After today, I will be done with going to class for all of my classes and completely done with one of them. I have an exam from 7 to 9 tonight for the class which the boyfriend calls "Deathmarch through the Periodic Table" (he's not in the class, needless to say). It's actually a pretty awesome class, but the exams are frustrating because they're pretty much all memorization.

I don't think I've ever been this burnt out at the end of a semester before. I guess grad school + crazy-ass snowfall and cold weather will do that to you. On a side note, I attempted to go running this morning because it was warm for once (30 degrees F or so) and slipped and fell on the ice, and now my right thigh feels like it has a combination of a cramp and a bruise. Maybe I pulled a muscle? Bother.

Classes are cancelled tomorrow because we're supposed to get 12-16 in. of snow tonight and are on a blizzard warning! Apparently, this is very rare. Yay!

My roommate and I are going to hole up in our apartment, study for exams, and bake (I have a recipe for eggnog cupcakes I've been wanting to try). We might go outside and play in the snow if it's not too ridiculous. The one downside is that the boyfriend lives 3 miles away. What's the point of having a day off from school/work if you can't laze around in bed all morning?

Oh well. No school tomorrow!

Last night, I had a for-real date (i.e. not just going over to someone's house to hang out/cook/watch a movie) with the boyfriend. He took me to an absurdly nice restaurant, and I had tapas and a ridiculously bright blue cocktail. Today I worked on homework and then went out for dinner and icecream with several other inorganic first-years. And now I'm in bed with my laptop, Assassination Vacation, and a pumpkin beer. Social life = satisfying.

I'm sort of trying to be socially active (that sounds weird) with a wide variety of people, mainly because I don't want to become one of Those Couples. You know, the pair who get together freshman year of college and spend the next four years practically married and inseparable in public.* As much as I was secretly jealous of them, I still don't want to be that. I think I'm succeeding so far.

*Side note: a friend of mine has That Couple in the lab section she TAs. Near the beginning of the semester, she had to forbid them from being lab partners because they were actually making out in lab at one point, which is disgusting. However, they win back some points for dressing up as Kanye West and Taylor Swift for Halloween.

Good: I officially joined a group today!

Bad: My head feels like it's going to explode because of this stupid cold.

Indifferent?: I may not finish my quantum problem set by Wednesday, and I don't really think I care. So this is what lowering standards feels like.

The Gen Chem for Smart Kids class is having an exam tomorrow. The way exams work for this course is that the kids sit the exam from 5:40 to 7:00 p.m. and we proctor them. Then, the kids leave (hopefully not in tears), the two profs who teach the lecture order everyone pizza, and all 17 of us (2 profs + 15 TAs) grade the exam from 7:30 until whenever we're done. Last time I got home around 1 in the morning.

It would actually be a lot of fun if it only took, say, three hours, because we get to hang out and be goofy, and some of the kids' exam answers are hilarious. (One of the questions last time involved drawing d orbitals, and the TAs who were grading that one got orbitals with 3 lobes, 5 lobes, and 12 lobes.) As it is, by 11 or so everyone starts flagging.

Thus I'm making mint brownies from scratch tonight so that we can eat them tomorrow while grading. Things that are awesome: chopping up baking chocolate, melting chocolate and butter together, buying fancy-schmancy peppermint schnapps to put in the brownies. Baking from scratch is extremely satisfying. In fact, life, despite the stress, is pretty damn satisfying right now.

Yeah, so my life has gotten crazy. General overview: busy, stressful, but also fun. The people here are awesome, and I'm so glad to be in Wisconsin.

Some observations:

- I'm officially lowering my academic standards for myself. I think this is making me happier.

- Dirty martinis are fast becoming one of my drinks of choice.

- Grading takes up more time than it should. Also, some of the 19-year-old guys I TA are kind of hot.

- Wisconsin bomb: a pickled egg in a glass of PBR. I haven't had one yet, but I will eventually.

- Even when I stay out until 1:30, my body still wants to wake up at 7 a.m.

- Group theory is still the most awesome thing ever in the world.

- I spent the evening watching NFL and eating chili. I was the only woman in the room. I love Oberlin, but God, it's so nice to hang out with people who love sports.

- The friend who invited me to football with the guys just got a 40-inch flatscreen, so watching sports with him is going to become a fairly regular occurrence.

- There may be something happening on the romance front. On the other hand, there may not be. I'm not sure yet. We shall see.

