Graduations -- Eighty Ninth Post

Fun fact: I'm about to graduate from my undergraduate university. I have a grad school all lined up, I'm all confirmed and working on a roommate and apartment for next year, and I can safely put off loan repayments for at least five years. Because I'm in chemistry grad school, I will be paid to go to school and get my doctorate. I'll have to work my butt off to get that money, but it's better than having to work to pay tuition on top of living expenses (i.e., food, shelter). Still, graduating puts one in a strange frame of mind, regardless of whether it's high school or college (college = uni, for any UK denizens reading this). I feel like reflecting on where the hell the past four years went, all of a sudden. I feel like giving advice to anyone who looks younger than me. I feel like making jokes about common lab glassware. And, of course, I feel like blogging about it instead of doing my homework.
I also feel like all the grown-ups in my life who always make weird statements about "how fast life goes" were right all along. I mean, where did the last four years go? I had to recap them just to prove that it really has been three years and nine months since I got here.
Freshman Year: 2009-2010
Cried when my family left
Became vegetarian
Made friends on hall
Didn't really make other friends
Found out that college is hard
Discovered Heroes and became addicted
Found spiritual home in shotokan karate
Had nervous breakdown in advisor's office over physics
Was angry in class most of the time
Passed Physics 1
Took 3 lab classes at the same time
Survived taking 3 lab classes, arguably
Started realizing that personal beliefs line up remarkably well with feminism

Sophomore Year: 2010-2011
Lost touch with freshman year friends
Kept doing karate
Took Ochem and German at same time
Made new friends
Applied to study abroad
Was accepted to study abroad program
Was accepted to University of Sunderland
Didn't do much else
May have survived taking OChem and German at the same time
Gained lots of confidence from karate

Junior Year: 2011-2012
Studied abroad in England
Made lots of new friends
Did lots of new things
Pierced nose
Discovered self outside of family-and-friend network
Liked who I found
Visited and fell in love with Edinburgh
Visited and didn't enjoy London
Had computer stolen
Came back to States
Promptly took hardest undergrad course load ever and didn't have a breakdown
Was sick all the time due to rain and cold, drafty, poorly-lit house
Missed England

Senior Year: 2012-2013
Missed England
Kept friends from sophomore year
Got new job in a teaching-ish position
Loved new job, much to my surprise
Took GRE
Did okay enough on GRE to get into grad school
Took lots of really hard classes and didn't have a breakdown
Got yellow belt in karate
Applied to grad schools
Got into top choice grad school
Kept missing England
Got green belt in karate
Lost motivation for last two assignments of undergrad like you would not believe

So, okay, it really has been four years. And if you want advice for college, here is my advice to you: Everyone's experience is different. If there is one thing I would love for everyone to do, it's study abroad, but I know that it's expensive and sometimes difficult to manage with a busy course load. So go, live your life, and enjoy what comes your way. If you need fantastic grades to get into your post-graduate whatever, then try hard. If not, well, I got into grad school with a solid B average. I don't get honor cords, which is kind of depressing given that I was valedictorian in high school, but whatever. The point is, I'm done and I did my best. Do I have regrets? Sure. Would I change anything? Nothing but keeping in touch with people and remembering to clean my hair out of the shower sophomore year.

Also, I can't help but include another fun fact:
The difference between a University and a College in the States is in the graduate programs. My school is a university; another school in Eastern Washington that starts with "Whit" is a college. Ugh, get it right.

School is starting back up -- Eighty Second Post

I find myself in an oddly familiar state: Denial.
I get like this every time a big life-changing event comes around. I was in denial up until two weeks before high school graduation.
I can't afford denial this time around; I have to register to graduate (occurs in May) by late November. I have to take the GRE, which is not stuffed down my throat like the SAT was. I have to apply to grad schools, which will be considerably less easy than my "apply to one school with a special no-essay-no-fee early application, get in, and don't apply anywhere else because that's where you wanted to go in the first place" method from high school. I researched schools for about twenty minutes over two months that time around; I've been looking at schools far more intensely for a little while longer this time.
This is my last year of undergrad, come hell or high water. If I don't graduate, well, I'm out of money. So.

Anyway, this was all brought on by wandering around campus and seeing all the freshmen. It suddenly struck me how young they all look, and I realized that everyone on campus except the 1990 summer-born seniors and the odd fifth-year senior is younger than me. That's about five eighths of the university population. A lot of people are still the same age as me, but it's still so weird. SO. WEIRD.

