I dunno, lately I've just had a hard time feeling bad for ESF employees over this no-more-free-tuition-to-SU-for-offspring thing. And that's probably bad because, after all, I am an ESF student and I should probably want to protect my own. Thing is, I don't see why that was ever fair to begin with. We don't give SU anything. Honestly, we don't. We don't give our own employees free tuition to our institution.

I guess I feel like the ESF employees who are making a big deal out of this need to calm the heck down. Look here. If your kids are in sixth grade and third grade, then they are much too young to have you setting their hearts on SU. They have time to grow into different people, who do not necessarily need to go to SU. You probably didn't take the job ONLY BECAUSE your kids could go to SU for free.

The way I see it - and in general, I see SU as an overbearing dictator most of the time, when I can't take more than one of their courses even though the credit quota is per department rather than per student and we're not using all of our allotted credits. Why not? When they don't take me for an REU when I am obviously, far-and-away more qualified than someone that I know who they took - because what the heck, SU?

But this is within their realm of reason. We're not giving anything back to them. I don't see that it saves them THAT MUCH money in the grand scheme of things, but it's perfectly fair for them to rescind the offer. I mean, what wouldn't be fair would be for the students who are already committed as freshmen next year and counting on that tuition to have it ripped from them, or for current students with the free tuition to have it yanked from under them. THAT would be unfair, but SU is not doing that, because they are already committed.

Your nine-year-old? Not committed. Come on, you WORK at ESF, whose tuition is about 1/7 of SU's tuition. You've been trying to convince your kid that SU would be great. Okay, so convince your kid that science is awesome (not hard, by the way). Suck it up. You're not going to die because now you have to pay some tuition. Hey, convince your kid to work for really good grades and nab some scholarships. But STOP COMPLAINING. Your nine-year-old is not devastated by this news. YOU are devastated by this news. Don't make it out like SU is crushing the dreams of your kids.

In other news, I am going to have to run the whole synthesis scheme that I have been following again. I don't know how much HMPA we have left. Hopefully enough. It is going to be not very much fun, but at least I know what I have to do.

My back is starting to act up again, which is pretty miserable, actually. I'm hoping that it kind of goes away, because sometimes it accompanies that time of the month, if you know what I mean. I don't want to go through another excruciating week of back pain.

I wish I had my diff eq book with me today. It would be nice to be able to work on the homework, because I understand what's going on but we have a quiz on Thursday. Which, if all goes according to plan, I will be attending. Mmmm I'm so tired. I really just want to nap. Maybe I'll go back upstairs to lab and wait for a negligible amount of my diol to crystallize and do some inorganic. In a comfortable chair that hopefully does not hurt my back. And soon Christina will come up to visit and she'll be around about until I have to TA.

And then after I TA we will move cars and I will get some dinner and then maybe go to Carnegie and if I'm lucky, I will still be able to take out a diff eq book and do some of my homework! Oh boy. I just have a lot of stuff to do. Unfortunately.

My fingernails are flaking and peeling. It is extremely annoying. I can't remember how I solved this problem the last time I had it. I can't remember when that was - maybe last spring semester? Maybe it's a winter thing. I am always kind of hoping that somehow my fingernails will just stop chipping and flaking, but every time they grow out, there are those edges again. And then I peel the flakes off, feeling simultaneously fascinated by it and also hugely irritated.

It's an odd feeling.

I just found an old playlist that I made sometime last summer or last semester, perhaps. It's actually a very good playlist. I am listening to it and it is distracting me from my work, which is not a huge life-changing work but merely a little write-up of the seminar that I went to yesterday so that Nomura will give me some more points in case I need them. I am a packrat in terms of points. I do not turn my nose up at extra credit.

My inorganic book came today. It is all loud colors and kind of happy, and I haven't decided whether or not I actually like it. Then again, I have not put it to the test yet, so we shall see whether I end up loving it or not really feeling one way or the other about it. I don't feel one way or the other about my pchem book. It is just kind of there. It is light blue and has bubbles on it. I'm not sure why that's physical chemistry, but I'm also not sure why Jupiter or Mars or whatever it is on my achem book is analytical chemistry, so I'll just not ask questions.

