I think I've lost my mind.  I feel really strange lately.  It's kind of a good strange, but I don't know how to classify it.  I'll try and formulate a meaningful entry and relate it to the written word if I can.

I feel a bit like I'm in stasis or like everything I do is in slow motion and even if it was fast it wouldn't matter anyway.  I feel a little lethargic.  At the same time I feel like I've gotten more done in the last few weeks than ever before in my life, like everyone else is moving in slow motion.  I guess it's hard to describe. 

I need graduate school admission decisions to come in.  I need some kind of closure on the rest of my life.  I need to know where my path is leading me next.  I really could use some vodka, also.  Not that crappy shit, I mean some real vodka, almost flavorless, just a cooling sensation and a quiet reprieve at the end of another long, yet rewarding day and another start to the rest of my life.

I have this weird thing for anorexic girls.  Normally, I'm a very rational person and consider all relationships as an acceptance of the other human being with no motivation to change them in any way, but for some reason when I see an anorexic girl I just want to hold her and tell her everything is okay.  I want to love her and show her that she isn't worthless or nothing or disgusting.  And in these fantasies she always stares back at me with love in her eyes and realizes she has to eat more so she doesn't die and leave me (or us depending on the daydream) alone in the world.  I know, silly right?  I don't know what's wrong with me.  I should know that I can't change them, that their disease isn't something that can just be "loved" away, but I can't shake the feeling that there is one out there who is hoping for someone like me.

I guess I always think that about everyone, that they are waiting for someone like me because I'm waiting for someone like them.

I'm just babbling now.

So the first week is over and I'm still not sure if I can post with civility, but I guess I'm going to spill it all out regardless.

This semester my goal is much different than it ever has been before.  I simply want to pass.  I want C- or above.  I don't care about my GPA because the graduate schools I have applied to have already been given a number and once I have been accepted I cannot be unaccepted unless I do not graduate.  That said, first impressions of my classes are as follows:

Statistics:  English is not the professor's first language which leads to quick and concise explanations of concepts so that the smallest number of words must be produced from a mind that likes another kind of words better.  I like that for mathematical classes because it really cuts back on the confusion factor for me.  I would rather have a professor I can just barely understand but who knows how to explain things instead of a professor that expounds way too much and just jumbles up the concepts in my mind.  Also, as for the actual content I foresee no problems with my understanding of it.  I've already taken a course on logic and statistics is just an extension of those principles when applied to numerical analysis.  In summary, I should not be in danger of getting a failing grade in this class.

Quantitative Chemical Analysis:  Oh gawd the professor is a huge douche.  He sounded jaded and almost resentful that he was being "forced" to teach us mindless idiots anything about chemistry.  That said, he sucked at explaining things (yep, native English speaker), hurried way to quickly through the lecture and seemed to be trying to insult us, saying that he had moved at the pace of a snail and if we didn't understand the concepts at this rate we should drop the course.  How 'bout you be a little more negative about teaching...jerk.  I honestly think he derives some sick pleasure from the discomfort of his students.  He made fun of a girl in the front row for giving him the correct equation for something, just with the variables in a different order.  He told us that if we came to his office outside of the time he set aside for office hours that he would help us, but it "might" effect his mood when he was making tests.  I mean honestly, does this dude think he is so important that students needing help is somehow below him?  Ugh.  He's also one of those professors that prides himself on low averages for tests.  He started complaining about how year after year students would get averages of 50% on his tests and blaming it on poor study skills and blah blah blah.  Excuse me, but a consistently low average on tests does NOT reflect a failing on the students' part.  The average student should get an average score, probably around a 70%.  That is your goal as a teacher, to run your course so that your efforts produce this result, so if you don't it isn't our fault, it's YOURS.  Anyway, at this point I'm a little worried about the course.  I could imagine a scenario in which I fail it, that being that I jump up from my seat and throw a punch at the professor, so I will probably have to work hardest for this.  Not academically, but in controlling my building rage.  Oh, and I forgot to mention that I went up to introduce myself after the first class (just something I do for my own benefit of remembering the professor's name) and he responded with, "I know that tactic.  Don't think shaking your hand will make me raise your grade.  I would have learned your name anyway," or something to that effect.  I was floored by the rudeness and honestly didn't even respond with anything but a nod before I walked away.  Okay enough ranting.

