Congratulations class of 2006!

I got choked up a few times during commencement itself and managed to fight back tears through most of the pictures. Then I sobbed, but only a little bit.

Since about 9 or so Friday night, I have been in hiding. I left the cookout and went home. I've shut myself up in my room and tried to disengage with reality. I have watched a lot of Grey's Anatomy (Thanks for the new addiction, Mary!). A lot. I have let myself become wrapped up in the lives of fictional characters for hours on end... because right now it hurts too much to be wrapped up in my own life. Commencement is in less than 6 hours at this point. No one is abandoning me, but everyone is still leaving. Part of me knows I should have hung out with people tonight, but all of me knows that I wouldn't have been able to handle it. I'm a wreck right now. The crying has started, and it doesn't look like it's going to stop soon.

To all my senior friends - I'm sorry I didn't see you tonight (Er, last night, whatever - staying up into the wee hours of the morning screws up time). It's not that I don't love you. It's that right now, I love you all too much. At this point I could either glom onto everyone or detach myself; I can either care too much or try not to feel at all. I want a happy medium. I don't want to deal with the inevitable changes. But I guess I don't have much of a choice.

Everyone is sending out their updated contact info. It's nice in some ways, as it's helpful and useful and all that. But almost every email starts out with some variation of "As you may know, I will be graduating from Swarthmore on Sunday..." and each time I read it I get a little sad. After reading it a lot of times, I'm a lot sad. And now I'm heading over to campus for a cookout with a bunch of my senior friends and their families. We were talking about it last night, and it was decided that name tags would be extremely helpful. "Hello, my name is ---. I am with -----." Possibilities suggested for my name tag were "Jen the Junior" and "with all of the seniors."

I'm going to cry so much on Sunday.

It's been a busy and long day... But also a lot of fun. The Six Flags trip got off to a late start (big surprise there), but things were fine once we got going. Mary, Megan, and I broke off from the larger group when we got there. We ended up meeting up with various people on and off, but it was nice to have a smaller core group to wander with.

The rides:

Batman and Robin: The Chiller - A long, long wait, which sucked. And the ride is really short. But it's also tremendously intense, especially as it was the first roller coaster I've been on in a while. Shot off at like 60 mph, loops and twists -- and then everything backwards.

Ferris Wheel - Because sometimes you just need to let your heart return to a normal pace.

Skull Mountain - A pretty basic smaller roller coaster - some twists, but no upside down loops. It's in the dark, though, so you don't know what's coming. The ride was made less pleasant by the presence of annoying, loud, obnoxious, immature teenage boys.

Superman Ultimate Flight - A roller coaster that you ride on your stomach. It's basically the normal harness thing - no floor but your feet are locked in - and then they flip it. Very cool, kinda freaky on one of the loops where you end up on your back.

Log Flume - Basic and refreshing.

Skull Mountain - Much better without the annoying teenage boys. This ride also had no line, which was an added benefit.

Musik Express - It spins and you smash whoever is on the outside of the cart. I rode a very similar ride all the time at Kennywood before I got over my fear of roller coasters. It was nice to relive a bit of my childhood.

Medusa - There was no line for this by late afternoon, so we got right on. It was fantastic - many loops, harness seats with no floor. Probably my favorite.

Runaway Mine Train - A traditional non-looping roller coaster. Fun and made more interesting by riding with someone who's not big on roller coasters.

Sky Ride - A gondola to the other side of the park. Yay for not having to walk.

Skull Mountain - Because there was no line, and at that point I was with someone who hadn't gone on it. This time I actually heard the "spooky" sound effects - ghoulish laughter and screams - and was entertained.

Nitro - No loops, but lots of hills, including some camel backs/double dips. A good way to end the day.

In other news: The Wilma finally got back to me to set up a meeting. However, by this point, InterAct has managed to respond to me, interview me, and offer me a spot, which I accepted. It also seems like the InterAct one will be more fun - more actual work, less clerical stuff. So yay. But it's still nice to hear back from them and feel wanted.

Now I crash.

There are times when I hate people. When I'm washing a bunch of dishes that aren't mine because I'm sick of having them piled in the sink is one of those times. Grr to people who don't have the decency to clean up after themselves! Grr to people who clog up sinks! Grr to people who just dump their dishes in the sink! Double grr to people who dump their large knives in the sink! (Seriously, there was a 5 inch knife just sitting there. I could have seriously cut myself)

It really just boggles my mind, though. I know that I'm a little on the obsessive side (though my room is currently rather messy, especially my desk). I can understand messy rooms, though. It's just when it spreads into public spaces - empty (or even worse, half empty) Chinese food containers from last night in the lounge, laundry that sits there for a week, dishes that are just left... Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Hate hate hate.

There are also times when I love people, of course. Right now is just not one of those times.

EDIT: Oh my god, do I ever hate people. Hate hate hate hate. I was just up in the breakfast room kitchen. The sink/dishes situation isn't as bad, but the counters are nasty, and... SOMEONE LEFT THE GAS STOVE ON. Yeah. Apparently someone got "Low" and "Off" confused.

I hate people.

I have spent nearly the entire day in bed. Boo to summer sickness.

On a happier note: going into Philly yesterday was a lot of fun. My main goal was to get a dress for the wedding I'll be going to this summer, but... Well, I got two dresses. One is far too formal (floor-length black sheath dress for $12... I love thrift shops), and the other might work (knee-length black strapless with white designs), but I'm not sure. Part of me has issues with wearing either white or black to a wedding. Weird, but hey, so am I.

