Final Countdown

Well, well, well, where has the semester gone? It has sufficiently wound down to the beginning of the final week of classes and I'm fairly certain that my health has wound down with the semester. This lack of sleep thing I've been testing out this semester is bound to catch up to me in my old age. But why worry when I'm still young, right? It is presently 2:34 a.m. and I should by all means be sleeping or studying for one of my two chemistry tests that will be upon me in 6.5 short hours. However, as another health killer, I had my mom by me some vanilla coke to push me through these final weeks. I've gone and decided that pop, one of the very things I used to avoid at all costs in the past because "it is bad for my health," is going to be my life saver for two weeks. It does have caffeine after all, and it is doing a good job of keeping me very much awake right now.

So, with my ridiculous alertness for the hour, I'm sitting in my room wishing that Papa Murphy's Pizza was open because I have a serious craving for some of that delightfully delicious pizza! It would make me feel more at home in my now bare and carpet-less dorm room. I'm kind of scared to go to bed because my parents came up to take my loft down today (despite my protesting due to my need to study!) and my bed now sits on the floor and everything looks different and big and sad. I might wake up in the middle of a chemistry nightmare and have no idea where I'm at.

I re-read my last blog before I started this one, and I've decided that I gave myself bad karma. All that stuff about being excited to hang out with the alumni volleyball players back for the game and having a good time at the spring formal....yeah....none of that happened. What really went down was that I managed to sprain my ankle such that it swelled, and remains swollen, to epic proportions during the alumni game. I spent that night with a very cold foot (ice), elevation, and ibuprofen. Despite walking almost normally, my ankle, foot, and toes are still interesting shades of greens and purples and I have an ankle that is literally doubled in normal size. Hopefully it catches a bad case of ankle anorexia this week and slims down significantly.

As far as summer plans...well, I finally signed my apartment lease, but I am still unemployed. I'm waiting on an internship thing to go through/be found/cooperate, and in the meantime pushing off signing a work study contract. It's quite the stressful balancing act.

My seminar presentation went pretty well. After about 4 hours with Dr. Wu going over questions and learning about intricate details that I wish I had never known the existence of, I felt reasonably confident in my knowledge of the most common form of parasitic infections in the U.S. - giardiasis (a form of non bacterial diarrhea...). I answered the professors' questions afterwards without being completely butchered and I spent a good chuck of this weekend revising my 20 page research paper.

Ok...I'm definitely hearing happy bird chirping....you know, the kind that signifies the arrival of morning. That's just wrong on various levels right now. I think it's a good sign that I should probably hit the lights for the night and bring on the chemistry nightmares. Good night/morning!

Daunting Prelude...

This is going to be relatively short compared to most of my other posts, but there are a few things that I need to tell you all about before I hide away in my studies.

First of all, the choir tour and our home concert last night was great!! We had a ton of fun performing and I think we sounded pretty great while doing it. We sang at five high schools in the surrounding South Dakota area and then gave one final show for our friends and family here at Mount Marty. Check out spotted on the Press and Dakotan website for pictures of last night's performance! My only negative is that I am drained from the big week.

Secondly, I am heading down to get ready for our Alumni Volleyball tournament this evening very soon. It should be a good time seeing all of the old people ( :P ) again. Ok, so most of them aren't that old at all, and I am very excited to hang out with some of my graduated teammates and friends this evening.

Thirdly, the spring formal is this evening. I will probably make an appearance despite my crammed planner telling me that might be an unwise decision. Oh well, one final night of fun before I hit the books HARD for the remaining 2 weeks of classes and finals. :)

Finally, um....this coming week is overwhelming me at the thought of it (hence this brief prelude post). I have to prepare a 20 minute presentation for senior seminar over my entirely too confusing research with Dr. Wu this summer. I am very daunted by the thought of it. The big presentation day is Wednesday, so Monday and Tuesday's homework projects might be pushed aside to half-hearted attempts. I have interviews and summer plan finalization and papers due as well. Oh mylanta....

And I'm off until next time.... (unless I am eternally buried in the hugeness of this coming week!). :)

Back at It

Oh my...it has been a while. I think the deal about that issue is that I was going to post last week, but last week was the beginning of Easter break, so I was extremely unfocused and just antsy to go home. I hadn't been home for over two months and burn out symptoms from this semester and exhaustion and monotony combined to make me homesick. In fact, I had full intentions of jetting out of Yankton for Elgin, NE at 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon after my last class and the campus tour I had agreed to give. But, the time finally came, and then I decided it was beautiful outside so I would run first and take care of some errands on campus. I finally left at about 4:30 and spent a very refreshing four and one half days at home.

