Catching Up on the Last 5 Weeks! (Part 1)

I can't believe how long it's been since I've written a proper life update post! Things went so quickly at the end of the semester, just as I'd anticipated that they would. I always say the end of the year sneaks right up on us because we're busy right until the last second. This year was no different! It felt like I had events every single day, on top of finishing up my graduate work and trying to not pass out from exhaustion. Anyway, I have a LOT to catch up on, so I'm going to break this life update into two parts. (I'll post part #2 tomorrow!)

The day after the Boston Marathon, Springfest activities got underway! I always love the large scale, campus-wide events because I really get to see the students in action. It really is amazing how much they can accomplish as a group! Each event was a success (even with the rained out carnival) and we all had such a blast the entire week. I'm going to really miss PC next year when all of the Homecoming and Springfest photos pop up on social media!

Grilled cheese truck, hosted by the Cheese Connoisseurs Club!

A happy Springfest gift from former PC advisor Matt!

Rachel & Kevin loving the cookie bouquet!

Mid-week during Springfest I picked up my cap & gown for commencement which made things REALLY real! It was a great motivator, though, to keep pushing through all of the school work and reach the finish line of grad school. I had it hanging up on my closet door right next to my mirror so I could see it each day to keep me focused!

My regalia in all its glory.

The weekend after Springfest was the Dean Dash 5K! My family had run it last year so we thought we'd continue the tradition. Louie even joined us, only 5 days after running Boston! #champ This year's race was much larger and much better organized as well. It was a gorgeous day for a race and it's always good to have friends and family visiting my neck of the woods!

Giving Louie the sign we made him for the Marathon! It got a little destroyed by the rain...

The following week I had, what I liked to call, an #SAroadtrip! We all know that I basically lived in my car this year, but that week I truly, truly did. I commuted between Dean, Nichols, Bridgewater, Clark, and even an institution that I interviewed at in Western Massachusetts for a total of 5 different colleges, within 3 days! I traveled a total of 399 miles in a little under 72 hours... Yikes. Here were my tour stops:

Wednesday: Left Dean in the morning to commute to BSU for work, and then went out to Nichols to visit Brett for the night.

Watching Brett play a bit of pick-up basketball at Nichols while working on some homework.

Thursday: Had my last day of my internship at Clark :( where Joanne and Tim took me out to The Fix for a delicious lunch that consisted of burgers with espresso. bacon. What. (Guess who's the idiot who forgot to take a picture? Trust me, it was BOMB.) Then I commuted back to BSU for the Impact Awards that evening which were so much fun! (So proud of all of my PCers who took home awards!) I spent the evening back in my apartment at Dean.

The give away at this year's awards were selfie sticks, so of course it was selfies galore for the rest of the year!

Friday: Woke up and commuted out to Western Mass for my interview, made a stop at Nichols to say hi to Brett on the way back, then was on duty Friday evening at Dean. (And of course, I treated myself to Chipotle for champing out the last few days.)

Saying I was tired by the end of the trip would be an understatement, but I'm glad I have such a reliable car to get me everywhere! #DoryismyBFF

That Saturday Brett and I went out to dinner at the new Smash Burger (YUM) and just relaxed at home while I finished up an assignment for school. Sunday evening was the end-of-year ResLife banquet at Dean, and it was so sad to say goodbye to my wonderful CAs. It was so wonderful to have them on my staff this year and I'm going to miss them so much!

Monday marked the last day of classes for the BSU undergrads, so of course we had to go out with a bang which included Duck Day* and the rescheduled Springfest Carnival! The weather was absolutely perfect and made for a wonderful last day to hang out with the PC gang. We had so many people at the carnival which was awesome! It was such a great note on which to end my time as a PC advisor. Don't worry, I'm not crying... there's just dust in my eye...

Set-up selfie!

Pie a Panhel! With one of my favorite Greek women, Shannon!

Look at those lines! It got much more crowded as the event progressed.

Tuesday evening PC hosted their annual Production Crew dinner, which is for students who have gone above and beyond to contribute back to the organization. Even alumni are invited back, so long as they were inducted into Production Crew while they were students! It was great to catch up with some of the students I worked with last year, as well as to have the opportunity to really say goodbye to the wonderful organization that really impacted my time as a grad at BSU. (And the food was amazing!)

With some of my PC pals!

Candyland battle!

