It's that time of year

Yes folks, it's that time of year again. No, no, I'm not referring to the holiday season, oh no. What I'm referring to is much less uplifting and much more stressful. Ah yes, the dreaded exam season is upon us again. And by "us" I mean those still in their undergraduate studies and those of us wondering why we chose to sign up for another 5 years of school... Actually I'm really enjoying graduate school, I just know not to take 4 classes next semester. :-)

Yesterday something really upsetting happened. I pushed myself all of Monday to finish my last applied math homework assignment so I wouldn't have to return to campus on Tuesday for no reason other than to turn it in. And I did. I put it in the little box right after class and breathed a huge sigh of relief. No more homework assignments. Time to focus on the huge final papers and exams. But NOOOOO. I couldn't just have that moment of glory. It was snuffed out by the posting of yet another homework in my biomolecular engineering class. Which is not due until 12/12, yet our final "exam" (which is a paper) is due on 12/5. Hmmm, to me that meant I would be finished with that class on 12/5. Or actually tomorrow, since all I have left to do on the paper is straighten out my references. *Sigh* what a let-down.

I've also sent my final rough draft for my individual R21 grant proposal to Monty, so that's pretty much out of the way too. It'll probably require maybe 5 more hours of tweaking and proofing and compiling all the sections together with references, but that's not too difficult. It doesn't involve reading ridiculous numbers of papers.

I've also got a group R21 due on 12/3; I've written my section for it, so I feel pretty proud. I think that will be more difficult to compile since it's the work of 4 people being meshed together, but we did well with that on the presentation portion, so I feel confident the group will be able to organize our paper effectively. I really did get a great group to work with; I feel very blessed. That's one of the thanks I can give tomorrow! Although it's trivial in the grand scheme of things, I still think it's important. I made them goody bags to study with for finals. Which means I bought all the candy I wanted for myself, but split it with all of them so I didn't have to feel as guilty about buying $30 worth of candy. Well, maybe $20 worth of candy.

I bought a desk last weekend, which my absolutely wonderful fiance is currently assembling upstairs. What a guy :-) I helped earlier, but then I retired to work on editing my final paper for that biomolecular engineering class. It will be nice to study for finals and work on things while sitting at a desk instead of on the floor. I'm sure that will do wonders to improve my back pain!

Speaking of pain, I began running again last week. It's been so hectic at school I've really been neglecting my personal fitness. I still go to that Body Tone class, but I've only been 3 times (I had to miss it twice for meetings) and it's not really a cardio workout. It really works the muscles, but I need to do more to have a slimmer figure for the wedding. Especially since I bought a dress that fit me almost perfectly. Now I have a goal to stay the same; grad school is not really conducive to maintaining a healthy eating schedule, but I'm working on it. I think once the holidays are over it will be easier to avoid temptation and the 83478534 varieties of Hershey Kisses will not be looking at me from the shelves in Target saying "Buy me! Eat all of us!"

I want to work more on being a less competitive person. I think the person I'm most competitive with is myself, so I'm not exactly sure how that will work. I look back on my undergrad classes and my performance in my last two years and I wonder how I did it. Really 4 grad classes should not be harder than the 7 classes I had one of my semesters junior year. And I still managed to get straight As. Three As and four A+s to be exact. So what was so different? I think the whole environment of grad school is much more intense, and what I'd like to be doing is narrowing down my scope to start focusing on what I'd like to research on for my thesis. At least doing something that feels like I'm going somewhere. Now it's a lot of reading. I mean a LOT. And almost none of my readings are related to each other, but most are fascinating. I just need to get out of the competitive mindset I had in undergrad; I'm already into grad school. I already got in to every school I applied to, so why do I still feel so pressured? It's a mystery and I'm hoping I can get over it soon. I really have been doing better with homeworks and such this semester than I did in my last years at NSCU; I try not to sweat the small stuff, because once I have that Ph.D. with the words "Duke University" on it, no one will care that I got an 88 on that test or whatever, but it's a difficult adjustment from when I didn't earn a single B on any assignment in any class for years. But really I know that now no one cares what my undergrad GPA was (except maybe the folks at the NSF looking over my proposal), it's just a matter of changing my mind set. We'll see how that goes.

Tomorrow I'm going with my family (Mom, John, Kristin, and Hunter) to have Thanksgiving with John's parents near Davidson College where they live; it will be nice to see them, considering Thanksgiving is the only day of the year that I do see them. They haven't been to Raleigh since Hunter was born (in 1995) but they claim to be coming to the wedding. That would be exciting! I hope they do come since it will be a nice day to share with all of my relatives. They've known me since I was three, so to me that's essentially family I was born with. Keegan will be staying in Raleigh to have dinner with his immediate family. On Friday we're going to go over there to help them decorate their Christmas tree! We're going to be buying our own and setting it up next weekend after I've had my first exam. I think that will be a nice treat for me :-) For both of us, actually!

It's less than a month until Christmas and less than 7 months until the wedding! 206 days according to our TheKnot website. Yay! Hmm, still so much to do... Cait and Sara (?) and I will be going on in a few weeks to finalize their dresses and look at possible flowers. I think those are the biggest things left to do. And they have been for awhile. I seem to get things accomplished in spurts where I order a cake, book a photographer, then buy a wedding dress then to nothing for 6 weeks. You know. In all fairness, I have found some wedding invites online that I really like, and I've been looking at bouquets and flowers too. But it's been too crazy to really get much done.

Well, I should go help Keegan now that I've finished my editing. Then we're going to watch the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special because I'm a nerd.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Remember to be thankful for what you have, rather than dwelling on what you don't. I know I will be counting all my blessings and being thankful for each in turn.
:-)