Hitting me

So there are several things that are REALLY hitting me in the face right now:

1. I am graduating from college in less than 200 days. Holy shit. I mean, I'm going to be done with these degrees (I am technicially getting two degrees, a Bachelor of Sciences and a Bachelor of Arts).
2. I NEED to start applying for graduate school within the next couple of weeks.
3. I NEED to save more money. My savings account=$400. My checking account=$50. My credit card balance right now=$515. I get paid tomorrow, so I should be able to bitch-slap about $100 off of that credit card.
4. I NEED to work about 15 more hours a week. It looks like I'll only be working about 20-25 hours per week this summer, and to save money, I need to be near full-time worker, even if it means three part time jobs.
5. I NEED to be learning more languages if I have any hope of being competitive in the future. Sure, most people in America are LUCKY if they can speak two, and sure, I speak three and know a fourth somewhat decently (Latin isn't spoken, so I really cannot do much about that), and will be learning a fifth and sixth starting this semester, but I think in order to be a competitive scientist, I'll probably need to be able to speak between eight and ten. My obvious candidates are Italian and Portuguese as they lie in the Romance empire, but I think that my final choice should be one of Japanese, Chinese, or Arabic.
6. I may need to take the GRE over again. My verbal score was kinda meh (580), and I would really love to breach at least 650. Every other score I'm perfectly happy with though (quantitative=770, writing=5.5), so I dunno.
7. I NEED to start my history thesis soon
8. I REALLY NEED to read some more biochemistry articles. I've read 8 and I have 12 more to go.
9. I REALLY REALLY NEED to get caught up in my lab notebook. I'm caught up to the Ides of March right now. I would like to be caught up to May 1 by next week.

Musings of a melodramatic mind

Summer brings such problems with postings. I just do not do enough stuff to be able to post much of anything. Sadness.

So, since Saturday I've been having this annoying thing going on with my heart. I think it may be an arrythmia, but I'm just not certain. It comes and goes in intensity, and these are certain points where I think that it's time to go to a hospital and then just as I sort of get the feeling together to go, everything calms down and whatever is going on stops. I've thrown my symptoms into WebMD, always a dangerous thing to do when you have someone who inclines towards hypochondrism. There are a number of potential candidates for heart problems, most of them involving either the electrical mechanisms or the valves.

I'm starting to have money worries again. Basically, I'm going to be working about 15 hours a week in the language lab and maybe about 25 in the bioenergetics lab. This works out to be about 350 dollars a week. Multiply that by eight or so, and you get just around $3000. Guess what my tuition for UCCS is going to be in the Fall! $2905.

So basically, I'm going to have the same amoutn of money I have now in my name by the time August rolls around. Now, I do have one good thing in that there is over $6000 in bonds with my name on it. I have no idea how, or if, I will even use that money.

I'm quite proud of the fact that I biked to school today, using not a drop of gasoline. unfortuantely, my sister has had need of my car, and she pretty much never pays gas money...perhaps because she has no job...so all that money I saved is probably gone. I will be saving myself money by parking in the four diamonds lot when I have to go to school in the future. Basically, I park for free and take a bus for free about a mile or so to campus.

That's about all I have to say right now..

Terrible Poster!

I admit that I've been a very very very bad poster for these last several days. Or a week.

So I finished the semester. I am now down to ONE semester in my entire college oriented life. By the way, these were the grades that I got:

PHIL 112: A
PHIL 495: A
BIOL 300: A
BIOL 384: A
BIOL 401: A
BIOL 431: A
FR 102: A
CHEM 482: A

So, my streak of 4.0 semesters is maintained, somehow. I have absolutely no idea how I got an A in my thesis class, but I did it, and it's exciting.

Now I have to turn my attentions to my two jobs and my independent research in the biochemistry lab. I'm so far behind on my lab notebook right now that it's really scary. I'm like 3 months behind. My goal is to get caught up in that next week.

I need to go work on some sewing for a graduation gift tomorrow. Laters.

So Close

In like 24 hours, I'm almost done. I'll have my grant totally and completely done (it's really close to that now). In 26 hours, my biochemistry test starts. In 28 hours, I am totally done with my Spring 2008 semester, which has been, by far, the worst semester I think I've had since I started college. I am seriously looking forward to the whole downhill feeling.

I'm starting to go through all my stuff to go to the Goodwill or the trash or recycle heap. I think I should have accomplished all of this by Tuesday.