What did I do with my much anticipated break? Well, I had full intentions of getting caught up on homework and maybe even ahead, of sleeping a lot, and maybe even watching a few movies with the family. Key word in that sentence: "intentions." Actually, I did hardly any homework at all. I wrote one physics lab report and a couple of articles for the Moderator. I slept in on Thursday morning and had lunch with a couple of good friends from home, I went to church three out of the four nights because the Easter season is a very holy one, I took zero naps, I went shopping with my Mom, and I spent Easter Sunday at my Grandma's. All in all, I did my darnedest to believe that I could relax and not worry about school, I slept not nearly enough for the sleep debt I have accumulated, I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and I woke up and realized break was already over and I had only begun to fully settle my mind.

I stayed up rather late last night (as seems to be my habit here at Mount Marty); but I wasn't even doing homework like usual. I was talking with friends and celebrating a good friend's birthday. So this morning I am feeling groggy but happy, and somewhere in that mix, incredibly stressed. I am still unemployed for this summer and without living arrangements -- school is out in less than a month just to but that into perspective for you...yikes! I just spent a good 20 minutes hounding our career guidance counselor about internship possibilities. Despite ill-fated plans in opposition to it, it looks very likely that I will be residing in Yankton yet again this summer. I'll keep you posted on details of that...

In the meantime, it is gorgeous outside, organic chemistry lab is cancelled this afternoon, and life is great! Enjoy your week (short because of Monday being part of Easter vacation!! :)) and the weather. Perhaps I will see some of you tomorrow or Thursday as I travel with the wonderful MMC choir to local schools on the annual choir tour. If not, you should travel randomly to Yankton on Friday night and watch the home choir/jazz band concert in Marion Auditorium at 7:30 p.m. It will be a stellar performance!!! Sing whatever song is in your heart..SING, SING, SING!!! :)

There's No Such Thing...

So I crawled up into my loft at 12:35 a.m. this morning and set my phone alarm like I always do, and before I secured my phone on the ledge of my loft and allowed myself to drift off into a much needed dream world, I happened to catch a glimpse of it's digital flashing of the date. We are officially in the month of April! My goodness.....where on God's green earth has the time gone? I'm not feeling very creative or ornery right now, so I have nothing to offer in the way of April Fool's Day jokes. Maybe that's only fitting because I sit here on April 1 without a job for the summer and no official plans. I don't know where I'm going to be living or what I'm going to be doing. I still don't know what graduate college entrance exam(s) I need to prepare for now that I've shoved pharmacy school to my list of "no's." Frankly, I think I'm stuck in this mound of homework that never goes away. I can't see over it, so I have no plans. What shall become of me???

Hmmm....Okay, now that I have my mini-anxiety attack out of my system, let's get on with this re-cap of my ever-exciting and eventful life. :) For some inexplicable reason, God decided it would be cool to send us a blizzard on the last day of March. Here at Mount Marty, the campus was very much alive in the morning. There were a lot of bitter comments floating around about the fact that classes had not been cancelled, because, it seemed that we were perhaps the only academic institution still plugging away in the state of South Dakota (I'm guessing many of you reaped the benefits of school closings of your own...). Downtrodden faces would soon be lifted, however, as it was announced that the campus would be closing at noon due to this anticipated blizzard. Lucky for me, I then had an afternoon free of organic chemistry lab and an evening without a Christianity in the Modern World lecture. Much relieved for the extra time, I spent a solid three hours in the afternoon attempting to memorize and draw out the entire glycolysis and citric acid cycles for my Biochemistry test on Friday, afterwhich my exhausted brain was pleading for recess. So I put it to work writing the beginning chapters of a book for Advanced Fiction and Nonfiction.

The time was exactly what I needed. I even rewarded myself and played basketball for over an hour last night. I hadn't played in a long time - too long I think - and it was great fun. BUT, then this first day of April rolled around and low and behold, I come to realize that there really is no such thing as a free lunch (or in my case, free time....). Dr. Wu graciously informed us that we needn't worry about what we missed out on in lab as we can just perform a double experiment next Tuesday and write two lab reports. Oh and Christianity? Class is moved to tomorrow night to so kindly infringe on my Biochemistry study time.

AND SO IT GOES.....

This weekend = relief that biochemistry and physics tests are over, summer job search (hopefully), Spring Formal, TEC reunion, and studying for the organic chemistry test on Monday....