My differential equations book is chillin' in Hong Kong. That's what I get for ordering international editions hahahaha. I just couldn't bring myself to spend MORE than $125 on a math book. It's not that I don't love math, it's just that I tend to love chemistry more.

This morning I picked up some money at the bank so that I could pay this girl for a Microbial Ecology book. I forgot that I was supposed to get a $10 for Laura so she could give me a $20 (she owes me $10 for various things). So now I have a lot of $20s and no $10s. What a pain.

Deep breaths.

Deep breaths and to-do lists may well become the theme of the semester. It's just that I have so much to do in a set amount of time. At least tomorrow is Saturday, which means that I will get sleep. I hesitate to say what else I will accomplish tomorrow, for fear of jinxing myself.

Suffice it to say that I hope that the terror of impending deadlines will kick my butt into action. The dates are just so inconvenient.

I went to a seminar today. Apparently the chemical ecology class was also given credit for going to the seminar (it was on sex pheromones), so it was absolutely packed. I mean standing room only. Dave came - maybe because the topic was so FX-y that he felt he ought - and there was still a seat next to me because I had draped my coat over it, so I indicated the seat and he came and sat next to me.

I didn't see FX come in but I certainly saw him at the end, so I'm not sure how exactly he did that. Nevertheless.

I think I like inorganic chemistry. It does not seem quite so anti-organic... Dr. D makes a big point out of being anti-organic but she's not. Not really. Anyway, it's hard to say NOW because I have only actually had two classes, but it seems sort of general-chemistry-esque (it will stop being that way soon, I'm sure) so far and that recalls Hem and, well, I miss her. I miss her a lot.

I'm cold. It's cold in my house. It's pretty much cold everywhere, which makes me kind of miserable. I'll tell you where it isn't cold, is on the third floor of Carnegie. It's like they're trying to smoke me out, whoever 'they' are. With heat, not smoke. Reminds me of the pchem 1 exam I took when the room felt like a sauna and I had trouble concentrating on the problems because I pretty much had sweat dripping down my back. And also my front. It was terrible.

BLAH. I don't feel like doing anything. I wish I was Schubert. He takes his napping very seriously. He has been napping all night. Mostly he naps, eats, and asks to go out. When he asks to go out, it's very annoying and he does it about three hundred times even if he's just been out so I usually yell at him. Good thing he loves me anyway. What a good dog.

Okay I would write down what I need to do but it is so OVERWHELMING that I will try to do the big thing tomorrow. Then it will no longer be overwhelming.

I feel overwhelmed. Forget it. I'm going to watch an episode of LOST if I can remember which one I'm on.

Don't you hate it when someone tells you something that you really should have heard from someone else? And then you realize that the someone else would not have told you because that someone else is actually holding it back - specifically - from you, and everything's just shot all to pieces.

So I'm all eaten up about this. I shouldn't be, should I? But when you compromise everything you believe in, it's another matter entirely. It kind of hurts sometimes to realize that maybe your MORALS actually keep a good friend from confiding in you - and really, if you can't talk to me about it, what does that mean?

Does that mean you're turning your back on what you used to claim to be? Does it mean that you've allowed yourself to fall away from that? Are you looking down on me now as someone backwards and old-fashioned? Or is it that you're scared of how I'd react? Does it mean that you're ashamed to admit to me what's going on?

I'm just so confused, I guess. It really sucks to be confused like this right when I'm trying to get my feet planted firmly underneath me before the semester goes off in a whirlwind of papers and lab time and timesheets and exams. It sucks even more than this to be confused about what I'm supposed to be feeling about everything. I guess if I hadn't heard that it was specifically being held from me, I probably wouldn't feel the same way.

It's the fact that it's held up like a badge of honor to everyone else, and then, as an afterthought, a quick instruction to not tell me. I mean. What?

