Hi y'all!

Smell that? That, my friends, is the smell of freedom. Granted, it's not complete freedom--I do have brand-new English classes to create lesson plans for within these next two weeks, but I have a week off from graduate school! This class I just finished was by far the most demanding, yet the most rewarding. It took me a while to really get the hang of all the jargon and whatnot of research proposal-writing, but five weeks later, I feel like I know much more about my profession, my potential as an educational researcher, and myself personally. August 16 will be the first day of my capstone course. October 10 will be my last day of graduate school!!! I can't believe how quickly this past year and some change have gone by! Of course, while I was in session, I felt like I'd never get to the end, but looking back, I am so incredibly proud and grateful for this opportunity to extend my knowledge and expertise--I feel like I can be a better teacher for my students and really see who they are, what they need, and how important they are to this country's future (hell, to the world's future!). Gotta go finish my research proposal...brb.

Goal accomplished! 47 pages later (that includes cover page and six appendices), I now feel like I can conquer the world, muahahahahaaaaaa!!! But my brain is too tired to do that at the moment. :{

Workouts have been hit-and-miss since my last post, but I did PR on push press (115#), 400m sprint (1:19 from 1:25), and OHS x3 (99# and got 110# x2). Overall, I'm not eating enough and definitely have not been as Paleo as I would like/need to be (I blame grad school!!!!). Sleep deprivation took its toll on quite a few of the doozies, like "Amanda" and the 800m run/150 DUs/50 box jumps/150 DUs/800m hell WOD we did a few weeks ago. Definitely sucked big-time!!! The latest awful WOD was on Wednesday--7 rounds of 5 push presses and 15 unbroken wall ball shots. OMGGGGGG! I used 83# because all the 45 barbells were taken (not that the extra 2# would have made much of a diff--it still sucked!!!). Finished in 13:36 with many of those seconds spent with my hands on my knees. Ack!

Today, we did "Gwen," another sucky girl WOD. 15-12-9 of clean & jerk, but you have to do the sets touch-and-go with as much rest as needed in between sets. I used 85# and couldn't turn my mind off for the second set (12 reps). Stopped after 5 and totally bombed out. But I did the remaining 7 unbroken. (I should have done all 12 over again, but Amber was nice and said to just do the rest of my reps.) Final 4 in the last set took so much outta me!! My mental game is so crappy. Definitely gotta work on it before ACO.

All right, time to eat, watch a movie, and SLEEEEEEP! :D