Holy eff, things got crazy

Garfield's visit was amazing. I thought our first visit would be hard to follow up, but no. This one was fantastic too. It felt so good to not do any reading or serious thinking for almost five days. I had been feeling really burnt out before his visit, so I needed the break. We just hung out for the most part: Friday night we went to this chamber music concert I was required to attend for a class, we hung out with his family on Saturday, Sunday was our chill Garfield & Sandy solo day, then Monday he had to fly back. We also ate pizza six times in five days - Garfield was really excited about that for some reason :)

I still cried plenty - either because I felt so happy having him here or because I felt so happy it made me sad to think about his leaving. But I am getting better, the long distance still sucks but it becomes less and less distressing as time goes on.

Then like the second garfield left, I have been *swamped* with school. The vibe all over campus has started feeling really tense and demanding - even more so than usual, and this campus is *always* pretty intense. It's 7th week, next week I have to turn in a paper proposal, I had to turn in this week a statement declaring my proposed MA thesis topic, I've been going to office hours all day to discuss paper topics and class selections for next quarter . . . Today has felt really stressful. I do think I'm figuring out my paper topics, but I'm not quite there yet and it feels really frustrating. The thought processes have been arduous, I'm ready to have these term paper topics resolved.

Oh, but HEY, guess what?!?! I got an A- on my Cultural Policy paper!!!! SO STOKED! Did I mention I got an A-/B+ on the last Core paper? Well I did. I'm getting A's at my expensive, elite private school, what's up :) I just hope the trend holds for my final grades!

In other news, one of my favorite new friends, Sarah, asked me to teacher how to swim properly. She's never exercised before, but the stress is really getting to her, so she came to me for help. We've gone swimming twice together, and it has been awesome :) she's already feeling better and feeling really motivated to keep getting back in the pool and improve. We're swimming again tomorrow, yay!

Okay, the distraction of writing a blog post has helped relieve some of the stress pressure in my head.

Hey, by the way, don't be shy about commenting or sending me emails. I do still like hearing from you guys! I just won't be super prompt about replying, but that doesn't mean I don't like hearing from you. I do still think about you all and wonder how you're doing.

Back to reading . . .