Design II (my "capstone" course):  My professor is an organized, knowledgeable, and approachable human being.  I am glad he teaches the course that is supposed to be the top of the so-called pyramid of chemical engineering.  I feel like I will learn a lot and, while it won't necessarily be easy, I will be graded more than fairly for my work and my frustration levels will be limited.  I will also be assisting the professor in grading homework for the other class he is teaching this semester, so hopefully if I am prompt and orderly that will increase my reputation with him and he will look even that much more kindly on my work.  A passing grade should not be a problem as long as my group and I keep plowing through the project and don't get behind.  Something crappy and unrelated to the professor about the class is that I thought I had a group with the girls I worked with in Design I, but after the first class when the professor announced we needed to pick groups, I get an e-mail saying that I am kicked out and another guy is in.  Alright...thanks...glad to know my intelligence is so valuable.  Well, thankfully another group of friends was grouping up and when they found out I wasn't taken by the usual group like they expected they were delighted and immediately took me in.  So, disappointment followed by validation.  I think I came out about even, but at the same time I felt very betrayed by those girls, especially since I was told at the end of last semester we would be working together.  I think one of them found out I'm a bisexual (don't know why it took so long since I have both women and men selected on facebook as well as "whatever I can get" in the relationships block, and they frequent that pointless site enough to use it like some kind of reference material) and became uncomfortable with me, but that's just speculation.  Whatever.  Moving on.

Controls:  I am working for the professor of this course as well, not grading for her but teaching her how to use the course website more effectively, so once again I hope that adds a positive touch to grading my homework.  She's a little strange and I don't really like her teaching style, but I'm very interested in controls so I don't think I'll have trouble absorbing the information regardless.  I don't think I will be failing this class either.

Medicinal Chemistry:  This is possibly the most unexpectedly exciting course I have ever taken.  I was forced to take it to graduate as it was the only upper level chemistry elective being offered this semester.  When I "chose" it I kind of sighed but I had heard it was easy so I wasn't really nervous, just disappointed that it wasn't another one of the much more interesting sounding classes.  However, to my surprise, the professor has this really amazing sense of humor and a quirky personality that I appreciate in people.  He also (again, to my surprise) WRITES HIS NOTES during class.  And I was beginning to think that the only way to present to a class was to pop a powerpoint up over the blackboard which was clearly designed for the same purpose.  I pay sooo much more attention and get so much more out of a course when the professor forces me to write everything he writes because it only exists for a moment in chalk form.  So, in terms of professors, this dude is a perfect 10 for my actually learning something.  Also, medicinal chemistry has turned out to be a lot more interesting than expected.  I thought we would be talking about what to prescribe people for headaches and would have to memorize a bunch of over-the-counter drug names or something, but instead we will be learning about the actual mechanisms of drugs with respect to the specific parts of cells that they effect.  Have I ever told you that I'm a sucker for anything that tells me more about how a single cell functions?  Don't know why, but that's me.  Anyway, yeah, no problems here either.

Conclusion?  I should be good if I can just keep my cool when it comes to that rat bastard teacher for Quant.  Did I mention that that class has a four hour lab?  It's like the rotten cherry on top of a melted sundae in a trash can.  I think the enjoyment of the other courses should make up for how pissed off I will get every Tuesday and Thursday with Mr. King Douche.  I guess I should be happy that he isn't as bad as the racist, sexist old guy from last semester.  Look on the bright side, right?

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In other news, I am the House Manager for Windsor Auditorium at the upcoming True/False Film Festival.  We had our first orientation meeting today and it got me pretty excited about the whole business, mostly because I get a special pass for the event and I didn't know that ahead of time.  I get to see the movies for free!  Awesome!  I was more doing it to help out my boss at my tutoring job because she wrote me stellar letters of recommendation, so anything in addition to that is icing on top.  Yay!

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I went and vented about people at a friend's house.  I was really nice because I hadn't seen her in a long time and we watched Van Helsing beccause it is awful and therefore hillarious.  Also she cooked the whole time while I was there and it smelled amazing.  I love standing around in a place where cooking is occuring.

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Well, that's about all.  I have all my homework done like a boring person and consequently I spent most of today playing World of Warcraft and having sex.  *shrug*  I can't really imagine a better Saturday, honestly.

I'm really bored with looking up pornography.  Every time I'm in the mood to do so, I end up finding something awful (like Mythbusters hentai or something equally cold shower like) and then I just throw my hands in the air and quit.  Maybe I'm just a quitter.  Maybe I'm too easily knocked out of the mood.  I don't care.  I'm tired of finding crappy porn.  I wish there was some website that archived all the kujillian gigabytes of porn on the internet by category, so that I could just click "hentai:  skinny guys having buttsecks" and be done.  Whatever.

