I survived my first graduate level class! I’ve heard from several people who are nearly finished with the program say that this was most difficult course yet. I managed to get A’s on all my assignments and pull off a 98.7% as my final grade. How did I do this even though I couldn’t comprehend most of the statistics half of the course? Here’s the glorious thing about grad school… there are no tests! So even though every lecture about t-tests and multivariate regression went right over my head, I was able to ace my homework with the help of Google, study groups, and a smart boyfriend. I guess if you don’t know all the answers, the next best thing is to know how to find the answers.

My next two classes started this week which sucks. There was no break between semesters. One class is online and the other is one night a week with online discussion assignments. I still haven’t gotten any of my books. I’m mad that I need five expensive books for one class! I think I still have a month or two of free 2-day shipping left from an Amazon offer I used in January, so I should be ok if I order my books by the end of the week.

I’m a little worried about managing two classes at once, but since both are required courses I’m taking them both now so I don’t get screwed over in the future if the classes aren’t offered for a while or if they are offered at the same time as two other courses I need to take (I think I can only take a maximum of courses per semester). Taking both classes now will protect me from uncertainty and a possible delayed graduation, but it will hit me financially. I get four free credits for every summer session, and my two classes total six credits. The remaining two credits will cost about $590 which isn’t too bad for a college course I guess.

I’m also worried about having the energy to do two sets of assignments. I’m lucky to have an understanding boss that told me off the record last week that I should feel free to work on homework during work hours if I need to (I seriously have the best boss ever!), but it’s exhausting sometimes. I don’t know how people with kids do it. Or how people with kids manage to do anything! I have four cats and work and class, and it seems impossible to complete the simple task of decluttering my apartment (I’ve been trying for a month). I think I need to learn to manage my time better.

Our last class of the semester was a week ago. I still have a homework assignment to finish up and a twenty page paper that’s due a week from today. It’s a research proposal, and I’ve read and highlight and transcribed notes for all the studies (like 18 of them!!) I’m going to use for the literature review portion of the paper (about half of it). I did a research proposal my senior year of undergrad about a similar topic, so I’m not really freaking out about whether I’m doing the assignment correctly.

So far, I’ve gotten 100% on many of our big assignments (miraculously including that impossible midterm!), so although I think my professor’s teaching skills are pretty crappy, I can’t really complain about his grading.

I have all my classes scheduled for the rest of the year. I’m taking two required core classes and one elective (grant writing) in the summer, and two more required core classes in the fall. After finals in December, I should have the program 50% completed. Next year, I’ll have a few more required courses to take, but it will mostly be electives (which are usually the more fun and interesting ones).

I’m really glad I decided to only take one class this semester though. One of the best students in the class, who is almost finished with the program, told me that if this was her first class she probably wouldn’t have continued with the program. So if this is as bad as it gets, I think I’ll be ok. I’m looking forward to classes that are way more interesting than boring statistics and research methods. Wait, boring isn’t the right word for statistics. More like so incomprehensible that my brain shuts down…

Listening to summer hits of the 90s and old mix CDs
Watching The Artist, The Great Gatsby (1974 version)
Reading tons of studies on the relationship of early television viewing and language development for my paper
Hoping I get an A in my class!
Trying to work out more
Cooking lots of kale :9
Writing answers to statistics homework
Loving my new furniture
Buying IKEA stuff!
Wanting my summer schedule to begin
Needing to go back to IKEA
Making lots and lots of notes
Eating really messy burritos
Drinking water
Wearing lighter hair
Goal for next month clean!

I have a lot of shit in my bathroom. A year or two ago, I saw the IKEA spice shelf on Pinterest and thought it would be perfect to store my makeup and lotions. Sadly, this shelf isn’t sold online, and I couldn’t find a similar one anywhere. By the time I finally got to IKEA in November, they were completely out of stock.

Source: stickybabychronicles.blogspot.com via Jenny on Pinterest

Instead, I had to use this depressing little Target shelf that wasn’t holding up too well after a few months.

When we went to IKEA last month, I looked for the spice racks again. They didn’t have any this time either, but in their place was a pile of their new picture ledges. Hey, that would work, too!

It was only $10, and we could probably use a second one. I picked the natural colour because it matches the cabinet under the sink; it’s not totally random!

I also want to put a longer picture ledge above the bed, but I think it will be much cheaper if we DIY that one.

