I'm A Senior!

It has finally truly sunk in that I am going to graduate in the spring, and that I will be a full grown adult with a degree! I'm so excited!!! What made it finally click? Registering for next semester and running a degree audit and seeing that I've met all the requirements as soon as I pass all those classes. That's it! I'm done! No more semester-after-that-one planning! I can feel the sense of freedom and accomplishment that was welling up in me during my high school graduation start to gurgle in my head and chest and make me have to control myself as I feel the urge to run screaming through the halls and around campus that YES! I'm almost done!

And then what? I will move in with my husband! That is the ultimate graduation present! That's the ultimate reward for two long hard years of doubt, guilt, tears, and frustration. Every day I look forward to that reward. I can hardly wait! I'm so excited!

Looking for Trouble

After dinner I decided to follow up on a tip someone gave in class about these really really large moths that seem to come out about dusk at the soccer field. I asked some of my male buddies if they would mind going with me, since the soccer field is a ways out and I didn't want to be walking around by myself after dark. Besides, more eyes means better chances of finding something, right?

So we make it out to the field carrying my butterfly net and jar-o-doom, and there's absolutely nothing there. Well, now the guys just want to see my killing jar in action, so we make our way to the tennis courts and I find a winged ant. I told them that the bugs just act really high and then pass out, end eventually die of an OD on the chemical. They thought my analogy was hilarious, and watched the ant very intently giving of-the-moment interpretative narrative. "Oh no! My legs! Ack ack, ahhh....." They were so amused that they walked around a whole section of campus with me from lit spot to lit spot looking for interesting things to kill. We found a mosquito hawk/crane fly (the giant mosquito kind, not the dragonfly kind), a huge beetle, a big cricket, and several moths. There also seemed to be another green stink bug every time we turned around. They seemed to be everywhere tonight.

We also found a big green grasshopper that I happened to know from personal experience has the most scary looking mandibles, so I picked it up and showed the guys, who agreed they don't want to be bit by that! So, we proceded to find a worthy-looking spider web and deposited the grasshopper there, hoping to get a death-match going, but the spider didn't look game. It was more along the lines of, "what are you doing to my web?"

Walking around having fun with my freinds: it's great and I wish I did it more often.

Feeling Productive

I've gotten the most work done today I've done in a long time. I asked a professor of mine if he would mind giving me an interview (he said yes, he could that same day! Score!), I got the tape recorder, got the paperwork, got the interview, transcribed about half of it, made a few labels for my bugs, read a bit of my book, went to all of my classes (as usual), and I actually ate all 3 meals today! Of course all that wore me out so I also took a 2 hour nap and played more computer games than I should have. But I don't feel like a bum right now! And that's great. My grades are starting to improve too. Whoo-hoo! Maybe I'll graduate on time after all.

Senior Year

It's strange. Today I went and got the form to declare my intent to graduate this coming spring. I am a senior. And yet, I don't feel like a senior. In high school, your class status was a solid thing that you fit into. When you were a senior in high school, you felt on top of the world. Here in college, the only class rank that was well defined was my freshman year. I was a new kid. After you become acquainted with life on campus and the phenomenon of college classes occurring only periodically throughout the day, instead of back to back all at once, time seems to run together. You count hours instead of classes, and even "semester" is nothing more than a block of time. The apparent "density" or course load of that semester is variable. And so, while most would consider a college degree to take four years, it's easy to let the actual length of time for that accomplishment trickle on longer to 4 and a half or 5 years.

No one other than yourself will really think twice about the rate of progress you're making. In college, if someone takes a lesser course load, or if it takes them 5 years to graduate instead of four, that person is not thought of as a failure. They are thought of as someone who is taking their time, who has other demands on their time and energy besides just school. In fact, the people who graduate in four years are almost seen as the overachievers, the go-getters, and the pushers. The people that take longer are seen as the people who have set a different pace for themselves, who have a family, who understand that life is not a race.

