Is it over yet...?

So here we are... nearing the end of the first semester. I just took my last midterm on Monday and I have my first final on Friday; pirate archaeology! Anyway it's almost over. I miss my friends and my family and (most of all) my dogs. It's a crime that I have to be separated from my little princesses... but soon I will be petting puppy heads and getting puppy kisses. December 22nd I'll be on a plane back to OC for two weeks for x-mas and my son's birthday. We can't wait!

Being here is challenging in ways that I never would have imagined, yet it is also allowing me to make connections with some of the most amazing women. Moms like me who are nothing like me at all. Women of all shapes and shades and backgrounds who each bring something wonderful to the table. Literally to the table, you see there is one friend of mine who opens her table up every now and then. We sit in her kitchen and talk about the kinds of things that need changing in the world. And we make plans to change them. It's not just talk either... most of these women are on their second year here and have already initiated some fantastic programs that will make life easier for the next round of women that attempt to change the lives of themselves and their children by giving this academic thing a try. Things like babysitting co-ops and emergency single parent food banks. Things like a single moms club (eh-hem, I must say that I was involved in that one) and emergency contact phone trees so that we will always have someone to call if we need help with life, or anything.

It's cold tonight. In more ways than just the weather. Life has been good to me, and I've had to watch some people fall down. I think it's getting close to time that I stumble a little myself and I'm terrified. I'm not afraid of total failure, I know better than that... yet something in me thinks that I can't possibly get through it all without some setbacks. So I'm bracing myself for more than winter.

Enough already... I don't want to bring anyone down! I can smell the from scratch veggie soup simmering in the kitchen and my boy is practicing drums. It's good in here... hard, and tiresome, but still good.

Oh mama!

So my mother was here visiting for the weekend which was both wonderful and highly stressful. My mother is one of my best friends, and though our relationship can be a bit (ha!) dysfunctional, overall we get along rather well and at times we actually seem to share a brain. The thing about my mother (grandma,) is that for my son, it means that it's time to act like an unruly, ill mannered, disrespectful, spoiled little brat. Which is exactly what he did for the majority of the weekend visit. Top that with the passive aggressive "woe is me" attitude that my mother, bless her heart, can sometimes have and we've got one exhausted me.

And did I mention I'm working on writing a midterm paper? Right. Not a lot was accomplished this weekend in the way of paper writing. But that's alright. I'm learning how to balance school and family all over again. I did it once when I first went back to community college at Golden West in Huntington Beach. The difference of course, was that in HB I had friends and family all around me, and I was juggling a full time job on top of being a single mom with a full class load. The balance there was different. It had more to do with getting the help I needed to just get through the long days and nights, where as here, in a town hundreds of miles from family, the balancing act involves finding the time & making room. Instead of needing them for tangible things, I don't really need them at all. I still love them and want them around, it's just not quite so need based.

Moving to Berkeley has allowed me to see how much more functional I am when I'm a little further away from the nest, so to speak. I don't fall back into the same codependent routines that I was raised watching. I don't feel like I have to do things any certain way to make other people happy, and in that I am able to do things in ways that allow me to be happier.

But I will miss my mom. Being able to show her around the Cal campus was quite amazing. She's never looked so proud. This is all new for us. This school business. The idea of my graduating and going on to do something that I love instead of something that I have no choice in, well... it's awesome.

But what am I doing here... I still have that paper to finish!

It's not all sunshine and roses here kids...

But it's not the end of the world. There are uphill battles, but they are surmountable. Midterms are mostly over, the stress of being a single mom is almost, but not quite overwhelming, and we are getting through it. One day at a time. One minute at a time. One chapter and homework assignment at a time. I am discovering new fears, new strengths, as well as new friends and new goals. I am not going to leave here the same person that I was when I came here, but it's for the better.

These last few days have been hard. I've let my personal life get in the way of my academic life, which is to be expected, but I'm a little behind because of it. Nothing I can't catch up on, but man o man is it hard to admit that I'm not actually perfect after all. I know that I can't really afford to take time off from studying, but:


sometimes you just have to stab an overgrown squash and give it an angry face to come down from all of the stress.

My son and I did that. With some fellow UC Berkeley moms and their kids. It was good fun that all of us needed.

Hopefully soon I will be able to tell you all about this woman that is what we've come to refer to as our "house mom." I want to ask her if it's okay for me to write about her first, but I'm pretty sure she'll be okay with it. I hope so anyway...

So... I hate to leave you all so soon, but I really must get back to this studying business.

