Thursday, December 13, 2018

End of Semester Stress

Festive view from my bed. I love that my bookshelf looks like a little fireplace waiting for Santa!

LOL @ me for thinking that the semester ending would slow things down for me at work. NOPE. Had the opposite effect, apparently! Classes officially ended on Monday which means a lot of things were due for students in our office, including any financial transactions they wanted to make (which directly impacts my job). Of course students wait til the last possible minute to do what they need to do, leaving us to be a bit frantic about tying up loose ends on our side of things. It's been a little crazy and stressful, but we're getting through it!

That being said, not a ton of things of note have been going on in my life this week outside of work. Just really starting to get things squared away before we leave for Florida next week (!!!) and trying hard not to lose my mind through this busy time of year. Luckily people seem to be in cheerier moods and feeling festive and goofy which makes the stressfulness much more bearable. I definitely appreciate that! 😊


Monday morning brought something called the Basket of Goodness to our kitchen at work! Apparently, one former staff member (who is now retired) brings all of this HOME COOKED food into the Student Affairs suite around the end of the fall semester, including homemade English muffins, cookies, rice krispies, breads, butters, cinnamon rolls... basically any baked good you can imagine, for everyone to share! I was a big fan and this was my main source of breakfast for a couple days early in the week. Absolutely loved it, and continuing to love the family feel of being a part of the Bentley staff!


It's finals week for our students, meaning they are in full blown study mode. Our building is completely taken over by students and their books and laptops as they rush toward the finish line of the semester. I will say that Bentley does a fantastic job of supporting students throughout finals - better than I've seen on any other campus I've worked at. Yesterday morning there was free coffee and bagels for students, and throughout the week we've been pushing a Snack Cart around the building to the big study areas for students to grab some free study fuel and to-go de-stress activities like coloring books and fidget toys. I'm absolutely loving the idea of meeting the students where they're at to provide a but of joy and motivation throughout a stressful week!


I've never related so hard to something in my life 😂 #longcommutelife
Despite being busy this week, I've been able to get quite a bit of reading done! I finished One Day in December by Josie Silver on Tuesday which was the contemporary book I NEEDED to kind of remotivate me to finish my reading year strong. It was a great distraction to the stress of work! I had been reading American Psycho last week and while I'm enjoying it, it's hard to be in the headspace of an angry, psychotic main character when I was feeling so stressed myself. I definitely needed the genre change and I'm glad I was able to breeze through it!


I also finished Dare to Lead by Brene Brown on my commute into work this morning. This was the pick for our Professional Development book club at work and I am so happy that I got the chance to read it! Brene Brown always calls me out on my lack of vulnerability, being "armored up", and my perfectionism, and it is just so refreshing to hear someone speak so frankly about the big elephant in the room - we all need to be better about being honest, about "rumbling" (or having hard conversations to accomplish the goals that we've set out), and about being okay with being vulnerable because we *all* feel that way! Highly recommend you all check out this book if you, like me, suffer from anxiety induced perfectionism. 😜

Me AF 😂 Sorry, y'all - I'm not a hugger.

For some reason I keep stumbling across running mugs on Instagram that I would LOVE to have in my mug collection. I mean, I don't need them (I have approximately 85,000 mugs 😂) but the sayings are just so cute and I feel like they will cheer me up on a Monday morning as I grumble at the end to another weekend. What do you guys think?


So adorable! 😍

Speaking of things that I'm stumbling across on Instagram - THEY ANNOUNCED THE THEME OF THE NEXT SEASON OF THE CHALLENGE AND I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH MYSELF.


Brett and I are huge fans of The Challenge so I instantly screen shotted this post and sent it his way. Both of our reacations: WHAT DOES WAR OF THE WORLDS MEAN AND WHY ISN'T THIS SEASON ON RIGHT THIS MINUTE?! 😂 Either way, we are very excited for this new season. I love that this has been a show we've been able to bond over throughout the entirety of our relationship and that we continue to get excited about every season!

This weekend is our last weekend at home for a little while. Tomorrow is our 6 year anniversary (!!!) I think we'll be doing a dinner out to celebrate. I can't believe it's already been 6 years! It does not feel like it's been that long at all. I think that's a good thing! 😊 We'll be spending Saturday evening with Brett's family celebrating Christmas with them a bit early, and Sunday will mainly be doing laundry/starting to pack as I will have little to no time to pack for our trip during the week. I can't believe we're leaving for Florida next weekend but at the same time I CANNOT FREAKING WAIT! I'm already so over this cold weather and the daily grind of work every day. I'm so excited to have a break, see my family and friends, and just ~relax~. Only 8 more days!

LINKS I LOVE THIS WEEK

Chocolate Dipped Oreo Cookies from Two Peas & Their Pod
High Fiving Grandma from HUUB Design
Me AF from Viral Videos
Alpha Kappa Alpha joins BSU from Bridgewater State University
A real-life Mr. Clean from Nameless Network
The Teacher's Pet Podcast from The Australian
Rock-A-Bye Puppy from Twitter

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