Hello friends and fam who read my blog, sorry for the long absence! April was a bit crazy with finals, graduating with both sets of family in town (which was pretty great) and work to do. Busy busy. And not much to blog about besides all that stuff, and who wants to read about that? Here's a summary with some pictures :)
As a 5th year senior, I didn't have many credits left necessary for graduating. I took 12 credits in the Fall, including three major classes, leaving only one GE my final semester...Humanities. I don't have anything against Humanities in general, just my first experience with it at BYU was horrendous, mainly because of the professor. If I had a blog during that semester, you'd hear a lot of ranting and complaining about that guy. Ooh did he rub me the wrong way all the time! Anyways, my friend Jessica (who's in my major and works with me) also had Humanities as her last GE and suggested we take it together from a certain professor--Lauri Haddock. She was awesome!! So funny, lively, super informative with interesting side notes since she had been to the many European towns and museums dozens of times (she hosts a tour of Europe every summer). She made me really enjoy the subject. Since this was a GE it was considered a "freshman" class, which was easy breezy for me, the 5th year senior! ;)
We had 3 exams, 2 papers and a final presentation--even better, the class was under the student limit to qualify for a TA so Lauri cancelled the second paper due to limited time to read all of them. SCORE!! As for the presentation, it had to encompass a piece of work (art, music, architecture, etc.) from each era we covered, but most of all it had to be "creative." So my group decided to cover a styrofoam sphere in blue frosting as ocean (in impasto style--look at us thinking like freshmen!) and hot glued mini M&M's in the shape of the major European countries that we covered in class...basically France and a few others. We then printed miniature pictures and pinned them to the globe where they were painted. But that wasn't enough. We recreated famous works of art. Our medium? Predominantly, candy. ^_^
Here's what another girl in my group did. View original here.
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| Girl with a Pearl Earring. |
Medium: Blue taffy, Coco Puff and Cheerios.
And this baby's mine! View original here.
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| The Scream. |
Medium: Variety of flavored pull-apart Twizzlers, Charleston Chews, Smarties, and taffy. The face is made of cookie dough taffy, that's how I got the eyes and mouth. Awesome, right? Well, I'm proud :)
After we gave our presentation (which my professor enjoyed and gave us full credit on!), I rushed off to dinner with my parents. Here's a picture of us enjoying Mexican food on a previous day, it was the only one where no one's head got cut off. Don't let the camera fool you, I haven't gained 10 pounds in my face.
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| After eating at El Azteca :) |
The day after my Humanities presentation was Commencement. I had no idea what this was about. I only knew it included a fancy, well liked speaker, sort of like a "hoo-rah" sort of speech? I had no idea you were literally paraded around in order to reach your seats! I stood around a parking lot waiting to enter the Marriott Center, to walk up the bridge to be level with the stadium, see the accoladed President and deans of the school, just to walk down some stairs and around through what I thought to be a secret tunnel to the bottom floor of the stadium, then walk up and around some more dang stairs to my seat.
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| Jessica and myself, walking along the bridge. Pre-knowledge of parading. |
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| Secret tunnel. West side of Marriott Center. |
Luckily for me (and Jessica), some lady asked a couple of girls if there were sitting together. I knew they weren't since they hardly spoke to each other so I immediately raised my hand and said "we are!," having some notion that answering so would be in our favor. It was. We were quickly seated to 3rd row seats, center section in front of the speaker. Our speaker was Elder Dallin H. Oaks. :) Great guy and talk but unfortunately it was on the warm side in the stadium and the talk was carrying on a little long...so my head might've bobbed a few times..... The poopy side of sitting so close to the floor is waiting for everyone to file out of the stadium.
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| Elder Oaks, mid speech. I tried to be discreet. |
After exhibiting salmon-swimming-upstream maneuvers, we finally emerged from the crowd to take a few pictures. Notice how the hand-on-hip trick worked in my favor with the unfortunate billowing graduate gown.
We also had a lovely dinner at our favorite Chinese restaurant with Loren's family but we regrettably did not get a picture of that. After dinner, we played Apples to Apples at the hotel. 'Twas fun, as my 2nd youngest sister-in-law would say :) The following day I graduated! Yay!! Here's proof!
I had to be at the Smith Fieldhouse at 7am. Boo! Super fortunately for me, I literally live across the street from it. No commuting or parking troubles for me, yes! The front row of people, minus the Latina looking girl (Idk her name, it's a pretty big major) were in my study group (but missing 2 other girls). Thank goodness for them or I wouldn't have gotten A's my last year and half-2 years of major classes! Notice how the hand-on-hip trick was an extremely poor choice in this shot. *Shudder*
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| Communication Disorders picture |
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| Adorable graduating toddler!! (He made tons of noise during the ceremony though) |
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| Can you see me?! |
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| Walking! Shaking Dr. Nissen's hand |
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| Tia Tygard. My favorite person in the major and best study partner. |
After graduation and more salmon like maneuvers, the 2 families gathered at Terra Mia, an Italian restaurant in the University Mall area. It was pretty good and not crowded! Dad has the only picture from that--hint hint dad. As a side note, I should give a shout out to my brother, even though I know he doesn't read this. He skipped part of work that morning, drove 45 minutes (plus however much more due to graduation traffic) and had to park 3 blocks away just to come to my graduation. What a great big brother!! We got together with him and 2 of his girls that night for dinner at Olive Garden. Yum yum :)
The only thing I had to worry about after that was finishing up work at BYU and packing for the Washington trip! Details to follow :)
