And that's a wrap

Well I think the last time I posted was a few days before my oral defense, and here I am, done with that, done with finals, done with teaching, and freshly graduated :D My oral defense on April 23 went rather well. There were a few challenging moments and I really had to dig far into my brain, but my committee was pretty good to me. Not easy, not at all, but I think they knew the areas of communication studies that I am passionate about and thrive in so they focused their questions and the discussions on those. After finishing my comprehensive exams with the defense, it was REALLY difficult to stay focused and motivated for the last couple weeks of classes. I sort of mentally checked out for a couple days after my defense, but got back on top of it so that I could still get the grades I wanted. Graduation week was great. Two days before graduation was the Graduate Honor's ceremony for those that maintained a GPA of 4.0 throughout grad school (my bragging rights for the day :), which was pretty neat to be recognized that way. I was seriously nonstop throughout Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Wednesday I had to drop off all 640 COMM265 exams (the classes my fellow TA's and I taught [I am the administrator for the course which is why I was in charge of this]) at the grading center, collect them later, sort them, make copies of the results sheets, make copies of the answer keys, and distribute them to all the TA's. I also administered the exam that I am a teaching assistant for as an independent study. Thursday I had to finish calculating all the final grades for the classes I taught, drop off the Wednesday night exams at the post office to be mailed to my instructor in Lubbock (she taught over Skype which is why I was her teaching assistant). I also cleaned our apartment. Then the honor's ceremony was at 7 PM, and afterward I went to a going-away dinner for my friend and fellow TA Hayley, who moved to Pittsburgh on Friday. Friday all the TA's met in the morning to record final grades for COMM265 and download necessary files to the speech lab computer. After that, I went to a final lunch with other TA's, came home and cleaned a little more, went grocery shopping with Jake for my graduation party, went to my office mate Mario's graduation party, then went and met my family, who got into town at about 6:30, for dinner at St. Clair's restaurant. That evening Jake and I prepared for the graduation party a little more. The next morning, my family came to our apartment about 9 AM to help prepare for the party (chopping food, decorate cupcakes, etc.) and I mostly pampered myself before graduation and played with my niece :) Finally graduation time came! I was so busy for those few days that it all seemed very surreal. I ended up sitting right next to my office mate during the ceremony, which made the time go by a little faster because we played Draw Something on his iPad. Hah. After graduation, we had my party at a local park and grilled burgers. Several of my friends and some family members, including Jake's mom and stepdad, came. It was really fun and relaxing. After that, we cleaned up from the party, and later that night Jake and I went to my parents' hotel to swim and hang out. The next day was Mother's day so we had brunch with my family and said goodbye to them :( On Sunday after my family left Jake and I made it a point to be really lazy all day, because we'd been so busy and nonstop that we needed it. We watched a lot of TV shows and I started reading the Hunger Games, and I am so hooked already. I think it still hasn't quite sunk in that I am DONE with school. I am so used to always having a paper to write, stuff to grade, and assignments/tests to do, that I can't quite grasp that I really don't have anything to do anymore, school-wise. That was my life for four semesters, and I really don't know what to do with myself now! (Besides job hunt). I am planning our trip to San Diego next week, figuring out what we will be doing there. A few days after my oral defense, I was talking with one of my committee members, Dr. Flora, and told her I was relieved, but at the same time I felt kind of empty, like I didn't know what to do anymore. She laughed and compared it to Olympic athletes; sometimes athletes get depressed after the Olympics because they train and train for it for sooo long, and then it's over, and they don't know what their life is anymore because they were so focused and dedicated to it. It's funny but true; grad school has been kind of like that, an Olympic event! I really do feel a little lost. I have severely mixed feelings about ending this chapter in my life. I am definitely relieved to be done with the stress, but in a way I thrived on that. I will seriously miss being in the classroom and learning from all my brilliant professors, and I will so miss the friends that I made in the department, specifically the other TA's. We were all very close in proximity during those semesters, all in our little offices in the little TA hallway in the Speech Building, and that proximity made us really close as friends. We were all there for each other during all the challenges and highlights of grad school and teaching, and I really miss our tiny, tight-knit community already. Some have already left Las Cruces, and for those that are still here, I want to make the most of hanging out with them before we are all dispersed across the country (and world in some cases...my office mate was named Fullbright Scholar and will be teaching English in Spain during the next school year!! Smarty pants. I feel smart just by association ;) Anyway, this has been a really long post but I feel like this landmark in my life deserved a long post. Serious shout-out to my Communication friends who laughed, complained, and freaked out with me every day during the last two years. We all put up with each other's psychotic-ness and built friendships out of it. Also to my family members who supported me from a distance and believed in me, and to my Jake, who deserves a medal for putting up with me when, every day, I wailed about how I'm going to fail and how I "can't do this." I love you all!!!