I must be such a depressing person, doing homework so late into the evening already.

I knew it.  Tonight a couple of friends experienced my awful mood.  I always get this way at the beginning of the semester.  I am going to continue to abstain from posting about anything because I know it will be dramatically overdone and overly angry and scornful.

I've decided against posting about things until after the first week is over.  I always get too angry or too overly hopeful with my posts before the semester and I'm going to save my judgments until I can actually make them.

Also I should mention that every day closer my moving away from Columbia gets the more I realize how much I will miss some select human beings.  Thankfully two of them read this blog and people have invented telephones and whatnot, so I try to console myself but it's not very effective.

Why is it so strange to people that I would allow my husband to be a stay-at-home dad and not have a job and raise my children for me?  I'm sure that I could easily make enough money for an entire family if I do become a professor one day, so what's the problem?  And he would still be required to do the normal stay-at-home things like cleaning the house and making meals and whatnot.  Bleh, people need to stfu sometimes when it comes to other peoples' lives.  I'll live mine the way I want and you can feel free to live yours the way you want.  Neither of us has the right to tell the other what the correct way is because neither of us is unconditionally correct.  So there.

I'm often surprised at what provokes an emotional response from me.

I watched Big Fish last night and I just started crying uncontrollably.  The movie is amazing, but that's not what I was crying about this time.  Instead, the man who plays the storytelling father looked a lot like my grandfather who died around this time a couple years ago.  When I was little I remember sternly requesting that were my grandfather to die, he return to me as a ghost and tell me what death was like.  I also remember him promising to do so.  Of course, he died and he didn't come back.  I just started thinking about that and how a reasonable understanding of science reduces one's ability to believe unconditionally that there is an afterlife.  Then I started thinking about how no matter what I do, eventually my cells will reach their limit of replication and replenishment and my body will begin to deteriorate and I will die.  Sometimes I wish I wasn't intelligent.  I've come to believe strongly that ignorance is indeed bliss.  I remember how magical the world seemed before I knew what really made it rain or why eyes can see or how an electrical button works.  Why was I fated to realize that heaven is just a dream created by frightened ignorant people?  Why can't I just blindly accept a religion, any religion, and be satisfied that my consciousness will go somewhere after my body has rotted and withered into the ground?  People who have that kind of faith are so lucky, especially if they really believe it all.  Then I just started crying uncontrollably nearing the end of Big Fish, which I will admit I normally cry about but not that hard.

Why do people have to die?  Death is the worst thing I can imagine.  Even being paralyzed from the neck down leaves you with your mind alive and well.  I don't want to die.  Life is too good, even at it's worst.  Maybe, before I die, someone will come up with a cure for death, a cure for the deterioration of DNA and cell growth.  But if that was the case, wouldn't we be prohibited from producing children?  Maybe that would be worse, living forever but being incapable of passing your genetic material on to anyone else.

I'm going to stop thinking right now and play World of Warcraft.  I'm depressing myself.

It's the last week before the semester starts and I'm kind of crapping my pants about it.  I mean...this is my last undergraduate semester?  This moment has really come?  I've aged four years since this moment seemed so impossibly far away?  It feels so surreal and it's honestly kind of frightening.  So many things have happened and I have so few regrets, but at the same time I always wonder if I did everything correctly.  Have I lived my life the way it was supposed to be lived?  I don't know, but I'm satisfied with the results.  I remember one of my very first posts was a list of goals I had going into my sophomore year of college and I want to revisit it.  Did I reach them?  Let's see:

1.)  My current weight is 130 lbs. and I must reduce it to 110 for it to be acceptable.

Well, I weigh about 120 lbs right now and have set my goal weight in Weight Watchers to be 118 because I feel that is a more reasonable weight, especially since in just a couple years I will be producing offspring.  Consequently I am really close to an "acceptable" weight and I feel really good about my body right now, especially because of my new wardrobe and how fancy I look all the time.

2.)  The crowding in my teeth must be corrected.

I don't really care about this.  My father has had all kinds of problems with his teeth since he got them straightened and I think a bit of crowding really can't hurt anything in the long run as long as I brush and floss daily like I am now.

3.)  The dry skin on my upper arm, while harmless, is slightly unattractive in the summer and must be dealt with.

What the heck?  I don't even remember this being a problem.  I guess you could say I reached this goal by purchasing lotion?  *shrug*

4.)  I must revitalize my poor mental image of myself.

