Tomorrow is the first day of my Ph.D. work at Duke; I can't believe it's here already! I'm about as ready as I can be- I bought the supplies I need and the textbooks the store had in stock. Only one class had books at the store, and I've already spent $265 on books. For ONE class. Boooooo, no wonder college students are poor! And my first stipend check won't be coming in until the beginning of October! Looks like there will be a lot of Ramen noodles in my future...
I only have two classes tomorrow, but I think we will probably dive right in. As a grad student, we only have classes for 3 months, since our classes end before the undergrad classes (my last day is November 25) so I've got 12 weeks to learn a LOT of things. Looking over the syllabus I have for one of my classes, we spend about one week per topic, and that's a little intimidating. All of my classes meet twice a week (except the lab and seminar), so that's like 2 classes per topic... and I'm hoping I will be able to keep up! But I keep telling myself that if I could make it through some of the hellish semesters I had at NCSU with 7 or 8 engineering classes, that I can handle 4 grad classes. We'll see how that theory pans out...
Yesterday Keegan and I met his priest, and I really like him; he's an NCSU alum, and when he greeted us and we filled out our info sheets, he told me that his grandparents were Presbyterians. I thought that was a pretty tactful way to make me feel less uncomfortable. He showed us around the church and answered the few questions we had at this point. Then we went to Duke for me to buy the books, bought a couch (yay! somewhere to sit!), AND went to a wedding consultation at Edible Art.
Edible Art is a store we're looking at for our cake, and they were so helpful there! We got to sample 4 types of cakes and several different fillings to help us choose what we might like, and then we described what we'd like the cake to look like, and we were able to get some price estimates. We have another consultation on September 7 with another bakery, then we'll decide which to use, but I know we both found what we were looking for at Edible Art. I'm a lemon person and Keegan's a chocolate person, and they were definitely able to meet those tastes! Mmmmm :-D
I think the next step of the wedding planning will be to meet with some florists and hopefully I can start looking at dresses in early October. Then there's ordering invitations, programs, picking a menu, bridesmaid dresses, finding a photographer, etc. But it'll get there eventually. I have a feeling a lot of this planning will be done over my Christmas break :-)
Well, that's all for now. I'll try to update again relatively soon about how all of my classes are going.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Life in Durham
I'm moved in to my townhouse in Durham now, and I really like it! There's still a considerable amount of unpacking to be done, but that's okay. It sort of looks like a home now, I mainly just need a couch and a desk. I found a desk I really like at Office Max that is a nice L desk that fits in a corner with two separate workspaces (which is what I really want), so once I start having a reliable income, I'll venture out to buy it.
I've started some minor decorating too; it's nice to have room to spread out all of my important things and trinkets where I can see them. Speaking of trinkets, Cait brought me a really neat coffee pot from Ethiopia; it's made from clay so they can grind up their coffee, put it in the pot, and then put the pot right on the hot coals. She also brought me a beautiful scarf and gave me some of her money from the countries she visited. I like to collect coins, and considering that I haven't really visited many countries, I've got a lot of foreign money! I still need to print a lot of the photos I've taken in Ecuador, at the beach, etc, to use for decorations. I also have a few small paintings I bought in Ecuador that need frames. So maybe by the time it's time to move into a house when I graduate, I'll be finished unpacking and decorating :-P
I haven't made a lot of progress on my wedding planning, but I have started looking at photos of wedding cakes to get a general idea of what I want. I'm going to start looking at photographers also, but I'm not sure how to know that I'm getting a good deal; I know they are expensive. I don't really have much money to spend on this wedding, so I hope I can find something I can afford. On Saturday I'm going to visit the hall where our reception will be held to see what it looks like all dressed up; it's so exciting! I will also set up a time to sample the menu of snacks and things we could choose to have at our reception. Our meeting with the priest has also been set up, so I suppose I am making a little progress :-)
Yesterday my old senior design team met with the Office of Technology Transfer at NCSU to discuss starting a patent application for our design project, that's really exciting too! They're going to start contacting companies we listed as possible competitors to see if they would be interested in licensing our idea. Then we could decide to file for a patent. Looks like my plan of just living off royalties from my inventions might actually happen ;-) Then again, maybe not...
Orientation starts next week; it's hard to believe classes are about to start again. But I'm excited because now all the classes I take are ones that I want to take and are actually in my areas of interest.
I'll try to keep this updated with wedding details as I go, but here is a link to our Knot website:
Alice and Keegan
I've started some minor decorating too; it's nice to have room to spread out all of my important things and trinkets where I can see them. Speaking of trinkets, Cait brought me a really neat coffee pot from Ethiopia; it's made from clay so they can grind up their coffee, put it in the pot, and then put the pot right on the hot coals. She also brought me a beautiful scarf and gave me some of her money from the countries she visited. I like to collect coins, and considering that I haven't really visited many countries, I've got a lot of foreign money! I still need to print a lot of the photos I've taken in Ecuador, at the beach, etc, to use for decorations. I also have a few small paintings I bought in Ecuador that need frames. So maybe by the time it's time to move into a house when I graduate, I'll be finished unpacking and decorating :-P
I haven't made a lot of progress on my wedding planning, but I have started looking at photos of wedding cakes to get a general idea of what I want. I'm going to start looking at photographers also, but I'm not sure how to know that I'm getting a good deal; I know they are expensive. I don't really have much money to spend on this wedding, so I hope I can find something I can afford. On Saturday I'm going to visit the hall where our reception will be held to see what it looks like all dressed up; it's so exciting! I will also set up a time to sample the menu of snacks and things we could choose to have at our reception. Our meeting with the priest has also been set up, so I suppose I am making a little progress :-)
Yesterday my old senior design team met with the Office of Technology Transfer at NCSU to discuss starting a patent application for our design project, that's really exciting too! They're going to start contacting companies we listed as possible competitors to see if they would be interested in licensing our idea. Then we could decide to file for a patent. Looks like my plan of just living off royalties from my inventions might actually happen ;-) Then again, maybe not...
Orientation starts next week; it's hard to believe classes are about to start again. But I'm excited because now all the classes I take are ones that I want to take and are actually in my areas of interest.
I'll try to keep this updated with wedding details as I go, but here is a link to our Knot website:
Alice and Keegan
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