…classes done. FOREVER! It’s a great relief, but not as much as it should be since I’m preparing for my first conference talk! It’s just my prof’s conference – Steel Research Group – but still, it’s a big deal, esp. for all of us in STEEL. I remember last year, being a first year and not having to present, I visited Sean the week before, came back the night before the conference, and then literally slept through at least half the presentations. Since it’s in Ford, there’s certain seats that are lit, and I just so happened to sit in one of those the first day. So I was clearly visible to everyone and there were a few times when someone towards the back would ask a question and everyone would turn their heads, and I would wake up trying to shake it off. Whoops. This year, I’m the only student speaking on the first day. Eek! Yes, I’m way nervous and want eagerly to prove myself to the crowd of 60 year old white men of metallurgy. I’m deathly afraid of question time afterward, but also know that GBO’s got my back. In the meantime, I’m trying to prepare for the talk, but can’t even begin to start practicing because I still don’t have all of my analysis done. I really want to show all this new cool 3D tomographic stuff off, but I am currently limited by a number of things: 1) time 2) a key to the Voorhees lab 3) good IDL programming abilities 4) 3 people running IDL on the Voorhees supercomputer – quad core processor + 16 Gb RAM = apparently not enough and 5) homesickness. Yes, I’m homesick! I hate/love this part of the quarter where I’m dying to go home so I start reflecting on all the things of the past and present and of course, the future. It feels good to take that step back and reflect on life, but it always seem like a dangerous thing for me since I start feeling this yearning for things to be different. It’s my constant dissatisfaction of my perfectly good situation. I’ve been trying to get myself out of this for…for my whole life, really, but it never seems to pass completely. Why can’t I just be completely happy with what I’ve got right now? A stellar academic record, a great professional career ahead of me, an unconditionally-loving family, a crazy boyfriend who is the most selfless person I know, a young healthy body, fun-filled friends, and food and a roof over my head every day. What is there to complain about? Nothing.
I was going through my phone numbers today, also. I was talking with my roommates last night, picked up one of their phones, and started going through the numbers. None of her contacts have last names! I mean, they have last names, but she didn’t write any of them down. I asked her in disbelief, “How can you not have last names??? Don’t you know more than 1 David? John? Chris?” She said, No, I just rename them, and No I don’t know multiple people of those names, etc. So then I look in my phone…over 300 NUMBERS. 300!!! What am I doing with 300 numbers? I scrolled down them all to see how many of them I actually called, how many I called on a regular basis at one point in time, and how many I still call. The outcome? Uhh..I dunno. It would take too much time to actually do that. Lol. But anyway, I still went through half the list and realized that I did actually call a lot of these people on a consistent basis at one point in time. Now? Not so much. There’s probably 4-5 people I still talk to from home regularly, but the rest? Never. Yeah, I’ll call them to meet up when I go home, but how long is this going to go on? Do I keep the numbers in my phone? Or do I simplify and delete everyone except for the select few?
I decided that I wanted to do a major spring cleaning after I go home. Clean up my room, my office, my room at home, my phone numbers, the whole freaking messy apartment, and my life. Not sure how I’ll go about doing the last, but I think I’ll start investing my time and money into other more worthwhile things. For one, I really want to exercise on a regular basis and maybe take up tennis or gymnastics again. There’s a club gymnastics team here, but I’ll be nowhere near their level. I really want to keep some sort of skill level up so maybe this is my chance to do that. Or…I’ll finally try to serve properly in tennis, maybe take the group lessons at the gym. The other thing is sewing. I’m going to bring the sewing machine that my mom bought me 2 Christmases ago and make curtains! Dani’s going to make a dress out of the cute polka dot fabric she got for the toga party. I also want to be able to hem my own jeans. I know it’s not that hard, but I never learned how to do it properly. Continuing on with the list, I’d like to read more. A lot more. Both for fun and for school. I think I need to read a lot more journal articles – as does everyone. Along with the rest is: newspapers (or online news articles), the Bible, this book on Energy that I still didn’t finish, this book about a guy becoming homeless for a year, and literary classics. As for money, I want to open up a CD or invest my savings somehow. I’ve managed to save quite a bit, but now I don’t know what to do with it. I also want to be giving regularly, to the church and to charities, because I think it’s time that I stop just thinking about how it’s nice and a good thing to do, and to just start doing it. Same goes with my time. I waste a lot of time – as does everyone else – but I think I ought to start doing something with it, outside of work/school, and something not for myself. How hard is that to do? Very hard, I think. We are so wrapped up in our own lives, and I personally don’t know if I could become less self-centered in the way I live. I’m just poorly self-disciplined when it comes to things that others aren’t giving me credit for – i.e. grades, research and getting a degree, etc. Anyway..enough rambling, time for work. Thank you, Xanga, for helping me waste time (even though I heard your stock is going down down down the drain).
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