Today

A couple of my cohort members and I are sponsoring an end-of-semester gathering. My friend Melissa fried chicken...and Danielle is making baked ziti. Others are bringing libations (lushes)! I'm not really sure what will come of this gathering. I'm not really a board gamer so I think I'll be disappointed if it turns into that kind of a gathering. What I would prefer is if we talked about some of our experiences and came up with some ideas to make our experiences in the program better. However, I'm not sure if everyone will be in the mood since this may serve as a break from finals work. I will update you all on what comes of this get together.

The End of Semester

I have a week and a half left and then I'm going home! Wow, where has the time gone? I'm thinking however that the next week and a half is going to be the hardest time I've spent in school since being here. I have only done one all-nighter (during midterms) but I'm sure I'll end up doing one more before next Friday. So this is what's on the horizon, in terms of finals. School and Society with Ingersoll: I have a take-home exam, no more than 10 pgs. which is decent. He has actually given us an extension on the exam but I pretended not to hear about it for fear of procrastinating just because I can. I have a final project that I'm already done with and is due today (Wed) for Counseling for Educators with Kuriloff...great class by the way. I strategically planned for my last three assignments to correspond. My final paper/study for Qual/Ethnographic Methods for Ravitch, critical book review for Anthro. and Ed. for Hall, and my final paper for Slaughter-Defoe are all virtually the same. The observations/data that I collected will go for my data/observational write-ups for Ravitch and Slaughter-Defore, and I'm using Hall's critical book review for my review of literature for my Ravitch paper. (Don't mean to offend by using proff's last names its just easier for me to keep them organized.) So, I'm planning for this to be easy but, you know, we will see. I have really gotten a chance to observe the patterns of my writing. I love to mull over words in sentences in paragraphs and it usually takes me a lot longer because of the way I like to play with words. It's not really even me playing, it's something that I feel like I have to do. I am not one of those kinds of writers that can just freewrite all of their thoughts. I don't like to see my thoughts on paper unless they are organized and make sense already so I spend a lot of time thinking about what to say instead of putting it down and arranging it later.

I'm sorry for that...i digress. Anyway, so I'm really excited about my classes for next semester. My schedule is solidified: Critical Race Theory (which is a graduate course I'm taking in the Africana Studies Dept.), Psychology of the African American with Howard Stevenson, Gender and Education with Peter Kuriloff, Masters Thesis Seminar, and an Independent Study with Marybeth Gasman in the Higher Ed. Program. I am really looking forward to next semester...really.

I am also looking forward to Atlanta!!! There's no place like home!