Tonight, I was in the mood for chocolate chip cookies. So, I made 5 dozen. And 2 dozen pumpkin muffins. And 2 loaves of banana bread. Go big or go home?
Other than my impulsive, ridiculous attempt to be the next Betty Crocker... today wasn't all that exciting. I woke up with a migraine, attempted to drink a cup of coffee and took some ibuprofen, and went back to sleep on the couch. Woke up a few hours later, started reading This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald, went a little crazy in the Kindle Store and downloaded 26 new free books to my Kindle... oops. Then ate some dinner, went to the grocery store for chocolate chips and came home to spent three hours baking while watching Chasing Mavericks. And now I'm sitting here, eating chips and salsa and watching Friends. Again, kind of lame for a Friday. It was, however, a pretty exciting week in the life of Jillian Goodwin. So let's recap!
To start, summer term started Monday. I'll be honest, I wasn't looking forward to it at all. There was only 12 days between semesters. I felt like I just finished classes, because well... I had, ha. Also, while I'm not a stranger to summer classes, I was very nervous about ODU's classes. I've taken summer school at TCC every year since I was 16. But TCC does twice a week classes, for ten weeks... at ODU, it's four days a week, for six weeks. Intense, terrifying, overwhelming... just a few words that came to mind thinking about it.
Despite my reservations... my classes went excellently! I'm taking two communications classes; Introduction to Public Relations and Public Relations Project Management. I have the same professor for both classes, Dr. Burton St. John. I've heard really great things about him as a professor, so I'm happy about that. And, he scored major points with both classes when he started off with "I know four day a week classes are rough and you get burned out by Thursday. And guess what, I do too. So unless we absolutely have to, we aren't having class on Thursdays."
My intro class is a moderately sized and pretty standard as far as assignments go; one quiz, two short papers, two in class assignments, a final project and a final exam. My project management class is a bit more interesting. There's only 9 students, which is officially the smallest class I have ever had. And, it's a brand new class to the program, so it's in a developmental/experimental semester. We have a syllabus, but Dr. St. John told us that it's flexible and we can make changes if something isn't working. And finally, 80% of our final grade is based on a semester long group project. Also kind of nerve-racking, but groups were assigned on Tuesday and the two girls I'm working with seem chill, so it should be okay.
Overall, it was a good week. The classes will be fast paced, but not as overwhelming as I was expecting. These are my first Public Relations classes (which is my actual concentration), so I'm really just excited to be finally studying what I want to do with the rest of my life! Just from the first week, I know this is a great career choice for me. It's something that I am passionate about and it's something I am naturally good at. Many of the personality traits and skills needed to be successful are ones I already have and value. I feel so comfortable with the topics and eager to learn more. I'm excited for the rest of the semester and even more for my future career in the field of PR :).
In addition to starting a new semester, I also got a MacBook Pro this week! Wooooo! My Sony Vaio has been acting up for several months now. It overheats really quickly and then shuts off in the middle of me working, multiple times in a row. Since I couldn't afford a new computer, I talked to my dad and he offered me his Macbook. He said he wasn't using it much since he had a computer at work and an ipad for home. It is two years old, but he restored it to factory settings so it's basically good as new.
It's going to take a while to transition everything from my old laptop to this one, and adjust to the Mac Operating System, but I'm very excited and thankful. I used Macs at TCC's art school for three years, so I am familiar enough.. but I only used them for the Adobe programs. Getting use to the overall format and organization will be a learning experience.
The next exciting part of my week is that I decided to try my hand at selling clothes, not just buying them. I went through my closet and I also had about three boxes of charity donations I hadn't dropped off yet. Pulled out everything that was brand name and in nice condition and put it on hangers. I knew of two women's consignment stores in Norfolk and one junior's store in Virginia Beach. On Tuesday, I went by two of the stores. Double Take is a high end women's store, they took 7 of the 10 items I bought in. Ditto is a teen's store and they took 14 of 20 items. Both stores have a 60 day contract and I will receive 40% of the proceeds if my items sell. On Thursday, I stopped by both stores again, Double Take took another 7 items and Ditto took all 20! I also stopped by a store called Act II, another women's store, to see if they would take the items that Double Take passed on. They took 7 items, also on a 60 day contract but they give 50% to the consignors. So all together, the three stores took 55 items. Hopefully things sell and in two months I'll be holding some pretty looking checks, that I can go spend on more pretty looking clothes, of course :)
I also got offered a part time job this week. It was brought to my attention by my childhood art teacher. She has a friend who recently had her elderly mother move in with her. The woman is looking for someone to "babysit" her mother, who cannot be left alone, so that she and her husband can still go out on the weekends to run errands or just see a movie/go to dinner. It would be Friday or Saturday evenings, and perhaps during the day on Saturday too. I spoke with her yesterday. She asked me to put together a schedule of when I am available and call her back after the holiday. I think it will be a good opportunity for me because it is not too strenuous. With my health and my full time schedule at school, I have to be careful not to push myself too far when it comes to working. It is really easy for me to over do it and get sick. I don't see that happening with this job though because it is only one or two nights a week. Enough that I can have some spending money, but not so much that I get worn out.
Overall, I'd say it was a rather pleasant week. I do feel bad about not posting at all though. And for this post being kind of mundane, ha. I did say no promises though :P But really, I'll try to be more interesting next week. Hope everyone has a great holiday! :)
