Graduation

It’s hard to believe that my undergraduate career is finally coming to an end.  After years of laughs, tears, good friends, and amazing memories, I will be leaving Madison and heading on to my next adventure.  I’m lucky enough to be spending this summer in Madison, so I do not have to say goodbye just yet, but there are still so many things that I need to check off my “buckylist”.

With exams coming to a close and graduation getting closer and closer, it’s scary for me to imagine what I will be doing this time next year.  I’m studying for the LSAT, which I will be taking in June, but if that does not go as planned, I’ll be right back at square one and trying to find another career path that interests me.  All I know is that I’m not ready to grow up yet and have a real, full-time job.  Hopefully a few more months spent among my friends in Madison will push me in the direction of accepting that I’m not that young anymore.

I have graduation, my twenty-third birthday, my baby sister graduating high school, my brother turning twenty-one, and my older sister getting married; all coming up in the next four months.  I still feel like I’m sixteen years old, but so much time has passed since those innocent and carefree high school days.

 I hope that all of my friends here at Madison will find the right career for themselves and that I will as well.  After deliberating throughout my entire college career what I want to do with my life, I’ve finally started to accept that there isn’t one perfect job out there for me, or if there is, I won’t know it until I see it.  It will probably be years from now before I’m set with a career, but I hope that I’m patient and allow myself to find the one that is really right for me and not what everyone else around me thinks that should be right for me.  Until then I’m happy acting like I’m still a college student, and enjoying my last few months in Madison, drinking beer at the terrace and spending days lounging around with my best friends.

Mifflin

The bitterness of missing my last two Mifflins was much too strong for me not to go all out for this year’s festivities.   Two years ago I missed it for my EX-boyfriend’s stupid formal and last year I missed it because I was cruising the Mediterranean with my family (Which, understandably, I’m much less bitter about).  This year we had at least seven guests staying in our tiny apartment the entire weekend.  There were bodies sprawled on every empty space of floor.

Saturday morning, the day of Mifflin, I annoyingly woke everyone up at the bright hour of eight a.m. to begin the celebrations.  Lauren cooked everyone pancakes, hash browns, and potatoes and then we were ready to rage.  We started with dizzy battying in my front “yard”, which is really just a tiny patch of grass next to a busy road.  I don’t know if you’ve ever dizzy batted, but it entails pouring a full beer into a plastic bat, kneeling on the ground, chugging the beer from the bat while someone counts how long and takes you, and then you have to spin in a circle with the bat against your head the number of seconds it took to drink the beer.  Sounds stupid, I know, but it never gets old watching people stumble and dizzily fall to the ground.

After a few more dizzy bats and head-banging in my apartment, we decided to venture over to Mifflin Street.  We didn’t know what to expect, what with the threats and chaos that has been surrounded the event this year, but UW-Madison followed through with their threats and there were police all over the street.  You would think that they would have something more important to tend to on this day than arresting the stupid college kids for getting too drunk, but apparently they did not.  The street party was not everything that it’s cracked up to be, but students still found ways to drink while avoiding getting arrested. 

The day was a fun and hazy blur of drinking and spending time with old friends, but the end of the night was a bit of a downer.  I got a call from my roommate around 1:30 a.m. while I was at the bars and she was saying that she thinks someone broke into our apartment.  The screen in her room was cut and her laptop, coach purse, and my other friend’s bag with this GPS and keys were all missing.  We called the police and an officer came and had to walk through the aftermath of a day’s worth of drinking in our apartment, but he spoke to my roommate and reported the incident.  The creepy thing is that we think we interrupted whoever was robbing our apartment because nothing in mine or Lauren’s rooms was missing.  I still have to live in this apartment for three more months, but have had nightmares about someone breaking into my apartment again.  I just hope that we will not be unfortunate enough to have the same thing happen again and that all of my roommates remember to lock their windows throughout the summer.

Even though the night ended a bit disastrously, I still view my last Mifflin as a success.  Hopefully someday my little brother will let his big sister come crash on his floor and re-live the Mifflin celebrations one last time.

Engagement

I hope you didn’t get too excited when you saw the title of this entry, but this engagement is NOT in reference to myself and most likely will not be anyyyy time soon.  While I was traveling to Pasadena, I missed a phone call and a few brief and frantic texts from my older sister Shannon saying call me as soon as you get a chance it’s important.  While my mind immediately jumped to engagement, my friend Lindsay chimed in my ear “oh my god what if it’s something bad…”.  In a few worry stricken seconds I was on the phone with my sister and rejoicing over her sudden engagement to my close friend and soon to be brother-in-law Michael.