Good Lord, I had forgotten how competitive I am. We have a department-wide picnic, and there's a softball tournament divided up by division: Organic, Physical, Inorganic, and Materials/Analytical. Inorganic got shafted, since we're just as small as Materials but we didn't get to combine with anyone else. Also, apparently I'm the only competitive person in the division. For next year's picnic, I'm taking over as Inorganic team captain, and shit is going to get done. I may actually buy a mitt for myself.

But I can still hit pretty well, and while my fielding needs some work, I also still have a good throwing arm. I can't move my legs, I have the beginnings of a huge bruise on my left calf and thigh (sprinting in sandals = bad), and I spent the past two hours writing out my quantum problem set all neat-like. And yet I'm still absurdly happy from the softball, and I'm pretty sure I'll sleep like a baby tonight.

Wisconsin was so totally the right place for me. Remind me of this entry the next time I'm going crazy with work.

Okay, done freaking out. I'll still have to deal with my workload, but it seems comparable to that of the other first years in my program. Besides, people make it past their first year of grad school all the time. I'll be fine.

Inorganic is doing rotations for the first time this year, and my first rotation also starts this week. It's with my second-choice professor, the awesome nanomaterials prof, and I'm looking forward to seeing if I want to go down more of a materials-y path or not. My first choice says he really wants me in my lab, but I'm rotating with him second, because currently his instrumentation is spread over three different floors, and it should be consolidated by mid-September. This is all very exciting!

Also, some of the other first-years are coming over tonight for carrot cake that the roommate and I made from scratch. I'm excited and need to start making the frosting.

I need to relearn how to budget my time.

My responsibilities this semester:
- 2 sections of Gen Chem for smart kids (the 1-semester course), which means TAing two lab periods and two discussion sections
- 2 grad-level inorganic classes (Symmetry and Bonding, and Main Group Chemistry)
- 1 grad-level quantum mechanics class (help)
- 1 fluffy how-to-be-a-grad-student seminar
- Inorganic seminars
- "Rotations" in 3 different labs (involving getting to know the lab and students, rather than actual lab work)

I'd also like to keep up my horn playing, keep running in the mornings, and have some semblance of a social life. I know going back to grad school was a good decision, but right now that full-time job with nothing to do on evenings and weekends is looking very appealing. If only I could take my burgeoning social life back to Philly with me.

So for the past week and a half, my life has been pretty much eaten up by moving preparations. Other than seeing my grandfather again, I've been packing, packing, packing. But! Tomorrow my mom flies up to Philly, Wednesday we load up the U-Haul and hit the road, and Saturday I move into my apartment in Madison. In five days, I will (hopefully) start being an interesting person again instead of a brain-dead automaton. Wish me luck.

...And the anxiety is starting to set in. Over the past couple of days, I've been obsessing that: 1) my mom and I will die in a fiery crash while driving the moving truck to Wisconsin, 2) I'll never be able to fit all my stuff into said truck, 3) I'll fail my advisory exams, and 4) I won't get into the lab I really, really want. I've talked to my mom at length, who thinks it's just the fact that I'm about to, you know, uproot my entire life in Philly and move to a city in which I know maybe 3 or 4 people (and none of them for more than a couple days on visit weekends) to start a program that will be completely different both from my job and from undergrad. Yeah, that makes sense, although it doesn't make me stop worrying.

On the plus side, I was listening to NPR this morning while taking the car to get its emissions inspected (it passed!), and I just really love Robert Gibbs' voice. Not in a sexy way; he sounds like one of my uncles (who is also from Alabama), and it's very soothing to hear. It's the good kind of Southern accent, as opposed to the I-was-born-in-Connecticut-but-really-I'm-a-Texan-I-promise kind.

Just got back from picnic of Philly Oberlin alums. Ignored foot pain. Talked to people about how awesome Wisconsin is. Waxed philosophical about Christianity in the South vs. Christianity in Philly (read: more Catholics) and what it means to be Episcopalian. Somewhat drunk. Love Obies so much.

I'm actually enjoying studying for advisory exams. I have very little to do at work nowadays, so it gives me something to do, and brushing up on my chemistry knowledge is already making me feel more confident about starting grad school. I'm on thermodynamics right now, and I had forgotten how much I liked phase diagrams. Another reason to lean towards solid state, I guess? I also feel like I understand statistical mechanics better now than I did when I was taking the class. It's been nice to go back over it and take my time. And once I quit my job, studying plus getting ready to move will be the only things on my schedule for a month and a half.

