Ah summer; we're all either really busy, or relishing our time to relax, and consequently no one seems to have much to say over here. Personally, this week and a half of break has been pretty interesting for me. I've seen a lot of friends, both old and new, driven my brother and all his dorm stuff, which literally filled my Rav 4, back home from the dorms, and moved to a new bedroom in our apartment. More excitingly (for me at least) is that I churned out a research paper on intelligence, creativity, and gene variation, wrapping up a semester of work with my terrific research mentor at NYU; was invited to join said research mentor in co-authoring a book chapter (!!!) which I'm super excited about; waited very impatiently as my grades for the semester trickled in; and made two delicious pizzas in one night - certainly my greatest accomplishment recently.

Now, back to relaxing...

Finale

So I sorta graduated Wednesday. Um, yeah. Whoa. It was the sixth CUNY Macaulay Honors College Convocation ever in the entire wide world. All 200 or so of us from the graduating classes of all 7 campuses.

It was, of course, ridiculously hot. I had to spend the better part of an hour, all told, outside in 90+ degrees, no shade, wearing a suit. And when I say a suit, I mean a black suit, and when I say a black suit, I mean:




Because black goes with everything. Especially if everything is black. On top of that, of course, the standard-issue black gown:



We all gathered at the Mac Center on 67th and Central Park West, then assembled outside. Then waited for 10-15 minutes. Then walked about 4 blocks to Lincoln Center. They even had cops stopping traffic for us:



See, aren't we special? We then formed a line--where by "line" I am understood to mean "vaguely linear mob"--outside of Avery Fisher Hall:



For at least another 20 minutes. Here's me just quivering with antici




pation. No, seriously, I was excited. Hot and tired, but excited. Because, hey, it was graduation. That was pretty cool. Finally we all got to sit, and there were speeches, and honorary degrees, and R. L. Stine gave us some valuable life advice, and there was a student speaker--one of our own, of course, because Hunter Honors students are just cooler than other Honors students--and then they had everybody line up, college by college, and get their names called and shake a lot of hands and carry off pretty little pieces of paper (not the actual diplomas, of course; each was a letter from the Dean of the Honors College, telling us how splendid we are). And that was pretty cool. There were lots of gowns and caps of various sorts, and much Pomp and Circumstance, and all those things graduations are supposed to have.

Afterwards, it was off to dinner with the family, presents and cards, and then back to the dorms, no longer sporting cap and gown:



And in close-up--notice the shiny new Macaulay Honors College Alumni pin on the lapel:



The cap went home with my family, the gown was donated after the ceremony to be reused by an underserved high school in the Bronx.

So I got back to the dorm, and back to homework. Um, yeah. I had one final paper due after graduation. My Honors project, to be precise. So that was my Wednesday night, and my Thursday, with a break to attend the Hunter Macaulay Senior Dinner. Nice little affair in the President's Conference Room, with more touching speeches about how much Hunter and the Honors College mean, raffles, an award, and delicious cupcakes.

And then back to the Honors project. The deadline was 12:00 noon today. At about 10:00 AM, I slipped under the professor's door some 4,285 words, 13 pages, 17 works cited, titled "Re-Understanding the Role of Authorial Intentionality in Determining the Status of Beckett’s Self-Translations." Not the most brilliant final project ever written, but a relatively solid paper, I feel... I hope...

...and that's it, really. I'm done. I mean, I still haven't moved out of the dorms (seniors can get 1-week extensions of check-out), so I get to just observe the lovely frantic-move-out atmosphere:
Stuff lying around hallways--

--stuff lying around lounges--

--but really, basically, it's done.

So yeah.

Auf Wiedersehen...

À bientôt...





etc etc etc

Summer is here!!!

Done, finally done! I do like finals week - it's a great reason to spend days at a time home in one's pajamas reading all day, and it's very focussed. This was a semester of extreme ups and downs (in life as well as grades) and finals seem to have gone the same: some went well, others less so.

But for now, I'm just thinking about about the extreme busy-ness of another variety that's about to ensue. First, a whirlwind week and a half of semi-relaxing: my brother's graduation tomorrow, a science fellowship poster presentation on Thursday, going to a really neat-sounding theater show with all old friends, my boyfriend's going away party Saturday, and then a few days of trying to pack up stuff for a major apartment rearranging that will occur when the brother moves back home. Second, a week in Vermont teaching at a dog camp (don't ask, but it's the best job ever!). And third, immediately after Vermont, I'm heading off to suburban Baltimore to spend eight weeks at a neuroscience lab at Johns Hopkins.

And right now, I've discovered this cool thing called television...