So, highlights of today!

DJ's first class of the day was canceled so I did not have to drive in to school until an hour later. In this extra hour, instead of sleeping more or eating breakfast, I sat in bed and played Bejeweled. I set my weekly high score, so I guess the time was well-spent. It was a nice recess from the constant stress, anyway.

Then I bumped into Jeremy coming out of the spec problem from the organic qualifier. He was not particularly pleased about the problem, but was surprisingly pleasant in spite of it.

I ate some Teddy Grahams - finished the box, actually - before biochem started. Adam came in and was actually EARLY, and he informed me that not only was the spec problem ridiculously easy, but it had also been right out of chapter 8 of FX's book and also the same problem given in the fall. I found this funny. I guess FX is predictable. He also informed me that he had not bothered to study... hahahahahahaha oh Adam.

I had lunch and sat around solving modeling problems in the Gallery with Justine. I actually solved them - which was nice.

Inorganic eventually made sense to me as I realigned my axes three or four times. Then, after drawing the picture of the molecule, it all made perfect sense. Go diborane.

Went and found Tony Perkins - we had communicated by email - in Archbold. Even though I actually remembered how to get to his office (how cute is it that Archbold has its door labeled "Math TAs"? hahahaa also that area is WAY more spacious than it looks from the outside. Surprises me every time), I didn't have to actually find it because I found him first. Our talk was helpful and just like old times... if I had actually gone to his office hours in old times... but you know. It was nice.

I came back and FX was gone, as Ed had said he would be. I texted Christina, who came up immediately, and went to see Dr. D about picking up the graded homework. We wound up giggling in her office for ten minutes or so, until she worried that FX would hear and I informed her that FX was not around to hear.

We went back and I sat myself in the windowsill to do some inorganic. I cleaned that windowsill off just so that I could sit in it, because it's such an excellent place to sit and now that Nomura's got a couple of grad students at the other desk, I can't really sit in that one.

Ed sat at one desk in one chair doing calculus, Christina sat at the other in the other doing something else. At one point I was distractedly telling her about how Mom was thinking about sending DJ and me to Aruba over spring break but then realized I can't rent a car because I'm not 21 yet - I think this had to do with a discussion of my birthday - and she said "Well, you should tell your mother that I'll be 21, and I can drive."

... to which I replied, "Um, Christina, you can't DRIVE to ARUBA."

Not my brightest moment, but we definitely got some more laughs out of it.

Then when FX finally arrived, he was slightly intrigued by the random homework party happening in the lab. Christina saw him first and said, "Shanny!" which he probably thought was funny. When he inquired as to what was going on (in his curious way, not an accusatory way), Ed said, "She's playing with pipecleaners." I use them to model for symmetry operations. Dr. D gave them to me.

So he looked at the pipecleaners and said, "Oh, making bad tetrahedrons, huh?"

I was quite taken aback because he doesn't usually joke and he certainly doesn't usually make fun of me. I don't think he's ever done that before. I think it's a good sign. I started to laugh and said, "Hey! That's not even a tetrahedron, it's trigonal planar." Good times.

Then I needed to eat before tutoring so I headed to the vending machine... which made me pay 95 cents for peanut M&Ms instead of 85 because it ATE MY DIME. LAME.

Then I tutored and I didn't really feel all that on-point tonight, probably because I'm tired and stressed, but the ones I usually had were willing to forgive me for it and I don't know about the others because I don't see them twice a week every week.

Well those are quick highlights and I probably forgot some but I just wanted to get the Aruba thing and the tetrahedron thing down so I guess I'll go now and take a shower and look over some diff eq BRIEFLY before bed and try not to panic.

After all, first exam of the semester!

Here I am, sitting in the new no-classes computer lab at a computer with a ridiculously huge screen and today I have just been thinking a lot about how I just belong here. I belong here at ESF. I was meant to be here and I am and when I can slow myself down enough to take a deep breath and push the stress away for just a moment, I'm ridiculously thankful for everything I have here. RIDICULOUSLY.

Hahahaha someone just sneezed funny. I have always loved sneezes.

I'm sure a big part of the reason that I have been thinking about how I belong here is that I went from my differential equations class at SU - which is a good class and taught well but just sort of impersonal and foreign because it's pretty much completely engineers of various types and then me, a random chemistry major - to my lab, to drop off my bag, and then up one more floor to see our very own the-man-himself.

Excuse me, I mean The-Man-Himself. The capitalization is, I think, pretty necessary.

So I slipped into his office and I asked him if there was any way I could have my old exam back, the first exam of the Spring 2008 semester and he looked at me, smiling knowingly, and informed me that he really had no idea where it was (which is understandable because he has exams dating back to '98 in that office). And then we talked. And talked and talked and talked. For an hour and a half we talked and it ran the gamut from how he began teaching organic and why he teaches it the way he does to how the preliminary qualifier is written and organized and when it's given to why the Heck reaction is a big deal but there is no Caluwe reaction (we devolved into inorganic, not that that's exactly a devolution, so to speak) to how I am organic-chemistry-brainwashed...

Basically, the man is the bomb. He's fascinating and he's sharp and he tells good stories and the fact that his accent is awesome doesn't hurt. Also he does not wear glasses anymore because he has had laser eye surgery, I believe, and it becomes less and less jarring every time I see him. After all, his eyes are still blue. Gotta love the man.

I have too many exams this week. I'm pretty tired, too, but I'll make it. I just have to budget my time... which I am unfortunately clearly not doing right now by blogging, but I think that even - and maybe especially - when things are crazy it's important to take a breather every once in a while. Plus I'm finally not house-sitting anymore tonight so I can sleep in my own bed in my own house with my own Schubaby.

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 :)