an era has ended.

Today, I took my last final of the semester.

...was that the Hallelujah Chorus I just heard?

That makes me a Junior and a half. Or something :)

It's a huge relief to be finished with the semester. Sixteen weeks I sat here on the floor next to the window (it's where I always sit, not sure why) and wondered if I'd make it to the end. Now I wonder where the time went. It's been a rewarding semester for sure.

Of course I'm tired and beyond thrilled to be done. Saying goodbye to a semester is rarely a sad thing. I'm sad to see friends leave and not return to Spokane because they're transfers or just don't love it out here, but I can't say I'm shedding tears over not having to study for exams anymore.

My favorite class this semester was Philosophy. I loved being able to work my brain and think through things that I didn't really get. Reminded me of lots of great conversations with amazing friends from home. I'm not super intellectual (something those same friends could agree with - love y'all!) but I really do like to reason logically though things. It's kind of fun in its own way.

Intercultural Communication comes in as a close second because it's one of the things that I really love to study - interacting with other cultures. Plus, our class has only three people so it's great. Friday mornings with Meagan, Nick and Dr. Repsold are some of my favorite things :) Psalms is another great class. We started the semester off with poetry and then went through the poetry of the Psalms. I really enjoyed that and can look at them differently now. The papers for that class were beyond my usual reasoning for paper writing so I even got to spend some quality time with the library.

Gospel of John was a good class too. I loved our class discussion times (even though it usually made us get out of class about 10 minutes late) and really liked that we each had to study and write about a chapter of the gospel and then present on it - I went last week on John 20 (and I did well on both paper and presentation which is a bit unexpected and so great!).

The last class to be mentioned (yes, I only took five classes/15 credits... I know, I know) is Linguistics. I want to tell you that I loved this class. I want to say that it was practical, that it made sense and I want to be a linguist now. Sadly, I would be lying if I were to tell you this. Linguistics brought my GPA down. I studied the most for this class and got the worst grades. I understood about 25% of the things taught this entire semester, and wanted to quit.

That said, it was a good class. I did learn. I liked the people in my class... there were only six of us! I like the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) and though I can't tell the difference between a fricative and an affricate, I know what sound the symbols make and enjoy writing in that "code". It wasn't all bad, just very hard. Finishing yesterday brought great relief.

The semester had many other wonderful things too: people! Meeting the freshmen, getting to know other people who came in when I did, taking trips, being silly, hanging out, movie nights... those are the things I love best about each semester. I know it's not why I'm here but it's so why I love being here. People really make or break any kind of situation for me (and probably for everyone on the planet) and so I'm really happy for the memories of wonderful things we've done this fall semester.

And so, an era has ended.

Goodbye fall semester 2009!

ps - The picture above was taken yesterday. 5/6 of our linguistics class visited the class next door before finals began and wrote a message to them in IPA, even going so far as to sign our names in it. Since it's not super likely that you can read them, it's Lindsay, Nick, Anastasia, Sarah and Harmony. We were so proud of ourselves.