Sunday:
I gave myself the day off on waking up early today, but I still managed to get up at 8 on my own. Making progress, I think?
A few weeks ago, I was contacted by a computational modeling professor from one of the schools I applied to for my PhD. I didn’t list them as a potential mentor, but they saw that I’d taken some computational modeling classes before and have had some experience with programming, and asked if I’d be interested in working in a computational modeling lab. I’d never considered it before since I’m in no way proficient at programming. We had a phone conversation about what it’d be like to work in his lab, and about his research, and after spending the next week reading a few of his papers, I came to the conclusion that I would likely enjoy working in his lab, although it might be difficult to pick up the programming and the advanced statistics that they use.
I emailed him back saying basically that, and he replied that if I were having trouble with reading papers with lots of equations, it might indicate that his lab isn’t a good fit; however, he also mentioned that while grad students wouldn’t be required to come up with models, we’d have to be able or willing to learn how to read computational papers. I replied saying that I would be willing to learn, and confident that I’d be able to pick up the necessary skills. It’s been a week since I emailed that to him, and no response back yet, while before that he’d always responded to emails within a day or so. Now I’m worried that he has lost interest in me as a potential PhD student.
On the bright side, this has kickstarted my motivation to finally learn Python; I’m trying to work it into time slots in my planner. I’m hoping he just suddenly has gotten very busy. I’m not sure whether or not I should email him again, and even if I did, I don’t know what exactly I’d say.
Bleh.
Monday:
Today I have an appointment with a new PCP. I haven’t been to a PCP in a while, and I don’t think I’ve had a physical since high school. However, since my insurance changed to Obamacare last summer, I wasn’t able to go to my psychiatrist anymore for my Adderall, and yes, I’m only now finally going to a PCP to get back on my Adderall that I’ve been out of for months. It’s only thanks to one of my friends giving me a list of some doctors that she knows are good and are also “prescription pad-friendly”.
I goofed and forgot I have lab today, so I accidentally scheduled it for 2:45; since it’s a new patient intake, I have to fill out forms and stuff as well, so I actually need to be there by 2:15, meaning I’ll have to leave the lab early. I know it won’t be a big deal, though, especially since I’m not working in the lab for credit. I still kinda feel bad, though. Maybe it’s part of my self-esteem thing, but I always feel like I’m not doing enough or not making much progress.
Tuesday:
This past weekend, I looked through the apartment and through the last two boxes that haven’t yet been unpacked to see if I could find my sketchbook. No dice, although I did find the pencil bag that had all my “art” pens/pencils/stuff. Oddly enough, it was missing the pack of felt-tip type art pens that I had. So either I looked everywhere and still somehow missed seeing my sketchbook and pens (entirely possible), or I lost them or maybe they got taken to my parents’ house. In any case, I bought two small sketchbooks from Michaels, along with some Sakura Micron pens that are used for Zentangle.
Maybe I’ll block out some time today to try it out. All I’ve really got is work tonight, though I do want to start on updating my budget. My goal for that today is to at least get my main bank account updated in YNAB. Aside from that, I want to spend some time learning Python, and get my Adderall prescription filled before I go to work.
I feel like I’m trying to do a lot of new things/establish a lot of new habits this month, so I hope it doesn’t backfire on me for trying to bite off more than I can chew.
Wednesday:
I was pretty successful in my attempt to be productive yesterday. I didn’t end up trying out Zentangle, but I was able to get my checking and savings account all updated in YNAB. It probably helped that I took my last Adderall, after saving it for months, for whatever reason. It never fails to amaze me how much of a difference it makes, especially after having been on a break from taking it. Chores feel less like a burden that I have to work up the motivation to do, and more like something that simply needs to be done. I feel like I’m able to better inhibit that part of me that has some slight anxiety and overanalyzes interactions in social situations; i.e., it’s easier to talk to people, especially strangers. Planning comes more easily — it’s not as difficult to break difficult tasks into steps, and prioritize which to do first — which in turn makes a difficult task (such as budgeting) less daunting and easier to start and finish.
And my new PCP wrote me prescriptions for Adderall for three months out, so I don’t have to worry about running out for a while; I even already got the first one filled yesterday.
Tl;dr, I did adult things and got back on my medication and now I feel super productive and motivated to get stuff done. HAPPY HUMP DAY GAIZ.
TMM – Week 3 (Pt. 1)
Sunday:
I haven’t been keeping up very well with my MM routine this past weekend. Not quite sure why the exact cause is, but I’m determined to keep up with it. I slept in today too, and did my MM in fragmented sessions. I’m determined to get back into the swing of it tomorrow, though. I need to get up early anyway, so I can help my boyfriend clean the apartment in preparation for his mom’s visit for Thanksgiving later this week.
