Graduation and toes

I am officially a graduate of Duke University. I packed up my apartment today (well at this point yesterday really) and left for good. I still don’t think it's completely set in, which is good because I don’t know that I can handle the concept of everything being over just yet.

I’m writing from Carrie’s beach house in Wilmington. Before I go on, I should warn you that I’m currently on Vicodin for my newly broken pinky toe, so if I sound a little uh… loopy, yeah that’s probably why. Yes, I broke my pinky toe. Can you think of a more ridiculous injury to have to spend 3 hours in the emergency room for? Cause I fucking can’t.

I’m not even entirely sure how it happened. We were all walking on the beach, and Mary got a little too excited about the prospect of watching Dirty Dancing back at the house. She somehow jumped into me, and I lost my balance and slammed my foot into… something. I thought it was Carrie’s flip-flop, but she says she didn’t feel anything, so I don’t know… maybe a sea shell? Anyway the point is that it hurt like hell, and when I finally looked at my toe in the light, it was sticking out almost perpendicular to my foot. Sweet… Actually, it really was pretty cool looking. Unfortunately, it now has to be taped to the toe next to it for 6 weeks to try to take care of that little dilemma. AND I’m not allowed to run for at least 3 weeks. 3 weeks! I really am going to gain those 800 post-rowing pounds if I’m not careful.

Anyway that’s the deal with my foot and the Vicodin and the fact that I’m feeling a little…happy… at the moment. Now, backing up three days, this weekend was good. All three of our races were very solid. We didn’t end up accomplishing what we set out to accomplish, but we put everything on the line and had three peak performances. Robyn droned on all weekend about disappointment, but I have to admit that I’m really not all that disappointed. Sure, we came up a few seconds short of making NCAAs, but I really feel like we came together as a crew and put out three of the best races we possibly could have. We finished less than .5 seconds behind Virginia and proved that we had gained a lot of ground on a number of other crews over the past few weeks. Overall, I thought it was a great weekend to end my career on, even if I would've liked to have another couple weeks.

When we got back, I went to dinner with the parents and Char at Johnny Carino’s, then met the rowers for one last night out. We all met up at Sass’s and pre-gamed playing Never Have I Ever, which I must say was quite fascinating with the froshies and sophies. Afterwards, we all went to the Joyce. The bar was packed, but we had a lot of fun just hanging out, and I managed not to make it a repeat of last year’s last night out which was definitely a good thing.

Graduation was…fine. The ceremony was nice and quick. I have to admit that I didn’t really listen to the Trinity College dean’s speech. I was kind of busy playing with my tassel and trying to think of ways to prevent myself from having to graduate (if I run away now and don’t take my diploma, can I come back next year and earn it again?) I’ve been assured that it wasn’t all that interesting anyway.

The reception afterwards was like sensory overload. I had to pose for about a million pictures while trying to accept congratulations from and say goodbyes to about 40 of the most important people in my life at once. Even though I got incredibly frazzled, and I think I might have been kind of rude to some people that I love like crazy simply because I was so distracted by everything, when it was finally time to go, I couldn’t tear myself away. My parents and brother were ready to kill me, especially since they had a flight to Vienna to catch. In the end, I was literally running barefoot after them through the football stadium so that they wouldn’t make good on their threat to just leave without me. Hehe, I am such a psycho.

Later on Monday, I went to one last dinner with the seniors and coaches at Blue Corn. Dinner was fun. I found out 2 very important things there. First, apparently they ALL read this. How embarrassing. I threatened to take it down altogether, but I suppose I’ll keep it up for a while longer cause I'm kind of addicted. BUT you better freaking email me or call me or stay in touch somehow instead of just stalking me. Second, I am the most hopelessly awkward person in the world, save possibly Robyn Horner. Okay, maybe I already knew that, but I was definitely reminded of it frequently. In reality though, I’m not quite sure that I mind my general social awkwardness all that much. It’s definitely a source of constant amusement for me anyway.

I spent all day today (ok it’s almost 7am, I guess it would officially be yesterday) packing up my apartment. The last thing to be packed away was my wall of pictures. For some reason, I just couldn’t bring myself to take them down. Well I finally managed to do it and afterwards didn’t think much of it. No big deal, it was just a stupid collage. But a few minutes later as I was driving to the Duck Shop, the pictures somehow found their way back into my head. As they flashed through my mind, I thought all the fun and amazing times they captured and of all the people in them that I’d already had to say goodbye to and those that I didn't even get a chance to say goodbye to.

