GRAD SCHOOL: a new beginning, sort of

Currently sitting in my living room not reading my textbook and instead eating chocolate-covered honeycomb, which was an impulse buy when I went to the organic grocery store for chickpea flour...which was for an impulse pizza craving. As you may be able to tell, I've just been goin' with the flow. My body knows what it wants and that's mostly carbs and chocolate right now... Which surprisingly seems to be working for me, because I feel better about myself than I did last year at this time. Life transitions = comfort food. ANYWAY!

Today was my very first day of graduate school! I made a great first impression by showing up a little late to the orientation breakfast because I was wrapped up in watching Beyonce's 16 minute VMA performance and eating pre-breakfast breakfast. Mah bad. I still got there for the free coffee, though. If this is any indicator of how the semester's gonna go, I'm diggin' it. Too bad that's probably not an indicator of how the semester's actually gonna go.

Here's my class list:

1. Neuroanatomy and Neurophysiology of Communication
2. Foundations of Research and Writing
3. Advanced Audiology
4. Research in Audiology
5. Clinical Practicum in Audiology
6. Auditory Physiology
7. Amplification 1

I've only gotten a taste of three of them so far, but I think I'm gonna like it. I also think I'm gonna be doing a lot of crying and eating chocolate-covered honeycomb within the next few weeks because a) there's going to be a lot of stress and b) that's what I usually do, anway. I'm currently the only one signed up for Advanced Audiology because (omfg) EVERYONE has taken it already. Most of the people in my program (there are 8 of us) completed their bachelor's degree here or took all of their pre-requisites here, so I think I'm the only one coming from a different background. YAYYY. That puts me with an extra 3 credits. Full time status for grad students is 9 credits and I'm taking 15, PLUS a 10 hour/week assistantship. I am very afraid, but also confident that my current one cup/day coffee consumption could be increased tenfold and could therefore elongate the length of my day by at least 3-4 hours. I WILL SURVIVE (HEY HEY).

I'm sorry this post is so long and picture-less, but I have ONE MORE really really REALLY important thing to tell you all and that is that my assistantship lets me get paid for doing hearing screenings on dogs, which essentially means that I get to play with deaf puppies EVERY WEEK. *happy dance with intermittent woofing and howls of stress-reduction*