Happy Halloween 2004!

Pirate time! Arr

Loyalty? Patriotism? Gah.

A small, superstitious part of me believes that, had I watched even a bit of any of the games this week, the Cardinals may have had a shot at the series. It's a silly thought, but I feel guilty. This from the girl who brought her Chemistry homework to the ballpark in high school... I know, I know, how unamerican of me.

Speaking of unamerican, my absentee ballot had better arrive very soon, or everyone I know will yell at me. I'm not looking forward to that prospect.

One down...

I took the GRE today... acceptable verbal and quantitative scores (for mom's benefit: combined only 50 points lower than my SAT, which I'm fine with. Oh, go look it up! I'm not telling!) but I get to wait for a mailing for the essay scores. I'm SO TIRED. They snuck a second math section in on me, which they do occasionally to try out questions for future versions of the test. They don't tell you which section is "real" and counts towards your final score, though, so it's just bonus stress. Exactly what I need today.

In other news, allstus (e-mails sent to the whole student body) make me laugh. Limecat is NOT pleased.

All I need to do now is write my comps and figure out my life. Whew, is that ever a load off!

Red in the face

Sometimes I think I'm paranoid about other people looking at me, laughing at me, talking about me... I've convinced myself that everybody is a little bit paranoid about that kind of stuff, though. At least from time to time, right?

One should feel especially silly if this paranoia rears its ugly little head when one is supposed to be the center of attention, such as when one is on a stage in front of 500 people.

But when the whole front row is pointing and mugging and giggling and talking to each other when they are expected to be rather passively listening... well...

Sometimes, a little paranoia is warrented. Like when you don't realize a big black fly is for some unfathomable reason attracted to your breasts and keeps landing on your white shirt, hopping from one side to the other for an entire song, and everybody all the way to the back of the hall can see it, and your own mother and aunt are hysterically amused to the point of tears.

I just wish someone would have told me.

{pro crass tin nation}

Just because I have no free time doesn't mean I don't have too much time on my hands.

current status

Things that went wrong today:

• Finding more problems with the most recent draft of my summer science poster
• Realizing I screwed up some dates and almost killed my honors project, and making more work for myself on the way
• Being unable to access my graphs (that I worked on until 1am yesterday) for my comparative presentation... this is after sitting in the rain for 2.5 hours on monday watching deer relieve themselves in some farmer's yard, only to have the property owner chew me out because she didn't call me back.
• This

Things that went right today:

• Confirmation of my fulbright application's arrival at IIE
• Revised and submitted my FINAL FINAL summer science poster for the presentation on Friday
• Realized that I was mistaken about project dates in time to salvage things
• While venting about my deadlines to a prof I respect, I mentioned that I have only three weeks left to write my comps. Her response: "Oh, you're fine, then!"

Oh. I'm fine, then. It's amazing how one small piece of reassurance can improve my entire outlook. Today was a good day.

synopsis

So, I bombed the interview.

I got an e-mail that night informing me that the committee was unwilling to support my proposal, so I cried for a while, called my boyfriend, and then decided I wasn't going to accept that. I rewrote my proposal and e-mailed it to the committee heads the following morning, and after two excruciating days of waiting was informed that I was still in the game. Beginning last Thursday I wrote three new drafts of my proposal in as many days (plus a new CV) and have until tomorrow to get everything situated for submission.

I've also gotten about 30 new articles to read so I can write my comps (comprehensive exam... required to graduate) proposal by thanksgiving, and two presentations due in a week, one of which (due wednesday) requires four hours of observation of some animal. The people I've attempted to contact for two weeks about the deer on their farm have never called me back. Plus regular homework.

So I've been too busy to post. Tough Noogies.

GAH

Interviews are obnoxious. It's not that I dislike talking about myself (QED, this blog) or that I dislike talking to others... but somehow if the stakes are high I get this complex about bragging until I feel uncomfortable bringing up my own accomplishments... or else I just shut down and stumble, tongue-tied, over my own answers. I HATE feeling unprepared, too... and somehow, even though I've spent hours in the past month putting my application together, I went totally blank on two separate occasions. How frustrating!

At least this is just the internal interview. IF I get past this phase I've got a while to figure out how to resolve my issues and present myself more suitably... and I should have better feedback to guide me. Either that or they've already decided that I can't hack it and don't deserve to make it to the next step, in which case I can just stop worrying about it. What's done is done.

progress is good

The internal committee has decided to support my Fulbright application! Yay! Now comes the hard stuff... I've got a panel interview Monday morning and LOTS of revision to do before this thing finally goes out. Mit glück, ich kann nachstes Jahr bei Deutschland studieren!

Now, if only I can finish my Psychopharm paper, comps proposal, AND honors proposal by tomorrow... and find time to read and study for my Comparative test on Friday... and finish my German homework for this week... and get the rest of my data scored and analyzed and read about 25 articles so that I can interpret the results and make a poster by next Wednesday... and eat... and sleep...

Good thing I can't often tell the difference between being deliriously busy and being deliriously happy!

Vandalism is fun

My roommate, Jen, and I have an ongoing project. My advisor is a great guy, but we've decided he needs more excitement in his life. Luckily, he goes up to New York every other weekend to visit his girlfriend, giving us (and any others we happen to drag along) a great opportunity to wield some mayhem. On the first visit we stuck about 10 spinning lawn ornaments in the yard and left a nice poem on the door, signed "the gardening powerpoint divas," in reference to an intensely exciting powerpoint presentation we did for one of his classes. (When you lose half a letter grade because the sound effects and slide transitions are "unproffessional" you know you've made it.) The pictures are from the second visit, when we added flashing frog lights and tinfoil on every other railing spoke. Our "mascot" is my roommate's boyfriend, Marc, visiting from grad school. What a great sport! As Jen has pointed out, he would totally dress in drag for us if we asked him to. Now we need to figure out how we're going to outdo ourselves do next week...


our fabulous poetry... and our fabulous mascot 


A blurry pic of our mascot, showing off his sparkling sparkliness 

I put the "dead" in "deadline"

I turned in my Fulbright application this afternoon. Whew. I'm SO happy to have it out of my sight for a few days after spending so many hours working on it in the past week. I'll know fairly soon if the whole thing is a wash or if I have to start prepping for interviews.

Now to attack the huge homework pileup... Comps! GAH! Summer science writeup! ARGH! GRE's! GRR! Everything else! YRNX!

Ah, senior year.