So close...yet so far!!!

The end of my academic career is drawing to a close, but I still am having trouble seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. For the past two weeks it has felt like it's been just...out...of....reeeeeaaaaccchhh.

BUT.

It WILL be over soon. I just have to stay focused. I will have my oral defense in 3 (!!!) days, and assuming I pass, I will only have to think about one big paper, one small paper, and one written final exam. And for my bragging rights of the day, I got through all of my written comprehensive exams with NO rewrites! It seems most people have to rewrite one or two, but I passed them all on the first try! I think it's the perfectionist in me, and the slightly obsessive-when-studying personality that did it. But I don't feel relieved yet, because of my oral defense, for which I am terrified. And everyone who has done theirs so far has said it's really not that bad, and you don't need to worry, but that's what I do best. As my adviser has frequently told me, I am probably just "Pulling an Erika."

I hopefully will get a job not too long after I graduate, but I am SO looking forward to not having to think about homework and or having to do work on the weekends. I plan on reading the Hunger Games series, the Harry Potter series again, some Jodi Picoult books, and maybe some other recent best-sellers or recommendations (put any book suggestions as a comment!). I also want to pick up my violin and bust out some tunes again. Poor thing, it's probably so out of tune right now. Maybe I will also make a bunch of gel candles. I bought a big bucket of candle gel months ago but haven't made any in a long time. Maybe I'll sell some! Because the last thing I need is to light the apartment on fire because I've made too many candles and feel the need to burn them all.

I also have mixed feelings about this chapter of my life coming to a close. While I am definitely ready to say good riddance with all the homework and paper writing and stress over exams, I will actually miss being in the classroom. I will miss learning really great things from my brilliant professors. And I will really, really miss the friends I've made in the program and department. I don't want to say bye to them!

Better than last time!

When I wrote my last post, life was pretty stressful. Things just kept piling up on us and it felt like God was showing us no mercy. But times like those are necessary for making people stronger. Since I wrote that, though, things have been looking up. Our next door neighbor and his cousin have been quiet, and supposedly the tenant called our apartment management out of the blue and basically said, "Ok, we'll be quiet." And so far, they've kept their word. No eviction, but they're on serious probation.

I got through probably the worst part of my comprehensive exam process. I finished the last one of all 8 yesterday! It's such a great feeling, and now I feel like the rest of the semester will seem easy compared to comps (I hope). Now I just have to wait to find out if I need to rewrite any of them (I know I have passed 3 of them so far, yay!), and then pass my oral defense on April 23. I also got an email inviting me to an Honor's Graduate Ceremony, for grad students that have maintained a 4.0. This email reminded me about what I've achieved the last 4 semesters, and although I still don't know what I want to do "when I grow up," I have accomplished a lot and will have a degree to show for it.

