Grad Schools
In December of 2013, I graduated for BYU with my Bachelor of Arts degree in Interdisciplinary Humanities.
As excited as I was to be done with my bachelors degree, I had to make a lot of adjustments. First off, I had to work hard in January to get all of my graduate school applications off in time. I ended up applying to only three schools, but I was applying to three different programs! I applied to BYU's MS program in Instructional Psychology and Technology, University of Utah's MA program in History and Washington State University's PhD program in American Studies. After I got the three applications, I just had to wait for weeks to get a response from each school. In late January, I heard back from BYU that I had been accepted to the IP&T program! I was really excited, but I wanted to hear back from the other schools before making a decision. In communicating with some of the staff at Washington State, I was expecting to hear back from them the second week of February. At that time, I was not thinking much about my application to Utah, since I didn't think I had done a good job on my statement of intent. However, the second week of February came and passed and no answer came from Washington State University.
By the end of the third week of February, I finally had another response from one of the schools, but it was Utah, not Washington State. One morning, I pulled up my e-mail to find this letter in my inbox:
"Dear Mr. Lloyd,
I am pleased to inform you that the graduate admissions committee has unanimously agreed to admit you to the PhD program and to offer you an appointment as a Teaching Assistant in our department, pending final approval of admission from the Graduate School. You will receive a stipend of $13,500 per year and a full tuition benefit, and you will have the option to purchase health insurance through the University. You must be a full-time student during the term of the award."
Of course, I was blown away by the offer, especially since I hadn't even applied to the PhD of History program! However, a few minutes later, the statement was corrected to the MS program. That calmed me down a bit, but I was still amazed by how good an offer I received! That meant I had some deciding to do!
I still was waiting to hear back from Washington State, so I e-mailed them again and was told that I should hear back from them the end of the first week of March. Then, I started looking at the advantages between the BYU program and the program at Utah. In order to help me make the decision, I met with a couple of people at BYU. By the end of last week, I learned that BYU would offer me the chance to teach two classes with the potential of enough money earned to compete with Utah's offer. Ashley and I went to the temple to pray about this decision and I felt good about the IP&T program, so, coupled with the offer of teaching in two classes, I made my final decision. For the next two years, I will be attending BYU to study Instructional Psychology and Technology! As for Washington State, I am still waiting to hear back from them...
Job Searching
Another challenge that comes from graduating from BYU was the fact that I lost my cushy jobs that both paid well and were useful for my future career plans. As such, I started looking for potential jobs throughout January with very few results. As January was ending, I had only had one job interview and that was for a food position and I hadn't heard back from them. As discouraging as that was, I did get another interview at the beginning of February and was subsequently hired by Vivint to work as a customer care professional. After three weeks of training, I have now been working on the call floor for three weeks now. I help with answering questions, troubleshooting issues with the technology, and resolving other customer issues. It is a fast paced job, but I am grateful to have the experience of learning to help out customers and represent the company well. As good of an experience Vivint has been, I will be excited to be working again in the educational field when I start my masters program.Ashley's Car Crash
The other adventure that we have had this year was Ashley's first car crash she experienced while a driver. Thankfully, it was not her fault, but the consequences of the crash are still affecting us.Since I work in Lindon, about 8 miles away from home, and since Ashley works at BYU, and we only have one car, we have to work hard to get each of us to and from work and school. So, on February 13th, I had gotten off work early and asked Ashley to come pick me up. As she was driving from BYU to my work, she got into a car crash. She was going straight through an intersection with a green light when a car in the opposite direction tried to turn left. The other car hit our car right by the front left wheel. (I am incredibly grateful that it was not further down the car, or Ashley's injuries could have been very serious!)
Although the car was damaged enough that we couldn't drive it, it was not so damaged that it would have to be totaled, which was a relief to us. Of course, the car crash meant that Ashley and I had a low key Valentine's Day, but we hope to make it up at some point. After a tense couple of weeks, we learned that the other driver's insurance company would accept liability. We were convinced that they would, but it was a little worrisome for a while there. After the delay in determining liability, the car repair place only started work about two weeks after the accident. In fact, we only got our car back yesterday, so we have been without the car for a month! During that time, we had a rental car that was quite nice, but we were glad to have our car back again.
Of course, there was more that we had to deal with than just the car and the insurance company. While Ashley didn't have any serious injuries, she has been dealing with a lot of neck and back pain. The day after the accident, Ashley went to the Chiropractor's Office (in fact, the owners of that office are our landlords, so we already knew them!) to get checked up. She has continued to go in about 2-3 times a week and is feeling much better, but still experiences some soreness now and then.
(Ashley's note on the accident: Yes this was quite a terrifying experience as I've never personally been involved in a car accident. I also struggle with anxiety and panic attacks so right after I was hit, I was pretty incoherent. Thankfully, there were a couple of really nice police officers who showed up and a passerby stayed [although he didn't even witness the accident]. Luckily, the person that was behind me at the time gave her name and number before she left. That was the determining factor with liability, since the girl that hit me wasn't admitting fault. I was surprised that she was the only witness that gave me information and no witnesses stayed. It was pretty awkward to sit next to the girl that hit me until the police officer told her she could go. Funny thing though: while we were sitting there, the police officer came over with two bags of cookies that he said a person at the stoplight wanted to give us. They had names on them so I suspect they were gifts for visiting teaching. Only in Provo haha! The nice policeman eventually drove me to my sister Stephanie's house since I didn't want to be home alone. I then had my first experience riding in the back of a cop car haha. Another stroke of luck, my brother-in-law Matt was home and was able to pick up Adam who had started to walk home from work. It has been extremely frustrating dealing with the insurance companies and I eventually just decided to get the police report myself because it was taking so long for them to get it. That sped things up quite a bit. I'm so glad we are at least done with the car part of the insurance and I can't wait to be done with the injury part. The chiropractor has helped a lot with the pain but it is time consuming to go there about 3 hours a week. They say that they are seeing improvement and they just want to make sure I'm stabilized and the pain doesn't come back. During this whole ordeal, Adam has been amazing with helping around the house and taking care of me :). )
Overall, we are both very grateful that the accident was not worse than it was and didn't total our car or seriously injure Ashley. It has been a busy month, but we are starting to get back to normal (as normal as life gets right now with all of the transitions).
Well, that is it for now, but look back in a month as Ashley wraps up her undergraduate degree!
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