I'm going to go back to that now.

THREE DAYS LEFT!!

That's all there is left in this wretched, wretched semester that finally brings the end of my 26 semester straight run of straight A's. Monday, I have to turn in my grant, which was fortuitously pushed until Monday to be turned in. It's not that I have a whole lot to do on it, but it's just that I am sort of in this really blech mood about, you know, doign work and such.

By the way, I'm typing this at school, at 9:55 AM on a Saturday. Why is Ray here on a Saturday? Oh, for more placement tests. Maybe I'll get 6 this week. I had five over a six hour period last week. I guess that no one is really interested in doing foreign languages here anymore. Whatever.

Today, while I'm working here, I plan on finishing my grant, which will lead to much excitement, and going through a whole bunch of old papers from this semester that I don't need and will promptly recycle.

The registration people are starting to come through now. Grr. I'd better get going.

Finished

When I say finished on here, I don't mean with classes because I have two things due on Monday--my biochemistry final and my advanced immunology grant. It fortunately was moved, which was actually the only decent thing that happened to me yesterday.

Well, I bought a white chocolate mocha at Starbucks, that was decent for my mental state, which was disastrous yesterday.

I'm kind of coming to grips with the reality that my 4.0 is pretty much trashed right now. I worked for how long to keep it, and in the second to last semester, I blow it to shit. Quaint.

Anyways, I've already finished my biostatistics class this morning, and I only needed to get a 50% or something like that on it to get an A in the course. I'm like 99.99999% certain that I got that A, so I'm going to go ahead and do the CNN thing where they project a winner. For me though, I'm projecting an A.

I do know that I have three A's locked up: Genetics Lab, Bioseminar, and French are all guaranteed A's. I know that I'm going to at least get an A- in logic, and given that it's a 100 level course, the odds are really good that I'm going to get an A in there. I think I needed something like a 60% on the paper to get an A, and nowadays you pretty much at least get a C if you even write a paper.

So really I have maybe three classes up in the air. In advanced immunology, I have no clue whatsoever what my grade is. It could be an A or it can be a C. All I know is that I'm "doing fine" in there--whatever that means.

Biochemistry is pretty sure to be an A. I'll study my ass off for the final, but I really don't have to do well to get an A. If my leg got a bacterial infection and I needed to spend the weekend getting it amputated rather than studying, I know enough biochem where I can get an A. I just hate the idea of getting an A by the seat of my pants. I've done that probably four or five times.

Finally is thesis. I know that I'll have less than an A. I just know that there's no chance in hell of me getting one in there unless the fates are going to torture me in some twisted thing where I get an A and the universe opens some black hole right in front of me, sucks me in, and then the black hole disappears, so that I cannot enjoy the 0.000000000000001% chance actually coming true.

Dammit. It sucks to work so hard and then fuck everything up. I'm already planning to add a whole bunch of shit this fall so that I can prevent my GPA from getting too bad.

I think today I officially ruined all chances of me ever doing anything successful with my life. Basically I have fucked myself over, and now I'm 99.9999999% certain that I will not be able to get into any graduate school, and thus I will be forced to work as a lab slave until the day I fucking croak---which may be pretty soon, as when I get as depressed as I am right now, I tend to stop eating. This trend will probably continue through the remainder of this week.

Bye-bye hopes and dreams.

Finals Week Commences

So starting in like 3 hours, finals week begins. Fortunately tomorrow, I don't have any finals where I actually have to sit in on them. I just have to turn in a paper, and then start studying like mad or working like mad for the rest of the work that I have to do.

My grant is up to 8 pages--single spaced. My ideal goal would be to get to around ten pages.

My last French test=not good. Fortunately, it doesn't really count, because I get to drop my lowest one that's not the final.

My logic paper is pretty much done. All I need to do is go back, make sure my English is ok, and then put in citations.

Tomorrow=work on grant, study for biostats, study for French, write up my defense schpeal.

It's hard to believe I am ALMOST done with my second to the last semester.

Eight days a week

If we use Beatle logic, I have a week left. That's somewhat frustrating.

I have done like no homework. I did get a significant amount done on my grant--if 3 more pages single spaced is significant. I have seven right now. Tomorrow I'll definitely be working on it.

The only other thing I did was to do my one page thing in French about Djibouti. It was freakishly harder than I thought it would be, although it's more because I don't have a very large vocabulary and accents needed to be typed rather than not understanding the language.

