Just. Happy.

Finals are over! Yay!

Let me see...Tuesday was a really long day. I hardly slept and then I had 6 hours of exams spread over 12 hours. The last one was Signals & Systems, which ended up being a pretty decent test. When I first sat down I was really nervous and went completely blank...I started working through it though, and felt really good about it by the time it was over. Not the same story with my CS test from Monday...yeah. That was a bad, bad, experience in spite of the fact that the CS department gives us chocolate halfway through. Blergh. It was awful. I wasted time studying important things from the class only to show up and have lots of...hard..."not so much stressed" things from class on the test. Blah. At any rate, everything was done quickly, so I'm not complaining too much.

Yesterday was a great day. I slept in (which for me is to about 9am) and then just...killed time...for awhile. I ran to campus really quickly (and forgot half the things I needed to do there) but had a good meeting with the staff advisor for one of the groups I'm involved with. I can't get over how wonderful all of CMU's...people...are. We were trying to come up with a speaker for our spring dinner and I get to send some e-mails to corporations begging. She also gave me some really good leadership advice, and we talked about some other stuff. It's funny how much different I feel about CMU this year after actually spending more time on campus and around people in the department compared to freshman and sophomore year. It's really starting to feel like I have a place here, and I'm not just another anonymous posing face. I mean, it took me forever to feel like I even deserved to be at CMU, much less be someone that had any kind of familiarity with the place and the department...

Along those lines, Laura and I are rooming together again next year. Yesterday it hit me that next year is going to be the 4th year I've been here, and the thought of staying with some random person and not being in a comfortable place filled with people I know and like just seemed...depressing. Which probably sounds like a somewhat obvious statement to most people (makes sense to want to be around friends) but I take so long to warm up and open up to people that for me to actually have strong feelings about it kind of surprised me. In a good way. I have the best friends in the world. Seriously. *Insert Hallmark sappy sh*t here.*

I also went book shopping yesterday - partly for myself, partly to have Chirstmas with the roomies + another friend. I picked up the new Thomas Harris book (I've got this odd fascination with the Hannibal series, what can I say...) and couple other more serious books. Then I got books from Laura and Chrstina! I'm so excited to have things to READ over break. It's going to be the first Christmas break in college ever that I'm not spending almost completely with someone else (the way I did with Charles and then Tom)...and I am really looking forward to having the time to myself to read, and sleep, and write, and think, and spend time with my family. Katie also got me this 3-D puzzle thing that's a sphere. It's going to be a lot of fun to build. I might see if my Mom wants to do it with me.

Break is going to completely rock. I'm looking forward to seeing so many people, and just enjoying life for awhile. Really, I haven't had this much freedom since ....ever....because before college there was always Charles, and then summers I've had work, and last year there was Tom...so....yeah. Wow. I don't think anything could put me in a bad mood right now.