Well, Dustan has officially decided that he is going to go to grad school in mechanical engineering (specifically controls and robotics). No way I would let him waste all that GRE testing money if he wasn't. He took the GRE at the beginning of this month and did fabulous! He's a smart cookie. The GRE is scored out of 170, and has 2 sections (verbal and quantitative reasoning). Dustan got a 163 on verbal reasoning and a 165 on quantitative reasoning.
October 9, 2015. Then this happened:
Dustan likes to tell people that we got in a fight. That I attacked him with a curling iron. Unfortunately this is true... JUST KIDDING. Intramural flag football happened. Dustan was on defense, he was rushing the quarterback, and just as he was diving to get the flags...the quarterback threw the football and clocked Dustan in the face with an elbow.
Thankfully, I knew he was okay because one of the first things he said was, "Somebody better be documenting this." I've trained him well.
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| Dustan also liked to tell people that see this picture that "the bullet went right out the back!" |
My husband obviously wanted a lot of attention that night. Within just 20 minutes of his injury he had not only an ambulance come to the fields, but a firetruck (because it happened during a BYU sponsored event, they were required to come)! I'm still bummed I didn't document the aid. But after some inspection, the men decided he was fit to be driven to the ER by me. Dustan was immediately admitted, got to lay on a nice hospital bed, and get sewn up.
Dustan got 11 blue stitches on the outside and 5 more on the inside to keep his head together. His mom thinks he needs plastic surgery, but I think he makes a very attractive Frankenstein :)
He got the stitches out just a week later and it already looks fabulous! We'll do our best to keep the scar from turning purple rather than white and we think the way it messes with his forehead wrinkles looks great.
November 8, 2015... It's now been about a month now and it's looking pretty good! Dustan could almost be Harry Potter ;)
Now on to the Praxis... The Praxis is the qualifying exam to get a teaching certificate. It tests a teacher's subject knowledge (not the methods of teaching) in language arts, math, social studies, and science. And this exam doesn't only test a teacher's knowledge of elementary age level material, but of all the knowledge that a teacher should know by achieving a bachelors degree. So basically, this exam is ridiculous. Who in the world should have to study for the history of the world from forever?! Studying was a little frustrating, to say the least. Basically the best shot I had at passing was to play a lot of Trivia Crack.
Good news though, I passed. By a mixture of help from God and likely pure luck, I was able to pass. (Reading/Writing: 167/200, Math: 195/200, Science: 180/200, and Social Studies: 159/200.) Thank goodness too, because that test was not cheap. Now all I have to do is pass my last classes, survive student teaching next semester, graduate, and I'm officially a certified elementary school teacher! Woohoo!
While I was stressing about the Praxis, Dustan has been studying up on and preparing National Fellowships for graduate school. He applied to 2 fellowships (the National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship and the NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship). For the application process, he had to have 3 letters of recommendation for each, write a personal statement, and a novel research proposal (meaning something nobody has ever done before). Because the applications were pretty hefty, I didn't see him too much these past few weeks as all the free time he has was spent preparing his applications. But they are done now and we have our fingers crossed that he gets one. Each fellowship (he can only get one) not only pays for all of graduate school, but also pays $36,000 a year while he is in graduate school. They're very competitive, so it might not work out, but we'll find out in April... such a long wait!
Up next: finishing up my second practicum, Thanksgiving in Seattle, grad school applications, and then Christmas time!
