Almost There...

about to take the second to last final forever....that i barely had time to study for...wish me luck, lots of it, please :(

edit (10:19PM)--I actually think I did okay on my exam, fortunately. Phew! One take home exam to go and  I'm free! Currently in Starbucks trying to skim through these books in order to answer my exam question ahh!

edit (2:25AM)--Tiny bit of progress, but I'm not sweatin it. All nighter tonight? no problem! I feel super giddy that it's all going to be over tomorrow! 

Game Plan Countdown to the very last day of Undergraduate life

Hopefully this will  be my last post until the last day of school (Wednesday the 28th!) because I definitely need to get down to business. I'm currently sitting in Periodicals (yea, I haven't been here in a long time because I was chillaxing at Starbucks unproductively--so now you know I'm getting serious!). I just realized what lies ahead of me after tonight...time to make a game plan.

Tomorrow (Friday) after class I'm not going in for work. Instead I will use that time to study for my Econ exam. I have the PDPSI banquet that night and I'm really excited for it so there goes an entire evening of studying time :(

Saturday is D-DAY aka the biggest Drinking Day of the entire year, especially for seniors as this is their last Dday. This already means this day is automatically crossed out for any attempt to study. There's going to be live concerts and all this carnival-y stuff. Not to mention the insane amount of booze that will enter my system continuously thoughout the day. Damn. Everyone's gonna be going INSANE!

Sunday I'm gonna attempt to wake up early (hoping there's no trace of a hangover) and study the entire day HARDCORE style until our Chapter meeting in the afternoon. Then back to studying. This calls for an all nighter that has been long overdue.

Monday I have my ASL written final exam. After that's over, go to work, then class until 7:30, then find some time in the measely hours of the night to study. Sigh.

Tuesday I have my Econ final in the afternoon. I must must must ace this final. After that, get to my take-home medical anthropology final that's due Wednesday. Must pull a long essay out of my ass from the books I never finished.

Wednesday: hand in the damn take-home exam and leap free from the bounds of undergraduate life forever and run & frolick on the sweet, sweet grass of my new found freedom of post-graduate adulthood. WOOHOO!!

let's re-evaluate after Wednesday and see how well my plan worked, shall we? :)

Cool Hwip

hehe my professor says her "wh-" words with extra emphasis on the "h". I am too aware of it because of that episode of Family Guy when Stewie does that..."cool hwip". Can't help but chuckle deep inside haha :)

CollaborAsian, Buffalo, Same Old

Crap, I have a lot to recap...let's see if I can remember half of it haha.

                                       our girls about to stroll during Nightmarket Showcase          CollaborAsian afterparty

Friday: We had the Nightmarket Showcase as part of CollaborAsian today. Many of the Asian cultural groups had booths for fun activities such as kite-making, pie-a-Pi, henna tattoos, and ours was origami folding. The multicultural Greeks strolled and other cultural groups put on performances throughout the night. Good job to our syzters for making that new stroll :) Afterwards, we had Chapter & elections that carried on til almost midnight. Then some of us hit the CollaborAsian after party that was upstairs in my dorm building. It was a good ending to a long day!

the travelers and the birthday boy

Saturday: Ended up going to Eastview again with Camille & Ling. Didn't get my dress but did end up with random clothes. Went to Buffalo that night (thanks Jenny!) to surprise Andy for his birthday--Susan & Simon were already there from NYC so it was really awesome seeing them again. Andy's friends and us all went bar hopping that night. It was a really fun night--I don't know what happened near the end though, I drank wayy too much for sure haha. But I made it back alive and so did the birthday boy. 

oreo blizzard

Sunday: Went to Panera Bread for Brunch (ugh the tired feeling of the morning after drinking) and then to mini-golf. I won the 2nd round, yes! Then went to the Dairy Queen for my first time to get icecream :D Watched a movie in Andy's room and then he was super nice enough to drive me back down to Rochester (thanks!!) 

Missy was the cutest puppy i've ever played with!!

Monday: class, work, class. My retired secretary brought in her brand new Havanese puppy! It was the cutest thing in the world!! Then met up with my ASL partner to practice our presentation for Wednesday. Then just bummed in Starbucks and did some hw. Bought the book 1000 Awesome Things :) Can't wait til it arrives!

Tuesday: work work work. Went to the gym and failed big time. I couldn't do a full half hour for some reason. My stomach felt really full--I probably shouldn't have eaten so much before the gym lol. Then met up with ASL partner one last time to practice. Sat with Susana and Thanh in starbucks and did some hw.

