was a child. (Never carrot-red, though.)
7. I make an awesome dog nurse. (I nursed my dog back to health and got her to eat again when she was sick over the summer.)
8. My hubby and I met online, on a Christian dating site. Maybe I'll tell that story someday...

And last but not least:


9. The professors in my department have a conspiracy to have everything due on the same day. Really. I asked one of them about it last night, why major projects in different classes are always due on the same day. He said it's a conspiracy.

Back to the books!