...I will not be having fun. At all. Ok, maybe that's a little bit dramatic. I will have fun, but it will be tempered with hard work. This will not at all be the "last crazy summer before work starts" that I imagined. And it's all my fault.

You seen, I brilliantly decided to have a more relaxed last semester and write my thesis over the summer. Consequently, I have to write my thesis...all summer long. And in order to keep the teaching jobs I so amazingly managed to acquire, I have to finish my thesis before the fall term starts. :(

So this summer, I will not be having all the fun I had intended on having. I will be writing. And writing. And writing. The pressure is on, I HAVE to finish. Please, God, help me finish!
What I wish I were doing:

What I will actually be doing:

(Disclaimer: This post is a duplicate of the most recent post on "Random Stories from Grad School," my official blog)

Yesterday was the commencement ceremony for CSU Sacramento, and I got to walk! The whole experience was amazing and overwhelming, all at once. I participated in commencement with my friends, Michael, Lisa, and Nicole. Out of the four of us, only one was really done...Nicole. The rest of us have finished our coursework but will be working on our theses over the summer.
That means that although I've "graduated" and gotten some job offers, I still have a summer full of work ahead.

Commencement was at Arco Arena, home of the Sacramento Kings. My dad and sister came, and being that they are hard-core Laker fans, I think their skin was crawling a little. However, there were some serious perks to having graduation at the arena, the biggest being that we were inside an air-conditioned building (score!). There was also plenty of seating, and they had cameras all over the place, putting people on the "jumbo-tron" screens hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the arena.

All of the master's students got to go first, and since Communication Studies is alphabetically the second major at Sac State, we were among the very first people to walk. I think I was the fifth person to go overall. I definitely sat in the front row :) The procession went like this:

1. Walk up to a professor and take a picture being "hooded"


2. Take a picture in front of the CA & US flags


3. Take a picture in front of the Sac State Seal


4. Take a picture getting your "diploma" and shaking the hand of some Sac State bigwig


5. Go sit down

Funny thing: in the past, the Master's students have hooded each other, rather than being hooded by an actual faculty member. So my advisor and I came up with a plan that if the students were hooding each other again, we would simply walk out to the front corner and he would hood me himself. Luckily, that didn't have to happen. I get really nervous about breaking rules.

Since we went first, my friends and I had the pleasure of zoning out for the rest of the commencement, which lasted about two hours total. Afterward, we went outside and took pictures with each other, family, and faculty members. It was an amazingly fun experience. So fun, in fact, that I'm going to do it all over again in the fall. Also because, for some reason, the commencement program didn't have my name in it. I really need a program that lists me as getting a Master's degree!!!!

Me and Michele, one of my committee members. She is going to be awesome enough to read through the drafts of my thesis this summer so that I can finish up and keep my jobs :)

It. is. hot. And I don't mean hot like it's warm and maybe I should put on some shorts. I mean that it's hotter than hades, a hoochie coochie, and the Gobi desert all put together.

Today I seriously considered driving my car into the river so that it could get a much-needed bath and I could get a desperately needed cool-down.

I don't quite know how it got so hot so fast. It seems as though only a week ago we were all enjoying typical California weather: mid-70's, clear skies, slight breezes off the river. Now people are lining up at the 7/11 and fighting each other over slurpees. This weather does not bring out the best in people.

Right now, as I sit here and type, I'm trying in vain to get some coolness and breeze from my ceiling fan, but it doesn't seem in the mood to oblige me. I'm halfway ready to hop in a cool shower and spend the night in the bathtub. But I don't think my roommate would like that.

So for now, it's on to plan B: plenty of cold water, no covers on the bed, and strategically placing myself where I can get the maximum breeze from my fan. I just have to keep telling myself that right now is better than tomorrow, when I'll be working with horses in long pants and boots while it's 106 outside.

Something about that is just not right.

I just joined twitter...so much fun! If you're not on, get on, and add me! My username is AndreaJune :)

I'm totally clueless when it comes to editing my page...it's just a total mystery to me! So I'm putting out a call to anyone who is handy with html code that can help me redesign my page and my blog to make them match. Right now they're horrendously un-matching. And the header on my blog needs some SERIOUS help.

Will someone please help me???