Wednesday, September 24, 2008
and the winner is...
Today will forever go down in history as the day I won a Red Sox T-shirt! yay!!!
A day in the life of JM
7:13 am: cell phone alarm goes off; hit snooze
7:14 am: drift off wondering just how big of a natural disaster it would take for classes to be canceled
7:22 am: alarm goes off again; turn it off
7:23 am: decide it's too cold to get out of bed, pick up my laptop instead to reply to all the emails I've gotten during the night... accidentally lean on my phone with my elbow and somehow manage to call my brother. it's 5:23 am for him. oops.
7:29 am: decide that neither Special Offers from Zions Bank, Overstock.com, Kayak Buzz Daily Alert, nor CNN Breaking News necessitate a reply
7:30 am: check MSN to see if various friends are online. Say hi. practice Danish.
7:47 am: get out of bed, say hi to roommates, eat breakfast
7:55 am: fail to convince myself I don't need a shower. take shower.
8:05 am: get ready to go, practice making faces in the mirror
8:25 am: realize all my roommates are gone already. skip around the house singing Broadway songs in various fake accents. pause for a dramatic rendition of "The Raven"
8:30 am: make lunch, pack backpack
8:40 am: leave to catch train
8:44 am: arrive at train stop just soon enough to see train leaving before I can reach it. wait for next train.
9:20 am: arrive at school
9:22 am: search the web to find out who played Mr. Magorium
9:23 am: email professor "It was Dustin Hoffman! I can't believe we couldn't remember that!"
9:30 am: class
11:00 am: 'nother class
12:00 pm: return to office (starving!), eat lunch, wish I had packed more lunch
12:05 pm: do RP homework frantically to get it done by class at 2:30
2:29 pm: finish scribbling some unintelligible answers, staple homework, run to class
2:30 pm: class
2:32 pm: get last homework assignment back (graded)
2:33 pm: crack up laughing due to professor's witty responses to my equally witty (and occasionally snide) commentary in homework
2:33:30 pm: stop laughing upon realization that laughter is not a normal response to looking at graded homework, and my classmates are now looking at me funny and shifting their chairs away from me
2:34 pm: remember a new danish word I learned, "hen", which my book claims "has no equivalent in modern English, but indicates movement away from the speaker"... wish English had an equivalent. decide to make one.
3:00 pm: nap
3:20 pm: realize class is not the best place for a nap... try to look interested. write to-do list in my notebook so it looks like I'm taking notes.
4:00 pm: back to office. wish I had brought more cookies. start working on homework.
4:17 pm: friend asks what I'm doing on Google Talk
4:18 pm: watch a youtube video
4:27 pm: exclaim "hence! English does have an equivalent!!!"
4:45 pm: start to get ready to teach lab
4:50 pm: set up lab
5:00 pm: teach lab
6:30 pm: kick remaining student out of lab, return to office
.
.
.
... to be continued because I'm sick of writing this now :)
7:14 am: drift off wondering just how big of a natural disaster it would take for classes to be canceled
7:22 am: alarm goes off again; turn it off
7:23 am: decide it's too cold to get out of bed, pick up my laptop instead to reply to all the emails I've gotten during the night... accidentally lean on my phone with my elbow and somehow manage to call my brother. it's 5:23 am for him. oops.
7:29 am: decide that neither Special Offers from Zions Bank, Overstock.com, Kayak Buzz Daily Alert, nor CNN Breaking News necessitate a reply
7:30 am: check MSN to see if various friends are online. Say hi. practice Danish.
7:47 am: get out of bed, say hi to roommates, eat breakfast
7:55 am: fail to convince myself I don't need a shower. take shower.
8:05 am: get ready to go, practice making faces in the mirror
8:25 am: realize all my roommates are gone already. skip around the house singing Broadway songs in various fake accents. pause for a dramatic rendition of "The Raven"
8:30 am: make lunch, pack backpack
8:40 am: leave to catch train
8:44 am: arrive at train stop just soon enough to see train leaving before I can reach it. wait for next train.
9:20 am: arrive at school
9:22 am: search the web to find out who played Mr. Magorium
9:23 am: email professor "It was Dustin Hoffman! I can't believe we couldn't remember that!"
