All I’ve been able to do lately is fantasize about the summer. I have three more weeks of class, then a week of final exams. The weather has officially turned beautiful, and there are lovely flowers everywhere. I won’t be taking classes or doing research, and I have an extra month of summer since UW starts much later than Purdue. Long story short, I’m afflicted with horrible senioritis and I’m ready to go frolic outside, travel, and play video games until my brain oozes out.

Since I cannot yet do any of these things, I’m doing the next best thing: blogging about what I’m goign to do. Here are my summer plans so far:

• May 7, 5:00 pm: Finish last final exam.
• May 7, 5:01 pm: Senior week! Aka, constant state of partying, drunkeness, and debauchery until the 15th
• May 16: Graduation! I’ll be all grown up! *sentimental tears*
• Late May: Trip to DISNEY WORLD, YEEEAAAHHHH! Seriously, I’m way too excited about this. The only time I’ve been to Disney World was in 5th grade, which was the perfect age to not really enjoy it – too old to love the people in suits, too young to love the rides. I’m psyched to go with my close friends and not just my parents. We really wanted to go to the Harry Potter theme park, but it’s not going to be open in time. So disappointed.
• June 5: Friend’s wedding!
• June 25 – 29: Evolution Conference in Portland, Oregon! I’ll be (hopefully, not official yet) presenting a talk on my most recent research project. Which means I’ll be shitting my pants, since it’s a huge conference. My whole lab is going, along with other grad students we know from other labs, so it should be a ton of fun.
• July 13: Play “How Can I Fit All My Belongings into My Car” Tetris (aka, moving out of West Lafayette).
• July 23 – 25: Secular Student Alliance Conference in Columbus, Ohio! This was a blast last year. I hope I can take the new set of officers along with me. And even better, I hope I’ll be a new SSA board member by then, but that depends on how the elections go (vote for me!).
• July 31: BLOGATHON! Oh hell yes I’m doing this again. Except this time I’ll be living in my parents’ house, and they’ll witness my insane displays of sleep deprivation. Hopefully I can break the $500 mark this time.
• August: Uh, have fun. I have nothing planned, weeee.
• Early to mid September: Make the 34 hour drive across the country to Seattle, Washington. This…will be interesting.

This may seem like a lot to a sane human being, but as someone who’s stressed out when she’s not overbooked, it’s a relaxing summer. I also have a lot of unscheduled things I’d like to accomplish:

• Finish up my current research projects and get them submitted to nice journals. I’d preferably like to do this before I give my advisor a heart attack.
• Lose at least ten pounds, maybe fifteen. Before anyone yells at me about how I shouldn’t care about my weight and that I look fine, know that I’m doing this for me. I’ve gained weight throughout undergrad, and I’d like to thin back down. I want to be able to look at photos of me without lamenting over how fat my face looks. More importantly, trying to lose weight will encourage me to start exercising and eating better, which are definitely good habits to have. I guess I see it that if I don’t get healthy at this point in my life, I’m doomed for the future. Of course, with my luck, I’ll probably lose all the weight from my boobs first (let’s hope not).
• Read a lot. I still have books I bought two years ago that I haven’t touched.
• Frantically catch up on modern research in human population genetics so I don’t feel like a complete dumbass when I go to grad school. Feeling like somewhat of dumbass is unavoidable.
• Finish writing a book. I have three books in progress: one is a quarter done, one needs seriously revamping but I don’t want to throw it away, and one is just an idea but a timely one. I’m notoriously bad for starting a writing project and not finishing it, mainly because I used to feel no one would want to read it. Now that I’ve been blogging and realize people do like what I write, I’ve been finding a lot more motivation. I will get a book published, goddamnit!
• Play video games I’ve been neglecting. Hey, I need to enjoy the simple things in life too.

Alright, after writing that up, I just wish it was summer even more! Four more weeks…must…survive…