Scholarship

Dear Rachel,

I am pleased to inform you that you have been selected to receive the Norma Eardler Academic Career Advancement for Women scholarship during the academic year 2008-2009. The scholarship amount is $5,000 which will be paid in two increments of $2,500 each semester.

I also got a call from the Dean's office and received another $1,000 scholarship from them! WHOOT!

YAY!!!!!!

I am so happy right now!! With the money that I will be making to go to school will be enough to pay for another complete year if I don't get any more scholarships or grants. Talk about a lot less stress. I just wanted to say that I am happy about this.

Finals and Stress Relief

So the last couple of posts have told about finals, but at this moment I am not too stressed out about it. I maybe should be but I am not. I have received my study guides to the 2 finals that I do have left and I know exactly how I am going to be studying for them. It is nice because the teachers actually talked about exactly what needs to be done to study effectively for their tests and what will be expected in an answer. WHOOT!! As far as stress relief I am busting it out in the gym. I turn up my mp3 player far too loud and do my 2 routines on the elliptical. 45 minutes on interval which is 2 minutes at low intensity followed by 2 minutes of high intensity going back and forth for 45 minutes. Then I rest a bit and go back on longer intervals of 8 minutes each for 35 minutes. I love working out!!! If I get tired or bored at home, I have an exercise ball and resistance bands that I work on toning. My body is still trying to adjust it's metabolism from the medications but I think that it is getting much better. If I keep this up I may just do a half marathon with the top of Utah marathon. Who knows! It is all good. I feel that I will be more than prepared for my finals and I have kicked butt on the finals that I have already taken. Yay for me.

Normal People

I like to think that I don't get star struck, but I find that I enjoy seeing people that have made their faces known quite well in their respective areas. When I went to general conference a year ago I was star struck by the first presidency and the 12. That was an amazing thing and I don't think that I would get much more star struck than that for the rest of my life. But I was thinking about this today as I was going to the gym and not 5 seconds before I go into the gym, a Nobel prize winner walks into the gym. How great is that? I thought that this was a great thing because that man was just going to the gym like any other normal person. He was wearing an old Utah shirt and sweat pants. Nothing to say "I won a million dollars last year" I know that the money usually goes toward further research into the subject that it was given, but that isn't mandatory. It was just nice to see an important person as normal. But I have to say it was fun to share a gym with someone that I admire in the field of science.

Death, Taxes and Finals

Finals are not my most favorite things to do in the world, but in the world of schooling they are as inevitable as death and taxes. I have had a final already this week and classes have not let out yet. I have an essay final in History that will be a gargantuan pain in the behind and a regular midterm in my Earth Materials class. It won't be too bad just as long as I get around to studying along with all of the end of semester assignments that teachers love to give out. I will be done with all finals and assignments Tuesday, April 29. This is the first time that I have a semester end before May. I don't get too much time off though because I will be Starting summer classes May 12. I hope that I am emotionally ready to have physics ingrained into my brain from 8:00 am-12:00 Monday-Thursday and from 8:00-2:00 on Fridays. Lucky me! I will have homework due every day with a test every Friday. I just have to keep reminding myself that I will get both semesters done in one summer without having to think about any other classes. It will be busy and interesting, but I know that it will be worth it.
I think that I have planned out what classes I am taking during which semester. There are a few classes than can be taken whenever, and I am hoping to utilize summer semesters to get done with some of the classes within a couple of weeks time. I really would like to do that. I will just have to see how it goes when the time is come to make my semester schedule. I can't wait to graduate.
I was looking at the graduation procedures and they are a bit different from those in ISU. The school is so big that they have a commencement for all of the graduating class, but you actually have little ceremonies for each of the different colleges in the school. Endrit will be graduating from the college of Science and I will be graduating from the college of Mines and Earth Sciences. For married couples they allow you to graduate in the other's college, but we haven't decided who will go to which one. Endrit wants to graduate from the College of Science, but I want to go to the graduation that will last about half the time because it graduates half the people. Who knows. I think that I will give in because he is the one that is getting the PhD and deserves to graduate wherever he wants. We may even graduate with our respective colleges if we think that we can attend both of them. It would be a long day but oh well. The things that I think about. I just want to have good pictures to have with both of us graduating. This is all dependent of if Endrit is able to graduate the same time as me like we are planning. Only time will tell. I just wanted to explain how graduation works around here.
I am getting ready to present my last big assignment in one of my classes but my team members aren't here so I blog...