9:30 am: class
11:00 am: 'nother class
12:00 pm: return to office (starving!), eat lunch, wish I had packed more lunch
12:05 pm: do RP homework frantically to get it done by class at 2:30
2:29 pm: finish scribbling some unintelligible answers, staple homework, run to class
2:30 pm: class
2:32 pm: get last homework assignment back (graded)
2:33 pm: crack up laughing due to professor's witty responses to my equally witty (and occasionally snide) commentary in homework
2:33:30 pm: stop laughing upon realization that laughter is not a normal response to looking at graded homework, and my classmates are now looking at me funny and shifting their chairs away from me
2:34 pm: remember a new danish word I learned, "hen", which my book claims "has no equivalent in modern English, but indicates movement away from the speaker"... wish English had an equivalent. decide to make one.
3:00 pm: nap
3:20 pm: realize class is not the best place for a nap... try to look interested. write to-do list in my notebook so it looks like I'm taking notes.
4:00 pm: back to office. wish I had brought more cookies. start working on homework.
4:17 pm: friend asks what I'm doing on Google Talk
4:18 pm: watch a youtube video
4:27 pm: exclaim "hence! English does have an equivalent!!!"
4:45 pm: start to get ready to teach lab
4:50 pm: set up lab
5:00 pm: teach lab
6:30 pm: kick remaining student out of lab, return to office
.
.
.
... to be continued because I'm sick of writing this now :)
"The most wonderful of all things in life is the discovery of another human being with whom one's relationship has a growing depth, beauty and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing; it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of divine accident, and the most wonderful of all things in life."
--Sir Hugh Walpole
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
When to say when
I'm in grad school. The first semester of a PhD program. It feels more like a hazing than a semester, to be honest. Basically we were told when we started to kiss our social lives and hobbies goodbye, at least for this first semester. Between class and studying and teaching and grading (oh the joys of being a TA...) there isn't much time left for oh, say, archery, soccer, hiking, reading--you know, those things my former self used to enjoy. Heck, I barely have time for eating some days. And sleep is a luxury.
Today I was talking to my brother--also a grad student--about it. He said that he has basically decided that he can't be a grad student if he has to trade in his soul to do it. I agree. This doesn't mean that I plan to quit school, but it does mean that I might not be getting all As. I might not be turning in all the homework assignments perfectly finished. I will not be pulling countless all-nighters and living in my office. I will be having a life, doing things that I enjoy, and I will know when to call it quits, close the book, and go home (or go to bed, or go outside, or go feed ducks, whatever the case may be). At least that's the plan. I've realized that when I'm in school I usually let school become the top of my list of priorities, to the exclusion of all else, and thus everything else slides when there is school work to be done or a test to study for. Part of this is because I love what I study, but part of it is probably because I'm an over-achiever and I'm not good at prioritizing. I'm going to work on that. I'm getting too old to put everything off "until I graduate." I put off going to Denmark until I graduated with my bachelor's degree, and though it worked out good in the end (wink), now that I have lived there, I'm a little frustrated that it took me so long to do it.
Now I'm headed home to get some homework done. :P (Hey, I still have to do some work here...)
Today I was talking to my brother--also a grad student--about it. He said that he has basically decided that he can't be a grad student if he has to trade in his soul to do it. I agree. This doesn't mean that I plan to quit school, but it does mean that I might not be getting all As. I might not be turning in all the homework assignments perfectly finished. I will not be pulling countless all-nighters and living in my office. I will be having a life, doing things that I enjoy, and I will know when to call it quits, close the book, and go home (or go to bed, or go outside, or go feed ducks, whatever the case may be). At least that's the plan. I've realized that when I'm in school I usually let school become the top of my list of priorities, to the exclusion of all else, and thus everything else slides when there is school work to be done or a test to study for. Part of this is because I love what I study, but part of it is probably because I'm an over-achiever and I'm not good at prioritizing. I'm going to work on that. I'm getting too old to put everything off "until I graduate." I put off going to Denmark until I graduated with my bachelor's degree, and though it worked out good in the end (wink), now that I have lived there, I'm a little frustrated that it took me so long to do it.
Now I'm headed home to get some homework done. :P (Hey, I still have to do some work here...)
Monday, September 22, 2008
Zzzzz...
Today I fell asleep in class. (Sadly enough, this is actually not all that unusual.) My professor was explaining to us how to use a certain website with some applications that apparently he developed--so of course that makes them highly important--so he felt the need to wake me up. In front of the whole class. Good times. People laughed, so I guess it was actually good that I was able to bring a bit of joy to someone's day... :P
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