Also good: various activities with friends through graduation. Six Flags tomorrow, general hanging out, and a cookout with family and friends. The bad part of this: graduation itself, where I am likely to cry like you wouldn't believe.

Despite the super-stress of this past year, this semester my grades are actually pretty damn good. A- for both my costume design project and dramaturgy, and credit for my playwriting class. The only thing I'm still waiting for is ToN. I'm hoping for a B; I don't expect anything higher.

Off to finally shower and get ready for the day (or what's left of it).

I have very easily and quickly fallen into a routine of sleeping, reading, and watching movies. While nice, I needed a bit of a change tonight. Thankfully, an opportunity presented itself in the form of an 80's dance party. I went with a few of the girls, and we had a blast. And in about 12 hours, I'll be heading into Philly with most of them to go shopping. Yay!

Now, however, I'm going to collapse. 2 hours of dancing is pretty damn tiring.

Dear Junior Year-

It's been real (real-ly stressful, I mean). Have fun torturing people next year; I'll be hanging out with your pal Senior.

-Jen

Yeah. I'm done. Woot, I guess?

Speaking of torture - Of all the books I checked out for my dramaturgy (most of which I didn't end up using), I've decided to hang onto one to read for the hell of it. The book? The History of Torture. Yes folks, I'm reading about torture. For fun. I suppose that says something about me. And probably nothing good.

Off to eat cake and celebrate now.

83 pages. Man. Granted, 63 of those are the script and footnotes, but still. And most of it's single spaced, too. And there's a lot more I want to look into if we end up doing this for Senior Company, too. There are a handful of books I checked out of the library that I didn't actually use.

Now I just have to finish my play. *sigh* Maybe I'll learn from this and start super-early on all my work next semester. But that seems pretty unlikely.

Sometimes, spell checker is weird. In a very related note, my spell checker would like to change "hegemonically" into "hegemonic ally." Which makes me think of little warrior hedgehogs lining up to help out their friends in need. Have I mentioned I've been on a strange sleep schedule? Because I have. Man, I'm looking forward to the laziness overload that is Tuesday.

ToN paper done.
Casebook started.
Play... Well, that's tomorrow's task.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the paper I'm writing is not exactly the paper my prof wants. I also have a rather certain feeling that I don't really care at this point.

12 hours left until it's due.

The great thing about ML - just because the power's out on campus doesn't mean that it's out here. My condolences to campus folk who are trying to write papers or study at all. Hopefully the power will come up soon.

I did not actually do any more work last night... Big surprise there. However, I have achieved the summer triumvirate! (Where my use of "triumvirate" is incredibly improper and bastardized) It hasn't been finalized yet, but I was offered the theatre internship, so yay!

So, for this summer I have secured:

1) Housing (Free, as I am the summer RA)
2) Income (Working part-time at the library)
3) Resume fodder (Jobs from 1 and 2, plus the internship)

I have also ensured that I'll have only a little more free time than I do during the school year, but whatever. I get to spend time in an office that has a cat, which trumps all.

It is oddly comforting to discover that life is just as awkward for other people. Also, long talks with nice people are good, even if they extend my supposedly 2 hour or so study break into a good 5 hours. (Brain shut down at 9, play festival at 10, long talk from 11 until 12:30 or so, walk home).

On the plus side, I feel kind of invigorated again, so I may get a bit more work done before sleeping. It's not like I have a normal sleeping schedule anyway...

"Ow," says my aching head. "Ouch," says my sunburned back. "Suck it up," says the inner voice of productivity.

I'm holed up in McCabe, doing research for my d'turgy casebook. It's the project I don't mind so much, so it's getting done first. I'd rather work on it than my English paper or my play... Anyway, research, research, research. Mostly of the Google variety, but in this case it's completely acceptable. I've been trying to figure out a production history of the play I'm working on (Ellen McLaughlin's Days and Nights Within), and I've reached a couple of conclusions. 1) There needs to be a website that just lists productions of plays en masse. Perhaps when rights are granted for a performance it could be added to the list? 2) People need to put dates on their resumes. I'm glad you played Elsa, Ms. X, but would you mind giving me a clue as to where and when? No? Damn you.

Whenever I get done with this, I may go over to Wikipedia and expand on Ellen McLaughlin's stub. They have next to nothing on her, and after this, I'm going to have a list of just about every play she's written, what awards she's won, and so forth.

Back to work... Damn sunny day taunting me through the window...

The internship interview went okay (the place has an office cat and a dog that comes to work regularly!)... I should find out tomorrow or so. Other than that, my feet hate me (stupid heels), Jamboree was good, free massages rock, and I really need to get work done.

For a group of friends that doesn't drink all that much, we certainly managed to produce a lot of alcohol for tonight... Everyone just brought what was in their rooms, and well, it was quite a bit.

Sleep now, because sleep is good. ML barbecue tomorrow (today), internship interview on Wednesday.

Zoo Story is done, meaning 1/4 of my credits this semester is done. Woot. Now I just have to do massive amounts of research and writing...

There is a nice playground about 4 blocks away from ML that I and some others discovered today. It has swings - good ones, even, with chains and rubber seats. Very cool discovery.