busy bee

The past few days have been crazy busy… sorta. I was graced with the company of some of my closest friends for my graduation (and the week prior), so I haven’t been glued to my computer in my normal fashion.

The post-school fun kinda started on Wednesday when Adam and I went shopping for work clothes. He ended up buying much more than me – but actually has a job. Me – I’m still unemployed, so I only left with a shirt and chinos from Banana Republic and a skirt from New York and Company (to wear for graduation). After a long day of stimulating the economy, we got back to my apartment just in time for David Cook and David Archuleta’s Guitar Hero commercials…

I flipped out when I saw these commercials.

Thursday morning, after brief water problems (a pipe burst in my building so they shut off the water for a while), Adam and I headed for the District. The trip wasn’t really as adventerous as we’d hoped, but we made a pilgrimage to Vapiano’s for some not-so-fast food pasta. Anyone craving pasta for a low price (with free gummy bears for dessert) should head to that place. We hit up a few more stores, then returned to home base to begin Music Downloading Fest 2008.

We cashed in our change at Coinstar for amazon gift cards… which meant a night of reviewing and downloading music. One of our favorites was Little Jackie – “The World Should Revolve Around Me”. We fell victim to its catchy-ness, I guess. I grew attached to this one:

Oh Kate Nash…

So yeah, eventually Adam got the munchies (for lack of a better word), so we made an emergency trip to shoppers for some cornbread and lemon cake – Bake Fest 2008. Two hours later, we experienced great disappointment:

The cornbread turned out okay (yay for Jiffy!), but our lemon cake broke :( At least it was still fun to bake, I guess.

Friday was graduation. It was boring. I was happy some more of my friends got to come to the ceremony: Emily from band and Jessica, my “sister from another mother”, and her mom. Then my parents took even more of my friends (474-7 HOLLA) and I out for a ridiculous feast at Maggiano’s. I almost died every time they brought out another course… the amount of food we got was pure insanity. For dessert the waiter brought out a graduation cake (about 7″ high) for me with super cool candles. Even with 10 people eating, I have about 10 separate containers of leftovers…

On Saturday, Adam left me (sniffle) and Jessica and I had some time to hang out. This began DC Photo Fest 2008:

Her camera was much better than mine.

We hit up Zaytinya (of course) for an awesome lunch – with even more pictures…

After lunch, we roamed Georgetown, where Jessica started to get a little tired of walking. So, we visited the waterfront, took some more pictures, then finished up DC Photo Fest 2008.

I don’t have as many pictures from the rest of the day – but we hit up Beth’s (one of my roommates) graduation party, ate some Japanese for dinner, and finally threw in the towel.

Jessica and her mom left pretty early on Sunday morning, so here I am again – in front of my computer. Just like the good old days… minus the constant memo writing.

The now

Everyone is talking about finishing up classes and graduation… of course, I still have forever and a day left until my last day of classes (May 13 + paper deadlines), but I’ve started the official graduation countdown (“The Final Countdown”) – 32 days.

I’m always thinking about my future/what will happen after graduation, but unfortunately I don’t have any answers right now. I have absolutely no clue what will happen after May 23rd. I still don’t have a post-graduation job; I don’t even have a part-time job to hold me over. Therefore, I’ve come to this conclusion:

On May 23, 2008 at approximately 6pm, I will be a bum.

The only deadline I will have after May 23rd is move out day, July 31, 2008. I guess that makes July 31st “Judgment Day”.

Anyway, since I’m incapable of thinking of any past 7.31, I figure I should focus on the present-day, the now. The pre-May 23rd; my pre-bum-ness. As I said earlier, I’ve started the countdown and it’s a little frightening because I have so, so, so much to get done before (an even earlier deadline) May 16th.

1. April 22: Lead class discussion (with Melissa) about school reform. Turn in 2000 word memo on hate crime legislation.

2. May 5: International Econ Policy take-home final is due

3. May 12: International Econ Policy 4 page (single-spaced) Colombia memo is due

4. May 13: The final 2000 word memo on hate crime legislation is due in my Equality class

5. May 14 or 21: International Development (IDEV) Econ 15 page (double-spaced, hopefully) paper on Brazil is due

6. May 15: My project course “thesis” is due. 20-25 pages (double-spaced). I have to also present my paper to a bunch of people who will probably tear me apart with questions that I won’t be able to answer. Excellent.

On the 16th, I’m leaving town to see my undergrad buddies graduate. I desperately hope to finish that IDEV Brazil memo on the 14th, but holy crap – I don’t know where the time to write these papers will come from in the next 3 weeks… Did I mention the fact that I probably won’t do anymore reading for my classes? Who has time for that anymore?

So yeah, it’s the final countdown, folks.

(really) extreme senioritis

I can’t possibly be the only person in my school (the School of Public Policy) who is going through this right now…

I have zero motivation. Zero. I don’t want to do a single thing for my classes. I just don’t care anymore. I don’t want to read. I don’t want to write these stupid memos. I’m sick and tired of learning about development economics, economic policy, development challenges and the rest of that development insanity. As a matter of fact, I don’t even want to go to class anymore. Class is lame.

I’m so over this grad school thing. Graduation is in 65 days.