Sometimes I think that college has actually contributed an amount of drama quite comparable to my drama load from high school. Generally I try to avoid drama. I hate cattiness -- but I am not the instigator, which is why I'm going to let this eat me up for weeks and weeks and potentially longer than that instead of staging a big confrontation and getting lots of people dragged into a maelstrom of my passive-aggressive nature with the passive bit gone missing.

I suppose I should talk about chemistry a little bit, in keeping with the details of the blog. Or something. I'm pretty tired and I had actually kind of planned to be in bed by now but whatever. That's the way my life goes.

I'm kind of excited for inorganic tomorrow. It's novel. I don't bump into much that feels simultaneously new and exciting and old and familiar.

one of us won't last the night
between you and me it's no surprise
there's two of us, both can't be right
neither will move till it's over
I'm the center of attention
and the wall's inside my head
and no one will ever know it
if I keep my mouth shut tight

In some sort of backwards way, I've been meaning to write some things down for ages. I haven't kept a proper journal since probably my first semester at ESF, and I think someday I'm going to regret that. Every once in a while I think of it and decide to commit some thoughts to text; it's funny, though, that I don't necessarily have any sort of guarantee that this journal will hang around.

I have a headache so either this will be quick or it will not be quick, but it will probably be a lot quicker than I'd intended when I start out.

College has done a lot of things for me. I think it restored some of the confidence I needed to have in myself that high school beat out of me, and I think that it's giving me the challenge that I need to keep myself moving - I try to schedule myself so that I can keep myself busy. It affirms that I'm doing a good job and that I'm capable.

I think my love language is words of affirmation. There's nothing like acknowledgment to spur me onward. Well, that and the fear of failure.

My semester came to a halt in a whirlwind of papers and weekend meetings at school and exams, even. I dashed around until the end, making sure that everything was going the way I wanted it to be going and suddenly - like losing the ground underneath my feet - the semester was over and I catapulted into a study marathon the likes of which I hope to never repeat ... but of course, inevitably, I will.

Three memory-intensive finals in two days, and it was like taking my first breath all semester. I felt amazing walking out of my biochemistry final - more so because he didn't manage to stump me in his questions - and I reactivated my facebook and smiled and let muscles that were probably tense since August 31st relax.

What's somewhat odd - in a funny way - is the thought that in my five completed semesters of college now, the only one that I didn't receive a grade from FX was the second semester of my freshman year. I love him to pieces, absolutely, maybe even more than I expected to. I can't remember now. I know I loved the chemistry first because organic is just kind of elegant and esoteric and lovely and then some, you know? And the experimental portion of it is just so much more hands-on than anything else. And I knew that he was an organic chemist and as I passed through his courses I got a better idea of what it was that he actually does... and I thought, hey, why not? I need to do something this summer!

I love him.

Yesterday (I guess technically it's not yesterday anymore, but two days ago), I went in to high school with Laura to tie-dye. It was kind of a nice day when you ignore the fact that I got up so that we could leave by 7:10am or so - a far cry earlier than what I'd been doing during the semester. I headed in, Hemler gave me a hug and a waffle, which I loaded up with strawberries and whipped cream, Laura was there to talk to... I met Mom and Dad for Synergy and sat through the concert, which was mostly nice.

Heading back to Hemler's room had worried me, but it turned out that I didn't need to worry. I walked right past the "lunch nazi" who was stopping kids walking through. She must have mistaken me for a teacher. When Laura got back from her second round of Synergy performances, we tie-dyed five shirts and six pairs of socks.

I even made it up to the second floor to say hi to KP. She was working with some kids after school, and I just stood in the doorway until she looked up and saw me, standing there and waving with my orange-and-blue dyed hand. Breaking off in the middle of a sentence, she - always theatrical - jumped up and ran across the room to give me a hug and I swear she knocked the wind right out of me when she got there.

"Sorry," she said, not looking sorry at all, "I belly-bumped you." Pregnancy appears to agree with her.

I did indeed mean to write more about my semester but at this point I really just want to wash my face and get some sleep. Schubert appears to agree, but then again, he may just be passed out on the bed.

