Please take note

Taking a break from wedding preparations to remind you that this next Sunday is the Argentina election.

Look down [edited]

Umm, sorry for the inconvenience, but if you want to read the post for this date, you'll have to skip down to Friday, 11 May 2007. Apparently Blogger uses the first save date for a draft as the official publishing date for a post.

[Edit: Never mind, just look down below this post.]

A little story of four unorthodox years

In honor of the long weekend, here are some college career memories of a recent graduate.

It was great, although it didn't go quite she like planned.

She went into the Fall 2003 semester knowing her roommate... she had met her at a VIP day event, another homeschooler with a similar background. So that was a pleasant start. Within the first two weeks she had a job of 20-some hours weekly in the cafeteria. It was a normal year, except for the spring '04 blip where her father went on the transplant list in February.

The second year started out normally with an upgrade in jobs - working in the library and the Language Department. By the time she went home for fall break, her Daddy was in the hospital with his heart failing. Before going back to school, she offered to come home, and so she withdrew from Grace for the spring '05 semester to relieve her Grandpa and Grandma from Iowa homestead duty.

The semester home and summer were absolutely wonderful. One month was just herself and eight of her siblings taking care of themselves. The rest was being all together, finishing up the year-long Spanish and German textbooks and working on the house. She was particularly proud of the hundreds of nails and screws that finally secured the garage roof beams. Her older sister graduated and landed a posh job, which made her even prouder.

Fall '05 was back to school and back to both jobs. Spring '05 was off to the great study abroad adventure which she'd never actually believed would happen. She had started the triple language major knowing that she wanted to study languages, not study abroad. Those semesters abroad proved one thing - if a home schooled country girl homebody could go study in France and Argentina, anyone could do almost anything. (After most of the year abroad, she contemplated finding a way to require every U.S. college student to spend a minimum of three months overseas in order to graduate.)

In 2007 she returned for one more semester at school, ending up with three nice positions - the sole assistant at the Language Department, an ESL instructional assistant at the high school, and a babysitter. She was especially proud of that last one. However, the number of lines filled in her day planner convinced her that humans were not meant to live on full schedules.

There were several exciting times in that memorable last semester, such as when they declared her four credits short of graduating, or informed her after graduation that her loan repayment grace period had been used up during the semester off. But a little help quickly cleared these details away.

So there it went. A B.A. in seven semesters, five of them on campus. Only 2 Bs in her entire college career.

Now there are a couple of ways to list college career accomplishments. Some people would write up all the honors, awards, and participations.

But, when asked, she provided the following two:

-The semester home - an opportunity to help her family and get her student mothering/household-running experience
-The two semesters abroad - opportunities to study in France and Argentina, meet new people, and add more dimensions to life

She did say that if she could do it over again in an ideal world, she would concentrate solely on studies, thinking, and discussions, with absolutely no work or participations of any kind.

[The author, somewhat tired of talking about herself, begs you to excuse her for writing this up in the third person.]

What does it mean?

Congratulations to Hannah, who just graduated from high school! (the younger sister of the family I live with)

She was very excited, which reminded me of my own excitement two weeks ago. Looking back and thinking about both ceremonies, I'm not really sure what's so exciting... about dressing up and walking around in solemn lines and hugging people. You could almost laugh at it all. But then, what fun or accomplishment would it be if they handed us our diplomas as we walked out the door on the last day of class?

One week later

This is just to say that although there are many important and interesting things to discuss, unfortunately, it's already bedtime. And I'll hereafter try to avoid resorting to either silence or this kind of post.

Speaking of today's rapid lifestyle -

One week after graduating, I received an email with the following subject line:

"Children in college? Apply for a Federal PLUS Loan now!"

Monday's bulletin

The author never rants. This is an informational blog post announcing the author's astonishment over how her primary email program rendered her account inaccessible for two days and then brought it back, all tidily cleaned out.

It was about enough to make her cry, till she realized three lovely things:

1) It was one more exciting event in the great adventure of life!

2) She wouldn't want to get too attached to anything temporal anyway.

3) Now she wouldn't have to go through and organize all that stuff.

Happy Birthday, extra late

Oh goodness, how did I miss May 3rd?

Happy 16th birthday to Derek!

Derek, that extraordinary brother whose interests and undertakings include everything from studying Mongols to designing mini rocketships to learning Greek to taking computer programming lessons to growing jalapeño peppers to composing music. One of these days you are going to be hearing his name from someone who doesn't know him. If you don't believe me, just go look at the meaning of his name.

But apart from all that, he's a great brother, even if he is a little uppity sometimes and says things like "Be polite and let me go first."

(This is a dangerous family. A mother who takes pictures, a sister who wins arguments and a sister who writes down quotes... to name a few.)

This is the good life

Ah, it's so nice to be done with school. This evening I could do whatever I wanted. So I started studying my next language.

Done!

That's it! Graduated and done with school.

It's funny how having graduated came make one feel like a whole new person, and much more an adult than any of those milestone birthdays (such as 18 or 20 or even 22). Did anyone else have that experience? From here, life seems like a calm clear river on out into the ocean of eternity (I can see the ocean but I can't see where the river joins it yet). Not to make too big a deal of it - it just seems that way!

(Hopefully nobody noticed those three succeeding prepositions.)

I thank God for His love and care during these four years. In the next day or two there may some reminiscing over specific examples of His presence in this college endeavor.

Closer [updated]

Today was my last final and last time in class ever.

2 days till graduation!

I hope that last professor remembers to submit senior grades by Saturday. Till then I am a 123-credit-hour senior. Maybe the Vice President of Academic Affairs won't notice.

The loveliest time of all will be Friday afternoon and evening, when a-l-l-l my wonderful family arrives!


[Update: that last credit has been safely awarded]