Where the hell have I been!?

(this photo is from last week before the madness started. Let's all pretend I still look this put-together, okay? Okay!)

That's a great question. If you follow me on twitter, you've been getting some updates on my life. If not, you probably just think I died. Good news, I'm still kickin'. Bad news? My life just got exponentially busier! Yikes. Let me walk you through it :).

Right now I have two jobs (one paid, one an unpaid internship) and I'm taking 18 credit hours (5 classes) at school. For some reference, 12-15 hours is considered a full-time schedule for a student. Needless to say, I'm ridiculously busy. On Thursday I worked 12 hours and when I got home I literally felt like I was going to die. Luckily, I'm surrounded by some pretty great people.

For those who don't know, I work at United Colors of Benetton here in Chicago and my co-workers are pretty fab. I feel extremely blessed to work with such supportive/understanding people and when I come in wanting to cry having an awful day they generally have the ability to cheer me up. My store manager is also really understanding about my schedule which, again, is a blessing. I really am not fond of working retail, but I think I have the absolute best situation at Benetton so I do my best to keep my chin up even when I haven't really slept all week and customers are being rude to me (speaking of which, stay tuned for a post on retail etiquette from a sales associate). I'm glad that I work with great people. Also, we sell some seriously cute clothes at Benetton which is great too. Or dangerous, depending on how you look at it...

As for school, I just started on Wednesday. My first two classes were African American History and Creativity in Marketing. I generally have three classes on Wednesdays but one of them was canceled due to an emergency for the professor (yikes!). My African American History teacher is wonderful. She has so much enthusiasm for the course and is extremely knowledgeable. She seemed so genuinely excited to share the material with us that it got me pretty excited for the class as well. I can already tell that I'm going to enjoy that class even though I'm certain its going to be a ton of work. My Creativity in Marketing class is going to be a BLAST. I'm such a marketing nerd and I can't say I'll ever stop taking classes in marketing because there is so much to learn and I love it all. This class is one of my electives and the purpose is basically to teach us to think outside of the box. I already love it. The rest of my classes are on Monday so I'll share about them when the time comes :).

Finally, I have my internship. Right now I'm working for a company called Tip Top Branding. It's a bigger company than my last internship (which I already miss so much!) but still a little bit on the smaller side. I haven't really gotten started on any projects there yet but I think it's going to be a valuable experience for me. All of the people there are really friendly and encouraging as well so that's fabulous. I only have 12 weeks left with them so I'm doing everything I can to soak up some knowledge and enjoy myself.

So, that's where I've been. Running around like a crazy person trying to fulfill a million commitments. I absolutely adore my blog, but my real life commitments are always going to be number one. I know that once I start to adjust to my new schedule that everything will go back to normal. It's always tough getting back into the groove of things.

How are things in your lives? I've been doing my best to keep up with reading blogs but I've been slacking there too so share with me in the comments :).

xoxo
Mal

P.S.
I know today is supposed to be the first day of Food for $40 but I'm on a train right now and I FORGOT MY MENU so I'll do my best to post it later tonight. If I can't make that happen, I'll wait until next week to kick things off. My apologies for being so scattered.