Two years ago, a senior told me that graduating from Duke was a bit like losing a best friend. I have to disagree. I don’t feel like I’m losing a best friend. I feel like I’m losing about 100. When I pulled into the 9th street parking lot, I thought of the fact that just 24 hours before I had stood laughing with 5 of my favorite people in that very same spot. Then I remembered that 4 of those 5 were already gone, and that I didn’t even know when I would see them again. And for the first time in over a year, I cried.
To all my Dukies: I love you guys like craaazy. Keep in touch, because I really can’t stand the thought of losing you all now. And if you don't, I'll track you down and harass you till you do anyway, so basically you can't get rid of me. dun dun duuun...

Quote of the Day:

"Protect us through the hours of this night so that we who are wearied by the changes and chances of this life my rest in your eternal changelessness" -BCP

Done!

I’m officially done with college. Whew. I left my ultrasound final literally shaking because I was convinced that I failed. It was horrible. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing for a single question and spent the entire 4 hours copying bullshit from the textbook onto paper, just hoping for some sort of partial credit. I spent all weekend envisioning having to contact each of the like 30 people that I invited to graduation to tell them that juuust kidding, I’m not actually graduating this year after all. Oh and by the way does anyone need a roommate for summer school? But contrary to popular belief, von Ramm apparently does have a heart after all. He gave me a B, and I have never been so happy to get a B in my life.

So I’m graduating. It’s weird to think about the fact that I’m a not college student anymore. In fact, for the first time since I was 2 years old, I’m not a student at all. Crazy. Walking around campus is almost Twilight Zoneish. Everywhere I go, I can’t help but ask myself “is this the last time I’ll ever be here?” Then I get weirdly nostalgic and think of all the memories I’ve had in that place over the past 4 years. The other day I was walking past the creek in the gardens and thought of our picnic freshman year. I had this vision of Carrie falling into the water and couldn’t help but smile to myself. Then some random guy that was walking past thought I was smiling at him and said hi. Haha awkward.

Anyway, I always thought I would be practically suicidal at this point. I mean I’ve been flipping out about graduation all year, and now it’s practically here. But lately I’ve just felt numb to everything. Every day there’s more reminders that it's all ending, but for some reason it just doesn’t quite seem real to me. I suppose I’m still I’m in denial, but maybe it’s better that way. I’d rather not spend my last few days at Duke depressed about having to leave anyway.

Annnyway, the past few days have been pretty uneventful. Everyone is off at Myrtle, and my life has pretty much consisted of eating, sleeping, and rowing. My last rowing banquet was on Saturday. The parents came up for it, and it was nice to see them and have them here. Talking about next year has gotten much less awkward now that they know they won’t be able to dissuade me. Of course my dad is still cracking jokes about me turning into a do-gooder hippy and about how I’m gonna to get shot in some drive-by before the year is over, but for the most part we’re able to carry on civil conversations, and that is certainly progress.

Alright, kids. Practice is in 8 hours, and I think I’m gonna go spend some quality time with my pillow till then. Nighty night.

A to the CCs

Hellooo from Clemson. We just got back from an amazing practice on the course, and I’m currently killing time in my hotel room with Em. I'm so excited to race tomorrow! Actually, I’m just excited about life in general right now.

This past week was the week from hell. I don’t think I slept more than 3 hours a single night all week. It was like sophomore year all over again. When I got on the bus last night I was seriously on the brink of a nervous breakdown or something, but I passed out for a couple hours and was feeling infinitely better afterwards. Then as we were rolling through Charlotte, I got a call from my top choice internship saying that I’ve been ACCEPTED! Yay! I haven’t completely decided yet, but I’d say there’s a very good chance that I’ll be a resident of Los Angeles, California next year. No more freezing cold North Carolina winters for me. Woohoo. I am such a Texan. Anyway, it’s good to know that I won’t be moving into that cardboard box Mary and I have been talking about for at least another year now.

