Suck It, Winter Quarter

The Grand Finale

Well, Winter Quarter has finally come to an end. This has been the hardest quarter of grad school thus far. It ended with a bang -- proctoring the final human sexuality exam and handing back 500 papers to 500 students. Above is me with my stack of ~175 6-8 page papers.

So what all happened? Here we go!

• Finalized a survey and started recruiting for a study on emerging adulthood.
• Read too much about menarche. About 10 weeks of reading about periods, evolution, and reproductive strategies. This seminar was one of the most interesting in my grad career thus far. I learned a lot, grew as a scholar, and dug deep into my childhood to answer questions. Let's just say I'm an outlier.
• HUGE paper for that class, a little empirical study on age at menarche, perception of on-time, off-time development, and dating in adolescence. Produced what I thought was a decent draft. Found out it was subpar.
• Pierced my schnoz. It's pretty darn cute.
• Learned multilevel modeling, I think. For the final project, I looked at the change in body dissatisfaction over time by ethnicity. I gave a pretty swell presentation, I think, but I have doubts about the quality of my paper. *Sigh*.
• Hung out with lots of people quite a bit. Mostly working, but hey, social is social!
• Got accepted to two of the four PhD programs I applied to. 99% sure I've been rejected by the others. But I pay no mind. I'm just happy I got into UC Davis!
• Recruitment at UC Davis. So much fun.
• A little drinking, a lot of eating out and about. I went to my first college party. I know, I know, what can I say?
• And a whole bunch of personal growth.

I still have more work to do -- so no time off until next week. But hey, as long as I'm getting more than 3 hours of sleep per night, I'm a happy Natalie! Yay for winter quarter ending!!

That's the update. I'm back on the map!