April 26

So, I guess we survived the last week of school and finals week. It was pretty intense at the time, but it all seems like a dream now. I got all my classes finished last week. Even though I didn’t have any classes after Mon., I spent many, many hours every day trying to finish a research paper on Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) which is a framework for technology integration into teaching. I have read and studied and coded and analyzed and discussed TPACK for enough hours that I don’t really care to learn anymore about it ever again! But perhaps that will change in a few weeks after I’ve given myself a break. I was working a few research hours with a professor and another grad student on all of the TPACK information, but the grad student moved away and is getting married and I’m going to start working on my master’s project, so I don’t know if I’ll do any more research for that professor anymore. It was a really good experience though.

I was also able to finish my statistics final and finish the final loose ends of the Church Museum Department project. One of the people in the department that we presented to sent us a really nice email about the project. In part she said, “I had high expectations when I recommended to Marie that she contact you…and I want you to know that you far exceeded anything I had hoped or dreamed that you would create for us. . . . What you have created is a masterpiece…and I was so amazed by how perfectly it was aligned with every ideal that our department is striving for (and everything I hope to someday be able to accomplish). . . Thank you for being willing to put so much into supporting us and striving to create the very best that the Church History department can offer the world.” It felt good to receive such high compliments after so many long hours of work!

This week I spent many hours grading, grading, and more grading, but I am now done and ready to enter all my grades into the system tomorrow. Yippee! Fortunately, I was able to do a few fun things in the midst of all my grading.

Monday night Jason and I went to a dinner celebration at Susan and Gerrit Gong’s home. We had a little over half of our design team there from the Church History project and we had a delicious dinner. Dr. Gibbons even came, which was fun. After dinner, Susan got out a set of hand chimes and we played “Come, Come Ye Saints.” I thought it was really fun and I got really excited about it.

Tuesday I went to the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving point with Jason, Sara Moulton, and her roommate Kristen. It was beautiful, but I must admit that I was a little disappointed because almost half of the tulips had not bloomed and in some areas I just had to imagine how pretty it would be in a couple more weeks. The weather was perfect though and I managed to get my first sunburn of the season. Fortunately it wasn’t really that bad.

We went to the Tulip Festival on Tuesday because Sara had major hip surgery on Thursday. Wednesday I went over to help her do her cleaning checks (in return for her expert editing on my TPACK paper). I cleaned out their apartment fridge and freezer and both of them were disgusting! I think it’s been a year or two . . . or four of five since that thing has been cleaned and it was pretty satisfying to leave it behind spotless.

Thursday Jason and I played some racquetball and then Kristilyn, James, and Grant came to visit us in Provo. We played a little in our apartment, played some more at a nearby park, and then topped it off with some Arby’s sandwiches, fries, and milkshakes. It was fun to talk with Kristilyn and see her adorable boys.

Jason’s brother Steve graduated in Accounting from BYU so we went to the convocations on Friday…well at least half of it. It was really long, and after an hour of talks and everything they finally started reading the long list of graduates. Fortunately I married into a family at the beginning of the alphabet, and since he was getting his masters, he was about the 18th in line. After he walked across the stage at the Marriott center, Jason and I left to go visit Sara at the hospital. Apparently they were still reading names an hour and a half later!!! I can’t say that I’m sad that we missed it. ☺ We went over to Steve and Kirsten’s that night for pizza and cake to celebrate.

So, if you’re wondering about Jason’s finals, he finished as well. He’s such a good studier that he likes to save his finals until the end, so out of the four finals he needed to take, he took three of them on the last day of finals, and two of them after 8:00pm that night—He really didn’t mean to wait THAT long on the last two but it somehow ended up working out that way. In any case, he is done, done, done, and enjoying the lightened load of stress. He will just continue working at the coding lab this summer and can work up to 40 hours a week if he can handle working there that many hours a day. ☺ I, on the other hand, just found out the class that I was planning on taking Spring was canceled, so I guess I won’t have anymore school either until Summer term at the end of June. I’m still planning on working for Dr. Rich 20 hours a week, but I may see if I can pick up some other work hours for the next couple of months.

One last thing, I finally got my hair cut again on Friday. I lost both people I knew cut hair to having a baby and the other to getting married, so I got desperate enough and called a hair school. I usually have pretty good luck with hair cuts (I can’t say the same for hair coloring!!!) but I guess my luck ran out. Two hours later I walked out with much shorter hair—some of it much, much shorter than I would have liked! Oh well, it will grow back right? Some of you may even say that you like my hair, but you don’t know what I’m hiding. ☺