that one way to become more successful is to use your mind like a knife in order to slice through all the BS. And the BS is really piling up, making my knife rather dull. It’s getting tough to see what really matters.
Since my knee and especially IT band gave out, I haven’t been able to run. I did try a few days last week but after a mile or so the area on the outside of my knee was burning. However, I was able to use the elliptical with success, so I’ve been doing that. It’s pretty boring though, but sure beats doing nothing. I really don’t have time to be hurt right now. Injuries require a lot more time and patience than when I’m healthy, but since my racing plans were canned, I’m not sure how much it all matters. I just want to be able to run again and ultimately be able to train and race like I used to, but it seems that school has really become the dominant factor in my current life.
Suddenly the next two weeks are packed with irritating meetings. Meetings are never productive. Some fool in the department schedules all the new faculty interviews at 8 AM instead of the usual 3 PM or later. There are three of them within the next week and the grad students have to go to all of them. Yuck. It’s funny because last year when this happened even the professors were falling asleep. I’ve also got a second meeting with my adviser and some guy from Hong Kong immediately after one of the faculty interviews on Friday. We can only meet in the mornings since there is a 13 hour time difference between here and Hong Kong. And of course I also have my four hour lab sessions, so all this stuff eats in to time I could be spending on doing actual work.
Since my schedule has been so weird, I’ve been a lot more tired than usual, despite sleeping nearly 9 hours every night. I’ve started to pick up a caffeine/energy drink addiction. The store in the UC sells a bunch of them and I started picking them up from there occasionally, until I ordered a whole case of Rockstar online since one of their low sugar versions had more caffeine per ounce than most others. I’m not really a fan of sugary drinks. Initially I was only drinking them on Thursdays when I got up real early to run, but now I’ve been drinking several a week. At first I got a real rush from the caffeine and was nearly bouncing off the walls during the labs, but now it isn’t as pronounced. Looking online, it seems one can get an addiction after mere days of caffeine consumption. Overall, it does seem to help my mood in the early afternoon when I’m the most tired, but I do notice I have trouble sleeping sometimes. It’s been more of an experiment than anything else and as of right now the results are pretty inconclusive.
As of right now it looks like I’ll be in the gradplex again next year, despite my best efforts to escape. One of the guys in the department didn’t have a roommate for next year and wanted to stay there again, so I’ll probably be rooming with him. He seems like someone who would be a solid roommate and already lives above me, so I’m hoping it will work out. As expensive as the gradplex is, including summer costs, it will still be about 1/3 less than an apartment on my own. Plus, it’s closer to school than the other places I’ve found and is also part of the bus route. At this rate, I might even get sucked back in to getting a meal plan next year.
The Board of Visitors decided to give the school president the boot last week. There’s been a lot of back and forth over this and hopefully it’s come to an end. Regardless of the where I stand on the issues that caused this, I don’t really see Nichol as a good leader. He has been very indecisive when facing several major issues, mainly just going with the flow of things instead of taking a stand. When people complained about the cross in the Wren building being offensive, he removed it. When alumni withheld major donations and protested the cross removal, he put it back (under a BOV compromise). When the NCAA said we had to get rid of our feathered logo, instead of fighting it, he just let it go and paid some firm big bucks to design our new Word Art/Kid Pix logo. With these issues being the most prominent as well as several others, two very polarized sides formed over supporting/removing the president. Ultimately the BOV has control and decided to get rid of him. Giving Nichol the boot is probably the only way to get both sides to be quiet and for the entire school to move on. Otherwise, it will just continue and every future decision made by Nichol will be heavily criticized by one of the parties. The whole thing has become way more of a mess than it needed to be. Several legislators in the state government have even claimed our school has made a mockery of itself with this whole ordeal.
I did get to go home and vote last week since my absentee ballot never came. Ron Paul FTL! I’ve heard too many people compare McCain’s policy to a third Bush term, which I really don’t want. I could have voted for one of the oddball Democratic candidates that were still on the ballot in an attempt to screw up the Clinton/Obama feud, but I chose not to. Still, I like being able to go home more often than I used to, but I have a feeling that will become more difficult as the meetings and other crap are piled on. Since I seem to be running in quicksand, my adviser pretty much acknowledged today that I wouldn’t get my Master’s project done in time, but he did seem satisfied with my progress. Again, it won’t matter too much since I’ll still be in school and around this summer anyways, but getting my Master’s degree was (and still is) one of my biggest priorities.
That’s about how things stand right now — it seems there are more setbacks, hurdles, and needless pressure than actual progress in my life. I’m hoping a lot of this will get cleared up and I can actually get somewhere in the next few months.
Recent Comments