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Is it wrong that I so enjoy stuffing my mouth with ground kava and chewing it on the way to class? People say it's bitter as hell, yet it's got a subtle sweetness that I can't help but love. It numbs my mouth and augments the sickening sweetness of the caffeinated Coke Zero that I sip periodically throughout the course of my three-hour classes in order to avoid slipping into a dream state.

I wonder if my kava-breath smells funny in class. Maybe it has a relaxing effect on my fellow students...

Real quick blog before I study.

 

Today my life was rocked by an awful revelation. My girlfriend (Sheri) and I were sitting in our apartment. She was browsing some news site and she mentioned that Al Gore won the Nobel Prize for his work on global warming. We both snickered over this and then I conceded, "I would have voted for him. He would have made a better president. Who'd you vote for last election?"

"Umm," Sheri said hesitantly, "don't laugh at me. I voted for.... Bush." 

 A wave of nausea hit me. I sat down on the couch to catch my breath.

 "You.... WHAT???"

 I could barely contain my revulsion over the fact that the sweet, thoughtful, intelligent girl that I'm in love with helped to elect the worst and most-hated president ever. I suggested that her right to vote be revoked, or that she voluntarily abstain from voting in future elections.

In summary.... says Sheri: "I SUPPORT YOUR WAR OF TERROR"

I just had an utterly life-changing experience. We'd just gotten out of a grueling 3-hour evening neuropsych lecture. I headed to a school restroom....washed my hands..... was drying them off when something in my peripheral vision caught my eye and I turned my head.

 

Enter ROACHZILLA (thanks to Jeff for the name ;)). I swear to you, this thing was the spitting image of an African hissing cockroach. I'd never seen anything like it in my life. If my vision was blurry at the time, I'd have easily mistaken it for a small mouse. I immediately whimpered like an injured dog and backed into the middle of the room where I did a quick scan of the walls/floor/ceiling for any of Roachzilla's friends. Nope, he was a loner. Working up some courage, I whipped out my phone to snap a photo, but he scuttled into the mop closet. I decided not to pursue him any further. Unfortunately I had to walk right by him to get out of the restroom. I feared he would launch a sneak attack and chomp right through my sneakers and lay his (her?) eggs deep inside my foot.

 

But I escaped. The whole train ride home, I had zero social anxiety. All I could think about was Roachzilla. I was giddy, swept with the realization that some things just ARE scarier than other people.

I'm taking Sheri back to my home this winter, just a tad south of the Arctic Circle, so she can experience the wonders of stepping outside from the scorching 75° interior of an airport to a cool -60°F snowscape :D We're staying for a week, plus another week in the coastal city I grew up in, plus two nights in Seattle! We have a few side trips in the plans too

In other news I'm far too wired on caffeine pills to study for my neuropsych & behavioral stats finals.

Ok. there's this guy in class who spends every damned second creaking his chair/desk back and forth. It irritates the poo out of everyone in class, but nobody does a thing about it. It's a 3-hour evening class, twice a week, about the neurophysiological bases of abnormal behavior. Today we learned all about (ok, by no means 'all'!) excitatory & inhibitory post-synaptic potentials (EPSP & IPSP); basic concepts, I take it. I sat 2 seats from the creaky guy and glanced over. He was making all sorts of frantic movements: rubbing his eyes, picking at his ears, running his fingers through his hair, . I don't know much about Tourette's, but it would be my best (only..) guess. He let out a few "oh!" utterances. Maybe he was trying to quell an itch of some sort. Poor guy :/

Today's bio lab calls for hell on earth: creating lego models of mitosis & meiosis, drawing 30 pages of detailed diagrams, demonstrating our knowledge of the intricacies of meiosis and mitosis to another group and getting their members to sign that we know each section and that our drawings are completely accurate.

No freaking way. I'm skipping. This is lab #9 and I haven't missed one yet. In a way I feel like I'll be cheating myself, but OTOH I calculated that today's lab will only be worth 1% of my final grade for the course. I won't even need the info for the last lab report.

Plus I've got half a book to read for a class that's tonight, and a psychophysics midterm tomorrow morning that I really need to study for.

This morning I was riding the train with Sheri and it was packed like usual so we were standing in the aisle. Without warning, the driver threw on the emergency brakes, sending dozens of us flying off our feet. I flew forward and slammed into some big guy's lap and Sheri knocked over a girl in front of her. Alarms sounded from everywhere. Within 15 seconds everyone was standing and perfectly composed again; it was like nothing had happened.

Sheri's lived here her whole life and this was a first. I told her that Kelly would have been traumatized. I got off one stop before Sheri and she sent a text saying that they did it again.

I'm paying $10k/semester for a school that I hate. An average day means 3 hours of commuting by train to/from campus, 5 miles away. My classes are 9:30am to 6:45pm, which means I spend all day on campus where there's nothing to do and nowhere to go. Out of boredom, I read the entire Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Boston Metro, and the weeklies. I come home exhausted and have a couple of drinks, but not enough to get drunk. There's enough time for homework and a little bit of chatting with friends on msn, but that's it.

I've got a little over a year left and I feel completely unmotivated. I'm miserable most of the time and I'm paying big bucks for my degree, for what? So I can get a decent job. A job in which I'll work my @$$ off every day and, as dragnink put it, make someone at the top even richer. I'll never be at the top because I don't have the personality or the networking skills to be there. I'll always work so that I can live to work some more, to spend my free time as a consumerist and get screwed over on a daily basis. That's all that most people do in life.

I moved to Boston believing that it would be easier to get ADD treatment here. That was one of my reasons, anyway. It turns out that nobody wants to help, and the healthcare system is every bit as stagnant and unpromising as it was at home.

The worst thing is discovering that I might not be as capable of learning as people have always led me to believe. Before college I set state records on exams, and now I'm struggling in an introductory bio course.

I'm dragging my way through school cos I don't want to live like a bum. Sometimes my only motivation in life is that if I give up school now, I won't get student loan money next semester.

Today was the crappiest in a long time. I felt a strong urge to drop everything and fly to another continent where I can wander around and experience new things daily......