impending graduation

A mere 40-ish days separate me from life outside of campus, classrooms, and college in general. It's been a tumultuous trek, but nonetheless interesting, intriguing, informing, and entertaining (I know it's not an "i" word, but it shares a similar sound). I have to simply pass my GBA490 - Strategic Management Capstone C&BA course with a grade of C+ or better and I can graduate with my Bachelor's of Science in Accountancy degree, my three remaining Spanish courses (conversation, Spanish-American civilization, and commercial) to received a Spanish minor, and one last honors course to receive a "graduated with honors" designation on my diploma.

This week poses a pretty hefty workload--a two-part, two-day test in Commercial Spanish, and more "typical" tests in Spanish-American Civilization and honors (a personal financial planning course that has been wonderfully practical and laid-back), a written case study in Strategic Management, a quiz in Spanish-American Civilization...and I think that's it for the academic requirements. November is going to be a busy month, with presentations, portfolios, final projects, lengthy written assignments, and other general classwork galore. But light is at the end of the tunnel--as it has always been (except at night)--and now I can see it.

To add to everything else in November, we are moving off campus during the week of Thanksgiving. Classes are dismissed on the Wednesday of that week, and our new lease begins Tuesday, so we'll begin carting loads over as soon as we can so we can get some semblance of order before the short five-day span is over and dead week, the week before finals is upon us.

We're baking cookies right now. Stephanie concocted a ginger-cinnamon-maple syrup cookie recipe to take to a girls' night tonight. And I have to head to work in a couple minutes.

decisions, decisions

Where to live? Where to work? What to do? How long to do it?

With another milestone soon to be passing by, general planning for the time after it comes to mind. I only have a mere handful of classes remaining between me and my undergraduate graduation this December. After, I plan to intern for part or all of the spring of 2010 with an accounting firm in Birmingham. Summer 2010 is rather up in the air; there are opportunities for other types of internships and work out there, and I may also be preparing for a graduate MTA program somewhere in the southeast before possibly going back to work in tax accounting for a time.

Stephanie may be graduating next spring, but if an option changes, she may be graduating in December along with me. That is where the living arrangements' decision comes into play: our housing will no longer be covered after our joint graduation, so we will need to strike out and find our own apartment or small house to rent for a while. She will be working as an ESL tutor with the Tuscaloosa County school system for the next school year, so we will at least be staying in the general Tuscaloosa-Birmingham, AL area during that time. After that, our location will depend on the location of graduate-level programs and other job options.

Right now though, we are just plugging away and working with what we have. I am taking one class, Finance 302 (my second-to-last graduation requirement for my major), and continuing to work at the University Press. Stephanie is working her Mary Kay business and enjoying some more flex time than usual at home. This weekend we are planning on going camping. We have neighbors now, and we are hoping to have them over for dessert or dinner at some point soon. Since I will not be rowing competitively this fall, we are looking forward to having that practice and competition time to work out and spend time together.

It's 10:00pm though, and we have been shooting to get up around 6:00am each morning to go work out at the rec center, after which we come home to some quiet time/Bible study together. We are wrapping up our second week of this schedule format, and it has been wonderful starting the days together.

gana!

Roughly the directly translated English expression "score!" into Spanish. In this case regarding my discovery of the way to edit the blog title, which is now "yo estoy pensando" as it should be. :)

a year down the road

So, I glanced at the bookmarks toolbar at the top of my browser and noticed, to my dismay, that I had, in error, named my blog "yo soy pensando" instead of "yo estoy pensando." *sigh* Now that I have noticed, I am unsure if I will be able to edit that part of my not-oft-visited blog.

My second observation was that it had been exactly one year since I had last written. A lot has happened in that last year, but in a nutshell:
-wrapped up a summer as an Avanti,
-completed another school year,
-continued work as an accounting intern at the university press,
-led Alabama Crew as the club president,
-won a medal in the men's heavyweight 500m dash at TIRC in January,
-worked as an accounting tutor with the athletic department,
-won a medal in the men's varsity heavyweight 8+ at the John Hunter Regatta in April,
-celebrated my 21st birthday,
-competed in the first men's varsity heavyweight 8+ fielded by Alabama Crew at SIRA,
-passed my last accounting class,
-celebrated my ONE YEAR wedding anniversary (!!!),
-visited Paris for one week with my wife,
-studied abroad in Spain for one month,
-adopted a kitten,
-volunteered as an ESL tutor with Stephanie,
-and baked many dozens of yummy chocolate chip cookies. :)

Now, en siete de julio de 2009, estoy en una clase de financia y voy a trabajar mas con la universidad en contabilidad. Voy a graduarme en diciembre si todas mis clases estaran bien, y despues, trabajare en Birmingham con una compania de contabilidad. Para mi, tengo solamente siete clases mas antes de graduacion en el fin del ano. Estoy emocionado para mi graduacion, pero no quiero andar en la ceremonia, porque es un poco absurdo y no voy a recibir mi diploma durantela y es mas o menos caro. No me gusta.

Right now, I am tinkering with my laptop a little, attempting to get a Linux flavor dual-booted with the default Windows XP Pro that has been on there since I received it back at the beginning of my freshman year back in 2006. Hard to believe that it has already been three years since then. Before studying abroad, I purchased an Acer netbook, which, after further inspection, I noticed has the same processing power as my '06 Dell Latitude D820 and twice the harddrive space, but is less than half the physical size. It was a boon to have during the five weeks abroad. I have Windows XP Pro on the netbook, too, as well as Linux4one, a Linux distro specifically designed for the Acer Aspire one netbook, which has been a lot of fun to use and work with little by little.