I was anxious all week about my Friday thesis presentation. Throughout the whole week, I felt Friday looming toward me. I didn’t want to talk to anyone (I mean, I did, but I wasn’t into it) and my patience for everything waned. The night before my presentation, I hardly slept because I was not only practising for it, but also still researching new content for it. I was seventh to present out of the ten people in my seminar. My heart was pounding so hard, my teeth were clenched to keep them from chattering, and my leg couldn’t stop bouncing. I contemplated the possibility of dropping my linguistics major and just majoring in computer science, in which case I wouldn’t need to write a whole thesis, only a lit review. I kept reminding myself that this was just a presentation, that in the scheme of the thesis meant nothing, and that in the scheme of my life meant less than nothing, and that in the scheme of the world meant far far less. I told myself that in the worst case scenario, I would give a bad presentation and would have to answer questions with “I don’t know.” And I told myself that I could survive this worst case scenario. Thankfully my presentation didn’t play out to be the worst case scenario and went fine in fact. My mind, body, and soul immediately lifted after my presentation. After my friend and classmate got through her presentation (which followed mine), we congratulated each other and I was grinning so hard.
// The exciting event I got invited to (which I mentioned last week but didn’t reveal!) was a tour and tasting of United By Blue’s new flagship store! Full blog post will be up this Wednesday, so look out for that!
// I’m craving beans on toast.
// My last college requirement finally got transferred! I’ve been trying to get this last requirement transferred since last November, but my dean and registrar were not great at communicating so the process never progressed. But finally. I have all my college requirements completed. All I need left to graduate is Theory of Computation and a 200-level elective for my computer science major, and two more college credits. So that’s my spring semester sorted!
// I’m planning to take two design classes at UPenn next semester to fulfill the last two college credits I need. I emailed professors who were teaching classes I’m interested in, and one of them remembered me as the girl with the shirt!
// Marjorie had dinner with a professor, and I suppose they were catching up and I came up in the conversation (as I’m Marjorie’s roomie), and the professor ordered take-out for Marjorie to bring home for me :’)
// Her Campus hosted an autumnal photoshoot (with me photographing of course!). The merch I ordered from hcxo.shop arrived just in time for it. Our chapter has been struggling with hosting events because 1) our events director isn’t accountable and 2) I’m not able to keep up my responsibilities and compensate for everyone else’s too, so I’m glad we finally put out this event. I was thinking that it’d be a fun way for the team to bond, and also a way to generate publicity for our club. Unfortunately, not everyone in the team showed up (not even all the exec showed up…), but I think it was fun for the people who were there, and we were able to get to know each other outside of writing articles and biweekly meetings, and also get some nice photos out of it. I’m really happy with how all the photos turned out–really autumnal! I won’t be sharing all of them on the blog, but you can check out the photo album on our Facebook page.
// Right after wrapping up the Her Campus photoshoot, there appeared a beautiful dog and since I had my camera out, I asked his owner if I could take a picture of his dog and the owner asked if I wanted a picture with his dog and usually I wouldn’t impose, but since I was wearing hcxo.shop merch, I thought the photo could be good for marketing, but also who doesn’t want a photo with a dog?? The owner positioned me in front of the trees and got his dog to face the camera and everything :’)
// Spent Saturday afternoon with Georgina! I needed to use her xacto knife and cutting pad for my project (she’s a Fine Arts and Cities major, so she has all the tools), so we co-worked in her dorm room. We ate instant udon, downed several cups of hot chocolate, and watched all the Thanksgiving episodes of Bob’s Burgers. Doing homework with friends is so much more fun than doing it yourself!