Observations...

...of Specifis Studiara Undergraduatum, or the studying undergraduate.

Studying in the undergraduate library has its benefits (close parking on nights and weekends, large tables with multiple outlets, good lighting, easily accessible bathrooms and water fountains) and its drawbacks (tons of undergrads, strange smells floating around, the inevitable butt-ache that afflicts anyone choosing to sit on a library chair for longer than an hour). Usually the benefits are enough to make me feel like it's worth it to study there. I am also unusually productive when surrounded by people reading novels and practicing in foreign language grammar workbooks (no hate, trust me, I was once one of you and I wish I could be again--sorta).

However, I feel like these Undergraduatum are both careless and inconsiderate, perhaps as unavoidable side-effects to being carefree and in college. When I was searching for a table I saw no less then five that were being "held" by a handful of papers and a lonely water-bottle. I saw one girl who was napping in her (four seater) booth. And I saw a bazillion of them giggling and sharing video clips on computers and making jokes.

Don't get me wrong. I understand that you sometimes have to get up and go to the bathroom, requiring you to leave all your crap splayed out on a table that someone else could use. That's fine. But don't leave your things for over an hour--that's just mean and selfish. Obviously you don't care very much about studying in the library if you are not even in the library. So please, allow others who need your space to use it.

Secondly, I also sympathize with people who might feel so sleepy that they need to put their heads down for a catnap. That's fine, and I am guilty of it myself. But twenty minutes of dozing is one thing; an hour and a half of hard sleeping in a space meant for four people is another. You go to school here. You (most likely) have a bed. Use it and let me sit in your booth.

Finally, I commend those who can socialize and study effectively. I also understand how that Funny or Die clip could be the most hilarious thing you've seen all afternoon; that these boots about to sell out on Zappos require trusted girlfriend input; and that this dirty knock knock joke simply must (must!) be shared. So please, share it elsewhere.

Phew. Now that I've purged myself of all my bitterness, I will take a few seconds to note that I eventually did get a table and am wearing headphones. So please, undergrads. Carry on. As long as I can get into my groove, I have no quibble with you or that Modern Cinema paper you need to write. However, if you do have any spontaneous tax knowledge, specifically pertaining to capital expenditures, please don't hesitate to share it with me. Thanks.

Pretty much the crappiest 24 hours I've had in a long time

If this comes across as whining, that's because it is. If you can complain to the internets it minimizes complaining in real life. This is actually true.

Things that happened
-woke up yesterday with sore throat, slight cough (sure signs of being sick)
-my fish died
-it was butt-freezing cold
-came home at 2 in the morning to discover that my hot water pipes had frozen in the kitchen
-My cable and internet are disabled, probably from the cold
-maintenance arrives at 4:30 to check it out — I have waited a long stinking time for them to show up
-maintenance informs me that my pipe has burst. He shuts off my hot water so I can't take a shower or wash my face without contracting frostbite.
-I get approximately 2 hours of sleep. The weather is such that every moron on the road drives approximately .007 miles per hour. I am exactly 1 minute late to my 8 o'clock class and the door is locked.
-I check Tom's flight status online. His flight into Detroit is delayed. His flight to South Bend will be leaving without him most likely, unless it is also delayed. The next flight is at noon.

Good things have happened too, but they aren't exactly counter-balancing the total suckage of the last day or so. Ugh. When it rains it pours — my bad days are always REALLY REALLY BAD days.

I write this from Lula's cafe while nursing hot chocolate, capped with a staggering froth of whipped cream. I have given up on this week.

When in doubt, blog

I need to outline, outline, outline...and yet, here I am.

Quick updates:

-baking time has been severely reduced, so the shiny new implements I acquired over Thanksgiving break are going to have to take a back seat until I get back to school in 2009...sob.

-I think I might be getting addicted to caffeine...I get these weird behind-the-eye headaches and they tend to go away with that first cup of coffee. This is absolutely not good and come break, I might have to figure out a way to slowly wean myself off the magic concoction that is 2 packets of sugar + a big splash of half and half. NOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

-I have given up getting my apartment clean; I simply don't have the time. Therefore, I've resorted to trying to control the mess: I have a bag for all the mail. All the dishes are in the sink. All the clothes are in a pile. Yes, they're clean, and yes, there's plenty of closet space and they should be there—but the point is that they're not EVERYWHERE.

-Taylor Swift. That's about all I'm going to say without going into a hundreds-of-words long review of how genius her pop songwriting skills are.

ACK. My life is a shambles. Please, please, please let me pull through the next few weeks with some of my sanity intact.

Please.

Poem, before bed

I have a lot of work to do.
Ooh, "Friends"!

It's that time of year again

I've done some looking back in my archives, and it seems like each year, around this time, I post some sort of panicked/denial-ridden-perky post about how I need to sprint quickly and successfully through my final exams without losing my dignity or sense of personal hygiene. And I am here to say "Enough! No more pseudo-motivational phrases with snappy alliteration! No more talking about how stress is great, but success is greater! No more, I say! Let's just be honest."

I am in full-blown, 100%, all out holy-crap-I-need-to-get-my-rear-in-gear mode. And I am not ashamed to admit it! I do not deny it! Finals times SUCKS!

Whew. I feel strangely empowered now.







PS: Back to the clean slate. It was nice flirting with the girly swirl, but this is a little easier for me to look at.

What I've learned about myself

I do way better when everything is a competition. Yesterday, t. and I compiled lists of things we had to do (lists that were comparable...we made sure of that) and held a contest to see who could get the most things done by the end of the day. And while I didn't get all my things done, I "little chunked" and won. BOO. YAH.

GOAL!

In my attempts to be a more goal-oriented, forward thinking, and proactive person, I've adopted a new system for getting through my day--a system I like to call "little chunks" (which, now that I think about it, sounds kind of gross).

My problem, usually, is that I cannot manage to get things done because I feel that the enormity of the tasks I set for myself render any steps I might be able to take negligible unless the entire thing gets done (clean apartment from top to bottom, including scrubbing baseboards with a toothbrush! read all my reading for a whole week in one day! organize all my clothes, hem three pairs of pants, and fold all t-shirts in a perfect square in an hour!).

Breaking up daily to-do lists into more manageable pieces is a time-saving task, a.k.a. life hack, that has been promulgated on the net and in various self-help books numerous times. I've tried it before. However, even when I did break up my day, I still found myself lingering over the first few tasks and eventually finding myself at dusk with a dishwasher half-loaded and a sofa covered in unfolded laundry.

Therefore, I have now found some success with breaking up the breaking up. By setting ridiculously doable standards, I find myself surpassing them: "Put away that dish" becomes "Well, I'm already putting away this dish...I might as well put away that mug, and that spoon, and that plate, and hey, let's put away all the dishes." Maybe I should call this "little little chunks"?

At any rate, it's working, and that's all that matters. So today's goals: read 4 pages of evidence. Throw away the old circular sitting on my coffee table. Put away my boots. Let's see how far these three things get me.

She's back!

My computer! Is back! And fixed! Hooray! This is a cause for celebration!