The Beginning of the End (of Grad School)

It's been a year and a half since I last updated this blog. I have no clear reasoning why I left it when I did, other than grad school does, in fact, get more difficult and more busy as the years progress. But, I'm finally in the home stretch, in my final year of grad school with a graduation date of December 2018, and I think that deserves documenting.

However, a lot has happened between that last post and now. So here are some photos of the highlights from the past year and a half (in no particular order) --

Went to Australia (and promptly fell in love with Australia)

Attended some weddings

Spent time with family (and adopted family)

Visiting Ohio to bid Jeff farewell before he left for his year-long deployment
in South Korea

Post ghost-tour in Colonial Williamsburg

Doing a family escape room (spoiler - we didn't escape in time)

Cheering on Dad as he gets inducted as president for the AAE

Walking the Trail of Lights with the Avants

Had on campus adventures

That one time Ellen came on campus and told everyone to dress like Beyonce

Moved the entire lab to a new building. This is one of the many
crates of garbage we filled

Saved a baby dove

Stalked baby Bevo

And just adventured in general

Opening Day with the Creightons and Aunt Gretchen

Went to Universal Orlando with Mindy

Found Elvis in Memphis

Did my first 10K as part of the Air Force Marathon

Went and saw my favorite, Jeff Dye

Day One Thousand Forty

This extremely extended blog hiatus was brought to you by a week long trip to Virginia followed by two weeks of frantic packing to move to a new apartment. But I'm back! More to follow later this evening...

Day One Thousand Thirteen

You guys, it's so hot and muggy here right now, and it's only going to get worse. But this past weekend I threw caution to the wind and went to the last UT baseball game of the season, and we actually won! That was an unexpected surprise. And I got to hug Hook 'Em, and it was the absolute best. Here's some photos.

Here's UT warming up, with some excellent leg action by the pitcher.

Bob and I also got some sweet HEB shades as a reward for getting there early. I'm
hoping if I wear them while I grocery shop I'll get a discount.

Hook 'Em and I bonded. This may be one of my
new favorite photos ever.

The Hook 'Em busted out some sweet, sweet air guitar moves.

Just look at him go.

Besides the crazy muggy weather, this week has actually turned out to be really great so far. I met some of my parents friend at church on Sunday, found someone to go see Gavin DeGraw and Andy Grammar in concert this coming fall, and then found another friend to go see Jon McLaughlin with me (also this fall). I've been a concert ticket buying machine these past couple days, and it makes me so happy.

And tomorrow...one of my best friends who I've known since 6th grade is coming to town! She's never been to Texas before, so it should be fun. And probably a bit of a shock to her pacific northwest system.

Day One Thousand Eight

In Texas, with hot summer weather comes insane tropical storms like the one that woke me up at 6 this morning and lasted until 1 in the afternoon. Thankfully I have a job that allows me to work at home when the weather and roads seem particularly vicious.

Finals have officially passed at UT, meaning my TAing responsibilities for the spring have come to an end. No more grading of 122 exams! Atleast not until the fall. Campus is already so much calmer. My first year of grad school, I hated having to work during the summer. Now, it's my favorite time to be in lab. Funny how things change. While the semester at UT has ended, my high school tutoring kids are still going strong in their school year, meaning weekend tutoring sessions press on. One of these days I'll have a full weekend to myself. One of these days...

Until then, I'll continue having my Pirates of the Caribbean marathon and enjoy the small piece of weekend that will come my way after tomorrow.

Day One Thousand Two

This year, I've found myself way more reflective on/after my birthday than usual. Maybe it's the fact that my age now visibly shows that I'm closer to 30 than 20, or maybe it's just caused me to acknowledge that I've finally reached a point in life where I actually feel somewhat like a functioning adult (not always, but definitely more often). It's that moment where you feel like you're doing pretty well being independent and taking care of yourself, but at the same time regularly struggling with feeling like you're floundering.

I made a lot of progress in my year of being 25. I made it a full year living on my own (this is a big deal, just trust me), started over in my search for a church that I felt connected with and am slowly working on establishing myself somewhere new, and got better at not letting the threat of going somewhere alone keep me from doing something I want to do. Like baseball games and concerts and comedy shows.

This bird also decided he didn't need anyone else to enjoy
some baseball.

 I worked on being true to myself and my interests, which included searching for a book club and eventually joining one. While this provided much fodder for others to poke fun at me, I haven't regretted it at all. Probably one of the biggest shifts this year has been finally feeling comfortable in grad school - feeling like I'm not the dumbest person in the room, like I made the right decision in deciding to go to graduate school and deciding to stay in graduate school even when things really, really sucked (and sometimes continue to suck). I now find that I can read and understand things like this and how it integrates with my own research.

Feast your eyes. Ready to go to grad school, yet?

