Yet another reason why I love my job...

I'm sure you've all heard me talk about how much I love my job at some point! I knew, from back in early high school, that I wanted to work in the field of Psychology, and, from late high school, that I wanted to work within Sport Psychology. My entire 20s were devoted to graduate school - first a Master's degree at Boston College, then a CAGS and license at Boston University, then a Doctorate at Boston University. I took a little break in there to be a school counselor, but I KNEW I wanted to get my Doctorate, be a professor of Psychology, work at a state university, stay in Boston, work primarily with graduate students, and do research in the field of at-risk youth development through sport. And, happily, all of those things happened. UMass has completely aligned with all of my goals and interests. The biggest part of my job, I'd say, is researching, writing, publishing. All day long. Research. Write. Publish. What I talk less about are the two other components - service and teaching. Service refers to any work I do to enhance the program (I'm the program director), the university (serve on committees) the field (editing journals), etc. I could go on. In terms of teaching, I only teach graduate students. They are motivated, smart, and creative. They are also, as graduate students, grown ups, with lots of grown up stuff with which to deal. Some are getting married. Some have full time jobs. Others are raising children. All are busy. Which was why I was SO surprised last night when my Advanced Internship class walked into the classroom at 7 pm, yelled "surprise" and carried in presents and cakes for me! They had a surprise baby shower for me!!! What a group of stellar people. Those of you in graduate school right now can speak to how busy of a month April is. Classes typically end in early May, so April is the heaviest month of the whole year. These students are also graduating, so they're juggling their regular courseload with their internship hours and their final Capstone project. They're so busy.... I felt so warm and loved! What a class.

My creatively challenged brain has absolutely no idea how a student was able to make such a unique cake

Odds are, we've got ourselves a state school baby...