Counting down...

There's nothing like two weeks of nonstop work to make you look forward to flying to a place that's 20 degrees colder and occupied by your pathologically republican parents.

Briefly: they amped up the reading in NBIO, I had to make two presentations, my brain underwent a conformational change that caused me to realize that making presentations is way easier than lots of other things (for example, operating on 6 hours of sleep every day-- more on this later), moar readingz!?, two weeks of lab totalling to 60 hours of pouring solutions, putting tiny pieces of tissue on slides, and scorching all my viable eggs from exposure to xylenes while i coverslipped and cleaned 130 slides. And just when I thought i would have a break, my neuroetho journal club asked me to present an article, which isn't a huge deal but I haven't done it before, and I naturally picked an article that was SUPER DENSE and only interesting to me and the profs in the club, so there was so much pressure and [insert neurotika here]. THEN our NBIO exam came to kick my ass all weekend. And it's still kicking my ass.

Here's an unfortunate cycle:
1. I have a lot of work to do so I need to get up early every morning and do it.
2. I am very stressed all day so when I get home I have all these borderline obsessive-compulsive things to do that ultimately keep me up wayyyyy later than is necessary.
3. Repeat.
I understand that there are many many many people who can operate successfully on 5-7 hours of sleep every night, but I am not one of them. I tried to do that in college and I was in so much physical pain and depression and exhaustion that I thought I had Lyme disease-- turns out I probably have fibromyalgia. I need my sleep. Maybe if I need it that much I should have gotten a 9-5 and not gone to grad school, but let's not talk about that now-- it's too late! Besides, I'm way too nerdy to be with normal people.

So: Four days until i'll be gallavanting around Chicagoland just like old times (hopefully the good part of the old times) and every day I'm waiting seems LONGER AND LONGER. Put me on the plane! Give me some non-crappy pizza! Until then... I will be working on this crazy exam until my eyes shrivel up like my poor, xylene-ridden ovaries.