A Day in the Life

Reading Books and Vicious Circles

This month I've been working, recovering from my Grand Canyon trip, hanging out and enjoying the sunny weather. I've started reading East of Eden, which is GREAT so far. I don't know how I hadn't read it yet. Grapes of Wrath has been one of my favorite books for a long time, and I've been meaning to pick up Steinbeck's other great accomplishment and somehow only just now got around to it.

I think one of my favorite things about summer is being able to read books that aren't for school. I read so much during the school year, that it is really hard to pick up a book for fun. It's much easier to do when I don't have six books to read for class (that week).

Eeek, and I just thought I was getting excited to go back to Hopkins.... Maybe I'll have to revise my schedule to avoid a few of those reading intensive classes... (I'm pretty sure my whole schedule is currently reading intensive...ooops).

Next year is a little bit scary because I'll be a senior ... which means I have to figure out what I'm doing once I graduate. Which is hard, because there are so many options, and I'm not exactly good at making quick decisions....

--> I could go to graduate school. Which would be great, if I knew precisely what I want to do once I graduate.

--> I may, however, look into some shorter (1 year or less) graduate and certificate programs in editing, because I am pretty sure that I want to go into the realm of publishing and editing, at least for a little while.  I have an editing internship this summer that I LOVE, so that is pushing things in the right direction.

--> However, I don't HAVE to go to a grad school to go straight into publishing/editing, so I could just start by looking for jobs. Which brings up more questions:

• What type of publishing to I want to go into? Book? Magazine? Newspaper (I don't think I want to do newspaper stuff...so we can cut that out)?
• Where do I want to go? Seattle? Baltimore? New York? 
• And then what type of company, etc...etc...etc...
• And then there is the question of whether I should take time off before working and go on a crazy backpacking adventure... tempting ;)

And you may wonder why I am worrying about this already. Well, now that I have this awesome internship, I have tons of career advice from my friendly co-workers.  Ideas of classes to look into, intern opportunities to look into, different career ideas within publishing etc. Which means that I could try to find an internship to get credit for in either the fall or the spring (or both!) Or try to find more appropriate classes to take at Hopkins....

Hmmm. A lot to think about.

In the mean time, I plan on enjoying the rest of my summer off--and hopefully going on a weeklong backpacking trip. But I am excited to get back into the crazy/hectic/fun swing of things at Hopkins =)

Loving Summer

Summer. I love summer. I don't know how to handle the fact that this is my last "official" summer - with school off and free time... boo!

My sister is a teacher, and is fortunate enough to have some time off during the summer; somehow the thought of a few weeks free from work makes her job sound significantly more appealing.

I always love summertime in Seattle.  And now that it is past July 4th, summer here has officially started. The sun is shining, it's warm but not too hot (yay for mid-seventies), it's super green (the other 9 months of rain), people are out picnicking, boating in the lakes and the Puget Sound, running, biking, shopping at bustling farmers markets and generally enjoying life.

I wrote about this a little bit ago, but this summer I am interning at The Mountaineers Books, a non-profit publishing company based in Seattle. They publish a variety of outdoor and eco-minded books from Guidebooks and Adventure Narratives to cookbooks focused on eating locally and books to raise awareness of environmental issues.

I am interning in the editorial/acquisitions department.  I do a lot of different things at work from researching new authors for projects like new guidebooks to helping proof pages. I also read all of the unsolicited manuscripts that come in--from people who send in their ideas, manuscript pages and work samples, and write up a summary about what I read for the acquisitions editor. Some of the other tasks I've done involve creating an index, contributing to company brainstorms and fact-checking.
I really love the internship and it definitely makes me want to pursue my interest in editing and publishing. The people that I work with are great- really helpful and super interesting so that has been really fun.

Other than working I am enjoying being at home. I've spent a lot of time hanging out with my parents and enjoying being able to cook in our big kitchen and have delicious meals and really really great fresh produce! I cleaned out my room some and got rid of all those pesky science notes I still had from highschool (who knows why...) and a few bags worth of clothing for Goodwill. 

Of course I am also trying to get outside and go playing a lot.

So far I have gone climbing around Washington a few times, on a short road-trip to Smith Rock in Oregon, river-rafting in Eastern Washington, hiking with my sister and family in the Olympic Peninsula and I just returned from river-rafting in the Grand Canyon for a week with my boyfriend and his family. Fun!

Walking to the rocks at Smith. Mike and I took an extra long weekend to make the drive (~6hr) to Oregon to get in some good climbing since it was raining everywhere in Washington. It was a really really fun weekend--and SUNNY!!! However, our theory was to do a lot of hard climbing and then keep it up, and while we improved during our 4 day sojourn, we didn't keep up the climbing so well.... =/ ah well...

  My family took a weekend trip to the Olympic Peninsula where we went on hikes to the beach and up in the mountains! The peninsula is super beautiful--here is a picture of my sister and I on a ten mile hike on the beach!!

I went on a Hike/Climb with Mike and my sister in Washington Pass, and we found both Snow and Mountain Goats!! COOL!!!

  

Just last night I got back from spending a week in the Grand Canyon with Mike his mom and his sister. We went river rafting with a group for five days--it was super fun! We went through HUGE rapids, learned all about the history of the Grand Canyon and the different layers of rock. We also went on a bunch of excursions--we saw Native American Ruins and hiked to a cool waterfall! We played in the surreal blue water of the Little Colorado and rode through it's rapids!  The trip was a ton of fun and we met a bunch of really nice and awesome people. And I managed not to get sunburned .... though I did use almost two whole bottles of SPF 55!!!

After rafting we hiked 9.5 HOT miles UPHILL out of the Grand Canyon. And that was HARD. The day started out super hot. We made pretty good time until we had about 3 miles left and then the hike just got so hard.... Fortunately it started thunderstorming when we had about 2 miles left, so the heat dropped a bunch. Overall the trip was great.

The rest of the summer I am going to continue my internship, hopefully go surfing, mountain biking and get in some more climbing and go on at least one long backpacking trip. I am also trying to go to a handful of concerts this summer ...but I have to work that into my minuscule budget.

Then I get to pack and head back to B'more/Hopkins.

Hope everyone is having a superb summer. Enjoy the sunshine and don't forget the Sunscreen. ;)