I still haven’t told my parents. I feel kind of guilty about it. I called Andie and a bunch of my friends immediately, but I have a feeling my parents might find this news more disappointing than exciting, and I don’t think I feel like dealing with that at the moment. So they can wait till Sunday.

Sooo, what else? Next week is the last week of classes. How depressing. I’ve definitely been in denial about the whole graduation thing all semester, but it’s finally starting to hit me that it really is ending and fast. Senior week was last week. I didn’t get to go to a single event because I was stuck in engineering hell all week and didn’t have time to eat or sleep, much less go out. I did get a very interesting IM from Carolyn after the pub crawl last night, though. Hehe.

It’s so weird to imagine leaving Duke forever. Duke is my whole life. I’m not even sure that I’ve managed to fully get my mind around the concept yet. Ahhh, I don’t want to think about it.

Anyway, I’m off to shower and nap for a while before we head back to the course to watch the 2V4+ and the coxswain race. I’m still debating about whether I should cox for the wee ones this afternoon. I’ve had coxswain envy for almost as long as I’ve been a rower, but I really think I would crash into something/one, and that would be bad. So we will see. Okaaay, showa time. Peace.

Quote of the day:

carolynannb513 (1:59:16 AM): cdawg where are u employed?????

Auto Response from Caro825 (1:59:17 AM): yay for being employed (sort of) and for ACCs. Bedtime.

Auto Response from carolynannb513 (1:59:17 AM): wastedddddddddd

carolynannb513 (2:06:31 AM): job?

carolynannb513 (2:06:34 AM): we jave a job?

carolynannb513 (2:06:35 AM): fujn

carolynannb513 (2:06:36 AM): !

carolynannb513 (2:06:37 AM): !

carolynannb513 (2:06:38 AM): !

carolynannb513 (2:06:39 AM): !

carolynannb513 (2:06:40 AM): '!

carolynannb513 (2:06:40 AM): !

carolynannb513 (2:06:41 AM): !

carolynannb513 (2:06:44 AM): ok done

carolynannb513 (2:06:46 AM): bye!

Let my f-ing people go

Long time, no update. I'd like to say it's because I've been super busy and productive all week, but really that would be a big fat lie. I've pretty much been just as worthless as usual, but after spending hours on application essays, I was verrry sick of writing. So, quick recap of the past week:

FRIDAY: Spent all morning attempting to finish my 141 problem set. Was thoroughly unsuccessful in that venture, but did manage to stay awake for the whole lecture after turning in the half that I did do. Drove out to Raleigh to practice on the course. The water was ridiculously crappy, but we did what we needed to. Ate a team dinner in the football building, which reminded me of graduation and made me sad. Hung out by myself all night while everyone else was at Death Cab. How depressing. Actually it was kind of nice.

SATURDAY: Race day. There were thunderstorm warnings all day, so the coaches decided to compress the race schedule. The varsity 8+ heats and finals were back to back in the morning. Didn't really matter, though; if anything it benefited us. We ended up beating all seven crews by open water and got ACC crew of the week again. Mary and Carrie came to watch, which made me happy. Saturday night I went to Doug and Will's party with Mary and Carolyn. VERY random crowd, but I had fun. Saw a bunch of random people that I hadn't even run into since Southgate plus Nat and Josh who were apparently here for the weekend. There were a few basketball players there, too. They played country music for a decent portion of the night, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I capped off the night by doing some serious drunken IMing. Still not sure who all I talked to. How embarrassing.

SUNDAY: Woke up at 11 with a massive headache. Just a word of advice- if you haven't had alcohol in almost a month, it's probably not a good idea to drink 5 beers and take 7 shots. Ya know, in case you were wondering. Went to a service project at the EC for a few hours. Why does that place make me feel so awkward? haha, well I was glad I went anyway. Lissa gave a great sermon that got me really fired up to participate in Holy Week stuff. Unfortunately, I haven't actually done it. whoops. Well, I'll go to Maundy Thursday stuff tonight if we're back in time, and I'm def going to Good Friday stuff manana. After the service, went to a senior dinner and a sorority meeting. Felt guilty again for not going to to formal and realized how little I've actually hung out with the Chi O girls this year. Was a little bummed for the rest of the night.