I'm excited and a little terrified to see what being 26 brings. I have some ideas of what I would like it to bring - a greater sense of independence and self confidence, greater consistency with being active/going to the gym, and being more accepting of the fact that I'm not meant to have everything figured out just yet.

I've only been 26 for three days now, but it's gone pretty well so far. I have family that sends me ridiculous cross-dressing ballerina birthday cards (it's a long story) and who make sure I have a box of birthday gifts that arrive to me exactly on my birthday for me to open, and I have friends that know me well enough to get me things like a small alpaca figurine, because there is never a time when those silly looking creatures don't make me smile. I think that makes me pretty lucky.

Day One Thousand

It's really late and I'm exhausted, but I can't not post on my one thousandth day in Texas. It's a crazy milestone and hard to wrap my head around. As is the fact that I turned 26 today. 26?! Officially  closer to 30 than I am to 20?! That can't be.

All in all, it was an awesome day. I slept in, got to talk to both parents and my brother on the phone, got some surprise birthday boxes in the mail, and was graciously taken out for a nice birthday dinner by a good friend and her parents. I ended the day watching Sherlock, and it was the perfect end to a pretty wonderful day.

Day Nine Hundred Ninety Nine

You know it was a hot day when you walk inside your apartment and think, "man, it's so nice and cool in here!" ....then you look at the thermostat and it informs you that it's 78 degrees in the apartment. For those who aren't aware, we climbed into the 90s today here in Austin, with 300% humidity, and it was a brutal awakening for what's to come in the summer. Be gentle with me, Texas. Be gentle.

I have quite literally been running ragged the past two weeks tutoring and grading and giving review sessions and office hours for the class I TA for. I go to work, run around meeting students all day, drive home, spend 15 minutes shoveling food in my face for dinner, then go back to my car to meet high school kids for tutoring. It's been an exhausting process, but also an enjoyable one, as I genuinely do like helping people understand chemistry. Only one more week of undergrads and three more weeks of high school tutoring and we can all relax for the summer. Them more so than me, but whatever.

Tomorrow I will have been in Austin for 1000 days. Quadruple digits. Tomorrow I also turn 26. The older I get, the more I understand when people used to tell me how life seems to fly by as you get older. Tomorrow is a day of milestones. I'll celebrate it by sleeping in (slightly), then going to work. Because unfortunately my birthday has not been deemed a national holiday. Yet.

Day Nine Hundred Eighty Seven

I'm writing this on my charged laptop! So without further ado, some photos from the past few weeks. 

First up, the San Antonio Zoo! My friend Mindy had never been, and I figured the combination of Mindy's love of birds and the San Antonio Zoo basically being half birds was a winning pair. Sure enough, I was right. And considering I also love birds, I didn't hate it either. They took away their penguin exhibit though, and that made me sad.

My selfie with a lorry.

Mindy was somehow a bird whisperer, and both lorries she fed
immediately jumped on her shoulder and just hung out there for
a few minutes.

Next up, this cursed, dysfunctional laser that has stalled all research progress the past couple months. We finally had to give in and take the cover off the entire thing to fiddle with the mirrors inside. See that green laser? That laser is so powerful it vaporizes air, and will slice through both a sheet of paper and your hand if it gets in the way. So I volunteered to fold the lens paper while my boss sacrificed his hands for the cause. While we all came out unscathed, the laser is still broken. Awesome.

The laser also has the exciting trait of causing instant blindness if
it reflects off something and in to your eyes. So this is what I looked
like for the duration of the attempted fix. The dark goggles block out
red laser light, the orange block green laser light. Together, they
maintain my ability to see things.

Last up, my office hour activity last week. No one showed up, so I drew Chem Bevo and hung him up in the room where a bunch of TAs hold their office hours. I checked today, he's still there. I'm a bit proud. If you can think of any catchy slogans for him, let me know.

This week thus far has been more fiddling with the laser and more office hours, as final exams loom over all the undergrads. Oh, and book club, where we talked about the behemoth of a book that is The Goldfinch. It wasn't my favorite, but I'm still happy I read it.

Day Nine Hundred Eighty Five

I forgot to charge my laptop again, so this will be another picture-less post since the phone blog app just cannot handle photos. But fear not, my laptop is charging overnight tonight so tomorrow I'll have no excuse.

This weekend was.....busy. Saturday was filled with tutoring, a baby shower, a Mary Kay makeup appointment (I looked fabulous afterwards), and going to see the new Jungle Book in theaters. That remake was absolutely amazing, and all of you should go see it. Today was spent doing all the stuff I didn't get done on Saturday, such as grocery shopping, cleaning, laundry, going to the gym, more tutoring, and data analysis for work. Thrilling stuff, let me tell you. It's especially fun when you don't realize you were saving said data analysis in the wrong format until too late, so you get to do it all over again. Excel, you kill me sometimes. Absolutely kill me.

