All I Want for Christmas...

My family is making me make a Christmas list. I don't really have time, but here are the things I really want:

1. A puppy
2. Someone to tell me what to do about grad school
3. A tire pressure gauge (this is the only thing I'm likely to get off this list)
4. To pass the first quarter
5. To keep my fellowship
6. A boyfriend (preferably the one I have in mind, but really anyone that makes me feel that way will work)

Time

I graduated from Pomona about six months ago. It feels like I was just in San Diego. It also feels like summer wasn't that long ago. That happiness was very ephemeral. I still feel very uncertain about my decision to go to graduate school, which is very rare for me. This is a decision I made when I was eight, and I rarely change my mind. For a while I thought I wasn't intellectually curious enough to be in grad school, because my classmates were always asking about the homework and wanted to delve deeper into it and really understand it, and I just wanted to do it and turn it in. I realize, though, that my intellectual curiousity lies elsewhere. I want to know about words and language and history and all these non-physics subjects. I want time to continue singing. I want to go learn ballroom dance and get good at it (and hopefully get the dancer's HOT body). Perhaps if I had a piano I'd take it up again, although my teacher at Pomona pretty much killed any enjoyment I got from it. Maybe these things will change once I get to take astronomy classes. I haven't done any of my homework this week. I'm so ready for Thanksgiving.

Fun Time!

A few fun links for your entertainment pleasure. In the past week and a half, I've read the entire archive of PHD Comics. A truly accurate description of grad school life. Sad, but true.

Additionally, XKCD is also hilarious. I shall leave you with a few choice selections, both funny and sad.
This one is astronomy related. It applies to me, in that I can rarely find those things.
This is sad, but very accurate.
Sad, but true. Again.
Classic.
Hilarious!
Hilarious! Again! If you're a nerd like me that uses UNIX/linux. If not, "sudo" is a command that lets you run something as the admin of the computer. You can google it if you care.

Lastly, to get yourself in the Thanksgiving mood, go listen to Alice's Restaurant Massacree.

Sick

I am sick. My ears are stuffy, my nose is stuffy, my throat hurts, and I can't breathe. In spite of (or perhaps because of) this, however, I did have a pretty good afternoon. I sat in bed and watched TV, read a chapter of Baym, and put some more pictures on my wall. I debate continuing this, though, because I do want to move in the near future. That's never going to happen, though, if I don't call up the housing office. I finally got to spend an afternoon by myself, not working. I think that has been lacking in my life. During the week I'm generally working in my office surrounded by lots of people, and when I'm at home I'm working. I need a lot of alone time where I can just decompress and I haven't been getting that lately. Even if I'm out having fun with people and not working, I still need to have time to myself. I think this is why I don't mind (actually, I think I might prefer) long-distance relationships. I like knowing that I have someone I can always talk to, but if I need to I can retreat to my own space. Also, I don't feel like I have to choose between my friends and my boyfriend. This, and the fact that I can't really live with someone else, however, does not bode well for my future when/if I do get married. I'm hoping that it's "when," but at this point I feel like it's "if."

I May Have Overreacted

I did not, in fact, fail my math midterm. I was right about average. I got the score I thought I was going to, but the average was a lot lower than I thought. So I will at least stick it out until the end of the quarter and reasses then.

Midterms, part the third

So I failed 2/3 midterms. Well, I assume I failed the third one, but I don't actually know. Also, if grad school were like normal school, I wouldn't have failed. A B- should not be a failing grade. Only one of my midterms was anything like the homework and examples we did in class. That's the one I "'passed." I use the term loosely. Right now I'm a bit concerned that I won't pass my classes this quarter, and if I do, I know my GPA won't be high enough to keep my fellowship. I'm a bit...disturbed by this, to say the least. It's very discouraging. I know I'm a smart person, but I don't feel like I am. I kind of hate it here. I miss my friends. I'm having housing issues, let's say, and my classes are miserable. The adjustment is taking longer than I thought it would, which seems to me that I might not actually be adjusting. When I feel like I'm failing at school, I feel like I'm failing at life, based on my experiences freshman year when I had to drop CS before I failed and I also broke up with Ryan. The two were in no way related, but they are intertwined in my mind. I'm tired all the time because I can't sleep, so basically I'm miserable. Cameron suggested that I ask you all for advice, although I'm not sure who reads this. So if you read it, now's the time to comment.

Basically, I have no life plan beyond get married, which is currently not a viable option. The people I wanted to marry have not returned the feeling, and my prospects here are bleak. Right now my plan is to stick it out for the rest of the quarter and see how things are in December. If things don't improve, I will not return in the winter and try to figure something else out. If in a year or two I decide this is really what I want to do, I will reapply. So I guess these are my options. Any insight would be helpful.

1. Stay in grad school despite being miserable. I will probably lose my fellowship, which would be embarassing. I also do not want to TA beyond the bare minimum, so I wouldn't have a lot of money. My parents said they would support me, but I don't want that.

2. Take time off to figure out my life. I don't know what I would do in this interim period. I would not want to do something physics or astronomy related, because I might as well stay in grad school for that. I would probably file at my uncle's office, which is really lame. If after a year or two I decide I want to go back, I will reapply. I have problems with this option because I think it woiuld be too much of a hassle to deal with leaving mid-year. Also, I don't know if I would come back to UCI or just reapply all over again. I haven't been here long enough to make it worth while to come back, and it would be weird seeing all my classmates way ahead of me.

3. Go to culinary school. I think I would like to a pastry chef. Unfortunately, culinary school is rather expensive. Also, I like cooking as a hobby, but I don't know if I would want to make a career out of it.

4. Go to law school. I don't want to study for the LSAT and the first year of law school is as miserable if not more so than the first year of grad school, so that seems silly. Really I would only be a lawyer for the money, the clothes, and since I would want to do entertainment law, the perks of tangential celebrity.

5. Apply for jobs that I haven't thought of yet. Suggestions welcome.

This is my dilemma. I don't really have time to think about it, though, because if I get behind on problem sets there is no catching up, and they are the only way I have a prayer of passing. Now it is time for bed, because I am exhausted. Ten bucks says I won't fall asleep for another hour. I need to go to the gym and see if that helps me work off my nerves.

Midterms, part the second

Midterms are terrible. I hate the quarter system. I just had my quantum one yesterday, and tomorrow is classical mechanics. None of the problems that he has given us in class or the problems from old tests have any relationship to the homework problems except on the most superficial level. They are also fucking hard. I spent all evening working on these problems and no one could figure out how to do them. Any of them. We could barely follow the solutions. It is going to be a tragedy of epic proportions, just like my love life.

How did Ryan get to be so hot? He lost weight and built muscle and is ridiculously hot (at least he looks it in his facebook picture). I don't really miss him, but it's still irritating. I do want someone to love, but there is no one here. How sad for me.