Happy April!

Ignore the fact that today is April Fools' Day - I promise that nothing in this post is designed to trick you. Pinkie swear.

Spring quarter starts tomorrow! I'm excited for my new classes and for my fraternity's spring rush, but I'm not quite ready to be back to getting four/five hours of sleep a night. I'm also going to be doing Zumba classes this quarter to get back into shape, since I gained a bit of weight this year and I don't like it. My mom said she'd help pay for the class and I just bought some yoga pants, so now I have more motivation to go!

The Good News
I got into the UC Washington Program for fall quarter! I found out on Tuesday morning (maybe 11 hours after my last post), which was definitely the highlight of an otherwise heartbreaking spring break. I'll be going with a few friends from my fraternity and quite possibly more people I know, although I won't get to find out who all the other participants are until our meeting on Friday. So, this essentially means I'll be in Washington, D.C. for the presidential election, and I'll have an internship that people would kill for (or at least I hope). Can't wait!

The Bad News
My U.S. Foreign Policy class didn't work out the way I thought it would, and now I have to go beg my TA for more points to bump me up from a B+ to an A-. I doubt it will work, but it's worth a try. My GPA dropped by .01 this quarter, which is tiny but still embarrassing since it already dropped .03 last quarter. It'll be harder to get my grades up to something that will help me get into a T-14 school... thank goodness that I test well, since my LSAT score should save me from my very-good-yet-not-Yale-material GPA.

Just for fun - here are a few books I've read over spring break:
1. Overbite by Meg Cabot (3/5 stars) - Semi-trashy vampire novel, a fun and light read
2. Starcrossed by Josephine Angelini (4/5 stars) - Greek mythology in modern times!!!! Need I say more?
3. The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids by Alexandra Robbins (5/5 stars) - This essentially sums up ME in my junior/senior year of high school.

March Blues

Well, I'm finally on spring break. It hasn't gotten off to the greatest start. My grandma passed away Sunday night at the age of 84. My family knew it was coming, since her health has been declining lately, but I thought it wouldn't be for a few more years. I'm really going to miss her - I'm just glad that I was able to be home to see her in the hospital (even if she was in a coma) before she passed.

So much is up in the air right now. I'm waiting to find out the date of the funeral (and whether I'll have to miss classes/cancel any tours/switch around RA on-call shifts), since it probably won't be until after Easter. I'm waiting to hear back from the UC Washington Program, waiting to find out my final grades for winter (which probably won't be as nice as I'd been hoping), waiting to find out whether I'll be employed with Conference Housing for summer, waiting to hear about another position in my fraternity I applied for...

I'm just emotionally exhausted right now. I'm semi-excited for spring, but it's hard right now. I'm not ready for Gram to be gone and I'm not ready to deal with school again.

Finals Week Fun

Just a quick update since yes, it's finals week. I can't believe winter quarter is almost over! In hindsight, maybe 22 units plus my jobs/extracurriculars/boyfriend wasn't the brightest idea. But oh well, too late now. I'll only be taking 18 units in spring (Arabic, Social Welfare, U.S. History: 1917-1945, Abnormal Psychology, and a seminar for my honors program), so that'll be nice... even though I'll be giving more tours, doing more Mondavi shows, and maybe even doing a leadership position in my fraternity. Also, I somehow found myself agreeing to be a tutor for Research Methods in Psychology, which would give me 3 units of academic credit and bring me back up to 21 units... oops.

I'll do a longer update later when I don't have to study for my four remaining finals. The worst part of 22 units? Five finals over the next few days. One down, four to go.

Happy Presidents' Day Weekend!

I hope everyone's been enjoying the 3-day weekend! It's been relaxing yet productive for me - after getting only three hours of sleep on Thursday night (in the midst of a large application, PHI 12 problem set, and catching up on Arabic homework), I had a tour and a Mondavi show and then rewarded myself with eight hours of sleep Friday evening. Another tour Saturday morning, but then I went out to lunch with a friend to celebrate being done with the application for the position we're applying for in our pre-law fraternity.

I headed over to a friend of a friend's apartment to check out her place - I might be rooming with her next year. I obviously won't be a resident advisor for next year, what with being in D.C. for fall quarter, so I need a place to live next year (preferrably somewhere that's close to campus but cheap enough that I can still afford to pay rent for the quarter that I'm gone). Most of my friends have their housing for next year worked out already - the curse of my freshmen year friends living together after the 1st year - so I've been stressing about that a lot lately, but luckily a friend told me about a girl from her church group that was looking for a third roommate to live in an apartment complex right next to school - a complex that happened to be my first choice due to its low price for the location! So I went by yesterday to meet her and tour her apartment. She was really nice (her name is also Christine, which will be awkward yet hilarious) and the apartment was amazing. I'll be meeting her housemates next week and will hopefully be all good to go after that! So relieved to be almost done with housing.

I also managed to vacuum and semi-dust my room yesterday, as well as take care of laundry and my sheets. Having a clean room always makes me happy... plus it's a great way to procrastinate on working on a 10-page paper for my Theories of International Relations class (I have to turn in a rough draft by Thursday and all I have so far is a vague outline). I'll be taking care of that today and tomorrow, in between going out to see The Woman in Black and to Sacramento to try out a new vegetarian restaurant with the guy I'm dating.

The weather's been getting nicer over the past few weeks - spring is here! It's supposed to be 74 on Wednesday, which will be wonderful since I've really missed warm weather. The trees in the courtyard outside my window are starting to bloom - I might post pictures in a couple weeks. I love springtime in California.

Happy Mid-February! (What happened to winter quarter?)

Quick update before I get back to working on applications! This quarter has been absolutely insane so far.

Academics: Yes, I'm still taking 22 units (Arabic, Recent U.S. Foreign Policy, Theories of International Politics, Symbolic Logic, Legal Writing, and an into-to-research seminar). I had my two POL midterms yesterday. Studying was brutal, especially since I had to catch up on all the reading I hadn't had time to do over the quarter. At least they're over, and one of them went well at least... Now it's time to start on my two 10-page papers. Sigh.

Work: I'm still working as a resident advisor, doing 1-2 shows per week at the Mondavi Center, and giving 2 or 3 tours per week. Way too busy, but at least I'm making a lot of money! Plus I'm still really enjoying all three jobs. And who knows, maybe Tour Guide of the Month will be in my future!

Extracurriculars: I'm still really involved in my pre-law fraternity - I'm currently our Relay for Life team captain and am applying for a leadership position for spring. Fingers crossed for that! I'm still helping out as a research assistant in a Social Psychology lab, and am still part of the Academic Affairs Commission of the student government and we're working on personal projects right now. I'm working on a way to create a mentoring system for freshmen on academic probation, so we'll see if anything comes from that! And then I'm also the Vice President of Public Relations for Global Law Brigades, which goes to Panama for a week to offer legal advice to underprivileged families on land titling. I can't actually brigade with everyone this year, but I'm using all my connections to make sure we can get the word out about recruitment, fundraising, etc. and I'll be all set to brigade next year.

So overall, you can see that I've just gotten crazier as college has gone on. I don't know what it is about me, but for some reason I feel the reason to add to my load each quarter! If I don't have a breakdown, it must mean it's time to add on another activity for the following quarter... that's my motto, apparently! Oh well, at least I'm relatively happy. I'm applying for summer jobs that will let me stay in Davis, working on my app for the UC Washington Program for fall quarter, and trying (in vain) to figure out housing for next year. Stressed, but that's normal for me.