25 posts tagged “school”
So, it's finals week. We all know what that means.
I got the invitation to Pam and Dana's wedding yesterday. It's beautiful, and I'm excited to go... my first wedding in a long while. There was a short little phrase, a very sweet and sentimental thought, letterpressed on the inside. Maybe another time I'll come back and add it.
But for now, suffice it to say, it made me ache a little bit. It's just another in a long line of revelations about myself that I really could have lived without this week. It's hard to admit, because it makes me feel sad and makes me look more than a little pathetic.
But, for the moment, all I can do is try to breathe through this week, survive and live to fight another day, and hope that each successive day brings me a little closer to what is to be, and to what I am to become.
Forethought: I'm done worrying for awhile. I've got lots of good things coming to me. I'm going home for the Buffett concert tomorrow night, and I'm getting a new car this weekend. I'm seeing Mizzou friends, and going out to dinner with the family. I have the city with Abby on Thursday, Spa Night with the girls on Friday, and an evening out on Saturday which I am very excited for. They are going to be good days, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let anyone stand in the way of that.
On with the show...
I love springtime so, so much. We are rapidly approaching the time of year where I'd prefer to be outside almost constantly. Flowers are starting to come up - there are roadside daffodils everywhere, and the tulips here are finally starting to come up. The air smells good, and it's warm outside. Our windows are open during the day, and I am happy.
There are people here that I've been neglecting a little bit lately, when I've been using my time selfishly, and I've been trying harder to get away from that. I'm trying to be a better friend to all of my friends, and that means spending my time differently than I have been lately. So, Abby, whom I have become good friends with over the last couple of months, talked me into going into the city today, for a change of scenery.
What a great day - how wonderful to be away and enjoy myself. We studied at Panera for most of the afternoon, then dropped our bags in the car and went for a walk by the lake. As much as I find myself saying that I'm not a fan of Chicago, I have to remember that I have very little experience with the city itself. I hope that, this summer, I have a little more time to enjoy it a little more.
Midterms week... you know?
I tried to make eclairs tonight - not so much. Instead, we had eclair "cookies" with custard dipping sauce. I also made petit pain au chocolat - those actually did turn out quite good, and very pretty. I sprinkled them with a mixture of green tea and sugar.
So there's nothing really else happening - just taking tests, studying, trying to get a little bit of shut-eye (...right...) and trying to stay sane in a crazy world. Had dinner with some friends tonight, and didn't get a whole lot done. But that's okay - the weekend's coming and I've got two whole days!
The moodiness and hyperemotionalism of the past couple week all makes sense now... it all came together this morning. Damn it.
So it's kind of a gross day today, and has been since 7AM. I pulled myself out of bed without much protest (odd in itself, since I went to bed very late, after doing very silly things) to go to the gym. It's not so much that it's raining, as much as it is walking through a cloud. It's very misty. It looks like it may have rained, or more snow may have melted. If it's the snow, then great - I've had enough of parking lot glaciers.
Last night was corned beef and cabbage and "The Big Bang Theory," which was fun. I made Oreo ice cream pie, of which no remnants remain. It was very good, and just as important, very pretty, and I am full of new ideas to try.
We have midterms at the end of the month, so the next couple of weeks are going to be really rough. I have 35 hours left of study time scheduled for this week, and 48 next week. It's odd to think about literally spending two days of a week studying, and weirder still to think that I'm actually going to spend more time studying than sleeping. Ugh. Or just unpleasant.
On that note, it is time for a power nap, and then to hunker down for the night.
I always feel a little guilty about complaining about my life. Knowing how much I have, compared to those who have so little, and that the struggles in my life are almost always trivial in nature.
It's rare these days for me to really, really want to be somewhere else. I don't mean that in the sense that I hate Chicago in the winter, and I want to be somewhere warm. Today, the only thing I really wanted to be doing was getting in my car and driving back to St. Louis. Stephanie's home this weekend to sing for a bar mitzvah, and I don't know when I'm going to see her again.
