Moving On

I think I wrote that I would not blog again until after my return from the Mts., however, I have a few minutes today, a few thoughts to share, and a few pictures…

Maggan and family (sans Alex) came into town last night. To any of you who do not know Maggan, here is her picture with her sweetheart Ulrik, a friendly and warm man. Oddly enough, Maggan has the distinction of being my only personal connection to High School—we have been friends that long, which really qualifies us as family. Below are pictures of the rest of the gang from this weekend (Really friendly and charming young folks):

Jacob (Maggan’s son) and Robin (Ulrik’s son) with Ulrik. And Victoria (Ulrik’s daughter) and Madde (Victoria’s friend and housemate) with Maggan. Maggan and Ulrik chose this weekend to visit as Victoria has a fotboll match (soccer) tomorrow. Victoria plays on one of the women’s professional leagues in Sweden; I am sorry I will miss the game, but not sorry that I will be in a train rolling North through Norway.

A few minutes ago my co-hort colleagues began the comprehensive exam in Duluth; the very exam I completed yesterday. I can only hope by now everyone is calm and settled into his or her ideas. I am so relieved to be done. Mixed emotions are still swirling, but they are subsiding. I can’t decide if the process was a good one? Yes, spending time this summer digging into study and review was useful, enlightening and even inspiring at times. However, when I consider the product, I am less than inspired. It seems that after a summer of preparations, there is so much more we could have to show for it. Topics to present to the next co-hort, opinion pieces for the newspaper, or even simply essays for our own development--if we could have written an essay with full access to the resources we had assembled over the previous two years and with full support of our APA guidelines, then more energy would have been productively directed. I think a fair amount of energy is derailed into the test anxiety, note preparations, and unofficial APA work. Despite my complaints, I feel lucky to have been granted the flexibility to take the test here and feel that Lynn (one of our instructors) communicated so carefully (and supportively) with me so as to alleviate any logistical concerns.

The test itself? A long day of writing and pondering and reconsidering ideas that I have been considering for weeks…second-guessing and a few inspired changes to the game plan…things were going well; my biggest concern was the Word progran in Swedish and the fact that the Swedish keyboard is different. For example, You need to be careful to avoid: ä, ö, and å. Further, I use too many semicolons and on the Swedish keyboard the semicolon is somewhere in the vicinity of Q, not down by L (and it requires a “Shift key”). Ugh! And with each Word command, I had to think twice… "Spara som” Ok yes, that means “save as.” Some of you (Shannon) know me as a less than gifted hunter and pecker on the keyboard, thus imagine how slowly I was typing! I did think to myself that if this is the worst of my experience, I am doing OK, and then after 7+ hours into the allotted exam time, the computer I was using shut down; seriously, it made a weird noise and shut down. Done. Needless to say I was shocked. I spent the next 30 minutes with two helpful Swedes helping retrieving the documents and getting a different computer to finish working on the exam. Thus the final 10 minutes of actual work time? A panicked scramble…the careful editing I knew I needed was replaced with a 10-minute sprint. I still don’t know if all of my previous changes were saved? I will have to hope that the content is sufficient in case the details are messy…Anyhow, I emerged into the daylight in a stupor; Maggan and Ulrik must have thought I was drugged.

I can’t face the thought of not passing; I’ll trust the effort was good enough and start thinking North.

One last picture, one that Kerry, Amelia and Peter might like…a candy store in Göteborg…you walk around with a big spoon and fill your bag! Jacob (in the picture) made two loops around the place!

I send my love.