Work, CSA elections

Went to work on time today haha. Got started on the Raising 100,000 Voices program brochure design but ended up cleaning my office area up. Chatted with Katie and wasn't that productive after that lol. Then went to Starbucks and sat outside in the balcony with some sisters. It was so beautiful and breezy out--good times. Went to the gym after that and then went to CSA elections. Frances won President and my little got Co-VP! Thanh got publicity and Wailing got Sophomore senator. Go Sigma!! I'm happy to see our girls take on leadership positions :) Finally I just bummed in starbucks and watched the movie Inside North Korea on YouTube because I missed that in order to go to CSA elections. Then sat home and caught up on new episodes of the shows I followed and crocheted like grandma. I think I have arthritis now :( lol jk

National Student Employment Week!

Monday: uneventful. class, then work, then class, then went straight home. did laundry and cleaned up my room. The highlight of my day was when I  ate my leftover steak from installs :)

She drinks out of a straw!                                     Katie playing with my sharp "asian" pens haha
 

Tuesday: Work and then studied at Starbucks (even though I said I wouldn't anymore lol). Katie stopped by and we talked for a while--I don't think we can ever study around each other lol. Went to the gym for about an hour and watched the show Chopped on the food channel while I ran. I ran extra long just to finish the episode and see who gets eliminated moohaha.

Pictures from today's celebration for Student Employment Awareness Week. Whoever came up with this appreciation week was genius :)

Wednesday:  We played a really fun game during ASL today. Our team didn't win but it was a good time nevertheless. After that I went to work and was surprised to see balloons all over the floor in my office. My bosses were celebrating National Student Employment Week by ordering out Thai food and giving me flowers and balloons haha. We went to have a "fancy" lunch picnic outside by bringing a table cloth and putting it over the bench table. To add an extra touch I put the small vase of flowers on the picnic table as well haha. We took some pictures and then got to eating. So delicious :) My bosses are the BEST <3

Relay for Life, Installs, Crossing Party

Quick recap of the weekend:

Friday:

Got my grade back for that presentation I thought I bombed. I didn't do amazing but it was definitely better than I thought! Skipped work and went shopping with Jenny for a dress for installs/banquet. We ended up fruitless :( But it was fun nevertheless. After that, went to Chapter--our chapter director, Glen, was present to observe.

can't do relay for life without snacks for energy!

After that, we all headed to our gym for Relay for Life. Christy and I got there first and tried to save lots of space for 22 girls by throwing our stuff around randomly haha. Finally most of us arrived and we were all hanging out and doing random things. I got a super horrible tarot card reading three times in a row. I'm cursed :(

 chubby bunny

As the night drew on, there were a bunch of performances as well as a ceremony honoring those whose lives were touched by cancer. I stayed to play chubby bunny (6 marshmallows this time!) and Limbo. It was hilarious and surprisingly fun that many of our sisters participated.

Went home around 2 or 3 AM--didn't stay til 6AM for the free T-shirt this time haha.

Saturday:

Went to the mall again with Ling, Yayi, Isabel, and Christy. We made a stop at Chipotle and it was my first time there! The burrito bowl I got with steak was DELICIOUS. I gotta go back there sometime. It was definitely well worth the money.

my first chipotle--steak burrito bowl

Then we went to Eastview mall and Ling got her ears pierced two more times. Shopped around for dresses and everyone got a dress except me haha. It's okay though, I think I'll just borrow a dress for banquet. I already have a dress for this night's installs, yay! On our way back, stopped by Wegmans and made it back just in time to get ready for installs. 

Neos: Iota Pi & Iota Rho

Quickly got dressed and ready (only had 20 min!) and we drove off to Crecent Inn Restaurant, where we had our last two installs. Took a lot of pictures when the rest of the cars arrived. The food was AMAZING. My prime rib was massive and too good to stuff in after I was full so I brought the other half home to savor later on. So proud of the babies :')

Afterwards, we hurried home and got ready for the crossing party with UR PDPSI. It was fun and really crowded (wow we're all growing really quick!) but I sucked at beer pong so that womped lol. Oh well!

Sunday:

Went to Starbucks to catch up on my Econ lectures. Yup, that's pretty much it haha.

You can't plan for spontaneity

I don't know about you guys but right before I go to sleep the night before, I briefly think about what I'd do the next day. So since today I don't have class and only have work, I figured I'd wake up early, go to work, FINISH my errands at work, then have the rest of the day to play catch-up on my homework. 

