Finally done with this past week, that is. It was quite the stressor, really.
I know I said I’d catch you up on life, but it just moved too fast this week to allow a long-term recollection. Basically, life at Rhodes has gone swiftly and wonderfully throughout my time back. It has been rushed, seemingly sprinting by, which is a shame, considering it’s my senior year. But I’m sure I’ll recover, right?
Well, this past week has been exhausting, but it’s the first small mountain in this semester. But it did hold some great events – things I’ve waited a long time to complete.
I completed and submitted my applications to the Rhodes Scholarship and Marshall Scholarship. Both are extremely competitive national scholarship programs, because they fully fund two-years of study at Oxford for the completion of a Master’s degree. And let’s face it - a fully-paid Master’s degree would be a wondrous thing indeed. But it has been incredibly stressful getting the application together. There’s just soo much information to compact into a thousand-word essay describing why me, why Oxford, why Britain, why study Russian social issues – it’s a lot. But thanks to Dr Haas, I managed to get my applications in on time and without incidence. Of course, the 6 professors who wrote letters of recommendation were also a great help. But it’s done, and now I just wait. And I can’t think about it too much, cuz I’ve got lots else going on.
This week I also managed to get my schedule cleared to get my Russian Minor. I had never declared it during my time at Rhodes, because I had started studying Russian in my sophomore year, and it’s difficult to fit a language minor in when you start that late. But I finally am on track, and I can graduate with my minor. While I’m not a huge fan of the idea of a minor anyway, this means a lot to me. I love the Russian Studies program, and the professors have been nothing short of amazing in teaching and supporting me as I’ve gone through their classes and looked to studying abroad. So it’s kind of a way to celebrate that relationship – and I’m glad it’s happening!
But this week was mostly taken up by a seemingly giant 20-page paper due for the Buckman Internship Committee, a requirement of my fellowship to Russia. Clearly, me writing a paper is worth someone else funding my entire summer abroad. But it’s incredibly stressful, because it’s a big research paper on top of your normal class work / life. So finding the time to finish class materials and write the giant paper and run was kind of ridiculous. But it too was turned on on Friday, so it is done, and I await the Committee’s response, albeit nervously.
We also had a big meet this weekend with Cross Country in Indiana, so that was a big thing gearing up towards in the weekend. But the traveling went very very well, and both teams really stepped up. In the month before Conference, I think our training has proved that we’re in a great position to be quite the success. Our times our solid, but our workouts are faster, and they’ll naturally translate into one another, but we require more time. It takes several weeks for your training to affect your racing. I was pleased with my race, as it was my first actual race this season in terms of running a time that is close to normal. But it’s still not fast enough, but I’ll get my speed up as I get back into the grind of things after doing so much long-distance, volume-training in Estonia and Russia. Woot!
But now this week, I have a friend coming to Memphis – one that I spend 4 months in Estonia with, so I’m quite happy to see her. And I’ll be able to catch back up on classes, and then enjoy my Fall Break this next weekend!! And then I begin the awful process of graduate school applications. Woot? More on that later…
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