I feel like this warrants a "what I wish I had known" post, but I honestly enjoyed my period of learning. For the most part. Except for the first half of first semester freshman year...
So here's the things that I would go back in time and tell myself.
1. You do not have to eat all the food in the cafeteria. I know there's a lot of food, but you just became vegetarian. You can't afford to get all your protein from cheese. Try for a salad with beans, even though you don't like cold beans. Just try it once a week. Maybe then you won't be crippled by a dislike of salads FOUR YEARS LATER.
2. College is harder than high school. I know you were the smart kid in high school. You coasted through and didn't actually pick up any study skills. Sure, you can write a decent essay and do some pretty good math, but your college professors aren't teaching classes of ten or twenty people. Lots of first year science classes are packed with non-majors, including yourself, and they aren't going to make review sheets with everything you need to know. You have to study, and you'll still get Bs. In fact, you'll fail some tests regardless of how hard you study. Get over it, princess. If you don't just roll with it and summon the willpower to do better on the next test, you'll have a breakdown in your adviser's office.
3. Study abroad. You already want to, now just do it and don't look back. Go with an open mind and a fairly empty suitcase and come back laden down with memories.
That one was cheating, because I actually did that. But you should, too.
4. Make sure you clean your hair out of the shower every time you use it sophomore year. You have really long dark brown hair, and it bugs the crap out of other people when you leave it on the floor. It's just polite to clean that up, if only so they don't blame you instinctively for the clogged drains.

There are lots of things I feel obligated to add, like "open up more in class" and "relax around other people" but I really don't want to. I like who I am and who my friends are now, and I look back fondly on the years before I met my current close friends. I'm kind of the quiet one in class; my housemate said she mentioned me in conversation with other chemistry majors in our year and had to describe me as "the quiet girl with the really long brown hair." This elicited an immediate "oh, yeah," response from everyone.
I'm okay with this. It might bother a lot of people, but I don't go to class to socialize. I'll sit with people I know and chat before and after class, and I'm friendly with people in the class, but I don't need my friends around to feel comfortable.
Introverts of the world, nothing is wrong with you. You don't have to be BFFs with everyone in your class, and you don't have to relax around large crowds if you don't want to. It's okay to be "the quiet one" as long as you're happy and comfortable in your skin. You do still need to learn how to deal with an extrovert-focused world, but you don't have to change who you are.

Running -- Eighty First Post

Dear reader(s), I have a confession. It's terrible, and it makes me a bad interneter. Sharing this will, in fact, have the potential to move this blog from its solid "random tidbits about my life that have little interest for anyone else (except that craigslist thing)" position to something more like a "fitness blog".
I know. Terrible. However, this blog also solidly reflects where I am in my life, and where I've been, and where I would never like to be again (in the case of a whole lot of my earlier posts). So here goes.

