Classes have effectively been over for almost a month now, with summer sessions starting Monday. Since that time, I've wrapped up my last semester as a full-time student, "graduated" as far as my fraternity is concerned, left one job for another and moved across town. Monday I started a Spanish class.
Samantha and I have moved over to Ridgeview Apartments. It, like Grove, is a one bedroom, single bath. As of a recent rent hike, it is five bucks cheaper than its university counterpart. We did lose phone, cable and Internet in the transaction, but the benefits have far outweighed the losses. There is one item that made the difference to me when we saw it: It has a dishwasher.
I recently took a job with The Union City Messenger, the weekday newspaper one town over from Martin, as a Prepress Technician. My first day began 25 minutes after my last fall final. In some respects, the position is similar to what I was doing my first year with The Pacer. Our department takes internal (three newspaper properties and related publications) and commercial clients files and prepares them for the offset press. It differs in that I have learned more of the technical side of things as opposed to concerning myself with design.
I did, however have a design project fall into my lap. The Union City Greyhounds, a wooden bat league for college baseball players in the off-season, opened their season this week. My task was to put together a package for season preview features, complete with rosters, schedules, park information, etc. It ran Wednesday, and much to my amusement the next day's paper featured a picture of six or so members of the team reading the paper with my page on the back. Talk about marketing.
There is a bit of comfort to be had with a "real" full-time job. I go in every morning at around 6:45 a.m., and leave as soon as the slate is cleared for the afternoon. Depending on the day, it could be anywhere from noon to 9 p.m. or later. We're working into a sense of normalcy, as I grow more accustomed to the quirks of the equipment and schedules. I have a hard time just pushing "Print" on any application now without checking every last setting. Every checkbox, form field and drop-down matters. Film and plates are not cheap.
Then there's that class. It sits right in the middle of my day, so there I have had a bit of an interruption from my regular routine. Summer classes are especially challenging because a 15 plus weeks of material are crammed into five. Going to class for five days solid should help the end result, however. If I can pull a B or higher, I solidify something I thought I would never achieve in college: a 3.0 cumulative GPA.
Long hours and classes. That's about the extent of the month so far. And as of this writing, Revelations hasn't rolled through Martin.