Grad School: Drugs as Poached Eggs : Fried Eggs .. Either Way, Your Brain is Cooked.
GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH. :P just kidding. sort of.
Has anyone else ever found themselves to be in the middle of a term, only to be told that you have exams in a week, which would be fine if you'd actually done the reading @.@ Yeah, I really haven't been keeping up in Southern Europe at all. Hrmm. I think I will be cracking some serious books for next week.
Meanwhile, I also have part of my paper due for Tess next week :/ This will include the descriptive stats and a light lit review (not at all exhaustive.) and the finished draft of the introduction. :P And we haven't yet gotten back the proposals, so I don't really even know if my topic is viable yet. Bleh to writing things when you haven't get gotten approval.
Oh, and I still have *no* solid clues on what the hell I'm doing with my southern europe paper either. I know this means that I should make appointments to see professors. I hate doing that :/ I always feel like I'm wearing a necklace that says "moron!" when I go in. But I'm not going to go see the TA for Southern Europe. Sinan, the TA, seems nice enough, but dang it, I'm a grad student, and I'm not going to hash out my topic with a fellow grad student. This is not why I take out loans. I just haven't got much of an idea how much lit is out there looking at the health policies/outputs from Spain and Italy :/ I also haven't got the slightest clue on how I'm going to explain why I'm comapring them, outside, well they were the states I chose to focus on (which seems an interminably stupid reason to compare them.... hypothetical example in, say, an essay on "A Comparative Analysis on Communicable Disease Prevention Policy in Contemporary Italy and Spain"... "The two countries' policies that this essay will focus upon were selected, not on the basis of significant policy similaries or notable differences, but rather because of the mere chance that the student chose to concentrate her efforts upon those two nations." Yeah, there's a kick ass reason for a paper.) :/
As for chinese politics... *gahs* I think I can safely say that whatever my future career is, it's NOT going to be in chinese politics. *giggles* well, i think we all knew that, but what I meant was it's not going to be *studying* chinese politics. (Can you imagine what the CCP would think of me? xD) Paper wise... I dunno :( I feel so aimless about this class. I guess I better start working on my topic at least :/ Maybe I will be doing something about SARS, since I doubt there's been much written on avian flu. I'd prefer HIV, but that's a sensitive topic that gets at behaviors, and I don't know how much the chinese really allow information to be known/measured.
You know, I feel like in other people's LJs they discuss so many things, and mine devolves into classwork. Granted this is a huge HUGE chunk of my life... But at the artist clearance sale this past weekend ( I was disappinted in the show :( which is unusual. usually it's a good one. I was able to nopt buy anything and not really regret this. usually i don't buy much and am sad that i can't afford to. I know, I know, i enjoy the looking too, but i *like* the buying.) we ran into someone that Mom used to work with... Her comment was that," too many people make the mistake of thinking that their work *is* their life. It's not. It's *just* work. The rest of the things you do, the people you see, *that's* your life." Hrmm. So, what am I really writing about? it just makes me think that I'm not writing about the stuff that should matter? But then doesn't this get back at the notion that I should focus on what I do have rather than what I don't have? Which makes me think, why do I always use the word "should" so much? Why am I always thinking about the "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts"? it makes me think I'm judging myself before I do anything, so that I almost condemn myself to failure, no matter what I actually *do*.
I'm going to see Judith tomorrow, which is good. There's a lot to tell her. I guess it's been an eventful couple of weeks in a sense. Grannie, emotions, my old car& accident, my new car, the new puppy. I suppose tho, the thing I want to discuss with her most of all is this nagging sensation that my general emotional state is really reminiscent of what I felt like when I was ending my classes for my last master's program. It's not at all feelings about school. It's other stuff. I haven't felt like this since then; it's palpably clear to me. At first I was quite pleased with this, thinking, "so, hey! Maybe this is finally the return to normalcy that I've been expecting! hurrah!" But, really, I'm concerned it's not a return to "normalcy". It's not that what I have now is fake... I don't think it is. What I think it might be is avoidant. More importantly, I think what I felt *then* was too. It's just that I'm now back to finding what I felt was a safe place, one I thought I was okay with. Problem is, I'm not so sure it really is an okay place, a safe place, any longer. Maybe it was then, maybe it's just not now. All I know is that right, or wrong, it's easy, and I'm worried enough about it that I think I need to get some guidance. Odd and rambly as this all is, I think the fact that I'm noticing some of this is significant. I have no idea what to do with that knowledge, but if NBC was right in their PSAs, "knowing is half the battle.".... That always was way more amusing when there was a cheesy celeb & instrumental jingle/shooting star animation included.