speaking of the arbitrary displeasure of the gods

In order to stay awake today, I have:

 

• Taken extra trips to the men’s room, even when I didn’t need to do a thing. (“Uh… zit check! Nope, all clear…”)

 

• Bought my weekly Diet Coke. (“Mmmm… bubbly… is this available in extra-caffeinated?”)

 

• Taken the long route to the copier, which means going through the frigid tape library.

 

• Done just about every piece of work I possibly can. You ever get to that point where you don’t want to do TOO much because then you’ll hose yourself for tomorrow and leave NOTHING to do? Yep, that’s me right now.

 

***

 

Did that family from the Land of the Lost ever get home anyway?

 

***

 

Hoping to get the multi-cultural test result back tonight. I’m feelin’ a B on this one.

 

***

 

And you know, speaking of the arbitrary displeasure of the gods (like I was earlier with that whole “code brown” business), let me also say that the syllabus gods were not kind last night.

 

One of the differences between how grad and undergraduate courses work is in the syllabus. Maybe this is just limited to my own experience, but as an undergrad, if any assignment was due soon we’d touch base about it in class, emphasize the date, that sort of thing.

 

In grad school it’s just you and the syllabus, man. Oh, big projects and tests get mentioned, sure. But readings and shorter writing assignments are the student’s responsibility. Keep up with it, turn it in, period. I got burned a couple times last semester.

 

This semester I’m better about it, but last night I realized I hadn’t read the syllabus in a while. BOOM, two papers due today. Ugh. Not awfully long or anything, but long enough to keep me from having any free time. Luckily I got in the habit at some point of tucking away potential sources for these projects. It helped last night that I could pull up a study on episodic and declarative memory almost instantly when I needed something to write about.

 

The study was also a fine cure for insomnia—badoom!

 

***

 

Studies… I spent a lot of time in medical studies while I was an undergraduate. God, have I never written about that? Can’t recall. Fetch me my brain medicine…

 

Anyway, I’ll roll those stories out at some point.

 

***

 

Better scoot. Have a good evening.