Speaking of cleaning, we went to Costco yesterday, and while walking around, I saw this random book lying out-of-place on a display of (I think it was) toilet paper. The book in question? The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. We ended up buying the book, all on account of one of the testimonies listed in the Introduction of the book. The author states: “A dramatic reorganization of the home causes correspondingly dramatic changes in lifestyle and perspective. It is life transforming.”
The selling testimony: “Your course taught me to see what I really need and what I don’t. So I got a divorce. Now I feel much happier.”
If that is not one of the best contextual testimonies that you have ever heard, please tell me a better one, ’cause that one is just so out-of-the-blue and somehow still applicable that I basically walked around flipping through the book for the rest of the time we were in Costco. I’m about halfway through already — it’s a short book — but I like the ideas in it so far. This method of tidying (the KonMari method) splits the work of tidying into two kinds: deciding whether or not to discard something, and then deciding where to put the items you keep. My boyfriend and I went through the kitchen today discarding and reorganizing stuff, and it just *feels* better now. In any case, it being such a short book, I recommend at least picking it up and flipping through a few of the topics in it if you happen upon it at some point in a store.
Monday:
So, I finished reading the book about the KonMari method of tidying, and I thought it was pretty interesting. Some of it seems a bit silly, but honestly, the affirmations part of the MM also seems silly to me. The interesting thing about the this method is that you decide on whether or not to keep things by asking yourself “does this item spark joy?” That way, in the end, you’re only left surrounding yourself with things that you enjoy. It’s a very subjective way of doing things, rather than the objective standards like “hang all your clothes backward, and switch them around after you wear them and put it back; the clothes that are still hanging backward by the end of the year, get rid of.”
Another thing about this method is that you’re to visualize the kind of lifestyle you want at the end of your tidying expedition — have a destination before you start. Otherwise you are wandering aimless without a goal. I guess the thing that I like about this method is how mindful it is.
Tuesday:
Chris’s mom flew in today. Luckily, we got pretty much all of the cleaning done yesterday, so all that was left this morning was to finish up the laundry and put the sheets back on the bed. She treated us to this Italian place near where Chris was working tonight, and I got one of the weekly specials that had veal, shrimp, angel hair pasta, and some other stuff in some wine sauce. It wasn’t bad, but it lacked flavor. It might’ve been just because the soup that it came with was very flavorful, but I felt like it needed some more acidity to it. We also got calamari appetizers, and those were DELICIOUS. I ate a lot of those, of course. After that, we tailed Chris around the store for a bit before his team got in for work, and then we got to meet a few of them.
I ended the night watching Guardians of the Galaxy with Chris’s mom (Mrs. Lazarus) after leaving the store. She’d never seen it before, and as it’s one of Chris and my favorite movies, it just seemed appropriate to have her watch it after she noticed the Lego version of Star Lord hanging from my rearview mirror.
Wednesday:
Hey-o, I’m actually typing this one in the morning, like I’m supposed to! I postponed my MM for an hour — I had trouble falling asleep even though I was really tired by around 10:30 when the movie ended last night. I think I didn’t actually get to sleep until closer to midnight. I had to play on my 3DS to make myself drowsy again.
When you have bad dreams about being totally unprepared for both your presentations that are due in a week, it probably means that you’re pretty stressed out about them and should really get to work on them. I’d been hoping to have gotten so much more done by now than I have. That’s part of the reason why I opted to not visit my family during this week — I knew I’d have more than enough to catch up on, what with presentations, projects, exams to prep for, and applications to work on. Having to use the weekend to clean and prep for Mrs. Lazarus’s visit ate up a lot of time. Not to mention I was really tired this past weekend and napped a lot. It’s probably a combination of stress and sleep deprivation.
At least Mrs. Lazarus is understanding and doesn’t expect me to entertain her, so I can feel less guilty about working on stuff while she’s here. I’ll need to do a lot of it.
TMM – Week 2 (Pt. 2)
Thursday:
I climbed back into bed today after turning off my alarm. :( Minor setback, I still got up and started my MM routine by 6:30.
Yesterday I tried having a study session with a friend; it didn’t go very well. Her study thing was just typing stuff up that she’d already written earlier in the day, while mine was more mentally involved — reading a scientific paper. Needless to say, I didn’t ready very much of my paper because we kept chatting.
I don’t feel like writing anymore, so today’s going to be a really short entry. Kthnxbye.
Friday:
I got up late today too — started my MM routine at 7 instead of at 6 when my alarm went off. Cold is super effective against me! It wouldn’t be so bad if I could have my space heater set up by the bed so that it wouldn’t be as cold in the morning when I got up, but for the past week or so, we haven’t had power in the bedroom.
