Done!

As of noon today, I am officially done with my first year of graduate school! Well, not if you count the summer, I guess, but I prefer to think of that sort of as no-man's land. I was really worried about my optimal control final, but I think it went all right. Oh, and I just checked my grade report online, and apparently my math grade has already been posted. Quick turn-around time, considering that we turned in our final projects just last Friday.

I had to go to the mall this afternoon to pick up a couple things, and in addition, I got a cute pair of white capri pants. :) I've never worn capri pants before because I have chicken legs, and I think they look slightly more normal when my thighs are visible to balance out the chicken-ness, so regular-length shorts are more my thing. I've also never owned a pair of white pants before, so we'll see how that goes... any bets on how long it will take me to spill something on them??

Last night as I was frantically cramming, my mom called and among other things, mentioned that my little sister's featured on the Eastern Michigan University webpage here. It's a short bio of Laura's college experience so far, posted along with some other students in an effort by the admissions office to show how EMU students are involved in different campus activities. Laura actually came to EMU as a transfer student, having spent her first year at a now-unmentionable small college in Michigan. It's funny - I thought I knew the whole story about why she transferred, but it wasn't until I read it in print, in her own words, that I really got how hard it must have been for her to do that. Our family moved once while I was growing up, and the first day of fourth grade at the new elementary school was most scared I had ever been in my 9-year life. Walking into the student center at MIT to begin FUP about a week before my freshman year started ranked a close second. There's something so nerve-wracking about being all alone in a new place, knowing that you're about to embark on something completely new without having any idea what it'll be like, and there's no option to just turn around, drive away, or try it tomorrow when you're feeling a little braver. But at least as college freshmen, you're all in the same boat - as a transfer, you're the new kid on a campus where everyone else already knows how everything works and has a tight circle of friends. I'm really proud of Laura for taking the initiative to get herself out of a situation that she knew wasn't right for her and then making the most out of transferring to Eastern.

The other thing I noticed while reading the article is that my little sister is really pretty!

Homestretch

Classes ended last week, so that means only one thing: finals week. Weren't grad classes supposed to have no finals?? I turned in my math project on Friday, but my exam in optimal control isn't until Thursday. Yes, I'm glad it's not until Thursday since I still have lots of studying to do, but I've been looking for every possible opportunity to not study since classes ended... Thursday was the OC, Friday was the Tiësto concert (which was an outdoor rave in the rain - absolutely amazing!), and then I came up with random errands and other "important" things to take care of this weekend... it's the homestretch, and I really need to just force myself to study hard for another few days so that my exam grade can make up for my second test grade... but really, the only thing I want to do is go shopping for summer clothes to wear in Florida next week. :)

So, the concert - it was awesome! We got it just before Tiësto came on, and he played outdoors from 7:30 until a little after 9:30. It started raining about half an hour into his set, which only made the whole thing that much better - everyone in the crowd started dancing and cheering even more crazily. It was really cool to see/hear everyone react to the music he was spinning - it would start out mostly treble, and everyone started clapping in rhythm, building up to the moment when Tiësto finally threw in the base. Then the clapping immediately switched to everyone just throwing their arms up in the air and dancing. It was really interesting how techno is so much more satisfying when you've heard just the treble and finally the bass is added, rather than when you just hear both together from the beginning. I haven't really figured out what makes a good techno/trance dj, but I think that's part of it. There was another aspect of the concert that I thought was unique to a dj performance rather than a singer or group - it was completely visible that Tiësto was having just as good a time as we all were. Ideally, every musician has a good time performing, but sometimes as the audience, it's hard to tell. Here, Tiësto was smiling and half-dancing along with us as he spun, which gave it a together-ness quality between the performer and the audience that I've never experienced at any other concert.

Our tickets were good for the outdoor evening concert and the indoor club concert at Avalon from 12-2, but my stupid eyeballs got pretty irritated with all the cigarette smoke, pot smoke, and who-knows-what-else smoke while we were jumping around in the rain, so I decided to pass on the 12-2 part. And in case you were wondering, dancing in the rain with glasses is a little difficult!

Thursday

Somehow it hadn't hit me yet that everyone was going to be leaving until Ann came over for the last time on Thursday. We were good friends in high school, but we didn't stay in touch during college, and it ended up being a mutual friend who told us that we were now both in Boston for grad school. It turned out that we were both big OC fans but didn't have anyone else to watch the show with us. (hecklers don't count!) So every Thursday afterward, Ann came over and we ate Subway and watched the OC. In honor of this past Thursday being the season finale and Ann's last week in Boston though, we decided to forgo the usual Subway routine and try the happy hour at Daisy Buchanan's. We made it back in time for the OC to watch all the characters graduate from high school (with an appropriately tragic ending), and then as Ann got up to leave, I realized she'd be the first person I'd have to say goodbye to this spring. It's nice that we're both from the same hometown and will have more opportunities to get together than those friends from college who are moving to San Francisco and it's entirely possible that you'll never run into them again. But it was still sad... especially since we'd made the effort to "reconnect" after high school, and then we only got a semester to hang out again before Ann left Boston for the real world. :(

The forecast

Seriously, I'm done with the rain. It's been days and days and days, and parts of MA and NH are flooding. As for me, just my shoes are flooding, but my umbrella's hangin' in there like a champ. :)

So I'm back to the glasses again. I went to a real opthalmologist last Wednesday, and he told me that it's either just seasonal allergies or an allergic reaction to my contact solution. So he gave me some eyedrops to use for the next two weeks while I wear my glasses, then I can start wearing my new daily disposable contacts while still putting in the drops twice a day. In many ways, my eyes are looking a lot better, so I'm really hoping this will fix the problem. On the other hand, I'm going to be pretty annoyed with the campus medical center if they've given me the run-around for 6 weeks about conjunctivitis, contact lens allergies, etc., if this is just a seasonal allergy thing. My big fear (yes, I know this is going to sound ridiculous) is that I'll have to wear my glasses when I'm on vacation in Florida in a couple weeks... I can't ride rollercoasters at Disneyland in my glasses!

My big excitement yesterday, other than the season pre-finale of 24, was that I got a new phone! My old phone worked great most of the time, but often it would just decide to not pick up a signal and sit around for hours pretending that it didn't know how to work. I wouldn't be able to call anyone or even send text messages because the reception was so poor. When I called Verizon's tech support, they told me that they didn't guarantee reception inside buildings, so there wasn't much they could do. But the guy also told me that I was due for my "new every two" upgrade, so yesterday I went to the store and got this one. I'm not very impressed with Verizon's phone selection, and this one has its share of annoying features, but it seemed to be the best of the bunch for me. I debated getting the Razr since it's really the only small phone that Verizon sells, but the reviews I read online said it was either fantastic or awful, and the salespeople at the Verizon store seemed to agree with awful...