Jake and I are going to Tuscon tomorrow night for a concert, and coming back Saturday. It will be nice to have a night out of town together. I'm not sure what we're doing for Easter yet, but hopefully it will involve relaxing! We also booked our flight for our anniversary trip in May! We're going to San Diego for 8 days and visiting Sea World, San Diego Zoo, and who knows what else. We were going to go the Redwoods originally, but figured in order to do everything and see all the places we want to on the Redwood Coast, we'd have to have a car rented for at least 10 days, which would have been pretty expensive. So we're still going to go sometime, but after we have saved up more so that we can take that long Redwood trip financially guilt-free.

So, life has been pretty good this week, and I look forward to finishing school and taking on whatever else is next!

Tests

Tests seems to be taking up the majority of my life right now, in more ways than one. The first, most obvious way is that I begin my comprehensive exams on Monday, and my degree depends on my passing the written exams, as well as an oral defense sometime in April. These exams, if you're not familiar with them, work like this: I receive one multifaceted question from the professors of 8 classes that I've had during my grad school career. 2 are required (Theories and Research Methods) and I choose the other 6. Then I study and prepare responses, which I've been doing since the beginning of February. Then over the course of 10 days, I am given one hour to write my response for each question, sequestered alone in an office or other available classroom with the department laptop. For 2 of the classes, I'm allowed to take in an outline, but the other ones I pretty much have to memorize. The professors are then given my responses, read them, and then if they find it necessary, tell me to re-write them to include anything that I missed or didn't explain well. Then I have to meet with my committee of three professors and defend, for two hours, my responses, and I've heard that they throw in other, unrelated questions from those classes to make sure I was mentally present during my four semesters. I am so freaking nervous. I think I'm more nervous for the oral defense than writing, though, because I've never been good with being put on the spot and I've always thrived with writing things down after giving them some thought.

Another way that tests are a part of my life right now is the chaos that Jake and I have gone through during the last month that has put our relationship and our mental and physical strength to the test. You probably recall my last post that was a letter to our next-door neighbor. Well, it didn't end there. In fact, it got worse. It's a really, really long story, but basically the week after the warning, there were parties and loud music almost every night for a week. Two nights in a row we had to go to Jake's brother's apartment (once at 4 AM when the party started) and each time the cops showed up after we called, the people next door would turn off the music, stay quiet, and not answer the door. We had to stay in a hotel that weekend because we just didn't know what was going to happen those nights. The Monday after the hotel weekend we told the apartment management, and they put an eviction notice on his door. Apparently the guy next door went over there, furious, and insisted that he wasn't doing anything wrong. In fact, he was "hardly ever at the apartment," but his cousin uses it sometimes. His cousin is not on the lease (so as we interpret things, since the actual tenant is rarely there, the cousin is using the apartment to throw parties, and since he's not on the lease, that is why he doesn't answer the door, because no one actually knows who is there). The actual tenant's mom even got involved and since then it has just spiraled out of control, with the eviction on hold because I guess they can't legally evict him if he argues it or something like that, a threat from the tenant of a lawsuit on Jake for "harassment" (seriously? We've never even made contact with him!), and the management giving us the property manager's personal phone number to call in the middle of the night if a party starts so she could go over with a key and bust into the apartment, yet she doesn't even answer the phone or return messages... We had to stay in a hotel AGAIN last weekend because a somewhat quieter, but still noisy gathering was accumulating in that apartment, and we just didn't know if it was going to go on all weekend. We are trying to get the management to pay for our hotel stays too. THEN Jake talked to someone from management on Sunday, and she told him that the property manager wanted to set up a kind of mediation meeting the next day (Monday) with the tenant and Jake, so Jake took off work because he didn't know what time it would be, but they never called him in. So we've gotten all the police records of every time we've called about that apartment, Jake has done research on leasing laws to know our rights as tenants and the responsibilities of property management, and we've been kinda of looking for other places so in case this continues, we would break our lease early.

