I am now a master of the universe

According to a fellow blogger and friend. I just had an awesome wicked cool surprise graduation party. I am currently typing while sitting on my husband's lap so the keyboard angle is a bit off. We had Buca food, and hand-made circle decorations, frozen mojito mix, lots of friends and family. I was definitely surprised to see all the people in our house. I was with my Mom and Dad taking my brother to the airport. I was wearing new boots and my feet hurt, but we all walked back and forth between the checkin terminals, and even waited to see if my brother "beeped" when he went through the security detector. Then we had to wave to him. I thought it was a little over the top, but now it all makes sense in the grand scene of things.

I owe a ton of thanks to lots of people for this super duper surprise party. Thank you Mom and Dad for buying Buca for us all and the lovely flower arrangement, thank you Elizabethan for your premium party planning, and decorating skills, thank you Amy for your magnificent chai, thank you Sam and Nat for picking up the Buca food, and Troy of course. I have to admit that I "challenged" him by saying that I didn't know if he could pull off a surprise party- which he felt up to the task to do bless his heart! Thank you all for coming who made it! It was a memorable time for sure, and I LOVE to celebrate!!!

So, by the way, not only was my Master's degree conferred upon me today but more than that happened. I was sitting in my row with other graduates just listening along to the program and watching a few awards getting bestowed on grad school staff. Then it was time for the outstanding thesis award. Rather than announce the winner simply, the faculty decided to create a lot of suspense by reading excerpts from a student's admission statement.

The first line was read and I thought, hmm...that sounded a lot like something I wrote once, like 3 years ago or so. Then the faculty read more stuff, like telling about where this student had traveled and worked in the past. By now my heart was nearly racing out of my chest. I think that is me, I thought. If it is me will I have the strength in my legs to accept the award or will I fall over or something embarassing like that?

Well, it was me. I won the outstanding thesis award. That was the one award given to a student this year, out of the school's largest graduating class. Another student came up to me later to ask my name to "check out" my thesis. I think she wondered how I got the award, and not her, because she is a really scholarly-like person. It felt like she was assessing me, to see if I really could write a good thesis or not. She went on to tell me about her thesis, it was a cross-cultural thesis also (as is mine). All I have to say is that I did work really hard on it, and I definitely appreciate my thesis advisor Roger Ballou who pressed me to do my ultimate best. I figured, I'm writing a thesis, why not write it the absolute best that I can?