'Cause when her heart breaks, no, it don't break even.

No lie, I just had to "correct" myself - I typed "doesn't" instead of "don't"! I'm a dork. I know, I know.

I'm more than a little frustrated right now because my biochem take-home exam is definitely hard to follow. It's not actually an exam, really, just more of a project type thing. I just don't understand what he wants us to do. Which is bad because the reason we don't have class tomorrow or Wednesday is that he's out of town on a conference. Hmm.

Well I'm sitting here and it's light out (which is good, because it's only 3:30) and Schubert is napping next to me. I'll tell you, this puppy naps like it's his job. He has two settings: sleepy/cuddly and RIDICULOUSLY OFF THE WALLS. Good thing he's so cute!

Finished my grading yesterday. It was less painful than I'd expected, probably because I only had to grade 17 or 18 instead of the full set. A lot of the kids took a break on this one, and I guess I don't really blame them. It's hard to remember what I did and didn't know when I was a freshman, though.

Justine and I need to demo the lab tomorrow. Turns out microbial ecology is canceled tomorrow, too, so I have from 10:30 to 1:50 to get it done. Gotta do nine titrations. I think I'll make it, especially since we did the standardization bit last week. I still think it's funny that we standardized our NaOH solution to standardize our acid solution. I guess it's all to take up time, though.

Tomorrow I also have to restart tutoring - I took the week before last off because I had an intense exam week, and obviously there was no tutoring during spring break. I have a lot of work to do in the lab - Thursday and Friday of last week kind of kickstarted me again and I've got things lining up to be done. Most exciting (or possibly most frustrating, depending on the results): what happened with the cyclization? I worked it up on Friday but didn't bother prepping a tube for NMR because Dave was out, FX was gone, the 300 is on solids and the 600 is busy, too.

I also gotta get moving on this biochem exam. Blahhhh. I wish I liked biochem more than I do. It just frustrates me, mostly. There's a ton of information and I wish there was a better way to learn it than by just memorizing, but I haven't found one yet.

I made it to season 4 of Lost. I'm pleased with myself because the first episode of season 4 was the one I saw on TV when I was babysitting a few months ago, and I've finally caught up with it. Now, though, I am starting to get slightly frustrated with the show because flash-forwards are much more jarring than flashbacks, and I know that as I continue on, we're going to flash-sideways and I just KNOW that's going to make me angry. Nevertheless, I have made real progress.

Speaking of progress, I scored 738k on Bejeweled Blitz. YEAH. I'm pathetic.

I'm semi-excited to be getting back into classes tomorrow. Having nothing to do gets old fast, which is why I didn't really mind going in to work in the lab over break. That and I had some pretty extreme guilt over not putting any hours in the week before break, so now I feel that my conscience is assuaged.

Well I thought I had a lot to say and I probably do, but I just don't feel like writing anymore, so I guess I'll sign off for now. It's been fun. My keyboard doesn't get this much action anymore because no one is ever asking me to write papers anymore!

NOT THAT I AM COMPLAINING.

Is it telling that my successes frighten me much, much more than do my failures?

I'm going to go to Northwestern this summer to participate in the nanotechnology REU. It's kind of a big deal. I'm really excited. It's good.

But I'm also terrified. This is something huge and new. This is moving away from home and meeting new people again and being given a new professor and new research. They'll tell me what I need to know.

It's just that Chicago is so far away from Syracuse, New York where I work for my organic professor and have a lab on the third floor, the yellow floor, that smells like ethyl acetate and vanillin and has a door that slams really loudly when you don't stand by it and ease it closed. Where I know the people I need to know and I sometimes run around like a crazy person between Baker and Jahn and get dry ice and talk to Marlene and run gigantic columns and mutter to myself the whole time.

Like I said: new. And things change, and I need to learn to adapt to change less tumultuously. And it's so cool that I get to do this and that they dump money into my lap so I can do it and I get to work with experts in a place that specializes in nanotechnology.

And I finally feel like I did people proud. My life should not be about accomplishing things for other people, so I hope this is for me a little, too, but I finally feel like I measured up to what other people think of me. Which is also weird because not only am I not holding that proverbial measuring tape, I am also not judging myself to award myself anything. So my hands are proverbially tied, right?

It's been a good year.

This is going to be a dry run for grad school.

I'm so relieved. I'm also really scared.

As I put off the beginning of studying for biochem (probably not the best idea, but I roll with the punches and all), I'm struck with this thought:

This is my third year of college. This is the first year I can actually say with honesty that I have done my readings. Impressive, right?

I'm so tired. I might just study and then go to bed early tonight, because I'm exhausted. Today wrung me right out.

Okay, well, I am not going to rehash my to-do list here because honestly it's stressing me out but I need a break for like five minutes or something but I feel like if I take a break, I'm losing valuable time and then I wind up just wasting that valuable time but I feel like for the first time this semester, I've finally kicked my rear end into gear so hopefully I'm on top of things.

Also, you know you need a break when your classical study music is making you want to throw your mp3 player out of the window. Lata babe.

I am trying very hard to be happier lately, but I think that maybe Mother Nature is against me. In any case, I seem to be either melancholy or laughing, and the outlier would be rage, because I tend to let my anger ramp up when I'm talking to people about whatever is frustrating me. You know, it's funny... I tell people a lot of the time that I have a lot of anger, but I don't think I usually have that much anger. I do have more anger than most people give me credit for, so I guess it's sort of an average. Reality is, I mean.

