Sexy, Innocent Child-Woman

One down, three more to go

Tonight is one of the rare moments when I can see light at the end of the tunnel, as far as my life in grad school is concerned.

I just got done with one final project about an hour ago. My groupmates (in my Philanthropy class) and I did our final presentation tonight about the foundation we did research on the entire semester. We examined different programs or aspects of the foundation (whatever we covered in our papers) and the foundation's ability to deliver change for our paper, in the format of a trial. It was tough putting all our stuff together, and we ended up revising our slides till the last minute, but in the end, we pulled it off. I have to say, we did a good job in our presentation. Career to death talaga. Hehe =) I was a bit nervous because I didn't I knew my stuff that much, and remembering my sucky paper just made things worse. I also didn't get to prepare for my part that much because I bummed around (due to burnout)--all weekend and worked on my statistics assignment till 4AM today. I also had to do a guest lecture on the Philippines for a class taught by Mark, a student in the Ph.D. program in sociology who has become my new friend, this morning, and I didn't get back to campus till 130PM or so. I had to work, so I didn't get to organize my section till 4PM. I'm also pretty shy about speaking in front of a group. I had offered to defend the foundation and I felt I had a weak case, compared to my groupmates who were more critical about it.

Surprise, surprise. I, as well as my groupmates, ended up winging it. Since I'm usually quiet, shy, and soft-spoken in class (and in general, haha), I think I was just as surprised as my classmates to find out that I can actually argue well in public and get other people to consider my side, or even agree with me. One of my groupmates ended up building on my case and she prefaced her remarks by saying, "To add to what my good defense colleage has said...yada yada..." Hehe, natawa naman ako. With the exception of one groupmate who was assigned to be the devil's advocate, my groupmates ended up alluding to what I had said throughout the presentation, so we pulled off a convincing defense. I also came up with good facts and "objections" on spur of the moment, which surprised my groupmates, who later told me they would never have thought of the points I raised. The guy who did the "prosecution" piece later commented about how he was caught off-guard by the way I challenged him. My professor and our other classmates, who also got into the trial we had staged, told us that we did a good job, overall, and they liked our style. Hehe, God is good talaga. Oh, by the way, my professor hinted that she took the side of the defense.

I'm not gonna tell my parents or my ate about the group presentation because if they find out about my sudden self-realization about my argumentative skills--the little of it that I have--they might use it as a reason to bug me about law school for the nth time. I can imagine what my dad and older sister would say to me, given their "career-centric" tendencies. Haha =)

One of our groupmates was absent tonight and we never heard from her the entire weekend, either. I wonder what happened to her, and I hope she's okay. She was always really detached from the group. She never sent us her slides for the PowerPoint presentation, and until tonight, we were wondering what the heck she would cover if she hadn't sent us her part of the presentation. But then we figured out she wouldn't come to class at all. We were right. We just had to tell our professor we hadn't heard from her.

I'm just so glad the presentation is over. I'm getting my paper back next week, and I don't want to worry about it. For now, I have three more finals to work on--my stats assignment, my thesis (whatever comes out of it), and my project in the workshop I'm taking on Designing a Syllabus or something--and another guest lecture (on EDSA Dos) to do for my roommate's class, and I'm done for this sem.

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I'm turning 25 on Sunday and I'm still in denial about it. Haven't even figured out what to do for my birthday.

found herself @ 8:49 PM