MEANWHILE, the first hotel weekend I started coming down with a cold, and have since been trying to get over it. The first week of my cold, there were no parties, but we STILL could not sleep because I was up coughing all night for a week. I needed to study for my comps so badly but was not getting any sleep. Then as if all this wasn't enough, the first morning of the second hotel weekend, I woke up with pinkeye in both eyes (if you've ever had it, you know how gross pinkeye is). The only urgent care center in town that took my insurance was closed on the weekend, and after seeking advice from another urgent care that didn't take my insurance, I decided to tough out the pinkeye until I could go to the Student Health Center on Monday. By then, my pinkeye had gotten better on its own.

Thoughts and prayers of encouragement are appreciated at this time. We are doing everything we can at the moment, and this apartment situation is kind of in limbo right now. For the time being, it has been quiet and I've been focusing on comps and Jake and I have been doing a lot to get our mind off things, like going on walks and out to dinner. But we have many options and amazing support from our families, who we know would give anything to be closer to us right now (and frankly, we want to be closer to them too). Even my brother-in-law was wanting to drive the 5 hours down here and wait outside our neighbor's door for him. Haha.

This has been a REALLY long post (sorry!), and I know that other people have gone through much worse in their life than what we're going through. The whole point of this post was not to get anyone to feel sorry for us, but to show that no relationship is speed-bump free, and that marriage is not always happy and perfect, and that life WILL test marriage. This has been a major test for Jake and I. It's taken a major toll on our mental well-being. Due to lack of sleep, anxiety over not knowing what is going to happen every night, and anger with the apartment management over seemingly not doing enough, we have had moments when we lash out at each other and times that we feel helpless. However, overall we both agreed yesterday that this test of all tests has made us even closer and has caused us to lean on each other even more. Every marriage goes through tests, and I know this won't be our last one. These tests will either break a relationship down or make it stronger. This one has definitely made ours stronger. Just like I know I can pass my tests during the next two weeks, I know that he and I can pass this test (with all the sub-tests in between). I love my husband so much and can't imagine going through this alone. After all, it's not the problems that you go through, but how you get through the problems together than matters!

A nice, simple letter

Dear (I struggle to use the word "dear" here, so let's just say "dear" means "horrible awful") Next-Door Neighbor,

I don't have a bad attitude toward neighbors in general. In fact, I kind of like neighbors. I have plenty of good memories of my neighbors growing up in my hometown, like block parties and fresh garden vegetable exchanges. I even have some good memories of some (only some) college neighbors.

But you, you take the cake for probably being the worst I have had. A close second is only the lady-like and good-natured (sarcasm) ladies above my apartment living at The Grove, who would stomp around at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in the morning. When you moved in next door a few weeks ago, I held no stereotypes or judgment. It was simply another neighbor next door, taking the place of the quiet, non-music blaring couple that had lived there before.

A few days after your move, things changed. On a Monday night, at midnight, that's when we heard the music. And literally felt the bass thudding. So in went the ear plugs and up went the speed on our fan, yet we still could hear/feel your nonsense. Thinking we'd give you a chance to show that you are not that uncaring, my husband went to your front door and knocked. And knocked. Not sure if you couldn't hear the knock over your music, or just ignored him. So next was the phone call to the police department. We ended up somehow falling asleep before we knew of the police got there.

A few days later, on a Friday night, I dreamed that you were playing extremely loud music again and that many people were at your apartment yelling and laughing loudly, and that the bass was once again thudding in my pillow. I woke up and realized that it wasn't just in my dreams; it was reality. Jake lay there frustrated too. So another phone call to the police department ensued, at which time we looked at the clock: 2:30 AM. Half an hour went by and the police finally found your apartment in the complicated complex. We spied through the blinds a little and listened. Sounded like we broke up an underage party. Terribly sorry (not really).

