Today was certainly my day of super extra awesome nifty-ness. And it started off kind of sadly, so I really didn't have very high expectations for my day.
Today was the last day of school. Normally, I'm really excited about the last day because it means I'm almost done grading. And, as any college English instructor will tell you, freedom from grading is lovely. And it will be this year too. But I'm really going to miss my students. I had a lot of fun teaching this semester, and it was really hard for me to say goodbye to them. However, I'm really going to enjoy my grading-free time next week, and every week until summer session starts. I will work on my prospectus, she says hopefully.
But, I digress. Today was also the day of our end of year First Year English meeting. They had free food, which is always a bonus to poor graduate students like myself, and we talked about First Year English-y type stuff. And, best of all, I won a Best Practices Teaching Award! For the second year in a row! For a skill I've been really working hard at helping my students build! Yes, that's right, I'm awesome! So are my students! Because I wouldn't have won that award without them! Okay, enough exclamation points. You get the picture. It's a big deal to me, and I was really quite pleased.
So I left school today in a pretty darn good mood. After all, I had my shiny new award in my backpack. And when I got home, I put my shiny new award on my mantle and settled down for a lovely Friday afternoon of watching Murder, She Wrote, playing The Sims 3, and surfing the internet. And then I got an email from my advisor--I had been awarded a dissertation fellowship for the fall! (Yes, more exclamation points--this is all very exciting, I can assure you) I don't get any money, but I do get a course release. And as my friend Rachael pointed out to me, the gift of time is just as good as the gift of money. Plus, since I'm teaching at 8am in the fall--I'll be done teaching at 9! I'll have all day to work! On my dissertation! This is worth exclamation points because I do not have good time management skills, and I am an expert at procrastination through teaching (example: I have already written both my summer and fall syllabi--and it's May!, but only two and a half pages of my prospectus). Since I'll have less teacher-y stuff to do, this will give me more time to work on the all important dissertation, which will be even more awesome and fabulous now that I'll have all of this extra time to work on it. And since apparently my brain has decided that the only place it wants to work is in my office, I will be at school at 9am every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday done with teaching and with all of this lovely time to devote to my dissertation.
But now, I'm going to take the weekend off from schoolwork and watch a cheesy rom-com on Netflix streaming (which is about five thousand times more awesome now that I can watch it on my TV) and bask in the glow of my day of super extra awesome nifty-ness. Have a great weekend ya'll!
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