Back to the Beginning

Our first day out with our tour guide.

 With my studies out of the way, a little bit of back-blogging is in order. ;)  As most of you know, Emily and I were in the States from the end of June through mid-July.  Angelines and a friend's daughter were there for the first two weeks and then Em and I were on our own for about ten days.

Our trip was mostly family oriented.  Having a baby means there are a lot of people who want to see "us" (really her).  Not that I mind.  I am of course, the number one fan of showing off my most adorable daughter. :)

However, we did begin our trip with some (mostly) pure tourism--Philadelphia.  I say "mostly" because, of course, although Independance Hall and the Liberty Bell are alluring attractions, my dear friend, Miriam is, much more so.  Our plan was to visit Miss M. and make a more gradual adjustment to the time difference.  As it turns out, thinking that a stop on the East Coast would lessen our jet-lag was a huge error; we managed to extend it by at least three or four days.  Travelling with a baby means jet-lag like no other.  Adults will lie in bed in a half-sleep until a semi-decent hour to get up...but Emily was up and babbling at 8am Spain time: 3:00am Eastern Standard.

All of this means we ended our days in the nation's first capital completely wiped out by 6pm.  Still, we were able to see some of the city and of course Miriam's company was enjoyed to it's fullest.  And although things got off to a rough start--our friend's daughter lost her bag!--we did manage to see the most important emblems of the city, visit a ship festival on the Delaware river, enjoy an Israli dinner, eat fresh-baked bagels and stroll along the Schuylkill waterfront.

It was a brief visit, but we enjoyed as much as sleep deprivation would allow.  After just three days we said our good byes and headed West.

Can you tell her dress is red, white and blue for her visit to Independance Hall?

Liberty Bell and Independance Hall in the background.

TFG

That stands for Trabajo Fin de Grado--my final project to obtain my Education degree here in Spain.  I am done.  100%.  I turned in my paper before our trip to the States (more on that in future blogs; I promise!) and yesterday was the defense.  I'll cut to the chase and give you details in a minute: the panel really enjoyed my presentation and my paper/proposal.  They gave me a 9.1 out of 10 which ammounts to the highest grade posible: sobresaliente. :)  I was on cloud nine.  It felt great to be done, but to go out with such a bang was icing on the cake.

The panel is made up of two professors from the UNIR (my university) and one professor invited from another Spanish university.  Since this is just a four-year degree more or less equivalent to a Bachelor's the defense is pretty minimal.  My presentation could be no more than 15 minutes and then an additional fifteen minutes or so for the panel to ask questions about my paper.

I was the very last presenter of the day.  They'd been at it since 9am with two hours for lunch.  My presentation was at 7:30pm.  I was nervous about being last because I know what it's like to be in that kind of situation where you're expected to be paying close attention for hours on end.  I was sure that come time for my presentation, the panel would be more than ready to be done, and I'd have to really work to keep their attention.

When I walked in the room, I immediately recognized one of the men--the president of the university!  As it turns out, he is also a specialist in Personalized Education (a key part of my paper: *gulp*).  Before I began, another member of the panel introduced herself as being a specialist in photography!  All of this was apparently coincidence, since the panel members have no control over the papers they read/grade.  I was just a bit nervous going into it knowing that there were two experts in my specific area watching and listening to what I had to say.

All went well.  I actually felt quite calm during the presentation, and I'm sure that came across.  They got a huge kick out of my Andalusian accent, and specifically complemented me on my level of fluency. ;)  More importantly, however, they were very impressed by my paper and genuinely interested in what I had to say.  I think we went over time with the question answer period because there was just so much to comment on and talk about.  Really, we could have continued all evening.

Once they had confered about my grade and called me back into the room to tell me, they ended by encouraging me to please consider continuing with this line of study in a Masters or Doctorate program because they thought I had really hit upon something original, cutting-edge and nonetheless sadly under-developed in the field of education. I was quite flattered to say the least.

So now I'm done.

In many ways this degree has been more important to me than my studies in the U.S.  I did my Bachelor's in the States almost out of intertia.  Not that I didn't enjoy it or think it was important, but I was too young (I think) to really know what I would do with my degree or even how it would influence my future.  I knew it was important, but that was about it.

This time, I made a concious decision to go back to school because I needed my degree in Education to continue doing what I've discovered that I love--teaching.  This degree has been very closely related to my life and work since I began five years ago and it hasn't always been easy to maintain motivation or find time to work between other life events.  The fact that I have finished despite it all, and especially getting such a great grade, honestly make me very proud of myself.

As I left the building, I had the sensation of watching myself. I felt so grown up, so professional in my dress clothes and glowing from an exhilirating discussion with doctors in my field of work--I couldn't believe the woman I was seeing was me!  Little Viola from PHS, standing in Madrid, Spain after having finished her second univerity degree, this time with a family and work in mix (!?¡).  It was a wonderful, but strange feeling.  Apparently I'm an adult.