So anyway, today I realized that, yes, I am a senior, and should be graduating this coming spring, as long as I pass everything. I really don't feel like I've been here for as long as I have already, and even though I can hardly wait to start my life as a "real" adult and wife, I also feel like school could just stretch on and on and become this never-ending thing, and no one would think anything really odd about that. Where has the time gone? I just got here. Didn't I?

The World of Bugs

My entomology class went on another field trip down the road today. Among other things, I found this huge caterpillar, commonly known as the woolly bear. I've never seen one before, and I was afraid to touch it. Anyway, here is a picture of it, already in a preservation jar, so please ignore the glare.


I also found this really huge awesome beetle just outside the science building. It has rows of green spots going down its' back. You can see a few of them if you look really hard.

And here is my collection so far, minus the caterpillars:

And a close up of the big moth, because everyone seems to really like that one:

In other news, I finished as much of the pink scarf as I plan on doing for a while. I want to do the hat that will go with it, and then use any left over yarn from that to make the scarf longer. Currently it is only about 51 inches long, and it's really thick. If I had a better idea of what the finished product was going to be like before I started, I would have modified it to only one cable with a garter stitch boarder in order to make it less wide and more usable. I mean, perhaps if I lived in a place where snow was a regular occurrence in the winter, then perhaps it would fit in better. But here, snow is a once every so many years occasion. I consider weather where I can see my breath as weather that you should stay inside for. Maybe I should move to Hawaii.

Yarn Pancake

My yarn collapsed. Just died. It's been sagging for a while, but until recently it still had a little structure to it. Now it is little more than a puddle of string. I suppose this is one of the hazards of working from the center of a ball of yarn.

I've also decided that I want to incorporate a twisted rib into the hat , possibly from either this pattern, or this pattern. I'm hoping this will have the illusion of a vertical garter stitch. I'm am slightly worried about the gauge of all this, but I'm sure I can figure it out.

I'm none too pleased with my first set of scores this semester. In one class, the teacher goes through his presentation so fast you can't write everything down. In another, the book I ordered never came in and the class itself is really difficult anyway. And the last class was a bad combo of luck and timing. Ironically, I got the same score in all three classes. I have another test coming up this Friday. I want to do better, but part of me wonders about the pattern I've made. I will have to work my butt off the rest of the semester to undo this no-so-good start.

Oh, and one of my triops disappeared over the weekend. My roommate said the bigger one ate it. But that's not unusual.

Hurricane Hanna

When I went to bed last night, it was raining, and there was a little bit of thunder. This was of course due to that pesky little hurricane that was passing through. When I woke up this morning, the sun was out, and it seemed as though the hype for this storm was overblown as usual. Well, that was only half accurate. For when I went out to get myself some food from the campus cafeteria, this is what I found:

Fortunately, there was a way around, so I could go feed my face without having to swim for it.

Living Things

This semester I'm taking entomology, among other things, and we are required to make an insect collection that is Smithsonian quality, with a minimum of 70 insects covering 10-12 families. Today we made our kill jars.


The plaster is still drying. After it's done I will pour ethyl acetate into the little holes in the bottom to soak the sawdust, and off to massacre some wildlife I will go! It still bothers me that I will be killing living things--and that our class as a whole will be out there doing the same thing. Some bugs, such as ants and cockroaches, are fairly common, but things like butterflies? I don't feel like there are enough of those around here for us to be collecting them for the fun of it. Why do all of us need our own dead bug collection anyway, when just a few living specimens of each species can teach us the same amount of information, if not more (behavior for instance). Sure, it won't be mounted on the wall for us to reference, but when we are done with them they can go on to make sure that our grandchildren will be able to look at them up close and personal as well. How sad would it be to know that everyone has a certain mounted butterfly in their attics or basements, but that has since gone extinct?

On a better note:

These are my two little Triops! They are only about 5 days old here, and already about half an inch long. This is about the 3rd or 4th time I've hatched some. They are very fascinating creatures. They start out about the size of the dot on the letter i, and grow to be an inch and a half long or more. I bought the eggs at Hobby Lobby for about $4.