This week has been so hard. I feel like I'm getting wrinkles - real ones, not the ones I already have on my forehead from scrunching up my eyes when I work at the computer for long hours.
At UF "taking initiative" and "going the extra mile" meant things like doing things before they were due, and doing a little extra research and gussying my work up so it was beautifully formatted and easy to read.
Maybe it's CSULB or maybe it's just grad school in general, but that's so not the case here. It's exhausting...and ennervating...and I start to understand the words "nervous prostration" much more clearly.
I am so, so, SO glad that Dr. Quintiliani likes my work and thinks I'm really starting to understand and "think" the way a graduate student/academic should. Dr. Rodrigue is very nice to me, but I'm not half so good at her class and it's wonderful to get real, solid praise from one of my professors.
Of course, Dr. Lipo's high expectations and his critical judgment of my work makes his praise super-awesome...it's just that I don't get a whole lot of yet it...but I will, just watch me.
Today, for instance, I just wanted to stay in bed. I felt tired, groggy, unfit, cough-y and just generally miserable and ready to spend the day imitating a bed-ridden bronchitis patient.
But I dragged myself out of bed, ate breakfast and allowed myself the luxury of going through my daily routine of comics and advice columns (don't laugh, I LOVE advice columns) before working solidly until noon when I ate lunch.
I was packing up my stuff to go to campus when I broke my glasses case (really, I expected much better quality out of Miu Miu, it is the day-house of Prada after all) and had to drop everything and rush over to CVS and get a new one (I simply can't afford new glasses just yet...so I couldn't risk breaking them) which set me back $10. But it's a nice hard case and I'm hoping it'll last a good long time.
I finally got to campus a little before one, and got started on my SAA project work - really, I was going through ImageJ (the freeware we're using to analyze the images) and trying to understand how Jimmy Daniels (the guy who did this project before me) did what he did. I was really glad when Jake got there and helped me out, although I must say with pride that I figured out FOUR THINGS ALL BY MYSELF!!! Of course, I was reading through the manual and that taught me a lot, but I still managed to figure out some stuff all on my own. I mean to read it again tomorrow because I was going to do it tonight but wrote an essay instead.
The boys left a little before 5 and I finally walked out at 5 because Dr. Lipo was still in a meeting and I was tired and annoyed. I went to the NAGPRA lab and the light-bulbs blew (of course) so I had to double-check my notes in the skeleton room which is definitely creepy with the main room darkened.
I walked home and spent the early evening cooking a nice prawn curry (I forgot how messy they get, I'm going to have to clean my stove tomorrow) and ate it with a salad that was properly accoutered with feta cheese. There's nothing like a good simple salad with feta cheese, even if I only have crumbles and not the nice flat chunks.
Then I wrote an essay while watching a PBS special on britcoms - "From Script to Screen" which was really rather touching, probably because I grew up with these shows and it reminded me of all those nights with my family and britcoms and good food. And I know you're looking disapproving about working with the tv on, but the work HAD to get done, and it's Friday night damnit, I deserve a little fun every now and again.
Once I wrote it I had a nice bowlful of ice cream while watching CSI and now I'm updating my blog with Whose Line Is It Anyway? on in the foreground.
This weekend I still have to finish some NAGPRA work, rewrite my essay (that'll happen Sunday after it's had some time to digest), reread that ImageJ manual, read my statistics book, do my taxes, rewrite some old assignments (if we turn them back in we get extra points, we can turn them in as many times as we need to get full points), and do some reading for another class. And on Sunday I'll have to go into lab to work on Lab 4 so that Tuesday will just be lab write-up because it's due Wednesday.
It's hardly a weekend, and yet, if it weren't, I'd be getting MORE work assigned to me, so I suppose it's just as well I have these days "off".
Anyway, it's midnight so I'm officially off duty. So, it's time to go work on my novel. It's not like I have any other time to write it in!
No comments:
Post a Comment