MONDAY AND TUESDAY: Drove myself and my roomie/ pseudo-roomies half insane over application essays. Props to MCC and Char for putting up with me. Got the applications sent off. Unfortunately, the essays are still pretty bad, but at least they are done and in. Practice kicked my butt on Monday. Tuesday we got to run instead of erg for half the practice, which made me really happy despite having to run down Campus Drive in a uni. Collapsed at 9 pm on Tuesday after sleeping 5 hours in the previous 2 nights combined. I am officially way too old for that stuff.

WEDNESDAY: was pretty unproductive. Ran errands and cleaned all morning, then met with Tina. I hate that I'm so behind on my own project. I know my group is ready to kill me at this point, but I don't really know what I can do about it. Practice kicked my ass again. Robyn threatened beforehand to switch some people between boats, and though she never actually did it, I have a feeling my days in the varsity 8+ are numbered. Oh well, all I can do at this point is keep pulling my ass off and hope for the best.

TODAY: Typical Thursday. Class, weights, class, lab, and now practice. Had to leave lab early again to put in a rush transcript order before 3. Did you know that the registrar moved from Allen to Broad Street? How annoying. Felt bad about leaving my group, but once again, nothing I could do. Anyway, I'm excited for tonight. I'm still debating about whether to go to Big Beers, screw your sis, or something else. At the moment, it's looking like big beers is going to win, but it all depends on who I can convince to go with me to what. It should be a good night regardless.

okaaay, now that we're all caught up, off to practice.

Quote of the Day:
Aquachic5 (8:07:04 PM): poop on Clemens head

0 what? '06!

Can I just say that I love Duke and all my friends here like crazy and I DO NOT want to graduate. ever. This weekend was so much fun. Saturday night was the senior party in KVille. I was definitely reluctant to go out there at all, firstly because I wasn't sure about going to the game and didn't want to waste the effort of getting a wristband for nothing, and secondly because it was freezing last night, and I'm a total wimp about that sort of thing. But as soon as I got there I knew it would be fun, and I wasn't let down all night. I got to KVille literally right as the Coach K talk was getting out, and Carrie came out and practically tackled me as I was walking past Cameron. We all went to the senior party where I got my free pizza and beer and saw Stine who was visiting this weekend. She's doing well, but it seems like med school is pretty rough. I'm really glad I dropped the whole premed thing; I definitely did not want it bad enough for all of that. She's crazy as ever though, and it was a blast to get to see her again.

I hung out there with the rowing girls for about an hour, then headed over to Dillo to have some margaritas with the Chi O girls, Carrie, and Carolyn's older brother Nick. The band there was really loud and not that great, but we had fun. We headed out to get our wristbands at around 12:30. What a mess. You would think that Duke juniors and seniors would be capable of organizing some reasonable way to distribute wristbands in a semi-orderly fashion, but apparently that's just not the case. The line was more like a mob of people practically tackling the line monitors and each other and get their bands. More than once, some kids stole a whole sheet of wristbands out the monitors' hands and ran off to give them to their friends. It was chaos. Luckily there were more than enough bands for everyone, though, and we were out of there with our bands after about 15 minutes.

From there we regrouped at MCC's and headed over to the Joyce where the rowing kids were. I always love it when I can hang out with them and the MCC crowd at the same time. It was a lot of fun despite that fact that Wiggs and I kept getting hit on by some sketchy old British guy who wouldn't leave us alone. We headed back to MCC's at around 2:30 and played flip cup till around 4. We played North v. South on my suggestion, which resulted in teams of me, Carrie, and Josh vs. Carolyn, Nick, and Kim. Our team got off to an inauspicious start as the North took the first 4 games, but in the end the South prevailed, winning the next 6 in a row. woo.

The game today was AWESOME. Once again I got to hang out with both the Chi O girls and the rowing kids the whole time. I was pretty bummed that I had to skip church and miss seeing Andie celebrate for the first time (nerd! I such a church nerd!), but in the end, I was really glad that I went to the game. When JJ broke Johnny Dawkin's all-time scoring record, Cameron just erupted. I've never heard it that loud, and when you're talking about Cameron, that is saying something. We screamed for about 5 minutes straight. It was a little sad knowing that that would be my last game in the stands as a Duke student, my last chance sing the fight song (the non-crew version anyway) and do the lobster dance, and my last opportunity to chant "Our House" with all the pride of a Cameron Crazy. All in all, though, it was the perfect game to end it on.