I've been thinking about senioritis a lot lately. Senoritis - thankfully I don't think I have it yet - makes perfect sense to me in college. Yeah, you've been in school for 17 or 18 years now and it just keeps getting harder and you're tired of paying to put the work in instead of working to get paid. Grades stop meaning anything to you, college is not the real world, and you're tired of the pretentiousness of academia.

Well, personally, I'm not. I think it's hilarious, the pretentiousness of academia, and I want in. Someday I'll be jaded and disillusioned and generally miserable, but for now I'm intrigued and entertained and I want it to go on forever. Well, maybe not forever, but I'll tell you something: more than a few days of break and I start itching to DO something.

But senioritis in high school does not make sense to me. Senioritis in high school should not exist. Not for college-bound seniors. What, do you think that somehow college is going to be the magical land of go-away-and-live-with-five-thousand-other-18-year-olds, drink a lot, and after four years of initiation rites they hand you your degree?

One of the reasons I grew to love college so much, so quickly is because I finally felt challenged. I finally felt like I was teetering on the edge of having just this little bit too much on my plate, and I kept adding things for the novelty of it all. And I knew coming in that I was going to have to work for it in a way that I never, ever had to work in high school. So this business of having senioritis for your senior year of high school?

I don't buy it. You've put your deposit in, so you're committing to AT LEAST fifteen weeks of harder work than you've done in high school (exception: if you took a bunch of AP courses and get credit but took those classes over again in your freshman year). You're not done working, you're not done with school... stop pretending you've lost all motivation to do work.

No one likes homework. Just saying. If I had a choice between lying around all day catching up with LOST and doing my biochem homework, you'd better believe I'd choose LOST. I do have that choice, though, and in some blissful alternate reality I'd like to sit around and watch my TV show on hulu, but let's face it: I'm aware that in order to earn the grade I want in that course, I am going to have to get my homework done.

Excuse me while I get off of my soapbox: I have a lot of biochem homework to finish instead of watching LOST. :(

Hello. I am feeling unhappy today because I slaved over my biochem homework for three hours today and I finished up through problem 7. But I skipped 4 and 5, and I have to go up until 15, so I'm nowhere near halfway done. I've done 5/12 problems.

UGH.

What a weird day. Today was a weird day. I think I got things done but really I just wonder what actually happened. Also, I am exhausted. SO TIRED. I should try to get another five problems done on my biochem homework tomorrow so I have only two left to do on Thursday night, because usually I end up staying up late on Thursday night because I didn't start the homework early enough.

I also need to figure out what the heck is going on in inorganic and to start studying for microbial ecology but mostly I just feel apathetic and lethargic lately. I don't want to do anything. I don't want to tutor, I don't want to grade, I certainly don't want to do homework or study. AND YET. I know I'll end up studying, so I just have to make sure I start early enough.

Lately I've been missing bits and pieces of people from high school. Mostly KP and Hemler, I guess... although Caluwe's a bit of a substitute for Hemler in that I can just sit myself down and talk to him (he makes fun of me a lot more than she used to, but you know, analogous and all that), there's really not someone quite like KP.

It's okay I guess. I mean most of the time I'm quite pleased with myself and the way things are going, but sometimes I sort of freak out about things. I am thinking that maybe I should just go to bed and get myself a good nine hours of sleep instead of totally freaking out about everything.

I'll make sure I have three textbooks with me tomorrow and that way hopefully I can coerce myself into getting at least SOMETHING done while I'm sitting around and DJ is playing at the Syracuse Suds Factory. It would just be nice to not feel somehow like I'm terribly, horribly behind.

Happiness is a weird thing. Sometimes I think that if you think about happiness for too long, you convince yourself that you're not happy.

I actually am quite happy. I think. You see, I'm doing it to myself.

I've just realized that I don't want to blog and that instead, I want to go take a look at the mechanistic organic chemistry preliminary exam for PhD candidates because I am hugely curious and I feel that that stage of my life is far enough away for it to intrigue me rather than terrify me.

I got four timesheets signed today and I picked up a check. My college pays me an awful lot of money. Then again, I do an awful lot of work for my college. I guess it's fair.

I love FX, he is adorable. So is Dave, though. I have a good department. I have a good professor.

I was insanely frustrated by the lack of direction in inorganic today. I am trying to like it, and most of the time I succeed but today was a spectacular fall-off-your-bike-and-surf-the-street-on-your-butt sort of failure (yes, I have done this before, why do you ask?). It just felt like a lot of information but it didn't even mean anything because there was no explanation for why we were doing it or what it meant. I probably should have read the chapter. I probably should read the chapter right now. However, instead of reading the chapter, I am going to go look at the organic qualifier even though the thought of being unable to do it scares me.

So I guess I lied and I'm a LITTLE bit intimidated by it. Merging of the minds, man. That triumvirate is just scary.

I'm tired, as usual.

Boyer wore a very girly hat today. I was proud of myself for being capable of holding in my laughter until the elevator door slid shut... then I exploded a little. But only a little. It was quite restrained.

Mmmmmm organic!