Thursday was my graduation. My mom and Mary came all the way from Buffalo, just to suffer through 4 straight days of terrible rain to see me graduate. For the past couple weeks I kept telling my mom I didn't even want to go to the graduation because it's such an ordeal. Plus, I'm going to be here for at least another 4 years so I don't really feel like it's a legit ceremony for me. When you graduate it marks the end of your time someplace and then you leave, right? Well anyway, I hate admitting it when I'm wrong but that was definitely the case here. I am soooo glad I went and I kind of wish I had realized how nice it was going to be so that I could have had more people come. It doesn't really matter because having my mom, mary and jeremy there was really enough.

Anyway, the ceremony was the perfect mix of seriousness and humor. People cheered and laughed throughout the entire thing but it was hard to forget the deeper meaning of everything said. It really felt like a celebration all the way through. At the beginning all of the schools processed in separately, behind their banner. Each school carried their own little symbol that the graduates jumped up from their seats and waved in the air when the President announced their graduation or referenced their school. The law school had gavels, the public administration school had blow up globes, the dental school had blow up crest tubes. Everyone from my school brought a children's book and then we donated them to local schools.

The first thing that happened was a Latin oration by a student. It was at least 10 minutes long and he had it memorized. Only students spoke at the university ceremony, and the degrees were conferred by the president after being presented by the deans. It was a little tense at the beginning because Larry Summers resigned this year after making a speech last year in which he made a reference about women not being naturally as good at math and science. However, he made a couple jokes when students started chanting "Larry! Larry!" about how they didn't have their degrees yet. As stupid as it was, people laughed and there was no more tense for the whole ceremony. There was one student speech which really had an impact on me. Luckily I have a copy since the graduation was broadcast on cable and I taped it. The honorary degrees were my second favorite part. These were 9 of the most extraordinary people I can imagine .

Despite sitting in the rain for at least 3 hours I am sooo glad I went. After the university ceremony my grad school had its own ceremony where we each had our name called and we got our degrees. I think it was the perfect balance of feeling recognized as an individual and also feeling as if you are a part of something bigger.

All lined up


Family and friends lined up at 6:15am! It kind of felt like having paparazzi follow you for a second.


Before the ceremony started everyone tried to stay dry but soon we gave up and put the umbrellas down so that we could see.


This is a professor reading the paper while the ceremony was going on! so funny.


There were so many people it was really overwhelming.


Our little ceremony was under a tent thank goodness.


With mary after it was all over.


Anyway, I'm really thankful that my family knows more than I do and forced me to go-- even if it was freezing and poured the entire time.

Last week, my friend Katie and I went to Newport, RI for the day to celebrate the end of the school year. I've never been to Rhode Island before but Katie's from a town really close to Newport so we went to her house for dinner. I loved walking around the town all day. We had beautiful weather (possibly the only day in weeks that it didn't rain even a little) and there were not many other tourists because it was a week day. Seeing all the mansions made me feel like I was walking around in an Edith Wharton book. Since she's basically my favorite author it was a dream come true. It's amazing that all of these huge houses were only summer homes for the rich.









On the weekend I went to Arnold Arboretum. As far as large areas filled with just trees go, it was a really fun place. The Arboretum was established when a whaling merchant named James Arnold died in 1872 and left a ton of money to Harvard to build a habitat that would house "as far as practicable, all the trees [and] shrubs . . . either indigenous or exotic, which can be raised in the open air." And although I'm not sure that Mr. Arnold's dream has been realized just yet, the arboretum is massive and uses a computerized tracking system to keep record of the name and origin of every plant on the 265 acres (there's something like 15,000 trees, shrubs, and vines!). Professors do research there all the time and we went on a (surprisingly) fun tour with one. After that we ate a really yummy dinner in Chinatown.



I'm glad that I'm finally doing some of the boston things that I haven't done over the past year. I've felt pretty ashamed of being here so long and only doing things when people came to visit. I plan to do a lot more (including the Duck Tour with or without you (e:Mike)) over the summer!!

Graduation is on Thursday and it is supposed to be 56 degrees with a 70% chance of rain. How unlucky!

I can't watch the Sabres tonight because I don't have OLN but I think that the National Spelling Bee Championship, which is happening at the same time, is probably just as exciting. I can't believe what these kids can do. I've only gotten three words right and there have been at least 20... not that I'm really surprised. I remember when we used to have spelling bees at Hoover. First we would compete in our class and then all the classes would come together in the Community Room and parents would be invited to watch the "championship." It wasn't really hard to get to the championship so my first year in Hoover (3rd grade when we moved to Kenmore) I got to the last round. Having to stand in front of all of the parents and all of the kids in my grade freaked me out so bad that I totally stopped breathing. From that point all the way through the spelling bees at Kenmore Middle, I would intentionally spell the first word wrong so that I could sit and not be nervous for the rest of the time. I give these kids so much credit for dealing with all the pressure of being on tv and put on the spot. I have literally been tearing up every time someone misses a word. They are so cute when they know they don't know the words. After asking all of the allowed questions (definition, origin, etc) one child even asked, "and how do you spell that?" He had a good sense of humor for someone who was out. Also, one tense moment was when the judges actually had a word spelled wrong and they rang their little bell to signify a girl was out. In reality, she spelled the word right and they had it wrong so she had to be "reinstated." How crazy! There are only 5 left right now. I will be watching until the end.

I'm feeling so awful today. First my roommate is coming back tomorrow after being gone for three glorious weeks. I knew it couldn't last forever but I have this feeling of dread. It's been so peaceful without her here. Now she's going to be around all the time because she dropped one of her summer classes (two classes was one too many apparently) so she'll be out of the apartment for a total of 4 hours a week. Thank God I have a job!

I also found out that I didn't do well on my applied linear regression final. It was a group project but my partner took the class for satisfactory credit so I ended up doing almost all of it. Still, I thought we were going to do okay. In the end we got a B/B+ (they only give grade ranges at my school) which is basically like a D/D-. Just to give some perspective, my partner would not have gotten credit for the class if we received half a grade lower. Anyway, the comments on the paper were the worst part. We had to include the program code for the data analysis but I didn't include all of the sub-programs (if that's even what they're called ) because they said they didn't want "the diary" of our analysis. Apparently they meant they didn't want that in the paper portion. So even though our model was okay, the grader assumed we didn't do all these extra steps. In the end his/her comments were so brutal because they were laced with sarcasm. I would never have written such means things to someone even if I thought they spent two minutes on their work. I mean it was a 25 page data analysis!

I've had this horrible sick feeling in my stomach all day because I feel like I've failed. This was a really important class and I've worked so hard this term to learn this stuff. I'm not smart enough to get it I guess. I'm just ashamed of my work and myself and I hate that feeling so much.

Sometimes I worry that I am wasting my time going to school for so long. Like maybe I am being super self-indulgent because I like school and instead I should just be getting a job and contributing something to the world. I used to convince myself that I wouldn't get a good job if I didn't stay in school but that seems less and less realistic. My boyfriend has an exceptional job and he has a bachelor's degree and is still finishing his master's (in a field unrelated to his job nonetheless!). He gets paid a lot and works with really nice people, and most importantly, he is not mooching off of his parents anymore. I wish I could say the same thing :( I work and go to school but it definitely doensn't cover the bills. I hope that my degree ends up being worth all of the money and time put into it. I better do something really good when I am finally done with school in four years!