Friday, August 16, 2013

Back to School! aka Problems in Somerville


Hello friends!!! I am in Boston (Somerville to be more exact) -- alive, well, and starting the next two years of my life.

My first 24 hours here were a little bit rough. I arrived last Sunday on a red-eye (Who designs airplane seats??? Sadists.), napped at Jess's apartment (we're now neighbors!), then hung out with her for the day. Sounds good right? It was.

I meandered over to my new apartment in the evening, met my two roommates and my subletter who is still in my room for a week (i.e. I can't actually move in/unpack yet), and thought, hmmm you know what would be nice? Not wearing traveler clothes to my first day of school! So I went down to the basement (where all my stuff has been stored since May), opened a suitcase, and discovered that almost EVERYTHING is moldy. 



Me: Lahdidah going to pick out clothes.....GAHWHATTHEOMGEWWWW!

I will spare you the gory details, but let's just say that (after panicking of course) I have done A LOT of laundry, soaked many a thing in white vinegar (which actually works), hung clothes alllll over the apartment, and have probably inhaled enough mold to kill me if I didn't have the stellar immune system of a seasoned Africa/India/Southeast Asia traveler.

And while the mold situation was unfolding, I started class on Monday morning! It felt so weird doing the whole back-to-school thing after 4 years of being a full-time adult. But oh man guys, I'm in a two-week intensive course and it is sink-or-swim, no-adjustment-period allowed! The first day, the professor and some second year students were talking it up -- this is the hardest course you will ever take, and the most work you will ever do in three weeks, and the biggest final project on par with your capstone. Us first-years looked at each other, wide-eyed in terror and confusion. Were you expecting this? What have we gotten ourselves into?







I assumed they were exaggerating, trying to scare us a bit...but here I am, at the end of Week 1, and I can say for certain that this is the hardest course I've ever taken and the most work (for one course in such a short period of time) I have ever done. So. Guess I'm getting my money's worth out of this whole grad school thing? (The course is on Program Design, Monitoring, and Evaluation -- google it if you care.)

BUT dear readers, I promise you that Eat Run Read will not become a litany of annoying grad school rants. (You know what I'm talking about: I'm so busy and important! Have I told you about how much reading I have? My life is so hard and you just can't understand!) because that is boring, and selfish, and not what this blog of joy and exercise and rainbows and sunshine and cookies is all about. I am just telling you now to explain why I dropped off the face of the earth this week (and probably next week too...and possibly the week after that...but the week after that I hope to be more normal!).


I do hope/plan to return to regularly scheduled programming soon (Weekend Reports, Cakes of the Week, Literary Bites, Best of the Week, etc.), it just might take some time.




Remember this cake? Yummmm
Oh! And semi-tangential, but I am running again! It is a necessary component of keeping myself sane through this academic boot camp experience I am having, and also a really good way to break up an entire day of un-fun reading. There's a really nice bike path right next to my apartment, and the weather has been gorgeous, so that is a win!