farewell

The end is coming near, the year is drawing to a close. People are leaving or have already left. Tonight was the last RISD Christian Body meeting of the year, and it was rather bittersweet. Worship and glorifying God is always a joyous occasion, but when you must say goodbye to loved ones who are graduating and moving far away, and I know that it will be 7 months until I myself can come again into this wonderful community, I can’t help but be really sad about it. I love these people. They are my brothers and sisters, best friends and support systems. You can feel the love of God pouring fourth amoungst them and through them. For those who are leaving, they will not be lost and certainly never forgotten. They will live forever in my heart and in my prayers. I am grateful for those who have decided to stay in Providence after graduation, happy that I will see them again next winter. For those traveling far and wide, I shall miss them dearly, but I must remember that this is not goodbye. I will see them again someday, and I must hold fast to that belief. In the meantime, I know that they will go on to do great and wonderful things, they will make a difference in the world and they will continue to touch people's hearts and people lives as they have touched mine. For all of this I am incredibly thankful.

miss you,
Rachael

written on May 20th

crash

Just as I predicted. I crashed.
After spending night after night working non-stop trying to get all my finals done on time my body just flat out refused to function anymore. My eyes literally could not focus on my work and i was practically falling asleep standing up, or at least I would have been if I had been able to stand up.
I crashed for a good 8 hours and I missed my final for Presentation class. OOPS
theres not much more I can say about that.
But it's not yet over there is still much more to be done and so little time to do it in.
This coming week is going to fly by like crazy, I just know it.
Pray for me. Pray that I get all my stuff packed on time and that I have a place to sleep when i get back after Jeff's graduation. Pray that my job and my housing in Massachusetts all works out splendidly. Only the grace of God can save me now.

loves

Just Keep Swimming

oi ve, last week was rough, and it doesn't look like its about to get any easier from here on out. I had to pull an all-nighter (only my 3rd of all time, which is still pretty good by RISD standards!) on Wednesday-Thursday to get my packaging model done on time, in my opinion, it turned out looking like crap because the methyl-chloride turns the plastic cloudy white when I needed it to be clear. And then in my crit, they complained that I didn't take enough artistic liberties with the design and that it was not creative enough, which i had already known, but when you're making something that could feasibly go into mass-production then there is a lot more you have to think about than how different it looks or creative it is. I did my research. I knew what was doing probably more than most everyone else, but such knowledge can sometimes be too much of a restriction in the design process. Then Thursday night I started on my exploded-view drawings for Presentation the next day. Most people just got blueprints off the internet, traced them and then colored them in, but I took the time to actually take something apart and draw each individual piece by hand which took me all night and the next morning. I was still drawing by the time class started and so I wasn't even close to being done, while everyone else who traced their shapes had finished their presentation boards long before I. I don't know why I do these things to myself. Maybe I wanted to get more out of it. I think I did in terms of learning how to draw exploded views but in terms of sleep, they definitely got more than me. Friday night I finally slept for a normal amount of time, but when I wonke up on Saturday morning I was quite sick and had to cancel all my commitments for the day. I have 1 more week to finish my metals project and I haven't even started yet, I don't even really know what I am going to do. I'm not too worried about CAD, but my next DP project is redesigning a common gardening tool to make it more ergonomic, so I'm trying to research that. As well as starting on my renderings for Presentation on Friday. I still have a cold, though I'm feeling alot better than I did on Saturday, and I can't really talk very well, but I make do with what I've got.
Wish me luck!