I've taken up working out to stave off the boredom of an exceptionally boring summer. Since I didn't have a job for most of the summer, I was pretty much stuck at home filling out job applications. All. Day. Long.
I turned to the internet, since I could take internet breaks from filling out applications and switch back in a heartbeat. Or not. Whatever. In the midst my pintresting, facebooking, and tumblring, I came across several workout blogs. I pinned a few workouts, did fewer, and then started reading the blogs.
This was a mistake. I was no longer content to just sit on the couch and watch Doctor Who all day. Instead, I picked up Buffy the Vampire Slayer because there was a "workout game" on my current favorite tumblr, Back On Pointe. Also, I ran out of seasons of the revamped Doctor Who and I'm stuck in the middle of the second Doctor because of missing episodes. Life in the first world is rough, let me tell you.
Anyway, I joined Fitocracy, which not only tracks your workouts for you (including compiling you a history for each exercise that you've done since joining) and has a thriving community of "fitocrats", but also has a points system that lets you level up, complete with challenges that give you extra points and allows you to "prop" other people's accomplishments and workouts. You can join groups made up of potentially like-minded people whose accomplishments and comments encourage you to work out more. It also has a cute little robot image that calculates your workouts; to close the dialogue box, you have to click the "I'm Awesome" button. Working out is both a game that can be won and a self-esteem booster.
Anyway, one thing led to another and I got into running. And it's not my fault. I tried at the beginning of the summer, and then I got shin splints from wearing heels when I went to The Dark Knight Rises as Catwoman. Admittedly, I was a slightly pudgier catwoman than Anne Hathaway, but still. Shin splints? Running was clearly not a good idea. Besides, I couldn't even run down my very short street without gasping and wheezing for breath. So I gave up on running "for the time being", figuring that I would try again when I was in better shape, with stronger legs, a stronger heart and lungs, and less flab to lug around.
I'm not an unhealthy weight: according to both my doctor and the internet, I have a perfectly healthy BMI. What the internet chart told me that my doctor didn't is that I'm right at the upper limit of healthy. I've been about the same weight, give or take 10 lbs, since ninth grade, and I haven't grown more than half an inch since eighth grade. The thing is that I'm not happy with the way my body looks. Don't get me wrong, it's a great body. It's taken me through a lot without too much griping, and it's put up with a lot of crappy food and piercings over the years. It's just that it could look better if I gave half a fuck.
Besides, I'll never be a Doctor Who companion if I can't even run down the block. Have you seen how much running they do?
So the summer went on, and I kept reading about workouts and working out. Eventually, I found my way to the "Couch-to-5K" (or C25K) site and realized that I could do that. It eases you into running and stresses the importance of not doing too much too soon. Running is hard on your body. It's very good for your body, but that's partly because it's so stinking rough on it. The thing with the body is that to make it stronger, you have to break it down. Muscles get big when you do strength training because the exercise breaks down your muscles just a tiny bit. The body repairs them when you rest, and they grow back bigger and stronger. Running builds up your bones because it's a high-impact activity, meaning that your bones jar against each other and break down a little. As long as you're not running all day, every day, your body will build those bones back up stronger. The problem is that people start too fast, run every day, or just run too much the first day, and hurt themselves. Most of my friends that run regularly enjoy it a lot, so why is it that I hate it so much?
According to the internet, it's because I get myself hurt. I start too fast and expect too much of my body. If I were to ease in, only run a few days a week and for shorter distances at a time, then I'd have a better shot at actually enjoying it. My little brother is on a cross country team, and he loves it. Clearly, running is hiding somewhere in my genes. Now it's my job to convince my body that this running thing is okay. So far, C25K is the best way I've found. Just reading about running, especially trailrunning and minimalist/barefoot running, will make me want to bolt out the door for a lap around the city, but I have to stop at the end of the street. I need self control, will power, and a strict plan to follow. You can buy a C25K plan for your smartphone, which would be nice if I had one, or just keep track of where you are on your own for free, which is what I do. I log my distances and approximate times to fitocracy and run on monday, wednesday, and friday, which should work well for school. I have easy tuesdays and thursdays, so I guess I could run tuesday, thursday, and saturday, but I'm not good at working out on weekends when everyone's around all the time.
N.B.: The people at C25K did not pay me to say all this.

So here's my tip to you: find a workout plan that you can stick with. Make it up yourself or find it on the internet, or both, but stick to it. Work out every day or every other day or even just once a week, but stick with it. Don't let a change in your life like moving or going back to school throw you off. And don't even worry about running if that was your least favorite part of those long-ago PE classes. There are lots of ways, impact or non-impact, indoor and outdoor, to get your cardio done.

I've been tracking my progress since july, and, quite frankly, nothing much has changed. I lose an inch here and there, then gain it back the next week. Granted, I'm more motivated now, but those love handles ain't goin' nowhere. I still can't do a real pushup, although for that I mostly blame my screwy shoulders, since I'm pretty good at tricep dips, knee pushups, incline pushups, and wall pushups, all of which put my arms at different angles but still use the same main muscle groups as real pushups.
That won't stop me from keeping on working out, though. I like working out. I like the way I feel after I've worked out, and I like logging my progress on fitocracy. I like being a part of the internet communities that work out, and I like the smell of my own hard-earned sweat. I like having an excuse to buy yoga pants and a new sports bra. I like giving a fuck about the way my body looks.
Also, I don't mean that I like the smell of not showering for three days, just that I like proof that I worked hard enough to break a sweat.

Twelfth Post

First off, I would like to point out that "twelfth" is a weird word.

Now that I've got that out of the way, we can discuss my exceptionally boring day. I went to work, which was pretty boring, and then I learned that high schoolers and university students move differently. (Quick background note- my university partners with a programme for minorities in poor high schools so that they have a better view of science and math. This includes the high schoolers visiting the science building and doing labs set up by university students.) I was calmly wasting some time at the drinking fountain when I heard the thunder of feet coming around the corner. High schoolers move in packs. I remember this from my own school, when getting into and out of the hall was a tricky proposition because of how tightly they stick together.

University students move as their own particles. They are not really influenced by the other thousands of people moving with them in the same approximate direction. I like this fact of life. I do not like stampeding hoards of high schoolers invading my nice, quiet sojourn at the drinking fountain. So my life was not boring at that moment... Just terrifying. This is why I prefer boring.

I have also been half-asleep since 15:00. I nearly fell asleep in class, and then I've just been completely out of touch with what other people are trying to say. I perhaps should have taken my roommate's advice sooner than I did.