Day Nine Hundred Eighty One

Remember how in my last post I said life felt a bit like a tornado? It hasn't changed yet, and it's continually exhausting. Things are very tense in lab, and an immediate resolution does not appear to be on the horizon, so spending 8+ hours of my day in that environment has got all my nerves frayed. I won't go in to what's happening, because I'll just get worked up (trust me), but it's an unpleasant situation at the moment.

Outside of lab, finals week is creeping closer and closer, and while I don't have any finals of my own to worry about (thank goodness), the students in the class I TA for as well as the students I'm tutoring are starting to feel the pressure. This means that extra office hours, review sessions, and tutoring sessions are all forthcoming. It takes up a chunk of free time, but the money made from tutoring makes the idea of paying for moving expenses a little more bearable. And for that I am thankful. Let's just hope I can calm these students down enough that they don't go in to panic mode when their exams and finals are dropped down in front of them.

On a final note, the weather has been absolute madness recently. Horribly stormy on Sunday (think flooding and emergency rescues - thankfully not in my area of town), then lingering storms all throughout the week that follow no rhyme or reason. Today was all thunder and lightning this morning, hot and muggy this afternoon, and then absolute perfect weather in the evening. I have no words.

PS - I haven't forgotten about posting photos. I'll get to that on the next post, when my laptop is fully charged again.

Day Nine Hundred Seventy Five

Last week was an absolute whirlwind of emotion and tension after a freshman girl was murdered on campus. For those who aren't aware, they were able to catch the guy (or should I say kid... 17 year old boy) who did it just 2 days after the body was found. Which is impressive, and we're all thankful for it. May Haruka Weiser rest in peace, and may everyone keep her family in their prayers. Yesterday was the first day where no news crews were on campus, which makes things feel a little more back to normal. There are still police cars everywhere, but I'm completely fine with that not changing for a while.

This week has been a completely different kind of whirlwind, with broken equipment in lab and suddenly realizing I'm going to have to move come June. $220 increase in rent (24% rise) after one year?! No thanks. I'm more than happy to leave. Thankfully today I was able to lock down an apartment for when my current lease ends, so cheers to not having to go a week or two with no place to live!

It's been one of those times of life where you feel like you're trapped in a tornado. If you all could pray for things to calm down (even just a bit), I'd very much appreciate it. There has been a highlight in recent days though during a trip to the San Antonio Zoo last weekend. Photos to follow in a post soon, since I'm writing this on my phone, and the blog phone app hates uploading photos.

Day Nine Hundred Sixty Seven

I recently hit the one year anniversary of living in my current apartment, and decided to celebrate by buying myself new dishes and a new shower liner. It's times like this that I realize just how much of a grown-up I've become. Yay? I also learned to smell a shower liner before you buy it, as I put my new one up, and in the course of 30 minutes took it back down and made a beeline for the dumpster before going to Target and buying another one. I may be a chemist, but that doesn't mean I want my apartment smelling like horrific chemicals. Crisis averted courtesy of Target being the best store to ever exist.

Besides the bad shower liner, it's been an odd/tragic week. Yesterday morning on UT's campus, it was discovered that a homicide had taken place overnight, with the victim being a female student. I've spent my week walking to and from work within 100 feet of an active crime scene, observing an extremely large number of law enforcement officers and news crews milling around the area constantly working. It's been surreal, scary, and completely heartbreaking. And I assure you all that I'm being as safe as humanly possible when working and moving around on campus, especially in light of certain events. So everyone say a prayer for the UT family, for students and staff to stay safe, and especially for the family of the victim.

Day Nine Hundred Sixty Two

This morning while walking with a friend to Starbucks on campus, we passed a guy on his bike singing "Roar" by Katy Perry and yelling "gotta start this day out RIGHT!"

Ahhhhh, college campuses. You never fail to entertain.

Day Nine Hundred Sixty

Okay, so I can't blame SXSW for my lack of posting these past 10 days. To make up for it, I'll make this a picture post! And I promise to do better...I promise.

Rodeo Austin! This is what I did instead of SXSW. You can see
how calm and serene the bull rider is on the big screen.

Katelyn and I at the rodeo, being excellent box-seat fillers.

Amanda's wedding photos are here! Here we
are looking adorable.

And here we are being completely normal.

The bridal party.

Here's a shot of part of the Shear Lab (including the boss-man, Dr. Shear)
at the Recruitment Weekend poster session last week.

I took the chem department recruit I was hosting to a UT baseball game, and
we snuck in to first row seats behind home plate for the last two innings.

It was basically like we were on the field with the team.

And this is just something random that happened
today when camels appeared on campus.

