The Waiting Game...

So I turned the first drafts of my chapters in on Thursday of last week - which was a feat. They were not even due until Friday, so, me turning in something A DAY in advanced, well, is pretty advanced for me. Thinking I was going to get my revisions back sometime early this week I decided to take a mini road trip over the weekend to take a mental break.

My friend Tay was going to Chapel Hill, NC to visit an old classmate of hers who did her graduate studies at UNC, and she had asked if I wanted to join her. Naturally, after feeling good about turning in my chapters, I figured it would be a good break. Overall the weekend was pretty fun! We got there late on Friday and went out to the bars on Franklin Street where we met lots of other fun ATs. The plan for Saturday was originally to go to the beach, however, Mother Nature had something to say about it. So instead we roamed around campus and avoided the rain, and even stopped at a cute little bakery/gelato shop for a treat! We then preceded to watch umpteen hours of the NJ Housewives until it was time to go out for the night. This night one of the roomies, who is not into the Chapel Hill scene, wanted to take us out in Raleigh. We went to this club where thankfully we got in free, due to her knowing one of the bouncers, and it was ridiculously crowded. It could have been fun, buuuuut all they were playing is techno and having people bumping into you for a solid 2 hours just gets annoying - not to mention the men who feel that walking past you in a crowded area allows them to slide their hand in inappropriate places as they pass. You also have those creepy guys that just come behind you and just start grinding on you....had I thought about it I should have utilized "the face."

If you do not know who this is, or what I am talking about, please visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wRXa971Xw0 and enjoy.

Ok. So after the creeptastic experiences at the club, they continued at the local fancy establishment - Waffle House. Finally after gorging on a choco chip waffle, and almost starting a riot at the WH, we (the "Pretty Gang" as we became known as) crawled into bed at around 5:30am. WHEW. It was then time for the mini vaca to come to an end and we packed up and headed home.

Luckily, we had already made plans to meet up with Nicole to go see Bridesmaids once we arrived back to VA. Let me just say that I was NOT expecting to laugh as much as I did. It was hysterical. Although my favorite scene is not yet available for your viewing pleasure, here is a verrrrrry shortened clip of another funny part (unfortunately the clip does not get into the funniest part of this scene, but I guess you'll just have to go to the movie): http://www.imdb.com/rg/VIDEO_PLAY/LINK//video/imdb/vi3876101401/

After the awesome wrap up of my weekend, I have now just been anticipating the arrival of my revisions. However, I am still waiting. I have been hanging out with my friends who are working on their stuff, so I have been trying to do some of the little things I can do while I wait; like my abstract, presentation, and poster, but.....I am now pretty much done with that stuff. I have applied to a few jobs, painted some art for the Baby G Nursery, looked at dogs to adopt, created and started my new workout plan, and now blogged. Not sure what I will do next, besides of course just sit here like this lady...

Updates

Well it has been a while. Lets roll through the updates:

Soooo I kind of graduated on Saturday. When I say kind of, I mean that I walked for graduation....I wont actually be done until the end of this month. Before I get into that, here are a few of my favorite shots from the day....

Whaaat?! We are graduating?!?!

YAY!!! We ARE graduating!!!!!!!

Too cool for school.

Alright, sooo the scoop on the rest of the story. It all started back in February. One of my classmates turned in her "final" thesis and that is when things started heading south. This classmate had been one of my groupmates - meaning we had collected and reduced data together, but were taking different pieces of it for our own projects. We also had the same doctoral student. Needless to say, with our chapters, we apparently were not being pushed into the correct direction according to our PD. Because this was the first time she had seen our writings for a while, it was not until then, that she had realized it. After this, things started to get crazy. My PD then wanted all of my writings CH1-4 to see if it could be salvaged. Turns out, the statistic I ran was not completely fitting for my type of data. Because no one knew the exact stat to run, I did a little research. Unfortunately, it is not available through SPSS. awesome. So, I then met with a stat guy in our department, and he suggested ordinal regression. Okay, so I ran all of that, and read the chapter, but was still fairly confused. In a meeting with my PD, we started discussing what the results actually meant, and she said that she could not even fully grasp the idea of it. This was about three weeks ago. Since then, my project was determined to be too difficult for a masters thesis, and more suitable for a dissertation. So as you may have guessed - my project has changed. Goodbye old thesis I spent almost two years on, and welcome aboard new thesis. Well then, it was determined that there is no way that I could get it done (it as in all new chapters) in time now, so graduation in august was the only way. So, as I said I kind of graduated on saturday.

So now what I have been doing is working my ass off on this new project. Oh, I also forgot to mention, that now my project is too simple to be a thesis, so now it is a project. Honestly, the only thing that changes is the presentation for passing - thesis=45 min present; project=15 min present. I was disappointed at first. Simply because I looked at it all as a major failure. But after talking to my PD and some Doc students who all did projects (which I didnt know) I felt a little bit better. However, I am still wishing that May 7 would have been my last day and I could be lying on the beach....

...soon though! I have to admit, I went to the beach on Monday for a few hours.... I had to. It was beautiful.

So that has pretty much been my life lately....stressing out about everything, and continually telling people that I have no idea what I am doing with my life next year (which is also getting annoying. more on the job hunt another time.). However, trying to remind myself that it will all work out, because it always seems to. It has been hard to stay positive through these last couple months, but, thankfully I have crazy good friends who always seem to keep me afloat.

Whew. Well we are all caught up now. Once I finish my chapter 5 here shortly, expect more posts soon. Oh, and I promise to be much more positive in the following posts! :)

Until next time.