We went to Cincinnati this weekend and bought lots of stuff for the apartment! For almost two and half years, our bedroom has been a hodgepodge of furniture that’s not my style so we bought a whole new bedroom set. We’ve visited several furniture stores in our town over the past few month, but we couldn’t find anything we liked as much as the furniture we saw at Ikea in November.

Here’s what we came home with.

The biggest thing on our list was a bed. We briefly had a plain metal bed frame with wheels on the bottom (yuck), but our cats burrowed up into the box spring which was weird. The metal was also super squeaky, so we’ve just had our box spring and mattress on the floor for most of the time we’ve been living in our apartment. But now we have a bed!!

We wanted a sleek bed that wasn’t super high or super low. A unique headboard and the ability to have drawers underneath was a plus. I looked at the beds on Ikea’s website over and over last week, and we narrowed it down to three beds: the low Malm, the high Malm with two of these super expensive drawers, and the Oppdal which came with drawers but the awesome slanted storage headboard had to be purchased separately.

Price was also a big factor. The low Malm was the cheapest at $149, but it was reaaallly low (too low for storage underneath) and a bit plain looking in person. The high Malm with two drawers was $299 which seemed like a huge jump just to lift up the bed and put some drawers under it. The Oppdal was the most expensive at $379. It also took up quite a bit more space due to the thick headboard.

We were in the bed section weighing the pros and cons when I saw a bed that I didn’t recognize from the website. It was the Hopen, and it was being discontinued. It came with a unique angled headboard, the body was sleek like the Malms and didn’t take up much more room, it wasn’t too high or too low, and you could buy wooden drawers to put under it for $30. It seemed to combine all the features we liked of the other beds. Also, it had the best price! Last year’s price was $249, but we got it for $139! They only had one colour left, and it was the one we wanted. I guess you could say this bed was even more than we were Hopen for. Haha. Sorry.

I tucked in the comforter to show the ledge of the bed frame. This photo makes me realize that the Oppdal and Malm with drawers wouldn’t have worked out since the drawers extend the whole length of the bed. Having a night stand next to the bed would have made one of the drawers unusable!

Now that I’ve written five paragraphs about the bed, I’ll be briefer about the other stuff we got.

I’ve been wanting an Expedit unit for yeeaaars. I have a smaller, less cool version from Target in the office, but for the bedroom I wanted the real deal. Plus, Ikea is the only place I’ve seen with a non-square version, and that’s what we needed. We sat it horizontally under our big framed picture.

Big dresser!

Little dresser! Or as we call it, a nightstand.

Metal hatrack for the downstairs closet.

The Poang chair! I love this thing! You picked out the color frame you wanted (we got this medium brown to match the living room) and then picked out your cushion. This isn’t the cushion we got, although I would have preferred it. The cushions ranged from $29 to $89 (or you can be crazy and get the $189 sheepskin cover). We got one of the cheap $29 off-white ones for now. The frame itself was $40 which surprised me. I figured a unique chair like this would be way more expensive.

This is something I didn’t even know I needed. This shelving unit is really tall and was only $15, so it was hard to pass up. Even though it’s metal, I decided to put it in the corner of the kitchen. It doesn’t look  galvanized in person.

I’m really excited about this picture ledge. We’re putting it on the bathroom wall to hold my makeup. It will replace a janky little Target shelf that sucks at its job.

(Totally not my house.)

I looked at this, looked at the price and said, “Ok, I need this.” This lamp is a great size and at $25 it was much less expensive than I thought it would be. Everyone seems to think it looks like a lotus, but all I see is Pineco.

No? Just me?

This shelfy dude for the office.

A little outdoor table for the balcony. I couldn’t find it on the website, but I think it was $15 or $20, and it’s a pretty nice size. There was also an inexpensive chair I wanted to go with it, but I couldn’t find it in the store.

Aaaaand the first thing I saw in the whole store. This $12 grey throw :)

Ikea sells glass tops for some of their dressers, and that’s definitely something I wanted to invest in so the cats don’t scratch the wood when they jump on the furniture. We bought the optional glass top for the nightstand because it was fairly small and could fit in the cab of the truck. I wanted to get the glass top for the larger dresser as well, but I wasn’t too sure if it would survive four hours in the back of the truck. I might go back next month with my grandma and her minivan to pick it up. They don’t offer glass tops for the expedit, so I’ll have to get some custom cut. I just hope it’s not too expensive.

Before taxes, we spent $725 which is less than a lot solid wood beds I’ve seen. I know this furniture won’t last decades, but I don’t care for it to. I’m really happy with my purchases, and I’ll post some before and after photos once I rearrange my rooms.