Merry Christmas :)

You know what's funny is that sometimes I have no idea what the purpose of my life is.

I gotta get back to my devotions. I think I'm starving myself in my walk and I feel like even if I don't become less confused or more confident or, you know, suddenly gain insight as to what I should do with my life in the next two years - the next two years, can you believe that? Two years from now I'll be in grad school. But anyway the point is that I'll feel so much less alone. I know this because I've experienced it before.

Somehow things don't seem so unattainable at the same time as they seem completely impossible. It's daunting, to feel like I should be able to do things and yet not know if I'm capable of pulling them off. Or, you know, whatever.

This weekend has been really amazing because it's given me some time to sit back and breathe, and somehow I'm right back to feeling stressed out because I think of the time I let myself take off and then I think of the things that I really ought to get done before the semester ramps up for this final crunch, and it's just overwhelming.

I think sometimes that life is supposed to be overwhelming. It's just supposed to be this big huge thing that stares you in the face and threatens to pound you into the ground, and you succeed if you can stare it right back down. So you know what, life? You can't beat me. Not this semester, not next semester, not when I'm a stressed out graduate student grading undergrad papers and sobbing over experiments that don't work. Because even when they don't work and I lose sleep over it and undergrads hound me for their papers back, I'm not going to give up.

The thing is that I've put too much into everything to give up. And miraculously, I've never stopped loving chemistry, not once along the way. I'm looking forward to a 15 credit semester come spring, with no labs for courses and afternoons to hand to FX so that I can continue this project. This project that was supposed to be completed quickly.

I guess that's what happens when it takes a couple of months to get in on the job and then instead of having 40 hours in the lab per week, I've got about six that I can squeeze out of my overly busy schedule. No, as much as I enjoy some few select things about this semester, I am not going to be sorry to see it go. At least, not as sorry as I usually am. I have this goofy thing about the passage of time. I have a hard time dealing.

So it's Saturday night, almost Sunday morning and I'm reclining on my bed in just the way I shouldn't because Mom thinks it's what put my back out -- I was in excruciating pain all week a week ago and couldn't lift my bag or anything and even a visit to Anna the chiropractor was not the miracle fix that it usually is -- but it is so darn comfortable. And Schubert is making little sleepy sighs down at the foot of my bed and I wrote up my genetics lab today - just a small victory, but it's something.

Also I finally found the Windows sidebar after some help from Steph, so I have the weather and a little daisy clock and sticky notes and this goofy slide-y puzzle, and also a to-do list gadget that I downloaded because I live and die by to-do lists but I still need to figure that out. Also, Pandora is quietly playing me classical music because I have been so darn antsy lately. It's playing Schubert now... too bad the Schu can't appreciate the irony. Or the coincidence? I've never been quite sure when it's appropriate to use the term "irony".

I don't feel bad, though. I feel like most people don't know when it's appropriate to use the term "irony" and an overwhelming majority of us say "well, that's ironic" when what we really mean is "what a coincidence", but we want to sound intellectual and not like that little seven-year-old grinning with missing teeth and crying "What a co-ink-ee-dink!"

Hahahaha I love it. I'm boycotting growing up. I plan to be that seven-year-old forever, although I want to keep all of my teeth and I never say co-ink-i-dink.

Isn't it funny how songs speak to us? I mean, not funny, exactly, and not wholly unexpected either but somehow I feel so odd tonight.

I'm almost done with my fifth semester of college. It's been my most frustrating semester yet. I think it's going all right, and completely unexpectedly, I'm actually finding that my favorite course is microbiology. I'm spending some time visiting Caluwe and reacquainting myself with him, and I'm trying to keep my head above water for the rest of the semester, which... I mean, there's a week and a half left until Thanksgiving which totally floors me.

Whenever I sing the opening lines to "Touches You", I pretend I'm singing to Castello.

"you think you're better
that you're better than me
you blow me off as history
to avoid conversation
you're ignoring me"

I hate being ignored. I also have suddenly lost my drive to write which may or may not be a good thing. I'm tired this week. This semester is exhausting me.