Sweeeeeeeeeeeeet Sixteen!

Cheer Cincinnati, Cincy will win!
Fight to the finish, never give in!
You do your best, boys, We'll do the rest, boys!
Onward to victory!

Go Red! Go Black! Goooooo Bearcats, fight fight fight!


Even Charlie's school is getting into the spirit - the director brought in her giant inflatable Bearcat. I'm so proud of my little fan, he ran right over and said "Mom! Look! It's Lucy the Bearcat!" (did you know that's her name? the real Bearcat at the Cincinnati zoo?)

I'm feeling smug right now, because even though the rest of my bracket is pretty much busted, I had my Bearcats going to the Sweet Sixteen. I hope they can beat OSU tonight and bust the rest of my bracket. I'd be totally ok with losing the pool in spectacular fashion if it means we'll be seeing the Elite Eight this weekend!

Whoop whoop!

So while the class was over and the studying was behind me, I didn't feel like I could truly relax about it until I had seen my grade. I checked obsessively starting on Saturday morning, when I nearly had a heart attack because I saw an "I/F" grade staring me in the face, and it took me a few minutes to get used to the new interface and figure out that the I/F was from spring quarter of 2008, when I foolishly thought I could study for prelims while on maternity leave. Once that scare was over, I logged in multiple times a day, worried that maybe they had lost my registration and that I wasn't *actually* registered for class, and wondered if they'd let me re-do the final or make me take the whole class over again if I failed. And then finally, after much stress and anxiety, my grade was posted.



Hallelujah! Apparently I must have struck some kind of awful bargain with a higher power, because then this happened...




NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Is this punishment because I spit out communion when I was 7? If they start winning Super Bowls, does that mean I need to convert back to a religion?

And, Breathe! ...?

Well, it's finally over. Last night I took what will hopefully be the last exam of my looooooooooooooong graduate school career. I say hopefully because it was an exam unlike any other I've taken in grad school - an actual final exam in the computer lab with a single sheet of quotes taken directly from the readings, rather than an end-of-quarter research paper. Leading up to the big event, I thought I was going to lose my shit. I did more sociology in the last week than I have in my entire life. Sociological theory has never been my friend. I'm not good at bullshitting like that, and I'm not good at boiling down thousands of pages of bullshit into a few coherent paragraphs. Unfortunately, my PhD is far from complete. I'll be taking my prelim exam in the fall and then writing a dissertation. Thankfully, the pressure won't be quite as bad - they're not going to be pleasure cruises, but at least the experience won't be crammed into a tight 11-week timeline.

I don't feel like I can give an honest assessment of how I did on the exam, either. I've never had this professor before, as she joined the faculty after I had stepped away from the program. I don't know how she grades, and I don't know if my essays were up to par. I do know that I forgot to include one point that I really wanted to make, but I don't think that omission will kill me. Now it's just a waiting game for the papers to be graded and the grades to show up online. I don't feel like I can really relax about it yet. I'll be happy with a B.

Either way, I'm so glad to have that over and done with. I'm looking forward to catching up with my internet friends and my In Real Life friends who have been long neglected, especially my BFF who has probably forgotten what I look like by now.

Up next:

I'm recombining my blogs. I don't have the time to worry about two separate blogs, so the running ramblings are coming back here. You can just skip those posts if you aren't interested in that kind of thing.

I'm running a half marathon on Sunday. It's the first time I'm going to repeat a race course, so I'm curious what the results will be.

My Google Reader has over 1,000 unread items in it. It makes me twitch.

The Bearcats are back in the NCAA Tournament again this year - I'm hoping for a good showing against Texas this afternoon. Go Red! Go Black! Go Bearcats!

Whee!

10 More Days

10 more days and my theory class will be over. I'm suffering through it and I can't wait to be finished. I'll be back soon, I promise! I'm not "forrest gumping" on you guys.