grad school: I think I'm doing it wrong

The other week I went to a de-stressing seminar sponsored by the Women in Chemistry club. As I listened to everyone talk about how stressed out they are, and how they feel the need to constantly be in the lab and feel guilty when they're not, I realized maybe my grad school experience so far has been an anomaly.

I don't think I'm stressed enough. I get to lab between 8 and 9 in the morning, and leave around 6 every day, plus a few hours on Saturdays. When I get home, I do nothing related to chemistry. I don't read papers or ponder my data. And up until that seminar, I didn't even feel guilty about it. BUT, now I'm stressed out that I'm not stressed out enough, which I guess is simultaneously solving the problem and yet making my life a lot less enjoyable.

I think I would be able to brush it off and go back to my low stress level grad school style because I wasn't planning on having a career in chemistry (or any career at all really), UNTIL. Aaron ran some numbers and saw that we would have some pretty serious money problems if we tried to live on his residency salary with kids and $200,000 in debt. So...post doc? Does that mean I have to write 15 papers now? CAUSE NOW I'M STRESSED BECAUSE EVERYONE'S MORE STRESSED THAN ME AND DOES MORE WORK THAN ME AND I JUST WANTED TO HAVE BABIES POST-PhD AND NOW MAYBE I NEED TO ACTUALLY GET A JOB, AND THANKS A LOT DE-STRESSING SEMINAR.

I did get a little yellow smiley face stress ball out of it, though, so it wasn't a total loss.

meh

I like how eating nothing but pizza, chocolate, and a cream cheese danish and fantasizing over buying clothes I can't afford is how I choose to be self-destructive. 

Man, I am a rebel.

If anyone is looking/knows someone who's looking for housing...well...I've got a contract that I'm desperate to sell. It's in a beautiful house a couple blocks from campus, and I'll write you a $500 bonus check if you'll buy it from me. Click here for the craig's list ad with all the info.

Thanks in advance!

too bad "just be glad we made it here alive" is never quite enough

I dreamed of $6.50 macarons this morning. I was telling my mom how much cheaper they are in Europe (like 2 euros for a big one) and how I was going to buy one anyway. But then the store didn't have the flavor I wanted (passionfruit? why that was the one flavor I wanted, I'm not sure) so I left macaroonless. 

And I woke up missing French food and summers. 

I could use a vacation or something. Just saying. 

sometimes

i get scared that i will end up as one of those moms who refuses to get out of bed and just sleeps all day and lets the laundry pile up and the kids be neglected.


or maybe i'm really just scared that i will either a. not get into grad school or b. (even worse, in my opinion) i will get into grad school and then realize i'm in way over my head and the admissions committee will realize that i sure fooled them and then they'll flunk me and i'll sink into a depression and never do anything productive with my life. 
it's things like products that don't dissolve and incorrectly done columns that make you (and by you i mean me) think such things.

quoi le heck

Avoiding working on my Occitan paper feels like the kind of rebellion I never indulged in during high school.

Sigh.

If I just ignore it, maybe it'll write itself.

I can't help it if all I want to do is pick out flowers and reception centers!

Mrs. Jensen, I still remember it

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul. 


-William Ernest Henley

quarter life crisis

I wish my grandma was here, because if she was she'd tell me I was awesome and that I could do it.
And I'd believe it when she said it.

Meh.

Maybe in the future I will write something positive for once?

somewhere in between

Just for today I would like to stop suffocating under the weight of to-do lists, unpacked boxes, unworked hours, and decisions.

So I did. I read Mockingjay until noon and then went to Jamba Juice with Kellie.

And then I came home and fell apart.

The end.

nope nope nope

My hair color gives me away before I even open my mouth.*

Thinking this makes me feel immediately better. Maybe if I package all of my fears into little short sentences I can hide them under the bed of this Ibis hotel and forget about the fact that I am still not even at the half way mark.

Here I am in Toulouse, with a suitcase I can’t lift and mascara that won’t stop running.

Take me home. Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease.

*French people, besides never straightening their hair, also never dye it blonde. and there are very few natural blondes here.

february air

Tonight, I would just like to stop feeling like I'm dragging myself through everything.

I would also just like to stop being afraid of life in general.

