Commissioning Week 2012
Kicks off tomorrow with the Color Parade.
It’s been an amazing four years, and now it boils down to this.
Ahhh, here we go.
Commencement
This weekend, I had the absolute pleasure of attending Janet’s graduation and commencement up in Philly. The latter ceremony included all of Penn’s students—undergrad and grad.
As I looked onto the field of cap and gowned students, I was in awe of all the different colorful hoods—the undergrads, the law students, the dental students, the medical students.
Then I thought about how hard all of these individuals worked to get where they were. How many late late nights they must have had. How many all-nighters they must have pulled. How many times they have felt discouraged, exhausted, afraid, nervous. How many times they must have had to rely on someone—a friend, a parent, a stranger—to give them a few motivating words to get them through the next hour, day, week, month, year.
Listening to Amy Gutmann congratulate the students, I felt so proud of them. I felt so proud of Janet—competing with some of the nation’s most brilliant minds at Penn, double-majoring in biology and anthropology, winning numerous awards for her work, being on the dean’s list, being in an honors society—and that but just an abridged version of her academic achievements. Not to mention the time and effort invested in Renewal Christian Fellowship, the many many close friendships she’s made both in and outside of church, the wonderful, kind words everyone I met had to say about Janet.
I might have teared up more than a few times by the ceremony’s end.
This has been a fantastic few days. It made me realize how many talented and amazing friends I have and how truly blessed I am to know them. Over the next month, I’ll have the opportunity to attend some of their graduations. I know that I’ll be emotional at all of them as I’ll be thinking about just how hard they worked to receive that small recognition on stage.
I cannot wait.
At the mall today
[Mother with daughter, age 5 or so, waiting for husband near the restroom.]
Mom: Where is your daddy?
Daughter: Which daddy?
Mom: (slightly taken aback, looks around to see if anyone is listening to the conversation) What do you mean, ‘which daddy’? You only have one daddy.
Daughter: Daddy here and… Daddy in Heaven!
Dear Allyson
Yesterday, my adviser (who was on sabbatical all year) and I had a full-on e-mail conversation. She ended it with, “I usually let my students call me by my first name after they graduate, but what the heck, let’s start early!”
It was one of the coolest moments ever. I wanted to cry.
I’m going to miss this school.
No Sweat
So everything worked out. When you’re CDO, you have to go to a 0600 muster in main office. Today’s CDO slept through the muster this morning, so his punishment was an extra 3 CDO days… so he’s taking duty on Friday!
The guy that awarded me his duty day glared at me all day until this happened. After that, he tried to make jokes with me and laugh it off. I wanted to punch him in the face. Haha.
No worries though. :D
—-
Edit: OH YEAH, I forgot to say that I texted him and asked him to try to find someone else, since Holly is doing this dinner thing with a bunch of other Senior girls. I was like, “I’ll do it as a last resort, but this was a really awful move to pull on me.”
He was like, “Okay, I’ll try to find someone,” and tried to make it seem like I was the bad guy (which, I guess I was since I didn’t explicitly say no on Sunday).
Selfishness
All of my papers are turned in. Classes are done. Library books returned. I got my cruise boxes.
I should be so, so SO thankful to God that I am finished with everything that needs to be done (except for finals!).
Instead, I’m super irritated right now. On Sunday, another Firstie in my company who makes me kind of mad sometimes (he once offered to DD for a group of my friends in DC, only to start drinking hard liquor—needless to say, another one of my friends stopped drinking immediately and “became” the DD. I was really mad he put us in that position) saw me in the hall on Sunday and asked me if I had finals on Friday. I said that I did, and he said, “I’m going home on Friday, and I need you to take my duty.”
Okay, so this is not a big deal, but usually you put up a duty swap chit and literally swap duty days one-for-one. So if you have a day of weekend duty that you need to get out of, you switch a day of weekend duty with someone else. Generally, it’s good practice to take someone else’s duty day if they take yours. I had a Friday duty day 2 weeks ago that he could have switched me with.
I just kind of looked at him and said, “I’ll get back to you on that.”
Anyway, today someone came up to me and said, “I’m CDO on Thursday—you’re on the watchbill for Friday.” (She needed to confirm for watch turnover.)
For some reason, this just made me SO mad. He KNEW that he was CDO on Friday, May 4th WEEKS ago, and yet he just found me as a replacement on Sunday and expected me to take his Friday duty. I was supposed to get dinner with Holly and some friends then, but I guess not.
I feel so incredibly selfish for getting mad about this (it’s just one extra weekend duty day, and I’ll be on duty status for the whole weekend), but I’m just so frustrated that people aren’t responsible or polite enough to cover their own asses.
UGH. Just minor, stupid things, but for some reason, I am furious. I hate being taken advantage of.
Final Paper of My Undergrad Career
In typical fashion, I am finishing it at 6 in the morning, the day that it’s due.
Gosh, this paper sucks.
Hi, Nicole.
I’m always so impressed by professors who can remember my name long after I’ve taken their class. I suppose I shouldn’t be, since we did see each other every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for 5 months, but still. So few professors do remember first names a year, two years or even three years after.
The small things in life. :)
