All posts by Becca

Hello December!

Whoo! November just flew by for me! I can’t believe it’s already December — but I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to see this beautiful month.

I wrote a 53,000 word novel last month for NaNoWriMo and am, therefore, a winner. Woop! I knew I could do it, though it was a bit more difficult this year finding time to write with college. It was good to write again. :) I also really love my novel – I haven’t completely finished it yet. I probably have another 10,000 words to write until “The End” but at least I’ve got a huge start! Last year I also won, but I’ve not touched my novel since. This year, I’m pretty excited about editing and revising, and perhaps publishing in the future…? We’ll see how revision goes. :)

If you’d like to learn a little about my novel, you can head here for an excerpt, summary, and my stats through the month of November.

Next week is finals week and I have a million and two things to complete between now and then. :/ But it’s okay! I’m a little stressed, but I know that I can do it and besides… there’s only four more weeks until CHRISTMAS! So I will rant at a later date about my dumb French professor. :)

Last week-end, me and Alysha decorated our dorm room and we got… a bit creative. :)

I am now in full Christmas spirit and I can’t wait for my month-and-a-half long break! The more the year goes on, the more I start to love college. Kinda crazy from my attitude when I first began, huh.

OH MY GOSH. Yesterday I had an interview to work in the Psychology Department as an administrative clerk, and I for the life of me had no idea how the interview went. I was just checking my student email and I got an e-mail saying I got the job! WOOOOT! Not sure about the details yet or my pay but man, today’s been a good day! Plus I’ve been pretty stressed about finances, so this is a huge relief. The only bummer is that I’m thinking about minoring in psychology, and if I go through with that, I will have to quit after a semester or so because you can’t be a major/minor and work there (because you make copies of tests, etc.). But that’s okay, at least I have a job for next semester! :D

Not a whole lot else happened in November. I got a week long break for Thanksgiving which was really good for me. I’d been really missing my family and my dog, so it was good to be home for a while and eat good food. :) My mom’s side of the family all came over for Thanksgiving day and we bought a 22lb turkey. :P Yum! That night I went and saw Skyfall, the new James Bond movie, with Andrew and his family. I loved it. I’m a huge James Bond Daniel Craig fan an it was probably my favorite Bond movie yet. (Not sure though, I’d need to watch Casino Royale again.)

And as always, I went Black Friday shopping with my mom. We go around 10AM so all the crazies are gone by then. :P I really just got some DVDs for myself and a few other gifts for friends/family for Christmas. (Can’t be specific because Andrew tends to lurk on here. :P)

I signed up for classes for next semester, which is kind of exciting and kind of not. I’m taking 14 credit hours, so it won’t be a real difficult load and I’m taking Statistics, Environmental Science Lecture and Lab (yuck), Economics, and Theatre Appreciation (also yuck). Not bad, not bad.

All in all, it’s been a pretty good month. :)

9 Comments Academia - Family & Friends - Work

Stop Trying to Take My Money!

It’s only forty minutes away from the start of literary abandon, the start of late nights and lots of coffee, the start of a new story beginning to unfold, the start of the timer slowly ticking away until the end of the month, and the start of a shooting word count. Only forty minutes away from the start of NaNoWriMo.

I may be one for a bit of dramatics, but really, I’m stoked for this upcoming month of November. I think I have a great plot that I’ve managed to somewhat outline and even managed to convince one of my friends to at least attempt this with me! Which is pretty big, because I’ve never done NaNo with literally anyone I knew. (Yes, I’m shooting daggers at some of you for not participating! :P)

I’m not sure how I’m going to fit NaNo in with college and extracurricular activities, but I’m just going to make time. It will be great in the end to see another novel that I’ve pushed out. :D

In other, much less exciting news, a few days ago I received an e-mail saying that my student account is negative $3,900 and a hold will placed upon it. My heart literally stopped. I was freaking out because at the beginning of the year we paid off the remainder of my bill that scholarships and loans didn’t cover so I wouldn’t have to worry about that during the year.

I should’ve know better.

So I’m looking over my statements, calculator in hand, trying to figure out what in the heck went wrong. Turns out UMKC dropped one of my scholarships and two of my loans. So I headed over to the Administrative building to find out why. The loans turned out to be a technical mistake. Something that I filled out didn’t go through so I just had to complete it again – kind of annoying but it was an easy fix. My scholarship, however, I wasn’t supposed to receive in the first place.

At the beginning of the semester, they gave me two specific scholarships (among others), but apparently you can only receive one or the other. So they realized their error during the semester and took it off, with no warning or e-mail or anything. Which would have been nice. “Oh yeah, sorry to tell you but that $2,500 scholarship we said we’d give you, we’re not giving you anymore!”

To say the least, I’m pretty upset about it. I’m just pissed that they weren’t even slightly sorry about it. It’s not a big deal about paying it, my parents will pay it and then I’ll pay them back, but I’ve just had so many administrative problems with UMKC in the first 4 months of school that I’m ready to go crazy.

And now I need to apply for some competetive scholarships because I’m not receiving as much financial aid as I thought. :( Money sucks!

The last month, except for that, has been rather unexciting. As the semester goes on I keep adding to my list of why I hate my French professor. I started planning out my classes for next semester, too, so that’s kind of exciting and kind of not, because half of my courses will be science courses, which I’m not a fan of. But I’ll just push through.

I hope you all had a wonderful day of stuffing your face with candy! I didn’t do anything for Halloween just because of the amount of homework I had and perhaps because NaNoWriMo is tomorrow. :P It’s never too late to join if you want to (which you totally do!)!

10 Comments Academia - Reading