I'm going to wrap up this first part of my life update with my Portfolio Defense that happened on Wednesday of that week. I had been working on my portfolio all semester long and it was so great to just have it be done with. However, I was the last person to defend, meaning I had to sit through six 25-minute presentations before I could present my own, which of course gave my nerves plenty of time to build. I'm pretty sure I blacked out during the entire presentation and I probably sounded like an idiot, but I PASSED which meant I was graduating for real! Such an amazing feeling to be done with that portion of my grad school experience. Our Internship course instructor took us out for drinks and appetizers to celebrate after we were done!

My outfit for the defense!

Pre-defense selfie with Brit!

Post-defense Mai Tai *heart eyes Emoji*

I still have a ton to catch you up on, so make sure you check back tomorrow for part two!

*Duck Day is an awesome program that PC puts on. Staff members hide rubber ducks all around campus, and each duck corresponds with a prize. When students find ducks, they turn them in for those prizes, ranging from a back of candy all the way up to an iPad! Students will climb trees, go through bushes, and look literally EVERYWHERE to find the ducks. It's one of the most entertaining things to witness!

The End of Everything!

Hey everyone! I just wanted to take a quick moment to give you a little bit of a life update. I usually have a pretty good idea of what I want to write on this blog before I sit down to write, but today I just feel like I need to just empty my brain. There is so much going on in my life, and rightfully so because I'M GRADUATING IN 47 DAYS. (But who's counting?) I thought I'd give you a little peek into what's in the very front of my mind as of late, and will probably be until I cross the stage on May 13th!

1. The #SAsearch is in high gear right now! My fellow GA Brittany (who is also job searching) and I talk about it pretty much every day and have been each other's support crew/cheerleaders which is really nice to have at this point in life. I've applied to several places and have had a couple interviews (which OHMYGODISSONERVEWRACKING) but I know that this process in the Higher Ed world is a whole lot of hurry up and wait so I'm staying positive and trusting that eventually something will work itself out. I'll, of course, update you all when it eventually does and I accept my first professional position!

#selfieswithBristacoforever

2. I'm wrapping things up at my Bridgewater assistantship and my internship with Clark over the next few weeks and it's so sad! April is NEXT WEEK, meaning there is programming every week between now and the end of the academic year, which also means time is going to fly. I'm going to be putting on my last major week of events with PC, I'm going to be giving support to all the offices I work with in their end-of-year activities, and worst of all, I'm eventually going to be saying goodbye to the students and colleagues that have been part of my life for the last two years. SO HEARTBREAKING! I'm very lucky that I've had such positive experiences that leaving them is difficult, but GOD does it suck! </3


3. THERE IS STILL SO MUCH HOMEWORK TO BE DONE, but I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel! I am definitely feeling the graduate school version of senioritis and homework is honestly the last thing I want to be concentrating on right now with everything else that's going on in my life. But today, I somehow miraculously fit all of the assignments that I have standing between me and my Master's degree on one single sheet of Filofax paper which is un. real. It's so crazy to be this close to having my Master's when not too long ago I had absolutely zero intention of ever pursuing it. It kind of doesn't feel real!

The FINAL list!

So as you can see, my life offline is consuming my whole attention and will likely be doing so until graduate school is over. It's only a short 6 and a half weeks away, (but again, who's counting?) but apologies if my little corner of the internet gets neglected. I'm going to make an effort to post at least once a week until the summer rolls around, (I still have so many photos and videos to share with you from my trip, as well as a ton of other fun posts that I've been meaning to write!) but if that somehow gets away from me as well, know that it is for a good reason! In the mean time, make sure you're following my Twitter and Instagram as I've been keeping those fairly up-to-date during this crazy time!

 I hope you're all doing fantastic, and I will be writing very soon!

<3

Survivng Homecoming... again!

I somehow survived my second BSU Homecoming last week! HOORAY!

Bristaco and I really bonded last week.

This year was 10x more hectic (but 10x more awesome) than last year. Partly because I finally knew was I was doing with the entire event, and partly because now that I knew what I was doing, I wanted to try EVERYTHING. I really pushed the students who I was working with to do something creative with Homecoming this year and to brainstorm ideas of how we could get more of the campus involved. My students are awesome, and together we developed a Spirit Week for the campus, engaging students, staff, and even added some competition into the mix! It was a blast, but there was a LOT to take care of in order to make it successful. I think for it went great for its inaugural year, and it has a ton of potential to go really far in the future!

The OSIL staff participating in Dress to Impress Day before the Pageant!

