April showers bring May flowers!

Post presentation relief!
(I actually walked into her shot of my references!
Hence--strange face)

Somehow, it is almost the end of April. How did we get here? And more curiously, how many pages did I read/write this semester? Considering that I still have more pages to write, plus a presentation for each of my five classes, I cannot even start to think about how much I have done so far. I had a thirty minute one on Tuesday for Dr. Fantuzzo's class and it was going fairly well...at least, until I realized I totally missed half of a slide and had to go back. OOOPS! However, the first one is always the most nerve wrecking.

College Hall. Photo Credit: Félix

We had some beautiful sunny weather (80F; 26C) on Saturday for Spring Fling. What is Spring Fling? It is when the undergrads go crazy and all the grad students hide out in the library and attend to the pile of work we all have. There was music blasting from the frat houses and the campus suddenly seemed to have gained an extra 5,000 people who had barely appeared during winter except to go to-from classes. Kesha also performed. How did I spend my Spring Fling? The library of course, and a short and spontaneous shopping trip. Luckily, I got a new light sweater because it has been SO COLD lately and of course, rainy. But campus has bloomed and it looks beautiful!

Locust Walk on Wednesday and the Penn GSE 100 years sign

So, what is happening with the IEDPers? We are all focused on getting final assignments completed and already have started talking about the assignments that are related to our summer internships. This includes a bit of pre-departure research, since many of us are going to be doing things unrelated to our general areas of interests (like me...ICT...M&E...what???). I am so looking forward to doing some research and already have saved a few articles related to ICT and literacy. We also have to do six blog posts while we are on internship. Since I won't be leaving until the end of June, I get to spend June reading everyone's blog! We also have a final assignment that explains our actual deliverables and such things. Where are people going so far? South Africa, Peru, France, Tajikistan, Kenya, Rwanda, Bangkok, Cambodia, India, DC, NYC, Samoa, Morocco, Costa Rica....Okay that's all I can remember off the top of my head. Some are still getting finalized, but some people are leaving in ONE MONTH. I'm now (or will soon be) focused on finding housing in San José. If anyone has any connections, send me an email! :)

Tomorrow is the Spring Open House for Penn GSE. It is a long day for us at Admissions, but it's always so exciting to meet all the prospective students and to talk about IEDP and GSE. Plus, there's always the (free) food! Let's hope the weather is nice for the campus tours.