Done.  I feel great about myself.  I have a wonderful, loving and extremely supportive fiance.  I have professors who think I am an amazing person and who wrote outstanding letters of recommendation for me.  I am going to graduate school to pursue my dream of one day becoming a professor myself and discovering something groundbreaking.  My family loves me and I've even picked up a second family because of my fiance who also think I'm wonderful.  Everything is working out for me and aside from the fact that I can be a complete asshole sometimes I think I am great and because of this I can provide a more loving relationship with everyone around me.  You have to love yourself before you can love others.

5.)  While I have already found the perfect male companion, I must also find the perfect female companion who is pleasing in her physical, mental and spiritual states within the state of Self, just like my male.  This will be the hardest of the goals I have set for myself.  How can one hope to find two soulmates in one lifetime?  I will find out.

Well...I've kind of given up on this one.  Females are so hard to deal with and I've begun to question whether this woman I described above even exists.  Yes, perhaps there is a girl out there for me who is just as perfect as my current partner, but how would she handle herself in a triangle?  I could see things going so horribly wrong in so many different ways and ruining both relationships so quickly.  Call it growing up or call it becoming jaded about the existence of perfection, but I've put this goal on the back burner for now.  Maybe Ms. Super Amazing is waiting for us at whatever graduate school I choose.  *crosses fingers*

6.)  Once my body is correctly rearranged to my liking, I will need a new set of clothing and jewelry to draw attention to my hard work wherever I go.

Done!!  It's so exciting!  I really should post some pictures of myself in my new outfits.  I've gone from ragamuffin to classy lady and it feels wonderful!

7.)  At all times I require more pornography (especially hentai) and video games for enjoyment purposes while I am not studying.  These will need to be acquired.

Oh gosh, I guess inheriting my fiance's old porn stash covers the first part of this one.  It was like Christmas!  I got to go through and delete the stuff I didn't like and pick out all my favorites.  He had done all the work already and I got to reap the benefits.  Also, between the time when I posted this list and today, I discovered futanari and subsequently downloaded massive amounts of it.  Yeah, I'm good on porn for several months now.

As for video games, well, lately I've been playing a lot of World of Warcraft and Left 4 Dead, so yeah, good to go on this part of the goal as well.  I should also add that perhaps I didn't think of other non-video games like Warmachine when I made this post, but I have also gotten into that for stress relief.  Also playing Settlers of Catan with my parents is wildly more fun than expected (we never did have game nights at my house when I was young and now I know what I was missing) and I'm glad my dad decided to buy the game.  I hope he branches out and buys a bunch of board games because I love playing them.

8.)  I must work hard to attain more money, for while it does not buy happiness, it does help to facilitate the coming about of it.

I'm mostly good on this one.  Summer may be tight but I know once I get to graduate school I will be making over double what I make now and I honestly don't know what we are going to do with the money.  I anticipate saving it because we really don't want for anything now.  Heck, I bought a DS on a whim and impulse bought Rock Band for no reason, so yeah.

9.)  My dorm room is very drab and boring and decoration is in order for next semester.  Joy in the home is most important!

Lol, yeah, not in a dorm anymore and our apartment is pretty festive.  We have lots of silly posters I got from working at the V-Gate as well as a small fiberoptic Christmas tree that we leave out and turned on pretty much all year.  I would refer to that as joy in the home.

10.)  I must begin saving money for the perfect home (complete with DDR machine and hot tub) for myself, my male and my female.

Well, haven't done a lot of this, but with housing prices so low right now I don't anticipate any problem finding a place in whatever town we move to for graduate school.  Plus I've never made a late credit card payment and I paid off a loan on a car back in high school, so my credit should be really nice and I should be able to obtain a pretty low interest rate on a loan for a down payment if it comes to that.  Still, I can't be sure how things will go so I'll just have to cross my fingers that we find a great house at a great price and don't have to rent anymore.

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Well, that was fun.

Anyway, a more mundane set of goals are those I need to complete before the beginning of the semester.  They are as follows:

- vacuum the office

- clean the bathroom

- do the laundry

- get groceries

- take that huge tub of cheese popcorn to our friends' apartment

- get binders ready for class

- buy textbooks

- clean the kitchen

- pay tuition by the 15th

- put on new license plates

- get CHEM 3200 textbook when it comes in

and that should be all.  Not too bad of a list for a whole week to get it done in.  I really hope this semester goes well, but really I just need passing grades (C- for engineering) and I'll be outta here.  My GPA isn't super important for this last semester and I just have to make sure and not fail anything.  I'm optimistic, but still nervous just like I always am.  Wish me luck I suppose.