One huge change this year was to the Homecoming Pageant. Last year, I worked with Lee Forest, the Director of the Pride Center at BSU, to get together a focus group of students to evaluate our Pageant on its inclusiveness to students of all genders. The Pageant had been set up in the past as a traditional pageant, with a King and Queen as the two winners. After gaining feedback from the focus group, we decided it would be more inclusive to have just one winner, male or female, who would be able to choose their own title, crown, etc. This change is in hopes to encourage students who may not identify as male or female or would not be comfortable being crowned "King" or "Queen". There was a great article on the change written on our university blog - click here to find out more about it! I'm very proud to be working alongside such mindful colleagues and students who were willing to make this change to such a long-standing BSU tradition.

Our Homecoming King and the two runners-up!

All of the events went off without a hitch, and we really beefed up some events that needed a little bit of extra attention this year. I'm so proud of everyone who was involved. I definitely felt much more connected to the whole event (all 5 days of it) this year and it's sad that it's the last Bridgewater Homecoming that I'll be helping plan. I'm very lucky that I've had such great people helping me through the process and execution and I hope the next grad enjoys it as much as I have! :)

'Til next year, when I return as an alum... (yikes!)

Run Over by October

It's safe to say it's October, considering what my calendars look like.

What my calendars looked like on the first of the month... they've since gotten more crowded.

This is the month where I typically completely forget I'm a student and am focused mainly on what I'm doing at work. That's not to say I'm not doing my homework, but I often have to remind myself "hey, you've got a 10 page paper due in 2 days... you should probably get on that". This is the month that Homecoming and prepping students for the NACA Northeast tend to collide and explode in a multitude of meetings, emails, Word documents, and more meetings. Oh, and mid-terms too... I guess. #SAgradprobz

I've been staying afloat relatively well this year. Last year, I kind of let it completely break me down, but this year I'm a bit more mindful of what needs to get done and how I'm going to accomplish it. I recently described how I deal with my busy schedule as "completely blacking out and just doing it then waking up and saying to myself 'what just happened'." I think that is the most accurate description I've given to date!

Me either, mystery person. Me either.

I've somehow been able to fit in some personal time in my schedule, and have actually been doing some pretty fun things lately! The weekend I went to NH for the marathon, my parents also ran a 5K called Footrace for the Fallen, so I ran support crew for them in return for running support crew for me the day before. There's so many fun short to mid-distance races in our area of NH, and they try to participate in as many as they can!

I've been making a serious effort to see Brett as often as I can as well. We're both so busy and on completely opposite schedules that it's hard to be able to spend time together that isn't spent sleeping or working on other things, but we've been making the most of it. We went out to froyo the other night (Brett's first time... his mind was blown) and we always have breakfast together in the dining hall at his school after his early morning work outs, so we still get a solid few waking hours together each week!

Yes, that is his school's logo in their waffles... incredible.

Other than spending time with Brett and my family, I've gotten a solid dose of time with my old pal Microsoft Word, cranking out papers like a champ. It's kind of gross that 8-10 page papers are second nature to me at this point when that seemed like such a daunting task a year ago. I'm actually enjoying the things that I'm writing about in my classes this semester, though, which makes it much easier to get through! I guess that's another clue that you're going down the right path, right?

Though October has been stressful thus far, it's been fun as well. We're smack dab in the middle of Homecoming at BSU and we've implemented a Spirit Week component to the mix this year which has been SO much fun! I'll post more about it next week. I'm also really looking forward to NACA at the end of the month. I know kind of know what I'm doing at conferences (I had never been to one before grad school!) and it's going to be a great opportunity to chat with colleagues at different campuses to get a feel for where I'd like to possibly work in the future. It's going to be a lot more than just taking it all in this year, and I'm excited for that!

I hope you all are having a wonderful October as well! (Can you believe we're already half way through? Where is this month going?!) I'll be sure to be posting in the next couple days, but here are two photos that are summing up my feelings on life at the moment...

Talk to you soon! :)

My #SAStory

One of the biggest questions people always ask one another when making small talk in the Student Affairs field (at least among new professionals and grad students) is how they wound up pursuing a career in it. I feel like I've told my story over and over to aspiring and current #SApros, and each time more and more of the story gets chopped off for fear of boring everyone and coming off as self-centered.

I do really enjoy my story, and when I tell it I remember what inspired me to get into the field in the first place. I figured that before I get further in my career and the details of why I got into this field get hazy, I should write it all down with photos and all! This will likely be a longer post, so if you'd like to learn more about how I decided my career path, please click the cut! (And you'll get to see me in all of my college glory... #embarrassing)

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