I went for my first bike ride in like 7 years yesterday. Felt not very good at several times because I could feel my lungs just closing up. My legs were pretty much ok the whole way, but my ass is killing me today.

I think that people who read this should go to this website: http://youtube.com/watch?v=hRc9rNDZOCE&feature=related. and listen to it. I really love this song for some reason.

The second part of Cranford is on tonight, and fortunately it only lasts one hour, so I might be able to do something else for a little while.

This is my week's itinerary:

Monday: Work on grant
Take eighth French test
Tuesday: Finish my logic paper
Work on grant
Wednesday: Study for statistics final
Finish grant
French final
Finish extra credit poster
Do my thesis defense
Thursday: Biostats final
Turn in all immunology stuffs
Friday: Do a whole bunch of catch-up in the lab
Saturday: Orientations/Study for biochem final
Sunday: Study for biochem final
Monday: Take biochem final.

There's not too much worth talking about right now. All I've been doing for the last few days is some homework here and there, like finishing off genetics labs and working on my extra credit poster for immunology, but it's not like I've been trying really hard on anything.

My last big thing left is my grant. That I REALLY need to work on this weekend. I don't know why, but I just cannot bring myself to work on it. Maybe it's the semestrial exhaustion.

I have to say that I was particularly bothered tonight by my dad's actions. He was watching Grey's Anatomy with my mom and there was this scene where there's this soldier who has brain cancer and another soldier is in the room with him. Well, I guess they were boyfriends or something like that, because they started kissing in a romantic manner, and throughout it, my dad's making all these disgusted noises.

What bothered me is that it reminded me of my attitudes towards gays maybe five years ago. Suffice it to say, I was one of those people who was all "it's unnatural" and calling it a genetic fallacy of nature. Crap like that. Nowadays, I am embarrassed by that position that I had, because frankly, it's not right. It's not right politically, it's not right legally, and it's not right morally.

Those attitudes are ones of discrimination, blatant and obvious, to anyone with a clear mind. Since then, my position has changed to the opposite. Now, I am in favor of laws banning discrimination against people for their sexual orientation. I don't care if religious institutions don't like it, it's a moral wrong. They should be the first ones to be accepting. This isn't a matter of religion, it's a matter of right and wrong. Furthermore, I am in favor of adding anti-gay motivated actions, especially those in high schools, where the problem is worst, as a hate crime, punishable by prison sentences in extreme case. Education though is the best way. Rather than punishing people for anti-homosexual behaviour, which will only make them more resentful, these persons should be put into some kind of program that will promote understanding.

I am also in favor of homosexuals adopting children. Children first of all need people who love and care for them. It does not matter what the sex of the parents are if they love them and can provide for them the kind of education and raising that every child deserves.

I am in favor of homosexual marriage and civil unions. Because marriage is a religious/political thing, churches may refuse to allow the marriages in their buildings, but they have NO jurisdiction over the law. The law of this country dictates principally that all people are equal before the law and entitled to the same rights and privledges entitled by the constitution of this great nation. Discrimination of homosexuals from these rights does not enhance the rights of those of us who are not gay, but rather diminishes it. When others are excluded from the same rights that we enjoy, we do not live in an egalitarian society, but rather, one that proports to dictate rather than protect.

The argument that permitting gay marriage will lead to the destruction of the family is a fallacy. I see no evidence in countries with gay marriage that families are no longer existing. The integrity of family is dictated not by society, but by the mutual commitment of two consenting adults and the decisions they make through love. Gay marriage does not relate in any way to bestiality or polygamy or pedophilia. These are instances where there is not consent on the part of some party (the first being an animal, the second being the consent of normally a woman in the face of the law [all consequential marriages after a first without divorce means she has no rights], and the last being a child). Homosexuality is not the same as these and the permissiveness of gay marriage will not lead to a landslide of these aggregious behaviors.

The purpose of the United Stats is to ensure the rights of others and not to discriminate because people live differently. The legacy of minorities in this country has been to fight for equal representation and rights. The previous generations were concerned about the rights of women and of racial minorities. Now, it is time for those of good conscience of the equal rights of all humans before the law to stand for the rights of homosexuals. That is the morally right thing to do.

Quickies are not just for Sundays

So I am at work, not really doing much in the way of homework, like I should. That's slightly disappointing, but I am so damn tired that I really cannot focus too much on these things.

