Thanksgiving break - the much needed refresher!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING, everyone!!

It has been quite some time since I have taken a few minutes out of my life to document the insignificant details for you. And, since my last post, I have accomplished...well....hardly anything. Truth be told, staying up until 4 a.m. for homework ruined me. That night, along with sleep, I lost what little motivation I was hoarding. Since turning in that paper, I have accomplished close to nothing of scholarly significance. In place of my motivation, I have acquired somewhat of an apathetic (or perhaps drudgery is a better word) attitude towards anything having to do with my Fall 2008 semester classes. Despite having a relatively non-busy week, I am currently 4 chapters of reading behind in cell and molecular biology, I managed to lose my physics notebook and thus haven't taken notes for an entire week, and I actually subconsciously gave myself permission to shut my brain off during organic chemistry lectures because the reactions of the week just seemed like way too much to handle. But did I just sit around doing nothing all week? No, of course not. No, instead of making it easy on myself and catching up on work for my classes, I daintily pretended I could have a grand old time, and thus read Stephanie Meyer's Twilight and updated my IPOD. I found the book alright, but not nearly as good as all the hype warrants it to be. And, the music? Well, it did make my drive home on Tuesday rather enjoyable.... I'm now banking on the hope that this marvelous Thanksgiving break will put some fire back in my brain so that I can trudge through the last two weeks of the semester in a scholarly manner.

Thanksgiving break thus far has been a wonderfully refreshing event. I had a grand 'ol time on my drive home Tuesday afternoon, singing the entire way. In fact, I think I sang myself to exhaustion. I fell asleep on my bedroom floor at 7:00 and ended up officially curling up in my bed at 8:30 and not waking from my peaceful slumber until 10:00 on Wednesday. That was worth about two entire nights of sleep at the Mount! Yesterday I went shopping and got a new phone to replace my malfunctioning razor. My mom made me homemade mashed potatoes for supper, and I spent the evening at a family friends' house, reminiscing and watching a movie with some of my best and longest-lasting friends.

Currently, I am a bit uncomfortable, as I stuffed in a bit too much of my Thanksgiving feast. Here in my hometown of Elgin, NE, Thanksgiving doesn't mean a home-cooked meal with family, but a trip to town for a homemade parish meal at the St. Boniface Parish Thanksgiving Bazaar. This year marks the 84th annual bazaar. People come from all over and stand in line sometimes for as long as an hour just to eat the scrumptious food. It's great for all of the outsiders, but for families like mine who are members of the parish, Thanksgiving means working at the bazaar and seeing very little of each other. It is a day-long event as there is more food to go along with bingo and a raffle during the evening, followed of course by clean-up. In any case, all the work and sharing that goes into the day is something to marvel at. I guess I have an entire parish family to be thankful for on Thanksgiving day! And I must be off now to go pick up my little brother from his shift of working at the games for kids.

Happy Turkey Day. Don't forget to count your blessings and eat too much food! :)

To sleep or Not to sleep...

Hello All! Yet another week of the semester has past, and I am living to tell the tale - even if my "living" is rather zombie-like this morning. After giving serious thought to the matter, and even jumping in the water for a test-run, I've discovered this week more than ever, the pure bliss of having a bedtime... or rather the pain of lacking one. As a young, energetic child, I threw the customary tantrums a time or two when the fun-annihilating bedtime rolled around. Now that I have acquired years of irreplaceable wisdom, however, I realize the stupidity of whining about that wonderful gift of required rest. Allow me to explain.

You see, on my course schedule this fall there has been this column inhabited by a so-called "research" class - a class consuming 3.0 credit hours of my life, I might add. A quiet class, it seemed to be for the first 3 months of this semester as I daintily gave not so much as a strawberry seed to it's whisper of a demand to receive attention. That is until Monday, November 10, the day I discovered a peculiar marking taking up more than its fair share of space in my planner. The marking, appearing rather smug and ominous said simply, "research paper rough draft due." .......uh-oh......And so the story of the week I completed a 3 credit course research paper in a week's time takes shape.

