And just like that...

...the semester begins. I began my second year of grad school yesterday and all of my commitments are in full-swing. (Yikes!) It's been a crazy couple of weeks prepping for the return of the students, but now that it's here I'm very excited to get this semester underway! 

I've been doing some exploring around the area where Brett works when I go to visit. I usually have a lot of time to wander around when he's busy doing his football coachin' thang and I found a little donut shop not too far from campus called Dippin' Donuts. I'm pretty sure I've been to a Dippin' Donuts at some point in my life, but I'm not entirely sure. Either way, this place is awesome. They have specialty coffees like my favorite South Shore chain MaryLou's and so many yummy goodies. So far I've had the Twix and Oreo iced coffees and I'm in love!

I did my absolute best at soaking up what was left of summer before getting back into the swing of things, and I think I did a pretty awesome job. Having some downtime while visiting Brett allowed me to do one of my favorite summer activities - reading in the grass - and although I didn't make it to too many ice cream stands, the cafeteria at Brett's campus was fully stocked with bubblegum ice cream every time we had our dinner there. If that's not a success, I don't know what is! (And lucky for me - and everyone - ice cream joints will still be open for a few more weeks!)

With the New Hampshire Marathon just a few short weeks away, I've been really focused on getting my long runs done. I've started celebrating #SundayRunday as the time to sweat it out for a consecutive three-and-a-half hours and put some serious mileage under my feet. Because I'm focusing more on my long runs, I'm only doing 1 or 2 additional shorter runs during the week, and generally asking a lot less of myself in the running department while trying to be a bit better about stretching and body weight exercises. This upcoming Sunday is when my final long run is scheduled  (18 miles - the furthest I went before running Hartford) before I begin to taper and incorporate more shorter runs into my weekly routine. I can't believe how close my second marathon is!

I mentioned it in a previous post, but I began my graduate internship last week! I am working with Clark University's Office of Student Leadership and Programming. My main responsibility has to do with developing leadership programming for the campus. We're, of course, at the very early stages of this project, but leadership programming is one of my favorite things that a college campus can offer, and it's been a little while since I've been directly involved in an extensive project involving it, so I'm very interested and excited to see where it will go!

Though this is the second week Clark's been in action, both Dean and BSU opened this week. Of course, move-in at Dean was on a nice and disgustingly humid Labor Day, but I had my awesome staff to keep me company over the 10+ hours we were working check-in. My CAs took the initiative to pretty much do all of the work while Sport & I kicked back and focused on welcoming students & families to campus. My staff is awesome (photo below for proof).

The next day was a slew of Welcome Week activities for the incoming first years at Bridgewater. Our office helped out with coordinating the class picture for about 1,000+ first year students (which unexpectedly included me getting smashed in the head by a metal sign stanchion... Thanks, wind. -_-), Convocation, and an awesome back-to-school barbecue on the lawn of Boyden. It was great to see some of the students I hadn't seen all summer and to see the campus in full swing once again!

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I began my classes yesterday evening with Intro to Career Counseling. This is the course that I've heard a lot of people have trouble with, which makes me a bit nervous, but I'm actually pretty interested in the topic itself. I worked in the Career Services office at Lasell and really enjoyed seeing what career counseling for college students was all about. I'm interested to see where this course goes, and how well I'll perform in it!

And, in the spirit of the first day of school, I naturally had to take a picture to send to my parents like I did last year. This year I went for the cutesy sign-holding photo noting what grade I'm starting so my parents could post it to Facebook and brag like the rest of the moms and dads out there (and they both actually did...).

I know this year is going to be crazy. I've had multiple people (students, colleagues, supervisors, friends, family, etc.) approach me to ask how I'm going to accomplish balancing everything, but I know I'm an organized person, I know I thrive when my schedule is packed, and I know I'm going to rock it.

The other night, Brett and I ordered Chinese food for dinner and I got a surprisingly appropriate reminder of how to best approach this year, and I'm going to end this post on that.

I hope you're all having a wonderful start to your September, and I'll talk to you all soon!

xx