The Last Friday Before the First Midterm...

It seems so daunting. So overwhelmingly different than anything you've ever done before. And at the same time, it's just another test, right? The dreaded midterms! They are officially upon us, or upon me, rather... and if there is any one thing that I can say about them it's that I am just as anxious for them to be over here as I was for them to be over at my former community college.

That being said, I feel very uneasy about the whole business of midterms. It's not that I'm "worried" as much as it's just that I feel totally unprepared. Totally.

Which is sad, a little, because I am that person that makes flash cards and does all of the reading and gets A's on the homework and shows up and participates in every lecture and discussion section and I still feel like I have no idea what to expect.

It doesn't help that I have meetings with two profs next week to discuss the final project for those classes. REALLY? Is it even possible to start discussing final project topics yet? I need to get focused and super quick like!

And, hello...? I have to start planning out my spring semester classes already! It's crazy talk! (Of course the crazier talk is the fact that I'm seriously thinking about taking 3 science classes with labs next semester. Really though, Bio, Paleontology, and the follow up to Bioarchaeology, who wouldn't want that schedule!??)


In other news, I'm meeting people and making friends. I would call it "networking" if I didn't intend on keeping these people in my life for years and years to come. I have some plans for my time here. Good plans that will help people like me in the future. Plans like a single parent student club that will provide emergency cash assistance to struggling single parents through donations & fundraising efforts, and that will hopefully (we have yet to talk to that department head) offer tutoring and mentoring assistance to the school aged children of single parents while they are in school, from education or child development type majors who can use this experience for units while us single parents benefit from having someone to watch/assist our children after school.

It's all sort of complicated, but I have a Psych major friend who is working with me, and together we will make it work. Even if it doesn't end up helping us, we want to put in it place for the next generation of old single moms trying to get through all this crazy red tape.

This is in addition to the time I'm going to volunteer working in the archaeology lab. And also in addition to the time I would like to spend getting dirty at the actual dig site.

These are amazing things that I'm being given the chance to participate in. I'm not sure what I did to deserve all of this, but I sure am happy about all of it!


They want you to think here. Not just in the bathroom stalls in the art building, but all of the time. When I came to Berkeley, not only had I never heard the term "research based school" before, but I never would have been able to tell you what that even meant! Now, I'm involved in actual research projects, at an actual research based school. I am working on things that will be published, not maybe, but definitely. I am involved in projects that I never could have even imagined being involved in just a few months ago. I have plans and ideas for new research projects as well. I love it here.

Can I really do it all...? Who knows! But I'm going to have a damn good time trying to find out :)

Happy Friday!

Oh, hi there!

So this weekend I will be writing about the trabecular microstructure of some rib samples... examining sex and gender related intra-skeletal differences in bone microstructure in theoretical paleopopulations, and comparing those differences to previously observed vertebrae samples.


Two weeks ago I looked at that assignment and thought to myself... "wow, I'm screwed."

Today I look at it and think... "oh that's not so bad."

See? I'm going to be just fine here. I keep wondering if I'm missing something, or if maybe I'm doing something wrong. I have this class on Fridays for new student parent transfers. It's basically a course for credit, that tells you how to balance life and school, how to deal with a bigger workload and more complex material, and it's kind of structured as a support group for parents. Everyone in the class is totally overwhelmed and stressed out, and I'm kinda like... um... YAY everything rules! So I'm thinking, am I just awesome? Or am I delusional? What's going on?

I am seriously the only one in the class that isn't scared of the reading and the papers. After today I was sort of thinking that maybe Golden West is just a really good community college? Because I don't really see that big of a difference in the workload or anything. And everyone else is FREAKING OUT. I mean obviously the professors at Berkeley are AMAZING, but I had some pretty good profs at GWC too. These classes are just more interesting and specialized.

Maybe it's just the combination of my not working and not living with the stress of living with my family that is making me feel like this is all easy peasy. Or maybe it's just that it's the 3rd week and in a couple more weeks I'll want to kill myself. Who knows? Either way... I'm feeling good and I'm excited and I don't think I'll ever get over how rad it is to be here.

It's funny to be wandering around the campus and just thinking to myself... "finally." I mean I really feel comfortable here.

Sometimes I think maybe I'm making too big of a deal out of it in my head, and then I think... who am I kidding, I'm at UC Berkeley! That's totally a big deal. And I love it.

Bedtime... what bedtime?