And it's Teen Camp weekend. I haven't missed one in three years. A bunch of my kids are graduating from high school this year. A bunch of my kids are old enough to go for the first time this year. It's hard for me to be away, especially when I don't know what the summer's going to hold for me yet. I don't know what place camp is going to have in my future life - I know that it can always be in my life if I want it. But it's going to be really hard to keep it up over the next couple years. It's always been such a happy part of my life, the one week of my year that I looked forward to, really, the happiest place in my world. Sure, there were times when my involvement was painful, but if there was ever an easy decision to be made, it was always, "Go back to camp." Camp is a happy, happy place, even when you're not sleeping and your camper is running around you in circles and you smell like... camp. It's an easy, easy place to be.
I feel like there isn't a single part of my life that's easy. There's not a single part of my life that isn't a struggle, and I feel like there are so many days when I've got to come out fighting. School is hard, friends are hard, talking is hard, everything is hard. I do alright keeping it in most days, but today was not one of them. I cried on the way home from dinner. I couldn't hold onto it anymore, and there is nobody here to talk to about it.
I apologize for my half-formed thoughts. I just want something in my life to be easy again. I just want to go home.
... I am super, super busy. No more than usual, I suppose, but I have my time budgeted through midterms. I have about 22 hours of study time left this week, and about 12 hours of class. I'm going to the talent show on Friday night (and then perhaps out for pie?)
... I am done with Genetics until the final in a couple of weeks. Hurrah!
... I was the contrary person in my medical ethics discussion group. It was kind of fun. And a little frustrating at the same time, just because it happened to be an issue that I've thought a lot about. Then again, I've taken medical ethics coursework before, so I've seen most of the "big" case studies on the stuff we're talking about this term - right-to-die and end-of-life options is the topic for this week.
... Excited for St. Pat's! To be fair, it might have more to do with the fact that "The Big Bang Theory" is coming back, and additionally, that there will be corned beef. And cabbage. And potatoes. And a super-secret dessert that I can't wait to make.
... Already anticipating the fatty nap I'm taking after midterms are over. My life improves so much when Genetics is over - I'll only have two finals (and Ethics and Epi... but whatever).
The week wasn't quite as bad as I thought it was going to be, just very, very busy, and replete with long days. I have friends now who work - with their real lives and spouses and kids who always snicker a little bit when I say a day is long. Who am I to complain, I'm sure they wonder, about a day that "starts" at 8AM and ends at 4PM, with an hour for lunch and a comparatively short commute. Except for that my day rarely ends at 4PM. For every hour we spend in class, they tell us, we should be spending two hours studying. It's an impossibility they fail to consider, when there are only 24 hours in a day, but we make it up on the weekends. Enough complaining - my life's not that hard, and there's not that much to it.
It really was a pretty good week. Brown cows on Wednesday night, and dinner on Thursday. I made chicken fingers, saffron rice, and broccoli, with pavlovas with fruit salad and ice cream for dessert. The pavlovas were very pretty, for something made on the fly. I had planned to make a really good mac and cheese, but it didn't really work out as planned, and I had it tonight for dinner instead.
Friday, I went to dinner with some classmates, and then out for pie. It was, as usual, a good time. I'm enjoying getting to know Susan and her husband better - they're always great fun and good for a laugh. And, I'm ever-appreciative of a good slice of lemon meringue pie.
Yesterday, I finally got to see Alyssa. I hadn't seen her since she left for Paris, so more than a year now. We had dinner at this nice little vegetarian restaurant in Evanston, a good choice on my part as she is vegan. I got a fairly decent quiche - as a rule, I like my eggs a little "drier" than this restaurant seemed to be serving them, but it wasn't bad at all. She got tofu fried rice and a vegan cappuccino brownie, which was alright, but I can't seem to wrap myself around the idea of vegan chocolate, no matter how hard I try. At any rate, the conversation was great, and it was so good to see her. She's one of the people from Mizzou that I really, really miss. I got a little bit of studying done once I got home, but it was overall a pretty chill night.
