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.

Fifty Third Post

I have been accepted to through a study abroad program to Sunderland University in England!
Read about that at a dedicated blog that I set up so that my family and friends won't stumble upon this blog that may or may not malign them from time to time. I named it "Raeann's Study Abroad Adventure" because that's what it's about.
And... Yep.
It is midterms. You might get an interesting post over spring break. If you want one tonight, it'll have to be about Arthurian literature; if you want one tomorrow, it'll be in German.
Actually, that might happen.
However. I've been typing on this crappy keyboard that puts the b on the wrong side of the little ergonomic hump thing and has a two-thumb spacebar that clunks horrinly if I use just one thumn.
I don't care enough to fix it when my Bs come out as Ns any more.
Deal with it.

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 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.