After that it was relatively quiet for about a week or so. At least no obvious parties in the middle of the week. Until last night, a Wednesday night for that matter. We attempted to go to bed and noticed that you had music playing loudly again. So we put in our ear plugs, but the noise just increased, and so did the number of people yelling in your apartment. Midnight rolled around, then 12:30, so another phone call to the police department. At that point we had to move out to our living room to try to get some sleep until the police broke it up, yet when one is that frustrated and determined to teach you a lesson, sleep doesn't come easily. Finally the cops showed up and we heard them knock on your door. And knock. And knock. At the first knock, the music magically stopped, and so did all the talking and yelling. Several minutes passed and the cops left. After all, there's not much they could do if you don't answer the door. We though you would have learned from the first time the cops came. Actually, I suppose you did learn. You learned to not answer the door to cops anymore.

We thought the cops showing up had scared you and your pals into stopping the party, because quiet ensued for about 15 minutes. Then it started again. Peeping through the living room blinds, I saw at least 10 more people in the parking lot heading into your apartment. Great-looking young'uns too; one with his pants down to his knees, one with a muscle shirt, some girls dressed like...well, you know. One guy came out to greet these nice young folks, then looked right at our front door, pointed at it menacingly, and said something. I don't know what he said, but not going to lie; it scared me. The police were called again by my angry husband, and they were very understanding and said to keep calling even if they didn't answer the door to the cops.

Somehow the music and bass thudding lessened, and we somehow fell into a restless, paranoid sleep, all night thinking there was music playing and that you and your friends were going to break in to our apartment.

Rest assured that our apartment management was called this morning and a lengthy, detailed complaint was filed. Perhaps you missed the part in the lease that says "No Parties." Wonder how many warnings they will give you...

Sincerely,
Your friendly neighbor

P.S. I gave up my morning routine of coffee for Lent. After your little stunt last night, today is not a good day for being without it.

Right now...

Reading: The Help. Jake got me this book for Christmas, and it's so good. I look forward to finishing it and getting the movie through Netflix.

Worried about: Comprehensive exams. Ugh. Why did I just remind myself?

Excited about: Redwoods trip in May! and graduating.

On the brain: Babies. Seriously. I've caught baby fever badly, and there seems to be no cure!

Annoyed with: Certain people.

Craving: Anything lemony.

Sick of: Sweets. We accumulated sooo many cookies and candies over the holiday season. I hate just seeing them now. I've taken so much candy to my work for others to indulge in.

Confused about: Plans after I graduate.

Let the countdown begin...

...starting with 4 months! Seem like a long time period to be counting down to something? Yeah, I know. Usually countdowns for long time periods like that are for weddings or births of babies. But today I started planning a prospective trip that Jake and I want to take in May, and I'm already stupidly excited. It's also the countdown to when I'll be done with school...FOREVER. It's sad, really, that the semester hasn't even started and I'm already counting down the days to when it's over. But I get anxiety just thinking about what is coming this semester, mostly comprehensive exams. I'll save that for another post, because I don't want to dampen my own hyped-up attitude about our trip.

We've known for a while that we want to go on a trip for our first wedding anniversary and my graduation, but were being pretty wishy-washy about the destination and never sat down and seriously started planning it. About a month ago, I came up with the idea of going to Northern California, as neither of us have been there, specifically the Redwood Coast. So I did a little Googling some main attractions and places to stay and ordered a free Redwood Coast travel guide. It finally came in the mail last night, and today, that's really all I've done. Sat on my butt and roughly planned out our trip and budget and obsessed over the scenic and adventure attractions. We're going to fly to San Francisco, get a rental car, and stay at 3 or 4 different areas for 3 or 4 nights at a time along the Redwood Coast and famously scenic highway 101. I so look forward to the hikes into the giant redwood forests and walks into green groves in Humboldt Redwoods State Park and Redwood National Park, and of course, driving through the drive-through tree! We also might see and stay in Old Town Eureka and/or Trinidad. All of this, and graduate school will be behind me! We're trying to figure out a way to get our wedding cake tier to California, keep it from going bad, and be able to eat it on our anniversary. Because, well, our first anniversary only comes once ever, and we must follow that tradition!

I CAN'T WAIT, and hope everything works out!