awards and prizes

sometimes i get into this attitude where i think that everything i do is substandard. sometimes, this is true. i don't always live up to my potential, though this is something i am constantly trying to improve.

(i just realized that the above statements could have come from anyone. pardon my impersonality for a moment.)

but, every once in awhile, cool things happen to me which show me that, yeah, even though i'm not perfect and even though i know i should quit leaving my big papers until the night before and do my reading during the day instead of my catching up on america's next top model (guilty pleasure alert!), i'm still kind of cool and i still kind of know what i'm doing. 

i guess i'm tooting my own horn a little bit here. but sometimes you just need to do that, you know? it's so easy to get caught up in the things that aren't going perfectly that i think it's healthy to dwell on the good things when they come along. 

last night was the english department awards banquet. you have to be winning something to go--it's not just open to everyone, because it's pretty swanky. three course meal, jazz band, salad and dessert forks. that kind of thing. i got to go because i won, rather unexpectedly, second place in a writing contest. my essay will be published in an online journal and i even received a cash prize. i wish more of my friends could have come to the banquet, too, but when i got home we actually studied and worked. in the same room. not at the library. so, another success story. :) and there were cookies involved--always a plus.

i also found out last week that a paper i submitted to a conference was accepted. yay! i get to take a little mini-vacation to scottsdale in october and present my paper at a regional conference, which, while it isn't the hugest deal, is still something of a big deal.

and, yesterday i bought my ticket to disneyland!!!!! one week to shopping, sunning, and playing at the happiest place on earth.

i still have a million things to do before the semester ends, but i wanted to take some time to remember that not everything is crazy and stressful and depressing. life is still good, after all :)