After the initial shock and excitement wore off, I soon learned that with weddings, comes lots of bickering and stress.  The main and immediate issue came down to the wedding venue.  With Michael being from Minnesota and Shannon being from Wisconsin, one family would have to back down and decide to agree to it being in another state.  My mother soon made it clear that this would not be us.  With this declaration, came my parents’ biased ridden statements regarding the ceremony being at Chenequa, a country club my family has belonged to all of my life.  After Shannon resisted the decision and viewed countless other venues besides Chenequa, she finally relented and decided to celebrate her marriage where my parents have always wanted all of their children to.

The wedding is set to be on September 29^th, a fall wedding just as Shannon has always wanted that is coming up quick! I’m so excited for my sister and happy that she has found someone who is so perfect for her.  They’ve also added another perfect little member to our family named Maddy! She is the most adorable white retriever (Which I never knew existed) that I have ever seen (See pic below) and she is named for the town they met and fell in love in, Madison.  These recent wedding news have started giving me a bit of anxiety of finding someone who would be willing to spend the rest of their life with me, but I’m giving myself a few years before I really start to freak out about that.  For now, I’m enjoying the wedding planning and celebrating for my beautiful sister that will be Mrs. Tierney this coming September.

Applying..

With the beginning of the semester, came an immense amount of stress about jobs and the future.  I started off my semester with classes only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with the goal of finding a job for Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays free to nurse my hangovers.  However, after a few job applications were filled out, for which I felt fully qualified, and no responses came, I started to lose hope. 

I realized that it was also important to volunteer places in order to boost my resume, so I decided that I should apply for some of these positions as well.  Of course, I generated many more responses to my volunteering inquiries as opposed to the paid job positions.  I decided to start volunteering at a local daycare called Head Start for children and families and loved interacting with the little kids.  However, I did not like the half hour walk to get there or the fact that when I finally did get a real job, I was starting to lose sleep.  I decided to temporarily stop volunteering and to focus on school, my new job—as an office assistant at the PEOPLE program, and the Kaplan LSAT prep class I was enrolled in.

Once I started my job, which I went to almost every day either between classes or because I didn’t have classes, I got extremely busy.  I was always either in class, working, or studying for the LSAT.  These last few months of college have really given me a preview of the real world and what it will be like applying for jobs and have made me aspire to do everything in my power to avoid it.  Hopefully my aspirations for law school will help out in my procrastinations and will aid me in finding a way to never have to work, but until then, I’ll keep trying.

Rose Bowl!!

Second semester of my senior year of college started off on a high note with a road trip to Pasadena for the Rose Bowl.  After weeks of contemplating the trip and brainstorming illogical ways to get there, my friend’s grandma finally saved the day and volunteered to let us take her ancient, two-door, teal grand-am to California.

I’ve never been one to embark on road trips; my family has, fortunately, always opted for flying, but that week I definitely road tripped for long enough to satisfy a lifetime of road trip curiosity.  After piling four people and countless bags into the tiny car and receiving nervous tears from Grandma Cech, we were ready to go.

After hours and hours of cornfields, windmills, and redbulls, we made a stop at our first “attraction”, Arches National Park in Utah.  From here we moved on to the steep and snowy mountainous terrain of Colorado, and after driving through the near abandoned dry lands of Arizona, we finally arrived at the Grand Canyon.  The Grand Canyon was everything it’s cracked up to be--a vast and miraculous landmark of serene beauty.  This was the last stop before we trekked on to Pasadena.

We were lucky enough to have beautiful 80 degree weather the entire trip and to stay for free at my friend’s apartment in Hollywood.  This same friend, who is aspiring to be a comedian, got us a free tour of the Hollywood Hills.  The next day was the Rose Bowl.  We followed badger tradition the day of the game and woke up bright and early for some early morning mimosas.  Arriving at the stadium, there was red everywhere we looked.  The tailgate consisted of beer bongs, flip cup, and a lot of drunk Wisconsin fans.  The game, unfortunately, was not very pretty, and us Badgers lost pretty bad.  However, I still do not regret my trip all the way to California to cheer on my Badgers one last time.