The end.

like a little seed

"Now ye may suppose that this is foolishness in me; but behold I say unto you, that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise."

-Alma 37:6

This week has been really, really rough. And right now I'm sort of clinging to the hope that the fact that I gave up two hours of my evening going to the temple (small thing) instead of doing a number of other things that need to be done will help me get my presentation (great thing, as in huge task, not as in my presentation is going to be so awesome) done before 7 AM tomorrow.

My chem lit professor would cringe at the construction of that sentence.

Here's to having a little faith, for once.

Let it burn

Grad school sounds less appealing with every chem exam.
Guys, what am I going to do with my life?

so much for "arrested development" and ice cream...

Why can't I just let something go? I swear I'm only being argumentative for a principle, like I'm looking for reasons to be angry.
And why do I have this awful hunch that my birthday's going to suck?

Oh yeah, because I've got an o chem quiz.
And it's one more day that I haven't studied for my Saturday test.

Someone get me a service project. Maybe I should move to Sudan?

Or study instead of writing pointless posts.

AWOIeFNBadhcaksdfjhoiHEGBASKJBHDGalkjnfa!

(translation: this is how i spend my last night as a teenager? pathetic!)

Hide and Seek

I am busy about everything, and that is exactly my problem.

Nothing's fine, I'm torn.

I wrote up a very long, angry, and bitter post just barely, but it was ridiculous, so let me just say this:

I AM VERY ANGRY AND BITTER RIGHT NOW!!!!!

Thank you for your time.

Just like glass

I feel so fragile.

I want to come home and make myself dinner. I want to love my classes again. I want to stop feeling guilty for every moment I don't spend with my head buried in a textbook. I want to learn concepts instead of just throwing answers on a page because it's due in two hours. I want to feel smart again.

I can't...can't I caan't take freaking physics for two and a half more semesters!!! GAH it's killing me!!

I just want to sleep for days. Wake me up when my life is back to normal, and I have good grades again please.

I miss myself.

So this is goodbye...

Well folks, thus begins my incredibly hectic, potentially scholarship/GPA/graduate school future destroying three week period of before/after mid semester tour.
I have zero time to spare, so I'm swearing off facebook and blogging for the time being. See you all in the cyberworld after the week of the 19th...

I've blogged a lot today. I really shouldn't study near a computer.

A direct quote from my chem text book:
"Consider college students living without CDs and spandex!"

I don't think I've touched a CD in months...and I haven't worn spandex since....I can't remember when. It's the second edition copyrighted in 2008. Someone needs to update these authors. Show them an iPod or jeans or something.

It's just been raining on my face

WHO THE HECK TAKES AN O CHEM BINDER?

Come on people! If you're going to be a thief, at least steal something good!
I have this organic chemistry test on Monday, and being the organic chemistry professor's daughter and probably the only chem major in my class of 250, it's important that I do well. Plus, I want to do well, because that's just the way I am. So I took my binder with all my notes and my review sheets, not only the ones I've taken so far, but this has all of the lecture outlines for the rest of the semester to the concert hall tonight. I was studying in between numbers, working out problems, reviewing as much as I could, since I haven't had a chance to do so all week because of World of Dance. I set my binder under my notebook while I ran to dance the west coast swing, and when I came back after the show, my notebook was there, but my binder was gone. If this was a joke, my gosh, it is so not funny. I have no notes from which to study, I have no lecture outlines for the rest of the semester, I have no review sheets. GAh I am so ticked. I am sobbing. It's like everything from the past week has all built up and built up, all the nights of no sleep, early rehearsals, full days where I leave at 6:45 AM and don't get home until midnight, stress of trying to figure things out and get my homework done, try to do the best I can for these performances, and study for this FREAKING TEST AND NOW I HAVE NOTHING. ;ahoawgh'aqhi'oaqgvabvae'vhia;skhndvahsva
vavacasvjav;hab
I was going to go see a movie tonight, but if anyone says anything in the wrong way to me I'll fall completely apart.
Like I did as soon as I got out of Toffer's car.
How embarrassing.
It's not like I've never failed a test before.

Porcelain Fists

My prayer:
Please let me get through this week without completely alienating myself from everyone I love due to my stress-induced irritability.
I apologize in advance.