However...most of the time, my plans never take into consideration all the distractions I have throughout the day. Haha. Katie sat in my office and made her first blog, whereas I surfed Tumblr for a while. Then we talked about stuff and before we knew it, we kinda wasted quite a significant amount of time haha AND we made popcorn again lol. So long story short--didn't actually finish my work errands :(

My boss was super cute though. She's been trying to get me two weeks off after graduation before I started work full-time at the office. But she wasn't sure and had to check with my other boss first. So Katie and I were pretending to do work when my boss walks in and takes a marker to write something on the jumbo calendar pinned on my office wall.  She said as she squeezed around us to the calendar, "Excuse me, I just have to mark something down" And she wrote on June 1st (2 weeks after graduation), "Rena's first day!" I was soo ecstatic that I am getting two weeks off before full-time so that I can go home and see everyone before I'm stuck here for good :) I booked my Amtrak ticket back up to Rochester on May 31st right then. Woohoo!!

I called Hector back about dinner so we decided to meet up after I got out of work. I went to the Bookstore to get my B.A. hood for graduation because Tina's lending me her cap & gown, and John Foote has an extra 2010 tassle. The whole graduation gown package is around 60 something, and JUST the hood cost me 28 bucks -_- that's like almost half the whole package!! Alright optimistically thinking, I saved 30 bucks by borrowing everything else woot woot!

Then grabbed dinner with Hector and talked for a long time. It was nice catching up with him--he's my very first friend in Rochester. Freshman year we both rode the same jet blue plane to Rochester & ended up together @ the Residential quad waiting for the keys to our rooms.

I headed off to Starbucks right after and prepared to get my homework started. But then I bump into Ryan, Jenny & Armando--and you know what that means, MAJOR DISTRACTION. Thus, I got nothing done that night haha. Gave up and went to the gym and then went home.

"How do you feel about being my friend on blogger?"

Today was my ASL story presentation exam. I pretty much had to make up my own story and sign it to the class and the professor evaluates your performance. So long story short--I did awful. Not only did he not know my name in a class of only 10 people, but I don't think anyone knew I was signing. What a fail haha. Oh well, I'm really glad I pass/failed that class :)

After class I went to work as always. I revised some fliers I had made and did some stuff on our website. Caught up with some miscellaneous tasks I've been meaning to do and cleaned up & organized my work area. Katie & I made popcorn again, except this time we didn't make a huge mess lol. 

 katie stuffing her face with popcorn cause that's what we get paid to do of course

We were also in the midst of hiring someone to fill my position for when I take on full-time at the office. Katie & I couldn't decide between three people so we had some ridiculous ways of trying to choose one. Like we placed all three of their resume's on the floor and shuffled them around--we thought maybe if "fate" let us choose someone multiple times, then it was meant to be. But of course, we were just kidding around haha.

We thought about retarded questions to ask if we called up these three applicants. Like "How do you feel about getting paid to eat popcorn" or "How do you feel about taking long walks in the hallways to waste time before going back to work?" or "How do you feel about blogging during work?" haha

Anyways, we never really reached a decision because all three applicants had different strengths & weaknesses so we handed the decision making over to our boss. 

After I went to starbucks where I bumped into Camille & Annabelle, and then Moxi later on. We just sat and chilled til I had to leave for class again. After class I went back to Starbucks to meet up with Christy. Hahha it was hilarious as always. I also forgot to turn off my Word recording from when I was taking notes during my last class so it pretty much recorded an hour and a half of me and christy's conversation. We listened to it over and laughed at how retarded we sounded :D

Then we had a long meeting. The end!

What kind of title would I use?!

Today I went to work and I actually had a lot of work to do :( I started out working hard and then I got lazy and started going on Tumblr haha. I had a really delicious lunch though--Chicken Pesto Melt on Flatbread

After work Tommy picked me up and drove to Korea House to eat. Yumm I had the Kalbi Tang and I stuffed myself really bad because the waitress said I couldn't finish the whole thing LOL but i did! That showed her, hmph. (yea bad idea, i know, haha)

So the Sigma's & Pi's are playing a game of Assassin and today i got destroyed :'( I didn't even have a gun yet either! haha cause I was stupid and broke mine at home before the game ever started!

But good news! I was on the phone with Frances and she tells me that we had won the Expectations of Excellence of Strategic Planning award!! This would make it the third of its kind that we've won consecutively and the fourth award we've gotten from the OFSA. And all this happened within the last four years! I can graduate happy now :) Read more about it on http://iotasyz.blogspot.com/2010/04/congratulations-iota-chapter.html

Then I went to meet up with Christy & Camille to sweatshop stuff at the library.