And today, of course, was almost nothing but studying. I've managed to get totally caught up in biochem, which wasn't such a tall order as much as it was time-consuming. And now it's onto neural transmission for neuroscience - a truly thrilling venture.
A new term starts for me on Monday - I'm finishing up biochemistry, starting Neuroscience and Genetics, and taking online courses in Ethics and Epidemiology. I'm excited to be in some new classes, for the challenge and the thrill of new material.
I'm also excited, even ready, to go back to Chicago this weekend. It's still not home, but it is where most of my life is now, which is simultaneously great and also terrifying. It's got the highest density of "my people," in terms of people who get me and understand better than most (with Lacey being the obvious exception) what my life is like. It's only just been in the past couple of months (weeks?) that I've felt like there was anything keeping me there besides school.
It hasn't been that long since I've been that happy in a place - I love Columbia, and there are days when I miss it so much that I ache for my places there, sitting under "my" tree, sipping coffee at Lakota, watching Thursday night TV in Lacey's living room. But it's not home now - most of my people aren't there anymore and when I go back, I'm going back for visits, to see the few people who are left and to be in my places.
The new year has been a strange mix of happiness and panic, stress and frustration. But I can't think, except for an afternoon here, an hour or so there, where I've been genuinely unhappy. And there have been a lot of situations where I've caught myself working without a net, and doing things I never thought I'd do. And there are some times when I catch myself thinking, "What's happened to me?" It's happened a lot since I've been home, when I think about Chicago and the things that I miss there. And the people that I miss there. I've never really been one for missing people, so that's a really, really scary phenomenon for me. I can't really iterate how terrifying it is to feel like that.
Anyway. I'm ready to go back to Chicago to await the spring and see everyone and learn new things. It's a big new term for me, but I'm going to try my hardest to stay uncomplicated and happy, to be the friend that I should be, and work hard and go to sleep tired every night.
I look and feel like the personification of finals week. I'm not just tired - I'm exhausted. My head is cluttered with thoughts from everywhere, some of which I desperately want to wash out of my head but haven't the least idea how.
The day got off to a bad start - the fire alarm went off just as I woke up, and we had to evacuate the building. Because nothing was on fire, it wasn't a priority for them and so we were in the lobby of one of the other buildings for an hour. And because I rushed out of the building, taking time only to put on real pants and my coat, and leaving my computer and all of my notes for today's exam on the floor, I lost that whole hour. What's more, they were also telling us that the problem was with a busted pipe that caused the sprinklers to go off (...the mechanism of which I have no idea). And because my computer and class notes were exactly where I left them last night...
Needless to say, it was panic-inducing. But, everything was fine, except for my mood and my inability to recover that lost hour. I just want for this to be finished...
It is still obscenely cold in the Chicago area. My mother reminded me a few days ago that, when we came up to look at apartments in July, how cool I thought it would be to be this close to the lake. I was so young then, and naïve. The lake is where the cold comes from!! The lake is where the wind comes from!!
Setting aside any problems I have with wind chill...
It's going to be a long night of pathways, carbohydrate metabolism, and electron transport... wheeeee... Not a whole lot has happened the last couple days, in any respect. We're all so bogged down with exams and just exhausted. I hosted a study group for embryology last night, pretty chill but still fun. I'm going to be eating leftover pasta con broccoli (St. Louis style, oversauced to no end) for the rest of the week. Sent Martha home with leftovers, and let Faye take a bowl yesterday, and there is still enough pasta to last me until at least Thursday.
I'm ready for the break. I'm ready for the week away, the week away from *everything*, putting some real, physical distance between school and my "school personal life" to figure some things out and steady myself a little bit. I'm ready to see my parents and some of my friends, and establish a normal sleep pattern, if only for a few days.
In the meantime, pathways, pathways, pathways...