I have some work done on my extra credit poster for immunology due next Thursday. A lot of the problem is that I just don't have a whole lot of work due this week. I think I have an extra credit assignment due for biostats on Thursday and my last genetics lab.

Next week is the bitch, since I have three French tests, my grant, my thesis defense, my extra credit poster, and my biostats final.

My problem is that I just cannot force myself to work on these things like I need to be doing right now.

I should be forcing myself to do it. DAMMMMMN.

Ok, fine I'm going to go work on my extra credit now.

Totally and Completely Unmotivated

So I now have less than two weeks left until the end of the semester. If my biochemistry final was scheduled for a reasonable time, you know, rather than the Monday after this next week, then I would be done in like a week.

It doesn't look like I have to do extremely well in most of my classes to get an A. This is encouraging. Right now, if I had to pick, I would say that my weakest classes are my thesis one and my advanced immunology one.

I'll probably get an A- in my thesis, at best, and about the same in advanced. If I do, then my GPA will be something like 3.9 for the semester, which I suppose is tolerable.

I don't really feel like writing too much, so maybe I'll write more tomorrow night when I may have something more substantial to describe in my lame-ass life.

Closing in on the end

Right now, I have to admit that I really hate people at other universities. Most people I know are done right now, having finihsed all of their finals and shit this week. Meanwhile, Ray STILL has two weeks of school left. Dammit. I mean, seriously, why the hell am I still having to worry about classes?

I'm at school maintenant with all these incoming freshmen. Sometimes, I would like it to be a more authoritative structure, with seniors able to give commands, but this isn't a military institution.

I've been here almost two hours, only given ONE placement test. But, hey, the school's paying me to sit on my fat ass for all this time, so I'm not going to bitch too much about this arrangement.

I also ahve been able to get almost all of the fallacies I need for my final paper in my logic class. I'm supposed to find 10 fallacies obtaining in a certain thing, work, whatever, and I have nine right now. I went ahead with Pride and Prejudice and focused solely on the scene where Lady Catherine de Bourgh (spelled that wrong last time) came to dissuade Lizzy from marrying Mr. Darcy. I need to come up with one more before I beautify everything, finish my paper, and basically do my presentation simultaneously. I'm going to show the movie though for my presentation so that people have something to look at besides a bunch of words and me talking.

All in all, logic will be done by this time tomorrow, I think. This will essentially leave me with something like 13 hours left of work left class wise before my semester is over. Once I finish this logic though, I REALLY have to bust ass on immunology. I may do my extra credit this weekend, but not all the pasting and stuff on the poster board that I am going to have to buy on my way home.

So all of my scheduling issues have been worked out. I can confirm the following as my class list for my LAST SEMESTER OF COLLEGE!:

HIST 300: The Ottoman Empire, Thursday 1:40-4:20.
HIST 499: History Thesis, Thursday 4:30-7:05
GER 101: German I, Tuesday-Thursday-Friday 12:15-1:30
BIOL 484: Molecular Biology-Monday-Wednesday 9:25-10:40
PHIL 940: Independent Study in Philosophy
CHEM 940 (dependant on space available): Independent study in biochemistry.

I thinks I'm going to go do some work now. Actually, no, correct that. They're offering free lunches for those of us working. Methinks I'm going to go get one.

Fixing

So it looks like all of my scheduling woes are going to work themselves out pretty nicely. UCCS changed the schedule so that I can now take German and just spend 4 credit hours there instead of the 18 I would have to do to be a business minor. I can keep my health insurance and my money.

I found out today that I got an A in my bioseminar class, so that's good. I'm getting really close to securing a lot of A's. Of my 8 classes, I'm guaranteed to get at least a B in 6 of them. To get an A in biochemistry, I need a 40%, a 80% in genetics lab (easy enough, I've never gotten lower than an 88%), a 50% on my biostats test, and something like an 80% on my logic paper.

The agenda for this weekend is pretty simple. Saturday I have to work at UCCS from 10-4 for language placement tests. I'm basically going to do everything I have left to do in logic and genetics lab between now and Monday, which is one lab, one paper, and one like 5 minute presentation.

So then when I finish all of that, I'll only have immunology stuff, my three finals, and some miscellaneous French to do.

At least the plus side of all of this is that I can finally worry less about money. It looks like I'll have about 4K left in bonds, and my sisters can split the 10K I have left in my college savings account.