Went to the gym afterwards but it was super stuffy in there because they haven't turned on the AC yet :( I wanted to run for an hour but I ended up stopping at 30 minutes because I wasn't sure if I was sweating due to effective exercising or if I was just plain hot haha. So just worked out on some machines downstairs to cool down. Finally we left and when we walked outside, we were surrounded by the craziest, densest fog. We just kind of stood there in awe of how foggy it was--it looked like we were straight out of a scary movie scene lol. Then we went to starbucks as usual and split an Odwalla smoothie + banana. Yum.

Went home and practiced for my ASL story signing exam for the next day.

Long Day

Miley Cyrus is currently playing on the radio and I really, really, want to change the station but it's too much work. Must...tolerate...

Anyways so Monday I had a huge fail. For ASL, our presentations were split with half the class going Monday (yesterday) and the other half going on Wednesday. I was assigned Wednesday but I didn't know that we didn't have to go to class if we weren't presenting. So yesterday I walk into class and got owned. Sigh, that shows how terrible I am at ASL lol. Terrible hand-eye coordination. Thank goodness it's S/F'ed.

So I just went straight to work. Neither of my bosses were in. One had a cat emergency (she thought her cat had a stroke and I kinda cracked up really bad because I had images of a dramatically animated seizuring cat in my head lol) and the other's just always out and about. So I did the rest of my paper at work and chatted with Katie.

After work, I met up with the landlord of the place I'm gonna be renting out after I graduate. I signed my FIRST lease ever. Felt like a pretty adult thing to do haha jk. No, but seriously it felt like I was taking a huge step into my adult life. I'll be staying in the big guestroom until the person moves out of the room I'm supposed to take. The good part is that I'll be living in the guestroom RENT-FREE :) I just chip in for utilities. The guestroom is just as big as my room so woopee!

Medical Anthro class was after work. Handed in my LAST paper in my undergraduate career in. I felt so relieved. We watched a movie about our health care system (as always). Apparently one study said that college graduates on average live 2.5 years longer than only HS graduates.

Anyways, afterwards I met up with Christy, Ling, & Camille & Gleason and bummed around for a while. Me & Christy grabbed dinner and headed over to Ruth Merrill for a community service event. We were making some simple no-sew quilts to donate to cancer patients. (pic below!)

I went straight home afterwards and finally felt like I could relax. This week has been super hectic and I barely found time for myself. I watched some episodes of Greys, Desperate Housewives, and Gossip Girl haha. Took off my badly chipped nail polish, and updated the Iota Blog. It was nice going through the past year and realizing how much our chapter has done. I just compiled all our events (as much as I could remember anyways) and posted up a compilation here www.iotasyz.blogspot.com

Weekend Fun

Wow it's harder to blog daily than I thought. It's currently Monday morning and I didn't the entire weekend :(

Saturday:

phat thai

Woke up on time this time to eat off campus today. Camille drove me and Christy to the King and I, which is a Thai restaurant. I tried my first phat thai and it was delicious! I couldn't finish half of it so I just took it to go. Then we went to Michaels to pick up some crafty stuff to make ourselves necklaces :)))

Then I went straight to the Mela show and sat with Annabelle and Di Pan. I went because Katie was performing in the show haha. It was a good show but the auditorium was crazy stuffy because it was in the 80's--so hot and no AC!!

After Mela, went to starbucks to cool down with some nice iced drinks. Camille and Christy came back and we started making our necklaces in Starbucks haha. We looked like we were sweatshopping because we had the tools and wires and all that good stuff. Then we had a meeting and after that I went home to get ready for the RIT PDPSI mixer.

RIT PDPSI mixer @ Danny's House                                  Party #2 at Riverview

Stayed at the mixer for a while--the guys were late in setting it up!! But I got a chance to see everyone so it was nice before graduation :) Jason Lee drove me back to Riverview and I went to John Foote's bday thing and let's not talk about the rest haha but it was really fun.

Sunday:

 

Jenny passed out at Starbucks lol

This one's gonna be short haha. I hate waking up early because I had to pee but unfortunately my bladder had to wake me up. Got up and decided that I might as well stay awake since it was already around 10am. I went to Starbucks to study with Jenny but a lot of people stopped by and studied or chatted so it was actually a pretty good day. I didn't really get any work done but that was okay haha. I left around 12:30AM and finished my work at home. (I actually did the work I was supposed to do in Starbucks within an hour at home alone whereas I spent a bajillion hours in starbucks doing absolutely nothing LOL)

Debbie Does Dallas (NSFW)

(it's really 3:41AM the next day that I'm blogging this but I forgot to blog so I'm setting it to publish at the right day) 

Today was hot hot hot! It was in the 80's in Rochester. My day started with a presentation for ASL but my professor wanted to have class outside since it was so warm out. However, we weren't in the shade--we were right under the burning sun. At first it was nice, of course, until you start feeling this burning sensation from the sun's rays. Not to mention, I have awfully sensitive eyes to light so I was squinting the whole time I was trying to present. I couldn't really focus either so I'm pretty sure I did terrible. Everyone was sweating balls and I was no exception.

