Apartment Hunting

This weekend, my mom, my future roommate, and I all headed up to Minneapolis to look for a place to live. I scheduled about 5 showings in one day, and at the end of the day we had an apartment (although the application is still pending).

We saw one building that we absolutely fell in love with. Open floorplan, granite countertops, lots of light. You get the picture. It was near where we lived last summer, but sadly they didn't have any two bedroom apartments available.

Then, we went to see Symphony place, which, happily for us, did have availability. The building is attached to the skyway, so in January I don't have to go outside to get to work in the morning. There's also a pool, tennis court, large gym, and basketball court onsite. Our 2 bedroom is on the 10th floor, and is about 1100 square feet.

Nice, right? I'm super excited to move in September.

First with Camera, Last in Chicago

This week is my last (for a while) in Chicago, so I decided to take some commemorative photographs with my new Nikon D3100 (a graduation present from my parents). The photos came out great, and I'm so excited to do more photography with a DSLR. :)

Here's a picture of the new library, affectionately named the "Eggenstein".

And some around campus.

Then I tried out the portrait setting on my camera, which is really great. Maybe I have a future as a self-portraiture artist.

Graduation and Real Person-Hood

I know I haven't written on this blog in a while, but I figure that now is as good a time as any to give an update on what's happening in my life.

I just graduated college yesterday, and I’m sort of at a crossroads in my life. I have a job (thankfully) but the job doesn’t start until September. So I’m taking the summer to study for the GRE...which is coming up in about 6 weeks. I want to do well on the test mostly because if I can knock it out of the park I won’t ever have to think about it again. I can just apply to whatever graduate school I decide on (more on that later), and be done with it.

Anyway, what time this summer I don’t spend studying for the GRE, I think I will try to take on projects that will promote self-improvement. (i.e. Learning skills like sewing, reading books I’ve been too busy to read recently, getting caught up on TV shows, etc.) Also, I will probably get roped into trying to help the family pack up things if the move actually happens while I’m at home.

My other goal for this summer is to try and get back in better shape. I think this year especially, I’ve kind of let myself go when it comes to eating well and getting a lot of exercise. I guess some of it was to be expected (3 months in Paris didn’t help that much), but I’d like to lose around 15-20 lbs. this summer, hopefully starting tomorrow. I’m going to try doing 2 a day workouts in the summer, morning and evening when it isn’t too hot, or at least 90 minutes inside at the gym.

It’s so weird that I’m done with college. I could literally never go back to school again, and no one would think that I was a failure. Not saying that I’ll never go back (I already miss student-hood) but I’m just having an insane internal dilemma about what kind of graduate school to choose. The most obvious choice would be business school. I have an economics degree from a premier institution, a good job in a business field, and if I get a decent GRE score, I’ll be a great candidate for top schools like Harvard, MIT, and Stanford. Right now that’s sort of where I’m leaning. But, if I decide I don’t like business, I could either go to economics graduate school or medical school. I have recommendations ready for a post-baccalaureate pre-medical program- and then eventually medical school. The other option is a PhD in economics, which would probably be more difficult, because it would require me to take a lower paying job for a couple of years and take extra classes in order to even apply. But all of that would probably be moot if I end up liking my career.