a new year

Provo has been abuzz with activity this week since school started on Monday and I find myself in an odd place in my life. I decided to stay here for one more semester in order to finish my thesis, study and take the GRE and prepare my graduate school applications. I'm TAing for a professor, but only for 15 hours a week. This leaves me with a lot of unstructured time. I need a lot of self motivation in order to get the things done that I need to, but the fact that all of my friends are busy and my house is generally empty helps because I am so incredibly bored and have nothing better to do but study and write my thesis. Also, I'm happy I found a nice and inexpensive place to live, but my ward is full of young people, boys just off their missions and 19 year old girls; I'm starting to feel old and out of place here.

Moving this time around was really hard on me. I'm not sure why, but I was dragging my feet the whole way. I had no energy and no desire to pack up everything I owned and leave. I eventually had to beg my mom to come help clean otherwise I would not have been able to get it all done before the move-out date. Going from 2 people in a huge house to 20 people in a house comparable in size is a big change. There are 4 apartments in the house: a basement with 6 people, the main floor with 5 people and the attic apartment with 6 people and an add-on in the back where a family lives. I'm in the attic, and even though there are six girls squished into a small space no one is ever home, its decorated nicely and it is very clean. I feel quite comfortable here and imagine I'll be spending a lot of time at home this winter studying and working. I even have a small office in my room, and my roommate works full time so she doesn't really need the desk space at all. And I like my roommates, when they are around. They're all very different and interesting kinds of people and I hope I'll be able to be good friends with some of them before I leave.

I'm feeling productive so far this semester, and it just started. I've already got half of my hours in for my TA job, I've been studying for the GRE, and I'm working on figuring out what to say when I contact the PhD programs I'm interested in. I also set up an appointment to talk to a professor this next week about expanding a project I worked on in his class into a dissertation proposal. That's kind of huge. I'm going to the community garden tonight and then to Institute and this weekend I'll be visiting my family for my sister's birthday. So I feel pretty good about everything so far. I only panicked a little yesterday, but I got over it pretty fast. I have to say I'm pretty happy right now.