Decisions, Decisions...

Why am I incapable of making a decision about anything? Right now I'm debating about 2 things, both involving basketball, with no prospect of coming to a resolution on either one anytime soon. First, and more immediately, I can't decide if I want to wait in line to get a wristband for the senior game tonight. I know I should, number one because I'm a senior and it's senior night, and number two, because literally ALL of my friends will be out there tonight, and I'll be pretty bored if I don't. Plus, there's free pizza and beer. It's really freaking cold out there, though, and I'm not really even sure I want to go to the game. I mean I love going to games, and this is one of my last chances to see a game in Cameron (from the student section, anyway), but I have other stuff I could be doing tomorrow at that time.

Then I still can't decide if I want to go home for the weekend of the Carolina game. I still haven't been to the UNC game, and I know that's something I really should do before I graduate. Plus my birthday is that Tuesday, and I think I'd probably have a little more fun partying here with my friends than at home with the 'rents. Just a guess. This is, however, my absolute last chance to go home before May. I think I might need some warm weather and a Tex-Mex fix to sustain me until then. Plus I haaaave to get my internship and job applications done at some point, and I have a feeling that that's just not going to happen here. Not having the option to wander over to MCC's and whine about them instead of actually doing them would be key. Aaahh, what to do, what to do...

About job stuff, I'm still not 100% decided on all that either. I really feel like the route I'm taking at the moment is a good one, okay a great one. It's something that fills all my needs, feels right, and really could be a life-changing experience. I'm just so nervous. I really wonder if I'm getting myself in over my head. But I did finally get some balls and told my mother about my plans. It went surprisingly well. She was much more, well maybe not understanding, but definitely more accepting than I would have expected. She actually seemed more interested than skeptical when she asked for details, and now she'll do the dirty work of relaying all this information to my dad. I'm still not sure how well TJ is going to take all this, but thankfully now I won't have to be around for the initial reaction. At this point I'm mainly just nervous that I'm not capable or ready for something like this. But sometimes you just have to go for it, right.

So other than all that indecisiveness, there's really not too much interesting stuff going on right now. I think my BME project group is mad at me. Malkin hated our presentation Thursday, so we have to redo our design. I can see where he's coming from; we essentially just copied someone else's design and changed the packaging. I'm just annoyed that I spent 5 hours in Teer putting the world's largest circuit into the schematic editor for nothing. Zach sent out an email asking if we could meet today, but Ed had lacrosse and suggested Sunday instead. Well apparently that was far too late for Lori who wanted to spend all weekend on it. Over-eager engineers kill me. She sent out an email asking if we could meet last night instead, and after I responded saying that I absolutely couldn't because I had an exam, practice, and a concert I'd had tickets for for 3 months, she sent out an email saying that the rest of the group could meet without me if it wasn't my top priority. gah. chill the fuck out.

Keith Urban was worth it though. I went with a crowd of lovely senior rowing ladies, namely Tonia, Leah, and Emma Wallace. I felt like such a midget standing between Tonia and Emma, which at 5'11, doesn't happen to me often. We had a really good time, though. Keith is hot. I'm such sucker for accents. Maybe I'll move to Australia.

Practice this morning was miserable. I think there must be some sort of rule saying that we can't have a double practice unless it's freezing cold and raining. Actually today it didn't rain so much as snow. It was disgusting. And people wonder why I want to go back to Texas... I came home and hid indoors till we had to go pick Charla's brother up from the airport. He actually seems pretty cool. I don't know why, but I kind of expected him to be really nerdy. He's totally not though. Hopefully I'll get to hang out with him some this weekend, but as Char is never here even when she doesn't have someone to show around, it seems unlikely.
Okay, enough sitting in front of the computer. People keep calling me, and I think I've finally caved and decided to head out to kville with everyone else. Now if I could just decide who to wait in line with...
Quote of the day:

“Too many times we stand aside, and let water slip away
Till what we’ve put off till tomorrow, has now become today
So don’t you sit upon the shoreline, and say you’re satisfied
Choose to chance the rapids, and dare to dance the tide” –Garth Brooks “The River”