School Life

Last week was a stress filled and busy one, and while I'm hoping that the semester gets better from here, I'm having my doubts. What's worse is that Monday was labor day, so my week wasn't even as long as it could have been.

The week started out OK on Tuesday, with Physics and Biological Oceanography (bio ocean) and bio ocean lab. Nothing too bad here, just three hours at a microscope cataloging and drawing different diatom and dinoflagellate species (such as these guys; aren't they cute?).

Both of these pictures belong to the Center for Integrated Marine Technologies since I didn't get any good pictures through my microscope.

Wednesday, however, found me a basket case as I went through work and chemistry lecture a nervous wreck due to a chemistry quiz and oceanography speech on the plastic in the North Pacific Gyre. I won't know how I did on the quiz until tomorrow, but I don't have high hopes. And I'd love to say that I needlessly worried about the speech and pulled it off wonderfully, but I really can't say that since I BLACKED OUT and have no recollection of the speech at all. I remember the guy going before me sit down, and the guy going after me standing at the front of the room starting his speech, but between that is just a vague memory of staring at my cue cards wondering what the heck language they were written in. Talking with a classmate later, I seemed to have done OK, since he said my speech was the most coherent and informative of all the other speeches. I'll take his word for it, at least until I go over the speech with my professor (and chair of the department and former boss) and get my grade sometime this coming week. David was fantastic and just held me while I cried and slowly calmed down after getting home.

Thursday was a little better, with mostly a repeat of Tuesday. My bio ocean professor (and faculty advisor) has offered me a job monitoring harmful algae blooms off our coasts as part of a statewide study. I would love to take it, but am going to wait until I know a little more about what the job requires. She is also going to help me turn the job into my senior research project that I must complete before I graduate, so that's a big bonus. And it's much closer to my field of interest than the PG&E sampling is, so unless the hours are crazy I'll probably end up taking the job. After class I headed over to the Oceanography department mixer, which was fun, but I don't do too well with lots of people. I'm glad I went though, since I'm now signed up with the Oceanography club and talked to many people about the PG&E marine sampling project and hopefully some of them will apply.

Friday I muddled through physics lab and a chemistry lecture and headed home. I don't think I've ever been more glad for a weekend. I didn't get much of anything done (like housework or canning pickles), but I've spent a lot of time relaxing and detoxing from my week, and I have my homework done, a weekly menu planned for next week, I started knitting a washcloth (and have restarted it 4 times already), and have started reading Diet for a New America, which is turning out to be very good in a kind of depressing way....

I'm off now to do some more knitting and am hoping next week will be better.