Official first year of graduate school is over!

Sorry for the long delay from posting. It has officially been a week since I finished my first year of graduate school. I visited my old college for a few days in time for graduation and visited honey’s relatives for his nephew’s birthday.  I was exhausted on Monday and started working on Tuesday..

So far I have read four books for fun, caught up with friends I haven’t spoken to in months, started my research and cooked for the first time in 5 months. It has been a great summer so far.

My plans this summer:

• Refresh my spanish
• Work on my two research summer projects
• Decorate my apartment more
• Read all the books in my apartment
• Read articles related to research and about sociology in general

Generally that is my plan… I only have 6 weeks of employment with my professor but even for that, I am grateful.  Hopefully I can get some extra income for the summer through odd jobs but if not, its fine. At least my parents are helping me out with the August rent, since I already know I will need help with that now.

Lots of work to do today since I have been chatting with friends for most of the morning.

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Here are some pictures from the DSLR as promised: 

The honey loves rocks.

 

my favorite photo from the test drive..

 

More tulips

Cool statue 🙂

 

 

Home stretch.. Go go go!

I’m in a coffee shop right now because just being at home was very distracting. I officially emailed my final paper for the semester just a few minutes ago. I just have an encyclopedia article to write (not school-related) and a statistics exam to do on Wednesday and then I’m DONE. My brain is mentally done and its very frustrating trying to work when all I want to do is relax and enjoy not having courses.

I’m going to Boston this weekend and I can’t wait. I have missed that city and my friends there.

I’m cursing myself for signing up for this encyclopedia article… I know it’ll help my CV, but damnit all.

On other non-graduate school news, the honey and I talked about marriage.  He is not planning to marry me at least for the next two years because of his training but after that is free game. I also told him that I am open to having children while I’m at the dissertation level in my program. I originally wanted to wait until I was established in my career but he is much older than me and wants to have children a little earlier than I planned. I have been discussing with other graduate classmates and they said that it is harder to have children when at the job hunt. I guess it depends if I want to get a job in academia: if I get a normal job, I can plausibly have a child after I get the job.  I’m honestly not that sure–I like teaching and I like research but I’m not sure I want to look for grants and all the other things that comes with that. My dream is to work for one of those policy institutes and analyze policy for a few years before I decide whether I want to go into academia. I wouldn’t mind teaching while I was working in a policy institute (albeit a night class).  Right now, I see myself getting a normal job. Only time will tell.

Its very exciting that we are talking about marriage and seriously committing to each other. I can’t believe we are in this stage of the relationship. I never thought in my life that someone would be in love with me, let alone someone wanting to marry me. I love him so much, it scares me sometimes. I still feel like we are teenagers in love sometimes 🙂

I’ll post some of the pictures I took with my new DSLR. I thought about getting it for ten months and finally made the jump a few weeks ago. I couldn’t be happier. I have always wanted better quality pictures and the pictures I take are such good quality.

Have to really work on that article now. Going to go toy shopping later today with the honey! ❤