**Warning: This post has very little to do with triathlon, read at your own risk**
Sadly, training has been put on the back burner early this week as my role as a student has taken over. I know this blog is usually about training sprinkled with bits of life but today, since I haven’t updated for a while and am leaving my poor sister without a procrastination tool (Hi Emily!), I thought I’d write about my current student status.
Background:
Currently I am a graduate student in the Criminology program, which means I do a lot of research concerning patterns and behaviors of crime. Realistically, it’s nothing exciting that you’ll ever see on TV although when you put it in plain English people usually understand it. For example, my thesis was about sentencing discrepancies based on gender for rural property offenders (layman's terms: are female thieves given the same sentence as male thieves for the same crime). Be honest, your head just tilted to the side just a bit and you thought “hmm, so do they?” which means it’s not as boring as you’d think it would be!
Life as a student on Monday:
This would be a typical day for me. Get up early, lifted (see I did some training!), and headed to campus for a few professor meetings before going to work. I work at a research center where I work with some awesome people that sometime require me to use my noggin (such as researching articles or writing human subject reviews) and sometimes don’t require me to use my noggin (entering 1s and 0s).
After work the Better Half, my sister and I went to dinner with other graduate slaves students before running to the store to drop over $100 (which is a lot to students) on food (we REALLY needed to go!).
Life as a student on Tuesday:
Got up at 5am to head to my other job at a breakfast grill. I was done by 9am (I just do prep work) to come home and lift, before heading to campus to meet with my stand-in thesis chair (my original chair is on maternity leave). Headed to my research job for a few hours before heading down to Iowa City for Avoidthestork.com training, a new gig that I start next month, which sounds like it will be pretty awesome (I’m working at the Snake Alley Criterium promoting the campaign to prevent unintended pregnancies (keep your gay jokes to yourself, we’ve covered all of them already!)).
Life as a student on Wednesday:
Today I finally handed in my thesis to the Graduate College which is essentially step 99 of 100 in the whole process. Needless to say I was pretty excited, even if I knew it was going to be anti-climatic (which it was, the lady in the office just looked at me as I was all giddy and said “ok, I’ll give that to them.” I was slightly disappointed for not getting any ‘congrats’ but I got them at work since I work with a bunch of research nerds!). Now I just sit back and wait for graduation in May…not…
Life as a student Next Week:
Next Wednesday I leave for Chicago for a few days to present at the Midwest Sociological Society and hang out with other grad students. Check this out (what I have to look forward to): I’ll be sharing a hotel room with FIVE other students! I’ll be spending lots of time running for sure! (I’ll get good speed work in for sure)
After the conference I will be faced with the most important decision in my life (to this point): which PhD program to attend. Yup, not only does this knuckle head have brains, but 3 of the 5 programs I applied to want those brains! My official options are Sam Houston State University (Texas), Washington State University (Washington), and Old Dominion University (Virginia). I’m still figuring which one I want to become a slave to for the next 5 years, but I’ll be sure to let you know when I have it figured out, I know you’re holding your breath in anticipation.
Life as a student triathlete:
While I haven’t been able to train much early this week, I have 4 double days coming up: AM runs and PM bikes tomorrow through Sunday. Don’t worry, it’s not going to be overtraining, I’m not afraid to take a break if my body needs to (read: I’ll be damn lazy when I feel like it with no remorse). I am excited though, Frankie is back from her injury and is itching to get outside!
The End:
Ok, thanks for letting my fingers throw up on the keyboard, I’ll let you go for now, but first, my sister, Emily, is big into crafting (and she’s good too) and has started reading crafting blogs but is too chicken to start blogging herself…feel free to leave her words of encouragement, I know you all remember when you first blogged and no one but your parents or spouse would read it!
Ok, for real, have a good rest of the week!
P.S. Did you catch that butt whooping Kansas was handed by a bunch of white kids from Iowa? Yea, those are my Panthers!
Very cool! Always interesting to read about what people do outside of their lives as triathletes.
ReplyDeleteI don't know how you do it. I did my 4 years of college and couldn't wait to get out. Although in my case, I landed my dream job as a freshman and have been there since, so at that point the diploma was just icing on the cake.
What is your dream job after you finish up school?
hahahahahaha thanks for the shout out, I laughed out loud. I'm not too chicken to start a blog, I'm just not good enough, duh!
ReplyDeleteLife as a student, I remember those days.
ReplyDeleteI have been to all 3 areas of your potential schools, personally I likes WSU area the best when it came to scenery.
Good luck in Chicago
I enjoyed reading about this other side of you. CONGRATS on submitting your thesis and being accepted to those schools for a PhD program. Always nice to have a choice.
ReplyDeleteHave fun in Chicago!
PS - To Emily, blog mainly for yourself, not others is my recommendation. If you do it for yourself you won't care who reads it or not.