I’d call most of the last week or two a period of “getting ready”… for various things.
Daniel and I had a housewarming/birthday/late-Halloween party Saturday night with a few good friends, and while we nearly killed one another (and ourselves) for planning a party one week after moving into the house, in the end it was the right move; it forced us to bust our butts getting ready for the party and putting stuff away. The house is now in a relatively liveable state… by no means perfect (or perfectly put together), but definitely workable and comfortable. For the last four days, I’ve been able to navigate my way around without having to step over or around boxes, been able to find what I need almost everytime I’ve gone looking, and just generally relax in the house. It’s been a real godsend. We’ve even watched a couple of movies! Fabulous!
Never far from my mind is the realization, ever becoming more real, that soon I will not have my full-time job (and full-time paycheck). My guess is that my last official day will be Jan. 9 (mostly because the first day of spring classes at UTD is Jan. 10). The good news is that in the last week, the political science department has found me a teaching assistantship position and I’ve got most of the paperwork done to make that official. I don’t know yet any details of my appointment, but that will come along soon enough.
I also registered for my spring semester classes yesterday. It’s a full slate of things I’ve never done before and know nothing about… very intimidating, very scary, very exciting. Empirical democratic theory, anyone? Ready for multi-variate data analysis and regression? How about a little Bayesian statistics? EEKS!
Yesterday during and after our mandatory group advising session for spring registration, I met a few of the other political science students in other cohorts (i.e., people who started in the program before me) and those who aren’t officially in the program but hope or plan to be soon. In particular, I spent some time talking to a guy in my Saturday class (my favorite class this fall, btw) who originally set out to take 18 hours so he can teach government and political science at Collin County Community College, but who has had such a good time taking classes this fall he wants to join the cohort now. I can already tell, he’s going to be a great person to know. He’s a former lawyer and is teaching classes at Quad C already that relate to the law… so he knows people up there, and invited me to come to his class sometime and let him introduce me around. *FANTASTIC*, I say.
I have two papers and an exam all coming up in the next couple of weeks, but I’m not too stressed about any of them. I probably should be. Maybe that’s what I’m getting ready for next?