So I have survived my first semester of grad school. My brain is still intact and my body is still functional. It has been an interesting 16 weeks. I worked so incredibly hard and felt strained and stretched in every possible direction. At least now I know that I can handle it. I ended up with stellar teaching reviews. My students loved me and my teaching methods. I was praised for my presentations relating to the lab work that I did. However, my course work wasn't that great. I ended up with B's for all three of my classes. B's aren't 'good enough' in grad school. Grad students must earn A's, grad students don't earn B's, and C's are not part of our vocabularies. So now I need to figure out what I need to do to earn my A's. All of the homework assignments I turned in were given stellar grades, however my exam grades sucked ass. I can't seem to put the knowledge I gained from doing the homework and attending class down on paper when it came to the exams. I have to figure out how to make that jump from homework knowledge to exam performance. I have a few ideas as to how I can make that happen, now its just a matter of trying to implement them. So I survived. Four and a half years left. My prof has declared that he is proud of me and that is why he pushes me so hard, that is why I receive so many lectures, that is why I am asked to do presentations in my first year of grad school and others aren't.... I don't understand why it took him so many months of riding my ass to tell me that he thinks I have great potential and that is why he pushes me harder than the other first year grad students. Four and a half more years...
My sister graduated from college last Monday. My Mom and Dad are now the proud parents of three college graduates. Mom just enrolled in college, for the spring semester, to finish her degree. She has already told me that she will be calling me for pep talks when it comes exam time for her. For those of you who don't know, I call my Mom 15 minutes before every exam I have ever taken in college, she is always ready with a pep talk.
My car, Mrs. Jones, has inoperable transmission cancer. She was diagnosed last Tuesday. My parents and I sat down last week and came up with a suitable solution. They know that I don't have money to buy a car. I don't have money to buy a new car and make payments or buy a used $2000 car. So they decided to let me BORROW Mom's relatively new car (2002 or 2003) Honda Civic to drive while I am in grad school. I will have to buy the car from them when I graduate and get a real job 4.5 years from now. Mom liked the car that she is letting me borrow so much that she bought the 2005 clone of that car. So now I have a car. A car that shouldn't be giving me any problems as long as I keep up with the regular maintanence.
Amy and I are still trying to work things out. I spent Saturday night in Jax. We are slowing starting over. There is still quite a bit of repairing that needs to be done but we are both working on it. Our two year anniversary was last week.
This is day one of quitting smoking (again). Do you like how I slip that in, in the middle of this post? Don't get your hopes up, I really am going to try not to smoke this time around.
I am currently enjoying a four week break from classes. I am still expected to work in the lab over break but I don't have any projects of my own to stress over. I was told to be Matt's aide in getting his 'to do' list done. I was also told to do all of the background research on Thermoelectrics. I need to know all of the theory behind what we are doing and why, I also need to know about all of the research that has been done up to this point. This assignment was given to me because I was unable to answer the two questions that were asked of me at the conference. There is no guarantee that I will be able to answer the questions asked of me at the next conference but at least I might be a little better prepared this time around. The next conference we are planning to attend is in June. Its the International Thermoelectrics Conference being held at Clemson in South Carolina. Its a pretty big deal for us. I am hoping that I will not have to present but I have a feeling that my prof will ask me to present.
My prof has been in an amazingly good mood lately. He had been stressed towards the end of the semester because we were facing project reviews. Project reviews mean that the people who are giving us grant money to do research visit us to see what we have been up to and to decide whether they want to continue funding us. From what I understand, we were highly complimented. So my prof is praising us and will soon start pushing us harder.
Oh, so the Zoe monster is a little older than I thought she was.... I was home last week for Melanie's graduation and I was stuck at home because my car died. My friend Rebecca graciously watched Zoe while I was gone. I got Zoe back from her on Thursday. As soon as I let Zoe loose in the house she started acting "funny". She was very vocal and affectionate. I thought it was because she had missed me. But this behavior continued into the next day and then Saturday... It was very un-Zoe-like behavior. I drove up to Jax on Saturday to spend time with Amy so Rebecca dropped by the house to pick Zoe up and took one look at Zoe and immediately determined that my little monster was experiencing her first heat. Needless to say, she will be getting fixed as soon as this heat is over and Christmas passes.
I have to go... I am late for a movie... I'll try to write more frequently now that I am out of school for winter break.
My sister graduated from college last Monday. My Mom and Dad are now the proud parents of three college graduates. Mom just enrolled in college, for the spring semester, to finish her degree. She has already told me that she will be calling me for pep talks when it comes exam time for her. For those of you who don't know, I call my Mom 15 minutes before every exam I have ever taken in college, she is always ready with a pep talk.
My car, Mrs. Jones, has inoperable transmission cancer. She was diagnosed last Tuesday. My parents and I sat down last week and came up with a suitable solution. They know that I don't have money to buy a car. I don't have money to buy a new car and make payments or buy a used $2000 car. So they decided to let me BORROW Mom's relatively new car (2002 or 2003) Honda Civic to drive while I am in grad school. I will have to buy the car from them when I graduate and get a real job 4.5 years from now. Mom liked the car that she is letting me borrow so much that she bought the 2005 clone of that car. So now I have a car. A car that shouldn't be giving me any problems as long as I keep up with the regular maintanence.
Amy and I are still trying to work things out. I spent Saturday night in Jax. We are slowing starting over. There is still quite a bit of repairing that needs to be done but we are both working on it. Our two year anniversary was last week.
This is day one of quitting smoking (again). Do you like how I slip that in, in the middle of this post? Don't get your hopes up, I really am going to try not to smoke this time around.
I am currently enjoying a four week break from classes. I am still expected to work in the lab over break but I don't have any projects of my own to stress over. I was told to be Matt's aide in getting his 'to do' list done. I was also told to do all of the background research on Thermoelectrics. I need to know all of the theory behind what we are doing and why, I also need to know about all of the research that has been done up to this point. This assignment was given to me because I was unable to answer the two questions that were asked of me at the conference. There is no guarantee that I will be able to answer the questions asked of me at the next conference but at least I might be a little better prepared this time around. The next conference we are planning to attend is in June. Its the International Thermoelectrics Conference being held at Clemson in South Carolina. Its a pretty big deal for us. I am hoping that I will not have to present but I have a feeling that my prof will ask me to present.
My prof has been in an amazingly good mood lately. He had been stressed towards the end of the semester because we were facing project reviews. Project reviews mean that the people who are giving us grant money to do research visit us to see what we have been up to and to decide whether they want to continue funding us. From what I understand, we were highly complimented. So my prof is praising us and will soon start pushing us harder.
Oh, so the Zoe monster is a little older than I thought she was.... I was home last week for Melanie's graduation and I was stuck at home because my car died. My friend Rebecca graciously watched Zoe while I was gone. I got Zoe back from her on Thursday. As soon as I let Zoe loose in the house she started acting "funny". She was very vocal and affectionate. I thought it was because she had missed me. But this behavior continued into the next day and then Saturday... It was very un-Zoe-like behavior. I drove up to Jax on Saturday to spend time with Amy so Rebecca dropped by the house to pick Zoe up and took one look at Zoe and immediately determined that my little monster was experiencing her first heat. Needless to say, she will be getting fixed as soon as this heat is over and Christmas passes.
I have to go... I am late for a movie... I'll try to write more frequently now that I am out of school for winter break.
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