Well, I did it!

I did it, guys! I graduated... Woohoo!!! 

(I hope you guys are prepared for the photo montage!) 

Still haven't received my diploma yet though - that they send in the mail! 

Look, there I am in the back! 

My family can clean up when they have to.

One of my favorite professors, Dr Berry, stopped by for a photo too! She is fabulous.

After I walked, no time was wasted before it was Meg's turn to graduate from law school!

Waiting patiently. The law graduates wear white, according to a  UT tradition.

Father and daughter. The law graduates are given sunflowers when they cross the stage!

At night, the tower was lit JUST how I imagined it would be... burnt orange, and proudly displaying "12"!

I do love my tower!

And as for the main event? FIREWORKS.

No rest for the wicked, however! Sunday was THE PARTY day! We had plenty of people come and celebrate with us - Whole Foods catered (come on, in this family, would there be any other option?), plenty of beer was consumed, and Guy Forsyth played! 

Another picture to add to my slowly amassing a collection of pictures of me with singers.  (I have one with Willie Nelson on my piano.)

No party is complete without CAKE. 

In this case, the cake is NOT a lie! 

Graduates, ASSEMBLE.

After cake, some people were nice enough to give me presents (despite there being a strict "no present" rule imposed by my mother!) I got a vintage 2-sided puzzle from one of my mother's coworker friends who is apparently just as big a Tolkien nerd as I am! On one side it has a map of Middle Earth, and on the other, a watercolor of Bilbo and the Dwarves floating down the river on their empty wine casks!

Yeah, I totally built that puzzle the next day.

And along with some nice jewelry and other lovely trinkets, Dad and Pippa gave me a 2-volume copy of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.

Nobody loves the dictionary like me!

 After the party cooled down and people started to leave, drinking games occurred! A little beer pong here, a little flip cup there.

The Powling Coalition was a little bit slaughtered by the Clifford Collective. If you'll notice, my mom elected to be part of the Cliffords, despite the fact we reminded her that she'd been a Powling for much longer!

Now that it's all over, it's time to kick back and enjoy a few more days before I start working again. I plan on borrowing a few puzzles from my mother, because I am suddenly totally obsessed with them. They're delightful, really!

My cousin Josh is in town, too, so we've been going out and enjoying ourselves! It's been wonderful to have him here with us, even for only two weeks!

Today's the day, y'all! Get your Horns up!

Hey guys! 

Today's the day! 

I'll be posting some more photos later, of course, but I just wanted to write a quick blog and say thank you. Without this blog, and you readers, I don't know what I would do. You've supported me over the years in ways that I cannot enumerate, and I love you all dearly! 

Thank you for being there though good times, rough patches, football games, endless homework, exam periods, failures, and successes. Thank you for sticking with me through three computers, four printers, and five phones. (Good lord, I go through a lot of electronics... Hey, remember that time I dropped my phone into a pot of boiling water?) Thank you for your supportive comments, wonderful advice, and readership. I couldn't have done this without the support of you: my friends and family. I look forward to continuing to share my life with you all for a long time.

So... 

Who's got two thumbs and is ready to become a college graduate? 

 THIS GIRL.

Last day of school!!!

Friday went a little something like this: 

8:00: Wake up, tweet about it being the last day of school. 

9:00: Sit through Victorian Lit class, in which my professor gave us breakfast tacos and then sauntered out of the room and let us do course evaluations. Turn in paper. Skip away. 

10:00: Sell back textbooks, get pathetic amount of money for it, but still skip all the way home to grab wallet, which I had forgotten in all the haste of getting my paper into my professor on time. 

10:30: Settle in Medici with a coffee and my notes. Study a little, do a sudoku. 

12:00: Take the LAST EXAM OF MY UNDERGRADUATE LIFE.

12:22: FINISH THE LAST EXAM OF MY UNDERGRADUATE LIFE.

12:24: Call my mother and cry. 

I knew I would: I walked home not quite sobbing like an idiot, but not quite holding it together. It was a weird, mixed feeling of excitement, done-ness, and sadness, for all the times I had during the last four years of my life. I know that I will always treasure my time at UT (and even at UTSA) but it's weird to think that it's over. 

Everybody says I should be proud of myself - and of course I am proud of myself - it just feels weird. It doesn't feel like it's over quite yet, although I know it is. I think I will get some more closure after the commencement ceremony in 13 days (but who's counting?) 

I think it's been hitting me in little increments. Like yesterday, when I was getting ready to head out to my mom's place, and I thought "What books do I have to bring? What work do I have to do?" 

Not a damn thing, I realized. And boy, that felt good! 

I bought a new copy of Pride and Prejudice at Barnes and Noble before I went to work on Friday. I tell you, it's never felt so nice to walk into a B&N not having any obligations to read anything.

1 Day: Taking Bets

So I skipped a day. Whoops! Not like any of you didn't expect it. (I think!)

Endless books in the library! Be still, my beating heart!

Today, I took a test, turned in a paper, and finished writing my pseudonym paper. Boy, it sure feels good, too! I can't wait to turn that in tomorrow morning, and my professor says he will be bribing us to come to the last day of class with breakfast tacos! Woohoo!

I printed out my paper and put it in a fancy report cover. Partially because it would be silly to attempt to staple 20 pages with my puny stapler... partially because if I'm going all out on the last paper I ever turn in as an undergraduate, I'm going to give it a fancy cover!

I spoke for a while this afternoon with Siobhan over skype. Siobhan is also graduating (but she is not finished for another month and doesn't graduate until July) and she is experiencing similar panicky urges to flee and cry in a corner for a while, so it somehow gives me hope that others are feeling the same way as I am. My friend Ally (who is in a rather different position than I am in, being that she is student teaching and isn't finishing up classes the way that I am) is ecstatic, and I am... left somewhere in limbo.

SURE, come tomorrow around 12:30 when I finish my last exam, I am going to feel some kind of strong emotion, but will it be excitement or sadness? Or a little bit of both? Part of me expects to skip down 21st street all the way back to my apartment singing songs in harmony with birds! Part of me expects to exit my classroom and immediately burst into tears. I hope it's a happy medium between the two.

Tomorrow stares me in the face more steadily than I can at it, but I know I will have to meet its gaze soon enough.

3 Days: Choices, Choices

3 days to go. Stuff's about to get real. I have an exam today, a exam and essay due tomorrow, and an exam and essay due Friday.

Caffe Medici is one of my favorite places to study between classes! Right across the street from most of my classes. Delicious coffee and plenty of places to sit, not to mention free wifi! :)

Technically, I should have written this yesterday. But I ran out of time... So today will feature two blogs!

Yesterday, my brain was somewhere else: I had a horrible nightmare on Monday night and I think I was knocked off balance all day because of it. It was a dream about loss and tragedy, and I woke up completely drained.

It represents a lot going on in my life, as dreams generally do. One possibility is that represents the choices that I have in front of me and the consequences of choices wrongly made. The emotion that ruled my dream was regret... and I am so, so worried that I will make the wrong choice, that I'll misstep, that I will come to regret what I didn't, or couldn't, do. I've never felt so unsure of what I want.

I can't make these choices yet, and yet I have to. Not everything will be better after Friday, but after I leave these exams and papers behind me, I sure will feel a whole lot better.