Only two more weeks of school ahhh! Here’s the rundown: I only have one class this week, which will be on Tuesday and Thursday, and those classes will just be for in-class presentations; I present with my partner on Tuesday, so that’ll pretty much be the end of my semester haha. UPenn classes have ended (although I still have a final project to work on for that class), and my other two classes are senior seminars, which don’t have class times anymore because we’re just working on finishing up the final draft of our thesis. I’ll have a lot of time this week, so I’ll need to be really good about managing my time; I’m definitely better at managing my time when I have a busier schedule, because the appointments in my schedule break up my time for me. Not that I’m complaining about having a light schedule haha. Then the following week, I’ll be taking my only final exam on Monday, I’ll be giving my final presentation/defense for my thesis on Tuesday, and then I’m flying home on Wednesday!
College
As I mentioned earlier, my last day of class at UPenn for the semester was this past week! I’m going to miss my professor and my classmates. I feel like all of us were starting to get to know each other’s personalities better, and a lot of my friends had said that this was their favourite class of the semester (it was mine too!). On Friday we had our salon, so we got to see student work from all five sections of the class. That was pretty satisfying. At the salon, I talked for a long while with another professor, with whom I was hoping to take a class with next semester, but which didn’t end up fitting in my schedule. But anyway, he approached me and we had a good talk and ahh I so wish that I could take his class next semester! But it’s all good. There are plenty of other graphic design classes to choose from.
My senior thesis is a joint thesis between computer science and linguistics. For computer science, I need to participate in a postering session, and for linguistics, I need to present a defense. I was nervous for both of these presentations, because you never know what questions you’re going to get! This past week was the computer science postering session and it was almost… fun?? I was only there for 30 minutes because I needed to leave and go to UPenn for class, but during the first 5-10 minutes, a bunch of computer science majors and I were just arranging snacks on a table for the postering session, and for most of the rest of the time we were messing around and looking at everyone else’s posters and pretending to present them for them. I did end up presenting to my thesis advisor and two friends, and I felt pretty good about what I was talking about. I wouldn’t have minded staying for the full hour honestly. I’m still nervous about the linguistics defense though.
I think I finished writing my senior thesis?? Boy do I love using the phrase, “beyond the scope of this paper.” I still have the linguistics defense to do, but I’m so close to being completely done with everything ahh! Sweet freedom!
As a senior, I get to check out books from the libraries at Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore for an entire semester before I need to renew or return them! All seniors automatically get to check out books for the entire semester, the idea being that seniors will need to hold onto books for their senior theses. But even for books that aren’t for your senior thesis, you also get hold onto them for the whole semester. And when you renew a book during the fall semester, it gets renewed until the end of the spring semester! So satisfying!
Christmas
I wore a festive outfit for postering! It consisted of my new Madewell evening sparkle ribbed sweater top in metallic mahogany under my old Abercrombie corduroy pinafore dress in dark green (can’t find online anymore, but there’s a photo on the blog here) with black tights and black booties.
Georgina and I had lunch in town together and we stumbled upon a beautifully festive shop called Pucci Manuli. There were so many cute toys! Georgina was especially taken by a little teddy bear; it was very similar to one she has from FAO Schwarz (of high sentimental value) and was the softest toy we had ever touched. She wanted to get it so badly but said her mom would kill her for spending money on that, so I said I’d get it for her and gift it to her so that her mom wouldn’t be able to kill her for it. Which is when we got the brilliant idea to get each other Christmas presents then and there, because I had also been eyeing a toy; it was a toy hedgehog that I had eyed whilst in Cambridge this past summer!
First snow of the season was over the weekend! I stayed inside the whole day, drank apple cider, ate cookies, and watched Christmas vlogs.
I like the idea of The Polar Express, but the animation really creeps me out, like, the people, and the voices are kinda weird too.
Good people
Marjorie left for winter break last Wednesday! But before leaving, she went on a grocery run. I was like, “Are you worried that I’m not going to be able to survive without you?” and she was like, “Yup,” haha. Very thoughtful of her :’)
Kat, Claire, and I made a spontaneous trip to Minella’s Diner at 11:00PM for shakes and fries. Good decisions.
Dim sum in Chinatown with Louise and Steph after our last design class. And bubble tea too, of course. We had been meaning to do this all semester!
Coffee spoons
There’s a set of small, plain metal spoons in my apartment. They fit perfectly in my mugs and are great for stirring my hot chocolates, green tea lattes, and citrus teas. They are my favourite spoons. I would not be opposed to starting a coffee spoon collection.
Apartment life
I made a chocolate mug cake. And I have a feeling that I’ll be making a bunch more of these throughout the week because they’re so easy. Thanks to Marjorie who went crazy with baking and left me with a bunch of ingredients and various types of flour! (She also left me with scone dough and cookie dough that I need to get around to baking.)
I finally scraped down my stove. It’s not completely clean; there’s been some stuff sitting there too long for that. But it’s not looking as gnarly as it did before. I probably should have been maintaining the cleanliness of the stove throughout the semester but… I’m not adult enough.
How was your week?