And so it goes... Another school year has started and along with that comes the dreaded "mommmmy I can't doooooo iiiiiiiit!" His homework. He can do it. He just doesn't really want to. You see, my 9 year old son is a lot like me. We over-complicate. It works well for me in a college situation because it causes me to work harder and produce a better developed end product, but for him in 4th grade it just wastes time and nothing gets done.

And that is how we have arrived at 9:30pm with homework still far, far from completion. So be it.

Right now, this is not the end of the world. I don't have a lot of reading to do since I gave myself a head start before classes began, however come midterms this kind of whining child situation will need to be rectified. Quickly.

That said... I am in love with the Anthropology department of UC Berkeley.


I will be spending a lot of my time in this building during my first semester. The anthropology undergraduate laboratories are located here, in the basement of the Hearst gym. If you ask me, it's a rather fitting little home for the skeletons in Cal's closet so to speak. The labs and offices are hot and dim, and a little spooky. This building also houses the office of the AUA, for those of you not in the know, that would be the Anthropology Undergrad Association. I've decided that I am going to force myself on them, whether they like it or not. I even (*shudder*) offered to help the poor thing who is renovating the website. It also seems that after today's meeting I might be unofficially in charge of organizing kid friendly events for the AUA due to the fact that, well... I have a kid. I'm not sure that I would be able to do all of this if it wasn't for the fact that the majority of these people are in two of my four classes and they are all ridiculously helpful and nice and all of those things that you don't usually expect strangers to be.

So. I have to get through tomorrow and then I will have successfully completed two full weeks as a Cal student. I feel a combination of total impostor and right at home. It's an odd mix.

It really does take a village...

Okay, get this...

Hipmama.com saved my life. It sounds like an exaggeration... and maybe it is, just a little, but the reality of it all is that when I discovered hipmama.com back in 1999 shortly after my son was born, I discovered the most amazing support system that I would ever know. I made the friends that would show me how to not just live as a single mother, but how to thrive as one. I made friends there that would grow with me, as we watched our children grow. Friends that would become my family. Strong women who shared their weak sides with me. Women like me. Girls, given the enormous task of raising the next generation with terrible role models and little more than each other.

When I look back at us then, almost a decade ago, I am so completely and totally proud of what we've become since.

And here I thought I would never possibly find another support system like that. The kind that shared my fears and knew my battles. The kind of support system that had not just blind advice, but real life experiences to draw upon to help get me through the rough spots.

Well, I must be one lucky something or other, because I think I've landed myself right smack in the middle of another group of people that just might turn out to be just as amazing and supportive as my hipmama family. You see, the Transfer Re-Entry Student Parent Center at Cal is already the place on campus where I go if I need a hug. Who can say that about their school? I mean really, I think if everyone had a place on campus where they could just go for a hug, then school would be a lot less stressful for everyone! Who doesn't want a hug every now and then?

Now this is not to say that only my hipmama friends have gotten me here. That's just not true. There are others as well, girls who rocked my world by just letting me hang around their smart ass selves, and by smart ass, I mean highly intelligent. I wondered for a long time why they let me hang around them, my uneducated ass. They convinced me to go to school. Even though I thought for sure I would fail, give up, or otherwise sabotage myself. (Thanks you guys!)

But so far so good. I am enrolled in a student parent transfer class on Friday afternoons and for the first class meeting I had the honor of being the only student parent transfer in the room that wasn't totally stressed out! I think that means I'm doing okay so far.

We'll see what this week holds though... I don't want to get ahead of myself.

Go Bears!

It's one of those things that you never really think will happen to you.

Your mother was a waitress, then a hostess, then a receptionist, then a hostess again. Your grandmother never really branched out, so she was just a waitress her whole life. Your father has been dead for most of your life, as have your other grandparents. The only other family members that you know well also work in the food service industry in some capacity or another, and the only relative, living or dead, who has ever gone to college that you know of, is your uncle. The one who lives in Florida as a chemist. The one who is your mother's younger brother. The one who told you back in 2005, when you decided to go back to community college and start over, that you would never get into UC Berkeley.

He was the first person my mother called when I told her that I had been accepted.

That was a few months ago. Since then I have moved my nine year old son and myself to Albany, CA. Albany being one square mile near Berkeley, where the university family housing is located just 3 miles from the UC campus.

Today was the start of week two of classes. I was expecting at this point in my journey to say that I was stressed out or scared or overwhelmed, but so far... all I can say is that I'm excited. Nothing has ever felt more "right" in my life. I am going to thrive here and I can't wait to get started on the rest of my life :)