Day Nine Hundred Fifty

Let's all blame my lack of posting on SXSW. I didn't actually go to the festival, because I don't have a million bajillion dollars, but I did have to constantly figure out how to navigate around the horrible traffic it causes. But guess what? Today was the last day! The roads can now return to their normal state of bad Texas driving.

This past week was also spring break at UT, which meant a blissful week of work with no undergrads clogging campus. My research did its best to ruin my good mood, but I've gotten used to it rarely working at this point. There's a reason it takes as long as it does to get a PhD. Cross your fingers that this week brings greater success!

As far as fun things go, I've enjoyed both Rodeo Austin and some Texas baseball this past week. The rodeo is always lots of fun, and always reminds me of how different Texas is compared to where I grew up. There's nothing like watching grown men try to ride bulls or throw themselves off horses so they can tackle and flip over a steer. And the best part of it all is we got to watch all this happen from 4th row box seats! Our section of the bleachers (because I'm not willing to pay the amount of money required to get box seats) was chosen to be seat fillers until the rich box seat people showed up, that way the rodeo looked filled to capacity to people watching on TV. We got lucky and the people whose seats we took never showed up! Best surprise ever. I'll post some photos tomorrow when I'm writing my blog post from my laptop and not my phone.

I also took in a UT baseball game yesterday, because I'm hopelessly addicted. We lost, which we're doing with surprising consistency this year, but I still love them. And I got to take a friend of mine to her very first baseball game, which made it even more fun.

Tomorrow.......back to work. What a drag.

Day Nine Hundred Thirty Six

I've learned over the course of living in an apartment building that you get first whiff of your neighbors strong-smelling food choices.

Neighbor making spicy noodles at 11:30pm, I will not miss you.

Day Nine Hundred Thirty Two

I know, I disappeared for a while. I've been battling the cold that just won't quit, and thankfully I seem to be at the very tail end of it. I think I can speak for my entire lab when I say we all can't wait for my sinuses to get back to normal.

My past 10 days have included lots of catching up at work after being in Washington for 6 days followed by being sick for a week. I've successfully overcome a research hurdle that's been plaguing me (yay!), gone to my first baseball game of the season (UT lost real bad), had a mental breakdown over grad school (the semi-annual "what have I don't with my life, I'm never going to get out of here" moment), gotten a massage (it seems I'm tense?), and tutored some young'ns in the basics of chemistry (where I remind myself that I'm not as dumb as I feel sometimes).

I also went to a baby shower for my cousin Emily, where I made a chemistry-themed baby block because you cannot sneak attack me with crafts and not expect me to immediately revert to my comfort zone, molecules. It was for this baby shower that I went shopping for a picture book to gift Emily, and was reminded that people will publish kids books about literally anything. Some favorites were "Who Flung Dung?" and "My Mother is a Foreigner, But Not to Me." I ended up going with "Shamoo: A Whale of a Cow" - the inspiring story of a cow who becomes best friends with a humpback whale and realizes his dream of living and swimming in the ocean. This is not even a joke. Clearly if this whole grad school thing doesn't work out, I can go in to the field of children's literature. Because they will publish the weirdest things ever.

Day Nine Hundred Twenty Three

Two days after returning from Washington, my immune system decided it would be a splendid time to succumb to a horrific cold. The past 4 days have been spent sneezing, coughing, and generally sounding (and feeling) like the most disgusting person ever. It's been a dream. So this post will be dedicated to reminiscing over my visit to Washington a week ago.

First up was a trip to my alma mater, St. Martin's, to give a grad school talk. As far as I know it went well, and it was surreal/wonderful to be back on that small, quaint little campus. I didn't realize how much I missed it until I went back. The evening ended with dinner at one of my favorite restaurants (Budd Bay Cafe) with some of my favorite people, Greg and Laurie Creighton. Thank you for the delicious salmon dinner!

Next up was traveling to Puyallup, where the wedding festivities commenced on Saturday morning. Here we are at Amanda's mom's house doing hair and makeup for the big event later that evening. It was a time of many curling irons and much hair spray.

Once we were all pretty, we got all dressed up for photos. The bridesmaids dresses looked great, but let me tell you...it was an adventure to travel with that thing between Austin and Seattle. Because it was winter in Washington, Amanda kindly supplied us all with fur wraps to keep us warm while we gracefully waltzed around Tacoma taking pre-wedding photos (and when I say "gracefully waltzed", I mean "awkwardly got out of cars while simultaneously trying to hold an umbrella and our dresses and trying to prevent getting the pale pink satin dirty with mud").

My old friend Mary and my new friend Annie at the wedding.

My roommate from freshman year at George Fox, Emily.

And finally, the beautiful bride, Amanda.

My time in Washington ended with gallivanting around Olympia with one of my other best friends, Abbie. We went by my favorite used book store, walked around the harbor, and ate at my favorite restaurant downtown. It was the perfect end to a perfect trip.