The Show Must Go On

If any of you are familiar with the Queen song I quoted in my title, then you kind of have an idea of how I've been just trying to just trudge through everything, with my eyes on the prize for right now: Christmas break, on December 17th.

The end of fall term, unfortunately, did not have the ending that I had envisioned it would have. If look back at my post called "Parents' Weekend", you'll see two things: 1. A photo of my father, my mother, and myself at the Mercyhurst football game, and 2. the fact that I mentioned my mother's illness and battle with stage 4 cancer.

She lost that battle, on November 16th.

I got the phone call to rush home on November 15th, and was with family and friends when she passed away.

I missed my final exams while I was home for her funeral. Fall break was slated to begin November 17th anyways, so I stayed home for the Thanksgiving holidays. My professors, as well as the College itself, was incredibly compassionate and kind through this time.

I received sympathy cards and phone calls from several people, including within the History Department, Admissions Office, Campus Ministry, even from the Office of the President of Mercyhurst College.

In the end, I was able to reschedule everything and made up my exams. I managed a B in World Cultures, and an A in Educational Psychology, still waiting for my grades from World War II.

This term, my workload is substantially heavier. I'm taking U.S. History III (1945-Present) with one of my favorite history professors and best friend, so I'm excited for the class. Next is World Politics, which studies how nations interact with each other in the political realm. My third class of the day (that's right, three classes on Mondays and Wednesdays) is Teaching Secondary Social Studies.

Teaching SSS is an interesting class, but there's only 5 people in it! Three of them are graduate students, which makes going to class a little intimidating. But, I'm sure I'll do just fine. The big project of the term is designing an entire unit for a Social Studies class. I picked the American Industrial Revolution as my topic, so I'm excited about making the unit up. Lessons, tests and all.

My fourth and final class, thank goodness, is mercifully on Tuesdays/Thursdays- Buddhism. This I am exceptionally excited for, and I am enjoying it thus far. It's refreshing and intriguing to be exposed to an Eastern religion, opposed to the Catholicism traditions I've been raised in.

Also, as co-chair of the Communications Committee, I'd like to welcome three new Mercyhurst bloggers to the project: Ryan, Brendan, and Angela. Here are their URLs for the blogs, make sure to check them out!

ryansmithmercyhurst.blogspot.com
brendanmercyhurst.blogspot.com
angelamercyhurst.blogspot.com

They're also in the blog roll on the left of the page!
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That's my life, in a snapshot, for now. Hoping to get on here at least once a week to check in. But at the moment, I'm just not holding anything back until December 17th.

That's when I take my car, hit the 90, and head back to Buffalo, to home, to friends, and to my family.