Buck Up, Kiddo!

School started back up this Monday. I think it's going to be a pretty great semester. I'm pretty excited about my Crime, Justice, and Corrections class: partly because the subject matter fascinates me, and partly because I have friends in that class. (That doesn't always happen.) I'm also taking a graduate course: Seminar on Race & Ethnic Relations, which should also be interesting. We've only had one meeting for that class so far, and I think I like it. There seems to be a lot of rhetorical questions asked, which invokes a great deal of thought, but I don't know if I've learned much. But like I said, we've only met once, so I suppose I can't make judgments about it already.

I'm also taking a psychology course on Motivation. We still don't have a syllabus, which leaves my OCD-planning personality very anxious. Our professor says he "doesn't lecture," whatever that means, and since we don't have any kind of course outline to go by (yet), I have no idea what to expect out of the class. We only meet once a week, too. I don't know what to make of it.
Then there's the first half of D&C, which should also be good but I'm sure plenty of memorization.

And on top of those classes I'm taking some research credit with one of the professors this semester to build my researching skills and give me a little more experience in the world of professional academia. I'll be going to a crim conference at the beginning of November to help present this paper we worked on this summer. I'm already a little anxious about that, but I don't know if I can help it. At least I've noticed that the semesters I get most anxious about and swamped with work, I get the best grades. It's not something I like, necessarily, but it's good to know that hard work pays off.

Work has been a little nuts the past few weeks. We just hired two new secretaries for me to train and eventually take over when I graduate in April. Graduation doesn't really seem real, but I've got time for that to settle in. They seem like pretty competent girls, so I think it'll work out just fine. I need to learn to let them just do things and stop trying to control everything in the office; I've just gotten so used to doing things my way, that any other way seems less efficient or just plain wrong.

So I guess, overall, I'm pretty stoked for Fall. It should definitely be a new experience. This week has been on the light side, workload-wise, so I've spent most of today watching Gilmore Girls and listening to Cat Power and Band of Horses. I've definitely fallen out of touch with a lot of music. I blame that mostly on the environment in Provo: too many Maes, too few Unicorns. Most of the people I listen to are the same folks from high school, so it's time to branch out a little. Find a niche or something. That's what college is for, right? Discovering yourself? Learning all kinds of things about all kinds of things. I love learning, but I'm still fighting to find that place that makes me comfortable.

In completely unrelated news, I keep going through these green urges that die when I wake in the morning. After work today, I seriously considering pulling off a no-impact experiment for a week. I don't think I have the guts, really. I did change most of the light bulbs in our apartment to compact flourescents. I do walk to work and school, but I suppose that's mostly because I don't have a car and it's less than half a mile away. But if it counts for anything, I'm slowly becoming discouraged with thoughts of buying a car. I'm also trying to be better about buying cleaning supplies without seriously toxic chemicals in them (and now I have a growing interest in homemade cleaners, both for household cleaning and laundry). Again, though: too chicken. But of course, I'll wake up tomorrow and forget all about the urge until the media focuses on it again. I'm such a fad-follower about these things, it's a little pathetic.

I'm ready for change. And whether that change comes in the form of schoolwork, or work work, or seasons, or something else, I think it should be good.

Possibly.

Sooner or Later

Conversations with myself are dangerous.

all in a day

save water, save energy, save money, save time, save the lakes, save the whales, save the pandas, don't litter, don't waste, don't waste time, grow a garden, eat right, eat healthy, eat omega-3's, don't eat sugar, don't get wrinkles, always wear sunscreen, take vitamins, recycle, thirty minutes of cardio, keep in touch, keep a record, study hard, learn everything, drink water, get sleep, don't sleep in, work hard, don't judge, be smart, brush your teeth, don't overbrush your hair, save the troops, support your local government, don't fight, stand up for yourself, you should read this, you should see this, haven't you heard?

i mean, it's easy.

Leisure Reading

I recently (this morning) finished reading Ender's Game for the first time. As the battle came to a close and the final two chapters commenced, Rebecca started playing her lovely violin so in sync with the fallout from victory, I nearly cried.

Well, not really. In fact, not even close. But it was a rather moving twenty minutes. I liked it. And it's much better than A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; that book stinks.

For Nicki (and lack of a better title)

Nicki's right: it has been a long time.

Where to begin? I guess we'll just go backwards and see where that takes me. Finals started this past Friday, and yes, I'm already done. It would feel much more amazing if I wasn't procrastinating a minuscule 2-page paper I still have left as part of my take-home final. But I took my first test (it was scheduled) Friday at 3pm. Then Saturday at 7am I took Old Testament, at 9:15am I took another, at 12pm I took another, (then I went home and took a nap,) and at 4pm I started my last final and was done by dinnertime. I felt a little like the Olsen twins, solving crimes by dinnertime. I'm pretty proud. Unfortunately, I now have another week before spring term starts and no real drive to read the book I'm on.

I did, however, finish reading Watchmen, and that was freaking amazing. I definitely would not show it to anyone under the age of 25 (I know, I'm 20, and that doesn't work), but anyone 25 and over with any interest in graphic novels (not comic books) or groundbreaking literature should totally read it. Shoot.
But now I am left reading The World Is Flat, by Thomas Friedman, which has so far not been my cup o' tea.

I think I finished the semester pretty well off. I'm really shooting for a half scholarship for Fall and Winter, but now that tests are all over, I'm left waiting for grades to come out. I hate waiting. But I super-enjoyed my Issues in Family Soc and Old Testament classes, because they made me think outside the box in such an incredible way.

At the beginning of the month, one of the girls in stats and I submitted a poster to the Mary Lou Fulton Mentored Student Research Conference, which is really just a big fancy name for "let's stand around for six hours next to a poster of some regression analysis we did." Our study (well, the title of the poster) was "Perception of School Rules on Adolescents' Fear of Victimization." I think something in our math was wrong, because our two biggest factors in the analysis were 1) being bullied, and 2) gang presence. Turns out if you've been bullied before, you're afraid of it, but the more often it happens, the less afraid you are. And if there are gangs at your school, you're not afraid of being a victim. It's a little... odd. But hey, statistics don't lie, I guess.

And I just realized how boring that paragraph might have been for you. I apologize.

Going back to the future, now, work's been slow and it'll be interesting to see what I can do all this week to keep myself occupied. Ben'll be in Las Vegas visiting family for the larger part of it, and my roommates are still busy with finals and moving out/around the apartment. Lena's birthday's on Sunday, though, and we have all kinds of fun planned for that on Saturday.

So... I feel like a drifter. Let's catch up!