What I had so blissfully avoided for 3 months came back to release its fury on me. To fight the storm, I put aside thoughts of studying for all other classes this week and proceeded to immerse myself in the ever-confusing, problematic analysis of Class II Giardia Fructose-1, 6 biphosphate, that is, the chosen enzyme as a drug target for killing the little devil of a parasite causing giardiasis, a form of diarrhea. The outcome of such an intense endeavor proved to be a lack of sleep, a couple of significantly lower homework grades in organic chemistry, initiation of auto-retreat of focus to thoughts of days of recess and snowpant-clad, carefree snow angle making during cell and molecular biology to save my brain from incomprehensible knowledge, AND a complete exploit of every pebble of motivation I have. It was like a microeconomics screenplay of diminishing returns coming to life. As the week wore on, I spent more and more time looking up song lyrics, randomly checking facebook updates, eating (it was out of control), and staring blankly at my computer screen. The week culminated in completion of the 19 page (20 with the title page), 1.5 line-spaced, 12-font paper at 4:00 a.m. this morning, Friday, November, 2008, a.k.a. the due date.

So, task complete, I weakly collapsed on my bed at 4:10 a.m. and preceded to dream of a parasite, portrayed as a very ugly, scary looking man, chasing me. The details are a bit hazy, but I recall it being frightfully dark. I sought the help of a couple of friends, who also happened to be up at at odd hours of the morning, crying frantically something about killing the enzyme. Sadly, I don't think they saved me, as I woke up 3 short hours after so gratefully drifting off to sleep to my alarm, creepily coordinated with a scream in my dream.

And so, my 8:00 class was torturous. I made a valiant effort at reading and note-taking in physics to save me from drifting off to sleep, and I listened through a fog to the organic chemistry review for our test on Monday. I think I was caught up in some sort of second-wind at 11:00, that I'm banking will keep me alive and thriving until 2:00 when my classes are complete for the week and I can take a nap, which sounds heavenly right now.

Three cheers for procrastination. Enjoy sleep while you can, and if you chose to skip bed-time, know that you are not alone. :)

It's soo cold!

Well...a week into November, less than 48 hours after I daintily spent 3 days wandering around campus comfortably and joyfully in shorts and a t-shirt, naively thinking that perhaps we would just skip winter and go straight back to summer, I am sitting here completely chilled to the bone. I normally wake up to see the sunrise outside my window. This morning I woke up to see winter waving frantically in my face. And, as if the light blanket of snow thought I couldn't see it outside of my fourth floor window, it's friend, Ice Wind, made some noise to go with it. Ice Wind is not my friend! I literally gasped when I stepped outside the door this morning to trudge to Physics class - winter is not coming quietly. In fact, I think the cold blast of wind in my face and the slippery sidewalk was a very rude arrival....like someone screaming in the library.

On with my life narrative, however. We played in the first round of the GPAC volleyball tournament last night. It was the first time in 8 years that MMC has been in the tournament. Annnd.... we .....lost. :( So, our season is over. Despite the greatly elevated amount of free time that I now have stretching out before me, it is rather sad to be done. For starters, we lost in 3 sets, and played okay, but not great. And secondly, a couple of the seniors on the team also happen to be some of my best friends, so I will miss them terribly. And, finally, if I am accepted into graduate school, I may be forever done with collegiate sports. My body would probably be incredibly grateful for that, but my heart is rather sad. It is kind of a surreal feeling right now, to be done. I don't think it will fully set in until after a few days of not practicing. As for now, the slow acceptance leaves me in a mellow/contemplative/sad mood, so the evil Ice Wind, though harsh, seems kind of fitting for the day. I should mention though, that this season marks the best for MMC volleyball in 9 years. We finished 14-21, doubling our number of wins from one year ago.

And despite the wind, cold, and ending of volleyball, life is surely moving on. This weekend lays claim to the Blue and Gold Days festivities. It kicks off this afternoon at 3:30 for the Honors Convocation. I will be honored, along with all of the other MMC scholarship recipients. I also have to ambassador at the ceremony (yay black, old lady suit......note the sarcasm :P). Post ceremony I have a couple of hours to lounge in comfy clothes before donning my suit for the second time in one day as I have to ambassador at the fall play tonight as well. I'm planning on staying to watch the show once my job is complete. Andy Hendrickson, the theatre director here always puts together shows well worth seeing! Tomorrow my mom is driving up to visit me and has planned a shopping date with me in Sioux Falls. Homework or not, family just seems more important. And Sunday, the suit comes out yet again....It's like rebelling against hanging in the corner of my closet or something and DEMANDING usage this week. (haha...) Sunday morning is the ambassador commissioning mass where I shall stand in front of the congregation and pledge my allegiance to the school and service...or something like that.

And I'm off and running again. I have to get some lecture notes printed off and make a couple of phone calls before class. Busy, busy, busy......oh Thanksgiving break, where are you? :)