Still breathing

Just about feeling like I am ready to come up for air...things are about to wind down just a little bit, which should hopefully give me five or ten minutes a day to slow down and breathe!

School is, for all intents and purposes, done. I have a couple nonsense classes today and tomorrow, two exams left, neither of which should be terribly difficult, and then we have to deliver our final presentation for the consulting project that we have been working on all year. To be honest, I feel a little bit removed from it because I haven't done much since March, but I have seen what the guys did to finish it after I left off my part, and it all looks really good. The client company has already seen it and likes it, so it is just a matter of the professors getting their look at it and asking some questions intended to make us uncomfortable;-)

I am pretty happy with myself for sticking the year out. If I had it to do over again, I never would have enrolled during the second semester because it turned out to be a completely asinine idea (seriously...most people that I am in school with spend 12-14 hours a day at school...how did I think I could fit all of that in with twins?) But now that it is over, I am glad that I did. As dumb an idea as it was, I would have hated taking a whole year off and picking it back up in January as a first-year still.

It has been a really incredible experience, even if the whole first year was kind of over-shadowed by the baby thing. The breadth and depth of my classmates' talents is extraordinarily impressive, as are their professional and personal backgrounds. I now know why everyone I asked said that going full-time was such a valuable experience...the stuff you learn in class and the stuff you get out of the books is good, but the real value of the program is being around all of these incredibly smart, incredibly driven people all day long for two years. You can't get that from a different kind of program.

One unusual thing, though, is that I don't feel like I made a ton of "friends". There are tons of people that I like, get along with, work well with and enjoy thoroughly, but very, very few that I would just call up to hang out away from school. I think part of it is that I skipped out on so many of the social activities because I was tired or sick or on bed rest...so I didn't get to know people as personally as many others did. I would count a couple of my group-mates as really good friends (in the sense that we have hung out away from school, I know their wives, etc) and there are at least two other girls that I absolutely adore, but most of the class are more like professional acquaintances.

One of those group-mates, told me on the sly that I am widely viewed as a little bit distant and aloof...which I understand, but which is totally not me. Maybe next year will be a little bit different because I will feel a little more social and a little less...um...pregnant? The truth is that I got married and had twins in the same school year, and that is kind of a lot to manage, so I was maybe not my normal outgoing self all the time. And, as I wrote about a while back, I just sort of felt the need to be a bit guarded all year long. Not totally sure why.

Anyway, school is pretty much done, and I am feeling really good about having finished the year. My grades will be pretty good, although they are entirely irrelevant...you either pass or you don't and no one ever cares about your class rank or GPA or anything like that. I am very, very much looking forward to my summer at the beach with my original baby girl, my new baby girls, my grown up girls and The Boy:-)

I have some more Munchkin stuff for you later on, but that can wait...short version, she remains completely on top of the world (although she still does not have a belly button ring...more on that later.) I also have some stuff related to the old (and future) office, Papa Bear, Boss Foxy and the rest of the gang. Given some of the big changes around here, you can probably guess the basic gist of some of that.

But this is already too long, and I have summer clothes to mentally pick out!