In more than one way.
I took today off of work to take my two final exams. It's a rather long story in which my professor was a little ridiculous, but I had to take them today because we went to DC last week!
I officially survived my first and only summer semester ever. Ha ha ha. It was kind of....brutal actually. I don't want to sound like a whimp, but oh my goodness, it was never ending work.
2 classes = 91 pages of papers written, 35 hours of lectures, 15 academic articles researched, 28 quizzes, & 7 tests. All in a month and half. Plus I was working full time.
But now I'm freeeeeeee!!! So free!
I learned a lot through it all too. I feel like I'm a lot better prepared to help messed up people. Ha. k, that sounds really bad.
My two classes were Family Relations and Adolescent Development and honestly the majority of the classes were on how to help messed up individuals/families/teens and/or on how to not become messed up. I wrote a lot of papers on domestic violence, abuse, eating disorders, media, dysfunctional families, drugs, gangs, etc.
Both of these classes were from the same professor. He was kind of hard to work with via the internet. I have an actual face to face class with him in the fall which I feel will be better? Who knows. He was just very strange in answering my questions....I would write him and say "What things do you want me to put on my title page?" then I would put a plethora or options cause we all know I can be long winded.....and his short reply would be: "Yes, put a title page." Ooooooy.
I'm hoping the face to face thing works out better.
I added up my totals on all my assignments/tests/everything and I SHOULD be getting A-'s in both classes. Knowing this professor I'll probably be getting B's though. Hooooooooray....ha. :)
Another reason this post is titled "freedom" is because, like I said, we went to Washington DC this last week! It was way fun!
Jeff and I pretty much spent two days in downtown DC going to all of the monuments and museums, a day at the temple, went to a Nationals game, and the rest of the time hanging out with Jeff's brother's family! Jeff's oldest brother lives back there with his wife and four kids. They are such a cute family!
Jeff's brother is an accountant so pretty much the whole trip we were talking about moving back there when Jeff graduates. I guess the four major accounting firms of......the nation....the world (something) are back there and so there are lots of good opportunities for accountants. I'm pretty sure Jeff is a lot more game for moving back there than I am, but I still think it would be fun!
It's defintely a lot different from Utah! All of the homes are either smaller or kind of older....cause its already been developed for a long time. In Utah there is TONS of growth still. I see it everyday at work as more and more gigantic homes go up in West Layton, Kaysville, Farmington etc.
Other than being away from my family I think that's the biggest draw back for me. Not that I want to live in a million dollar home, but I've always liked the more open farmy feel that Utah, especially when considering raising a family.
Who knows, we'll probably just stay in Utah for the rest of forever. It would be cool to live back there for five or so years though if it really did get Jeff some good experience.
Anyways, off of that tangent, back to our trip! I love how green it is back there. We would drive on the freeways and it was just trees everywhere! I love how the Washington DC Temple sticks out of trees on the freeway as you drive past it. That was such a pretty temple! It was HUGE! Like, we didn't really know where to go and what not. The floors were all so open and spacious and there were about eight of them, ha ha. Very big temple! Ever since my family went to Washington DC when I was younger I've always wanted to go through that temple. I even had a picture of it on my temple recommend cover for many years because it was always a dream of mine to go back and go through it. Dream accomplished.
Pretty much the whole time Jeff and I were at the monuments and museums we kept talking about how lucky we are that we live here in America and that there were so many brave people who fought for our freedom. Even in the Air and Space Museum we talked about how crazy it is that people could actually come up with inventions like they did. I can't even imagine inventing even the most basic planes that they had in there.
One of the most sobering, but coolest places that we went was the Holocaust Museum. It was so sad, but so amazing! I walked out of that museum with a large renewed gratitude for my country and religion. I'm grateful for all of the Americans who have fought for my freedom so I don't have to live under a dictatorship and be in fear like all of the Jews in pretty much all of Europe were back then.
It's also very comforting to know that I'm a child of God and all of the people who suffered from the Holocaust were children of God too. Nobody deserves to live through what they went through, but it's great to know that God is merciful and that we can live with Him again.
I feel so blessed to have the life that I do. Sometimes I get caught up in small annoyances or stupid little things that don't matter, but past all of that I have a wonderful life. I have a husband who takes care of me and would never let our family end up "messed up" like all of the situations I had to write my papers for, ha ha. That's one of the saddest parts about writing papers on domestic violence and things like that is I can't imagine being in that situation and it breaks my heart to research and learn things about people who deal with it all the time.
We really do have it good. Jeff recently got a new job at Goldenwest as an accountant and we feel very blessed about that! I don't really know much about accounting, but I guess the stuff he's going to be doing is like....stuff that a person with a degree should be doing? Ha ha.
Goldenwest is a smaller credit union so they hire students sometimes and train them to do things that normally you would need a degree for. It's going to be really good cause by the time he graduates with his masters he'll have lots of experience and be more marketable.
It's amazing how God gives us what might seem like little blessings along the way, but they all ultimately end up creating huge eternal blessings. I like looking back at my life and seeing where the little blessings have added up to big ones.
Well, I better go clean la casa before mi esposo gets home! I think we might celebrate my "Freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeedom" tonight by reinacting our first date. Or we might just stay home and watch the Bachelorette. Oh the decisions I have to make in life.........
I'll probably be able to blog more now that I'm freeeeeeeeeee. We shall see..... :)
