Fun fact: I am 112 days away from being a college graduate.

Well, we’re done with the first week of classes.  I’m not sure what I think about this.  Do I like the relative security of being a college student?  Of course.  Am I looking forward to adventuring off after graduation?  If I weren’t looking forward to it, then I wouldn’t be doing it.  So yes.  Does that mean I can’t wait for the end of the semester?  Not really.  I try to avoid thinking about it.

On that cheerful note, I think I’m going to talk about the unseasonably warm weather we’ve been having lately.  There are bulbs sprouting by the front door of my house, and I’ve spotted a few blossoms outside the library.  Man, they’re going to have a hard time in 112 days if it rains like it did at last year’s graduation.

Okay, take two.  Classes.

I’m taking three upper-division English classes, one of which is an internship with the Gig Harbor History Museum, so there will be a lot of reading and writing this semester.  I’m also rowing, of course, plus one of the quarter-credit EPDM department classes (which I highly recommend, by the way; they’re a fun way to mix up your course load), plus beginning rock climbing.  I’ve been meaning to get into rock climbing for a while, and am really excited that I got into the class in my last semester of college.

Nope, we’re not thinking about that.

What about winter break?  I lounged around for a couple of weeks before volunteering for the internal communications department of the U.S. Geological Survey headquarters in Northern Virginia.  Turns out that that was the place to be, because my supervisor introduced me to all sorts of cool people – the director of a team of three hundred scientists doing coastal research, the chief of the Science Publishing Network, the regional director of the Northwest region, who might have some contacts to help me get a job this summer after I graduate.

Well, so much for not thinking about graduation.  In any case, thinking about it is only serving to help me put off homework, which is sort of a necessary component of getting there.  Plus, I’ll be rowing 2,300 miles with OAR Northwest’s Adventure: Mississippi River expedition this fall, so why should graduation scare me?