So when he finally dismissed us, I hopped on the bus to work. No one was in the office today so I pretty much didn't even bother doing work. I sat in my office surfing the internet and attempting to do some catch-up reading. But I ended up struggling to keep myself from falling asleep even though I was sipping on coffee every few minutes. I hadn't slept much the past few days for no good reason, really. Anyways, I gave up on trying to do homework and left my office to meet up with Frances.

relaxing and passing time on the academic quad & soaking up the sun

We both got some iced drinks and went out in the grass and laid there talking. Some other sisters and friends joined us. It felt absolutely wonderful (despite the bugs and lack of a picnic blanket!) I missed that summer warmth.

Then we had chapter and that was followed by elections. Congrats to the new E-board! 

Then we had a sister dinner and I was off again.

To where?

To see the annual spring porno. Yes, it's exactly what it says. Frances decided not to go anymore so I dragged Jenny to go with me haha. It was this porno called Debbie Does Dallas. It was my first porno movie so I was curious. But it was like shot in the 1960's and naturally the people dressed from that era: men with the tight clothes and women speaking with the perfect housewife accent. They were all hairy and fugly. Most of it was pretty explicit and disgusting. Orgies, girl on girl, pretty much everything packed into one movie. It was really unpleasant--is that what the 60's people enjoyed? I don't know how you can get past the hairiness!!

(is it weird that I took a picture of the movie screen because I wanted to remember my experience at my first porno? You know what, don't answer that.)

(terrible tan lines and dudes with fro's)

Anyways I left early because it got boring (after a bajillion sex scenes you kind of get sick of it) and I went home and watched Grey's Anatomy. 

That's all for today, phew!

Oh Xanga, where for art thou?

I'm currently at work and neither of my bosses are in. Of course, that's the sign for lets-do-absolutely-nothing-today. Not to mention that it was extremely gorgeous outside--it's currently 73 degree weather with the warm sun shining :)

Katie (our awesome secretary who's my age!) and I were just blowing off time by strolling outside to get coffee and ranting about the some of the awful things we have to put up with. Then we ended up looking at my blogs because I wanted to show her a recent article. I wasn't surprised that led to wasting some more time by creating her a blog haha.

So anyways, I mentioned Xanga to Katie and she didn't know what it was. I was really surprised because back in high school it was like the Facebook of the era. But I think it was just NYC-ers or something. Everyone and I used to be so obsessed with Xanga and I remember updating almost everyday about all the little things that happened in my life on a daily basis. 

So, I went back to my Xanga and started reading some old posts like some adult trying to recall her childhood life. I do this every so often and for some reason it never fails to entertain me with the crazy idea that this girl writing was ME. Just many years ago. It's like, how could I have ever thought these things or felt these things--it's almost uncomprehensible to me now. 

I read about the people I talked about, and struggles in the past, old relationships, new relationships, and random every day events--and it seems all so foreign to me. It's as if I'm reading somebody else's life instead of own, almost like a distant yet familiar memory. 

So I guess my point is, if I didn't have those daily blogs, I don't think I would've remember that part of my life. It's not enough to just write about the BIG things that happen because you'll always remember those for the rest of your life. It's the daily writing that really helps you see what kind of person you were and reminds you of the things that were easily forgotten. To me, it's really useful to remind myself of who I used to be and characteristics about myself that has changed, grown, and stayed the same since then. 

I think I'll start daily blogging again.

By the way, for anyone who's interested, my geeky self from high school can be found here www.lilstar765.xanga.com

---edit---
After work I went to my first house hunting location. It's two blocks from my work place so I won't be needing a car soon and it's insanely cheap. It turned out to be a legit, really nice place. It's owned by this shanghainese lady who is leading a large project in radiology. The rooms are big and there are two guest rooms that she said I was free to let any friends use. If I decide to stay I'm pretty sure I'll be signing with her.

Then i went to the FASA movie about Corazon Aquino. It was a really interesting short documentary on her becoming the Philipines first female president.

After that, went to play raquetball for my first time at the gym with Ryan and Armando. I sucked! haha, practice practice practice.