First Semester of Graduate School is Over!

May 02, 2007 17:33

Wow, it certainly has been a long time since I have updated this journal, but I think I can fairly attribute that to this having been my first semester of graduate school here at Mississippi State and my basically just being up to other things besides worrying about updating this journal!  Still, I feel that I should apologize to those who read this, as it has been about four months since my last post!  Quite a lot can happen in four months, and I will try to summarize the events of the past semester as best I can in this post while not boring you all to death!

For those of you who don't know, I graduated on December 9, 2006 with my Bachelor of Arts in History.  I was admitted to the university's graduate program in October of 2006 with the intention of majoring in Early-Modern European History and minoring in Early-Modern East Asian History.  When I started graduate school this past January, I wasn't sure what to expect exactly other than what I had heard from other graduate students and professors.  This semester I took 9 hours of classes, which is about par for the course in grad. school (9-12 is full-time):

1.  "Grand Strategy and International Security Seminar" (HI 6213)
2.  "Renaissance and Reformation Europe" (HI 6643)
3.  "Readings in the Far East" (HI 8763)

However, these courses actually worked out quite nicely.  The seminar only met once a week on Mondays from 4:00 to 6:50 PM and my "Readings" course was a one-on-one course with the professor which met in her office every Wednesday for an hour or so at 1:00 PM.  As for the "Renaissance" course, the professor decided that graduate student attendance was not necessary for a split-level course (4643/6643), so he decided that the graduate students just needed to submit a 12-15 page  historiographic paper as their project for that course (which I did just before Spring Break.

As a whole, therefore, I basically just had to get used to the fact that graduate school is more of a "learn on your own" environment- you have classes that don't meet very often and most of the work is all "on you."  No one holds your hand through the program anymore (not that they did very much in the undergraduate program, but they certainly don't here).  Still, I like the pace of things and it lets me get things done when I want to (as long as it's before the deadline, of course)!

One good thing is that now my education is completely paid for and I get a salary on top of it all.  How's that?  This past April (around the 15th) I was awarded a Graduate Teaching Assistantship that will allow me to serve as a lecturer in undergraduate courses, paying for my tuition, books, and giving me a very nice monthly stipend on top of it all.  While they haven't yet told me my assignment yet, I'm guessing that it will probably be with "Eastern" and "Western Civilization" classes (so that PhDs don't have to teach them).

In other news, we finally got a Nintendo Wii!  Of course, this was back in early-February, but we've been enjoying the hell out of it!  The Wii is a nice step up from the GameCube and the other "last-gen" consoles for several reasons- the control setup is very nice, the graphics are very good, and I like the fact that the system is constantly online (as long as you are in a wireless environment or have it hooked up via the additional broadband adapter).  It has some neat "channels" on it, such as the "News" (which lets you see news stories from around the nation and world), "Forecast" (weather), and "Internet" (which will cost money if you don't download the Opera Browser before June 2007) channels.  So far we have Call of Duty 3, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz, and Wii Sports for the Wii.

Beyond all of this, summer is coming up now that the semester is over and this summer I will be taking a couple of courses for the first time since I've been at college.  I'll be taking "French I" in June and "French II" in July in order to work on my foreign language requirements for my Master's Degree.  Also this summer I will be doing a good bit of reading and research so that I can have a nice background and have done some preparation for my Thesis, which is just around the corner; next semester I'm taking 12 hours of courses, so by the end of the semester I'll have 21 hours completed, which means it will almost be time to start writing my Thesis!

However, this month (May) we will try relax and visit with family (although we will try to relax during the summer as well)!  On Friday some of our friends will be graduating with their Bachelor's, mostly from the James Worth Bagley College of Engineering, so at 7:00 PM we will be attending the ceremony.  Then, on Saturday, we will be driving to Birmingham, AL, to attend Laura's cousin Chris' graduation from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (at 2:00 PM that afternoon).  From there, we will spend the night and then go back to Huntsville to visit with her family for a while (a few days or so).  Later in May, sometime around May 21, I intend to travel down to the Coast and visit with my parents and grandparents and maybe anyone else who happens to be around that week (and Laura will also come down later in the week since she'll be off for the Memorial Day weekend from her job).

Speaking of that, Laura has to work in Vicksburg, MS as part of her scholarship program for her Master's.  As such, she'll be working for the Engineering Research and Development Center and living about 25 miles outside of the city with their Personnel Director.  It's actually a pretty nice setup as the house she'll be staying in is very nice, the rent is low, and it's a pretty quick commute.  I'm sure she's going to enjoy it.  Plus, it's only about three hours from here so we'll get to see each other on weekends.

Aside from all of this, the last bit of news is that my laptop has died once again!  If you recall, it died last semester (the video card crapped out), and this has happened once again.  This system has been a problem from the start, and you would expect a lot more from Dell.  However, Dell is very reliable and has fixed the system each and every time it has had a problem, and finally, since we have had "three or more" problems, they are replacing the system (this time with a new Inspiron 6400).  It's supposed to come this week, so I'm very excited!

Well, that's about it!  I hope I haven't bored you all to tears!

I'll try to update more often as things happen!
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