New Years Resolution for 2011: Blog more than once a decade.

Today I turned in the final paper of my undergraduate career.  It was a bittersweet experience.  But I have to point out that the paper was pretty cool, because I got to write it about this movie, which is pretty fantastic:

Isn't Leonardo dreamy? 

I wrote it for a phenomenal class I took from Dr. Siegfried.  She is a fantastic teacher, and the sad thing is that I could've had her at least twice in my time here at BYU, except she scared me right out of her Shakespeare class on the first day of Winter semester 2009. (She said every time we were late, our grade dropped a letter. So sue me for chickening out!) She came highly recommended to me, so I bit the bullet and took the class, favoring real learning over actual grades.  It paid off!

This class felt like it really fed my soul.  Here are some interesting things we talked about this semester, for which I am a better person:

• The difference between art and pornography.  (In a Shakespeare and film class, this is a hot topic.  Think Olivia Hussey in Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet. My opinion: pornographic. What artistic purpose does it serve?)
• The importance of education! I don't know how, but this brilliant teacher of mine can store the results of several studies in her head.  Once she told us that they had done studies on marriages, looking at how education affected their longevity.  Turns out, the more education a couple has, the more likely they are to stay together.  Then, they wanted to study whether a single spouses education had a bigger impact on the marriage.  Turns out, when a man's education is higher, it has virtually no positive or negative difference to whether the marriage will last (although I'm sure it is highly beneficial in a lot of other ways).  BUT, in marriages where the woman has a higher education, the marriage is more likely - something like 80% more likely - to survive.  So, HA. I feel completely validated to get a Master's degree and a PhD in the name of family, not a career.
• We have the ability to construct the world we live in.  How we see the world affects what we believe; if we see reasons to be happy, we believe we can be happy no matter what. We construct our lives, not our circumstances. 

Those are just a few of the gems that came from my class this semester.  

On a completely unrelated note, I took a beginning gymnastics class this semester and LOVED it.  I'm also going to brag a little that I can still do back-handsprings, aerials, and I now can do front aerials.  Boo-freakin-yah.

Overall it has been a great semester! I'm pretty sad it's over because I love learning, but I'm trying to be excited about a new chapter ahead.  Watch out real world, here I come! I'm a college graduate.

See you all again in 6 months, because I'm apparently that good at blogging.

P.S. Aren't you proud that I have a) actually posted on my blog, and b) even changed the layout? I am.  On that note, does anyone know how I can get rid of the stupid "Cutest blog on the block" logo that's covering my beautiful profile section?  I have tried and tried to get that off, to no avail.