Three more days of work left. When did that happen?

It's been getting harder and harder to get up for work in the morning. Today, I woke up, said "Fuck it," and decided to take the 8:02 train instead of the 7:35 one. I have barely anything to do anymore, either. There are some product formulae that I need to change around, but that's pretty easy once you get the hang of it, so mostly I've been studying for advisory exams and following political intrigue.

Oh, well. I have seven more days of work, and then family vacation for a week, and then nothing to do but study and pack and arrange everything for moving until mid-August. I'm going to miss my coworkers, at least. They've all been much more understanding than I quite imagined, and I think there's cake in my future. That's what they usually do when people leave.

I've been having bizarre dreams lately. Well, more bizarre than usual. Two nights ago, I had a dream that involved John Milton, and I remember telling myself to remember it right after I woke up because it was very amusing. And now of course I can't remember it. Last night, on the other hand, I dreamed that I was trying to get back with one of my ex-boyfriends, and his favorite hooker* told me that it wouldn't work because I was much too ugly to date him!** What that means, aside from the fact that I have self-image problems just like almost every other woman in the world, I have no idea.

What I do know is that I dream more vividly when I have a lot going on. And right now I'm getting ready for friends to visit on Friday, going to a wedding on Saturday, looking up apartments to visit next weekend, and studying for exams to be taken in August. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.

*As far as I know, none of my exes have ever visited hookers! I have no idea where this came from.

**Don't worry, I don't actually think this is true. But apparently my subconscious does?

Had a fantastic Memorial Day weekend; I went down to the Chesapeake Bay with my sister and our grandparents. There is really no place on earth more relaxing than my grandparents' beach house. Rachel and I listened to country on the way down, hung out with the grandparents, got some work done, helped around the house, and (after my grandparents left on Sunday) drank beer and played Trivial Pursuit. Sister time = excellent.

And a year ago today, I was graduating from college, with no job, no apartment, and no plan other than to move to Philly and get a sublet for the summer near my sister. Compared to what I got done last summer, finding a place in Madison and studying for exams should be a piece of cake, right?

Somewhere in the past 18 hours or so, I've acquired a wretched cold. It's one of those colds where it's not bad enough to legitimately stay home from work, but it's bad enough that all I want to do is lie around like an inert lump. I'm also trying to figure out how future roommate and I are going to look at apartments in Madison when neither of us is there right now, and I'm paranoid that all the good places will vanish quickly, since it is a college town after all. Whine whine whine.

On the other hand, my sister had the idea of making half-assed cupcakes, so I now have "butter recipe golden" cake mix and a can of strawberry frosting that I'm going to take over to her place. Mmmm, disgustingly sweet processed foods.

You know the TV show "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia"? Well, that show is a lie. It rains all the damn time in this city. It rains more here than it has in any other place I've ever lived. And it's not thunderstorms or heavy downpours either - those are kind of fun. It's this crappy chilly drizzle that gets heavier or lighter as the day goes on but never entirely stops, and it must happen at least twice a week.

God, I can't wait to move out of this city.

I've been thinking about posting and not doing it for about two and a half weeks now. Suffice it to say that: a) I went home for Easter and fell in love with the South again, b) I just got back from a weekend in D.C. visiting Lauren, which was fantastic, c) my orchestra had its final concert, which was both wonderful and sad because it's over, and d) I am so ready to start grad school that I don't think I can handle it.

I would write more, but it's hot as hell here, which is bad for introspection. Instead, I'm eating cold leftover greens for dinner and doing precisely nothing for the rest of the day. Remind me that I hate hot weather when I wax lyrical about moving back to the South to settle, okay?

I found out this morning that I didn't get an NSF fellowship. Fair enough, these things are always a long shot, and it's clear that grad schools still very much want me, but getting a "no" is never fun. Especially since I should probably try again next year, when I have no idea what my project will be.

Fortunately, it's Good Friday, which is an excellent day for putting small unfortunate things into perspective. And on the good side of things: I have today off work, and tonight my sister and I are flying down to Atlanta to spend Easter weekend with my parents. It should be wonderful. I haven't been back to Atlanta for over a year and a half at this point (since August 2007), and I miss it so much, especially in the spring. The climate in the South does a lot of things wrong, but damn, does it ever do the spring right.

And, for Good Friday, a poem: ( Cut for Length )