Forty Third Post

It is... getting late. I have one final left, at 15.30 Friday. And then I am done with Fall Term 2010. Done with 2010, really.
And then, of course, I go home Saturday before 0700. I am not pleased, but I'll get home quickly, I guess.
I don't remember if I mentioned it, but I can't have stimulants in the hours between waking up and falling asleep. Otherwise, I'm up until 0400 wanting to be asleep so badly, but totally unable to shut down my brain. I also don't remember if I told you all about the time I unwittingly drank green tea with mint in it the night before a german exam, but mint is the one thing I've found that never fails to knock me out mentally. It turns my brain to mush (green tea makes me hyper, so I was tripping pretty badly that night) and allows me to sleep.
I have a small hoard of mint tea now. Just mint, nothing added. It does the job.
I had to have three cups of it last night. First, I just couldn't fall asleep, so I had to make another around 01.30. Then. Oh, then what.
There was a f**king fire alarm at 3 f**king AM.
By the time I got back to my room at 03.30, I was wide awake from standing out in the sub-zero (Celsius) weather in pyjama pants, tank top, jacket, and hiking boots without socks for half an hour. Obviously, I started texting my friends angrily about how I was planning to kill whoever woke me up before an 0800 final. Then I made another cup of tea, grumbling angrily, and eventually fell back asleep.
I'm also a bundle of nerves from the odd behaviour of my course handbook. I'm planning to study abroad next year, but that's tricky as a science major. I need specific courses, so I'm fitting my schedule around those that I would prefer to take. Sure, it wouldn't be the end of the world if I had to take Developmental Biology instead of Advanced Cell Biology, but as someone who wants to go into disease research, I care more about the cellular and molecular level of things than the thing itself. Advanced Cell is far more interesting to me that Developmental would be, I think. I'd still graduate, and I'm sure I could take all the cell biology I wanted in graduate school, but I'd rather take it now and be able to know for sure if this is really what I want to do with my life.
My handbook lied to me. It's been giving me the wrong semesters for classes, and that's really important. So I've been emailing some biology professors, usually around bedtime, so I get nervous about whether I have the prereqs or the proper semester picked to travel.
Whoo. We'll see how this all pans out.
In the meantime, I'm going to ignore the fact that I have a final tomorrow (for the time being) and go to bed.
Goodnight.

P.S.
I've taken to wearing my pyjama pants to every final, and I definitely had a "I'm wearing my purple plaid flannel pants to class and you (the world at large) can't make me change!" moment. I love these pants.

Twenty Seventh Post

I may or may not have mentioned this, but I'm in an english class. It's for a gen-ed that I need to graduate, or I would not be in it. Actually, I'm glad that I am, because I learned that I like science better and that I really don't want to have to deal with the humanities more than I have to.

The class is called "Women Writers". It is taught by a poet (I went to her poetry reading for her new book- she's not bad). Poets- real ones, not "people who have a life and also write some poems"- are not scientists.

I like scientists. I like working through physics problems more than I like dealing with people problems; I prefer mathematical formulas to crowds of people. Biology is my one exception to that, but I'm really more into the cellular and molecular levels. Things that I cannot see with my naked eye but can find scientifically or mathematically...

It's funny, really. I look at the world in a totally new light now, after a year of college. I see the light outside my window- with current I and resistance R- blocking my view of the pine trees- gymnosperms, with three generations in each seed- that sit in the parking lot. I can tell you about the chemical reactions of the batteries in my drawer, and about the effectiveness of the bleach wipes against bacteria. I can move in such a way that, if my hands and feet encountered a person, that person could die. I see all this as a product of the efforts of countless women before me.

I am really not a feminist. The word has extremely negative connotations for me, evoking images of anti-men, bra-burning crazies. I am a very conservative person. I like it when boys open the door for me, and I fully intend to get married someday to a nice man who will safeguard me because that's what men are supposed to do. It's how they're made.

At the same time, I am realising that my being able to go to college and take courses in maths and sciences is the direct result of some crazy women. It's the radicals who make things happen. Were I born in another era, changes would not happen because of me. I have come to respect the radicals, even if I don't agree with their ideas or methods. That's not the point. I have a grudging respect for the fact that because of them, I am able to wear jeans and a t-shirt whenever I want. No skirt if I don't want it. I don't have to take courses that are deemed appropriate for women. I can take any course I want, be anything I want to be when I grow up.

This respect for the radicals is the result of my english class. It's shocking, I know, but the diversity credit really did end up broadening my view of the world.

But now that class is almost over, and all I have to do now is come up with a presentation, write a five-page paper, and read a poem out loud.

There is one thing that I hate more than people, and it's reading my own poems out loud (I am one of those "people who have a life and also write some poems", or would be if I had a life). This may very well be the hardest final of my life.

Okay, so that wasn't a horribly boring post. But my first year of college will be over soon, and I am looking back on it with some nostalgia already.