Insta-Update 5: I'm Graduating! Kind of!

Welcome to the fifth instalment of my monthly insta-updates! In case you missed the last one, this is a time where I update what I’ve been up to by sharing what I’ve been doing on Instagram! I find it fun, and I’ve always hated the boring posts that are just long essays of “what I’ve been up to” from bloggers. So I’m throwing in some pictures to make it more interesting!

I haven’t done a personal update post in a while, I’ve realized. But I’m going to start doing them again to still seem like more of a human on here and less of a college-tip-robot who just continuously pumps out posts but doesn’t actually have a personal life.

These last few months, I finally achieved a major goal of mine with blogging! For me, blogging isn’t just about the numbers, but I do make goals for myself to keep myself accountable to post content and engage in social media and I passed my goals in January!

Then Pinterest screwed up everything and now I’m back to where I was in November. But I’m not bitter at all.

I’ve been trying to be more environmentally conscious in my food choices recently, which has also helped with saving a ton of money. I wrote a post a while ago about how you should pack a lunch and then promptly started buying lunches again because I got busy and lazy. Of course, then I actually started following my own advice and found that I was definitely right. So I’ve been very good for the last two months! Buying this reusable lunchbox also really helped, because it’s super cute and has two different compartments for food and snacks:

Connor and I have decided to try to do more fun activities together instead of just goofing off at home beside each other. So we started going for walks this semester and having dinners together instead of huddled over books or laptops. And he snapped this adorable picture that I love:

Mainly, honestly, life has just been crazy. Dealing with school, still being newlyweds, and figuring out what’s happening next year with work and the like. And honestly I am loving it. Connor and I have such a great life together, I don’t mean to be one of those annoying married couples but seriously–marrying him was the best thing I’ve ever done.

The biggest thing that I’ve been dealing with since September has been my honours thesis, and boy has it been an experience. I feel like that’s everyone response to a giant research project–so many wonderful things came from it and so many stresses came from it, too. But I finally finished, and I got to present my research twice!

Here it is at the University of Ottawa honours thesis conference:

And then this last Friday a friend of mine and I went to the Research Special Interest Group conference for the Ontario Association of Developmental Disabilities. We took lots of pictures with our posters but the lighting wasn’t instagram-able so we also did a photoshoot in the gorgeous gardens they had indoors!

It was fun and nice to have a more lighthearted break from discussing our research halfway through the day. For those of you who are wondering, I studied informational support for women with intellectual and developmental disabilities during pregnancy. So when women with intellectual disabilities become pregnant, what type of information do they know about pregnancy, childbirth, and newborn care? Where do they get their info from? What makes it harder or easier for them to receive accessible information that they can then put into practice? It’s a really interesting topic.

So on the topic of graduation: I’m graduating my undergrad soon! I only have one more course to take and I’m doing that over the summer, then I’ll be finished! But then of course I’m applying for 7 more years minimum so, I’m graduating, but not for a little bit and even then, not really? It’s confusing. Either way, I’m excited!

So that’s what I’ve been up to in my personal life! It’s been a very busy and very stressful semester but now that my thesis is done I really feel like a weight has been lifted. And I’m finally able to really dedicate my time back to this blog, which I have missed so much over the last few weeks! It feels great to be back!