Forty Seventh Post

Hello, everybody.
I've just survived what I hope is the most stressful week of this school year. It's mostly my fault that it was so stressful, but that's never before stopped me from complaining about it.
So there's this thing called "ISEP" (International Student Exchange Program) of which my university is a member. Students from member universities can apply to study at member universities in other countries. The students who are accepted to these other universities pay tuition to their home university as if they were there, taking classes and living in a dorm, but they are actually in another country living in the dorms of their host university and taking their classes for free. Sort of.
It's ridiculously cool. Since my dream has always been to travel to Europe, I leapt at the chance to study abroad. One of my favourite high school teachers (a recent alum of my university) talked up the study abroad programme and mentioned that college was the best time to travel. You're young, ISEP makes most of the arrangements, and you have the time for it.
My plans for study abroad evolved as I solidified my plans for these four important (and expensive) years of my life. I started off planning to go on a study tour, which I found in the course handbook (a wealth of excitement, planning, and crushed dreams when you realise that that awesome medaeval studies minor is 26 credits, which doesn't really work with your 120-odd credit biochemistry major if you plan to graduate in four). It was offered every three years in the fall, so my only chance for the British Isles Study Tour was the fall of my junior year. I immediately began to plan my life around that eventuality.
However, I still needed to think about my major. The study tour is strictly humanities and theology. I need a biochemistry class to take some interesting upper-division biology courses, and they're offered the spring of my junior year only. So I had a meeting with Sue, the international coordinator, at the suggestion of my advisor.
I got some vague ideas of schools and classes over the summer between my freshman and sophomore year. But since the application for fall 2011 wasn't open, I kind of forgot.
Meetings started up again between myself and Sue, mostly consisting of me being vague and her being frustrated by my lack of planning. I'm... plan-challenged, if you hadn't noticed by the general lack of organisation in my posts. I'm also terrified of dreams coming true.
Finally, I remembered that the deadline was coming up. 15 January, which translated to 18 January, being that the 15th was a weekend and that Monday was a holiday for us. I went in and had my pre-application talk with Sue on Tuesday 11 January. I discovered that I had exactly one week to get the following items in order:
A "participant profile"
A personal statement essay on why I want to study abroad
A list of requested host universities
A course request list, preferably with course numbers, for each host site requested
An explanation of how attending each host site will fulfill my study abroad goals (academically, personally, geographically)
Recommendations from two university-level professors (a form and a letter on official letterhead)
A copy of my passport
So.
My passport is expired and has been for almost a year. It will cost me $135 to get a new one because I was a minor when I got the first one.
Half my professors are off campus since it's jan term and not all of them are teaching. This makes it hard to find good recommenders.
It is really, really hard to find course numbers on a university website.
However! I prevailed, got my professors to fill out references, researched schools, looked up classes, had friends edit my essay, and filled out the participant profile. It turned out that my passport being expired is okay, so long as I get my hands on a new one before I go, if I'm accepted.
Now I'm trying to convince my body that it's okay for it to relax and not be stressed out.

Forty Sixth Post

So, I tried to do a vlog thing. It didn't work because the microphone that is part of my computer doesn't seem to work. I don't know why, and I'm too tired to figure it out.
Why did I try to make a vlog thing? Because I had been awake for 24 hours exactly when I was musing about how great minds don't think alike whilst sitting in the bathroom.
Now, my trash contains 25 minutes and 11 seconds of me moving my mouth and hands without sound, plus a 40-second sound test thing.
It makes me sad. I'll need to play with the settings when I'm awake so that I can talk at the screen of my computer when I'm tired.

In other news, I'm dying some of my hair purple today. We'll see how it goes, since I have dark brown hair and the package just informed me that I should lighten my hair. Why they couldn't have told me that while I was still shopping online for all the things I'd need, I don't know.
So here's hoping that I don't dye my face and shoulders purple in my quest for awesome rewards for good grades.