Rachel...Don't Stress

I handed in a paper for my history class about 2 weeks ago now. I was stressing about it so much that I asked the grader to treat it as a rough draft and let me hand it in again. he told me that he couldn't do it so I just sat in wait for my bad grade (C). I thought that I would get it back last Wednesday. Nope he didn't have the grades entered yet so I had to wait yet another weekend to find out my score today. He walked up to me with the stack of papers in his hand and asked me if I was the one that was stressing about how bad my paper was going to be. I admitted that it was me. He handed me my paper and said that it was one of the best papers that was turned in!!! I couldn't believe that I got an A. Not that I am not excited about it but I really thought that it was going to be disorganized and poorly written because of my lack of timing forcing me to not proofread it after fully writing it even once before handing it in. There were a couple of errors but for the most part it was coherent. All I have to say is that when I have successfully completed University I will be writing a thank you not to Tina Stewart, my wonderful and patient friend who taught me how to write papers while I was still in high school. I have yet to get a grade lower than an A- on a paper in University! Thank you Tina!

Back from the dentist

I have the coolest dentist. He is a really nice person and I can go to his office before my classes and still make it to my class on time. He even apologized for getting me back there 5 minutes late. If I only had to wait that long at the doctors office. I had one tiny cavity and a chip. It took less than an hour for the whole visit. It was my first (and hopefully last) cavity. I am proud of myself by being 22 before I ever felt the drill. My face is finally coming back to life.
ETA: The only bad thing is the horrible pain that I had last night!! In order to try to go to sleep I tried regular pain killers and I tell you they did nothing!! Luckily I had some left over vicodin. I only had to take one pill and I was out! I feel much better today.

10 things...

1. I am glad that I am getting my degree. It is really hard to do, but in the end it will be completely worth it.

2. I love planning. I mean planning everything down to the T and that is my greatest strength and my greatest weakness. It isn’t to say that I can’t get in my car and drive to a random place every once in a while, but mostly everything really important is planned.

3. I am attempting to take Physics this summer and not only is it the first semester of it, it is both semesters crammed into one summer! Tell me that I am crazy!! I will only be taking one class at a time so I should be able to do everything and get a really good grade. I am hoping for a 4.0 this summer semester.

4. I love learning. School has always been fun for me because learning has always been fun for me. Now I am in my specific classes it is hard, but when my mind is on it, I love to just learn and expand my knowledge base.

5. I am finally loosing more weight. I am a little less than half way in my weightloss. It is definately harder than I thought it would be but before I have any kids I want to be as healthy as I can be.

6. I love Endrit. Like I really need to say that Endrit is an amazing person. He is my scholastic inspiration! Graduating with a Bachelor’s at 23 Master’s at 25 and hopefully a PhD at 28. I always think that 7 years of school isn’t worth the degree when I fully expect to be a stay-at-home mom until my kids are in school, but knowing that Endrit was able to go to school for 10 years straight it gives me hope to not give up.

7. I am superstitious. Not to the point of living my life by superstitions, but some things I tend to believe more than others. It is hard to explain.

8. Endrit and I are almost debt free. That is such a good thing. We do have some student loans, but our car is paid off so the intrest is subsedized instead of accruing on the car loan! It is awesome. By the time that Endrit and I graduate we should be able to be completely out of debt. That will be a great start for us to buy a house.

9. I love the thought of adoption. I have tried to convince Endrit that we should adopt all of our kids. He doesn’t agree of course because he doesn’t know if he could love an adopted child as much as a biological one...I know that in his heart he knows that he can. I secretly want to adopt a multiple birth from Albania. Who knows...only time will tell.

10. I learn by example. This is a really good thing because I can just look at other people and see the outcomes to their choices and make my decisions vbased upon that. There is a downside because I am to the point in my life that everyone that I know has not gone though the situations that I am facing so i am having to rely upon myself, yes myself and prayer, to choose what I need to be doing. It is really hard on me but I have not done anything drastically wrong yet so now I am gaining self confidence in my decisions.