Well, that’s not exactly correct; we have power, but for some reason, trying to turn on multiple switches causes the power in that room to cut out. And the breaker switch for the bedroom isn’t flipped when that happens, either. It takes lots of switching the breaker switch back and forth for the power to come back on, and when we do that, we have to remind ourselves not to flip anything else on, otherwise everything will shut down again. Chris just submitted the work order yesterday, so hopefully it should be fixed soon. Hopefully the maintenance guys don’t tattle on us, since we have unauthorized pets. If we got advanced notice of when the people will show up, or at least the day that they’ll stop by, I could take the dogs over to a friend’s (we’d probably just have the cat chill in the garage).
Chris’s mom is visiting next week for Thanksgiving too, so we’ll be doing a lot of cleaning this weekend. It’ll be the first time I have a traditional turkey! I’ll get to know what it’s like to have the proverbial leftover turkey sandwich the next day!
I think food is a good note to end today’s entry on. Til tomorrow~
Saturday:
I completely broke my streak today. I slept in til 10, and including this entry, I’ve only done 4 out of the 6 parts of the MM routine. Given that it’s 1 in the morning right now, I probably will get up later than 6 tomorrow too.
However, I’m still gonna start tomorrow as being Week 3 of my MM routine/journey. I actually rather enjoy waking up early; the only problem is that I haven’t been going to sleep early enough and keep accruing a sleep debt. Today I napped for 3 hours on top of sleeping in until 9 or 10 this morning.
All right, well I’m gonna get to bed before it gets any later. New start tomorrow!
TMM – Week 2 (Pt. 1)
Sunday:
Today’s the first day of week 2 in my MM ~adventure~. Yes, it’s an ADVENTURE dammit. So, waking up and staying up this morning felt pretty easy — I think I fell asleep around 9 or 10 last night, so that’s probably why.
There’s only about one month left in the semester — hard to believe that we’re already this far. My first PhD program application deadline is in 2 weeks (December 1st). I’ll be graduating from the masters program, and commencement is on the 18th. At 9 in the morning. Which sounds really early, but I guess it shouldn’t be a problem for me if I keep up this MM routine. I’m only applying to 3 schools this cycle; my adviser suggested I apply only to my top choices this year. I’m not quite sure which is my top school out of the 3 though — at the moment, I’d be happy going to any of them. Fingers crossed I get interviews for all of them.
The schools I’m applying to are in Colorado, Arizona, and Florida. They all do developmental cognitive neuroscience-type research focusing around executive functions. The lab in Florida was recommended to me by the PI whose lab I worked in during my first semester of the masters program. I like the climate and all the outdoor activities in Colorado. Arizona has really good research labs in aging, but that doesn’t apply as much to me since the lab I’m applying to is involved in development, not aging in adults.
Monday:
The other day, I tried the first video in this 30 Days of Yoga playlist on Youtube, and I noticed that after getting a little over halfway through it, I felt the most awake out of any other time I’ve done the MM routine. So I decided to get myself a yoga mat yesterday and try the 30 Days of Yoga challenge starting today.
It seems kinda odd that a practice that is focused on relaxing and quieting your mind can make you feel the most alert and aware of things. I also found out today that I’m pretty inflexible. Sad days. It also feels slightly redundant to have a meditation session during the MM routine, and then do yoga during the exercise portion of the routine. Come to think of it, I don’t think I ever went through all the parts of the MM.
So, the author/creator of the MM came up with this acronym: Life S.A.V.E.R.S.
S = Silence (meditation)
A = Affirmation
V = Visualization
E = Exercise
R = Reading
S = Scribing (writing/journaling, etc.)
You don’t need to do everything in that order, but that’s the order that makes the most sense acronym-wise. Now it just makes me want life savers candy.
Tuesday:
I had the pleasure of being woken up at 4 something this morning by the lovely sounds of tornado warning sirens. All I did was lie in bed and waited for it to stop. In hindsight, I probably should have taken shelter in the closet or something, but I’ve heard that sound so infrequently in my life — and without any significant repercussions — that I guess I just don’t take it very seriously. I’m sure if I lived in Oklahoma, it would be a very different story. At some point, I thought I heard ambulance sirens, but maybe that was just overlapping sound from another siren. I don’t know, I was half asleep and groggy and irritated that it was going on for so long. I think the only coherent thought was something akin to “Oh, it must be a tornado siren. I wonder if I’ll have to call the lab and tell them I won’t be coming in due to the tornado warning.”
I was having a pretty interesting dream too — something about a girl doing an acrobatic performance on a hoop hanging from the ceiling for her bat mitzvah. Yeah, I don’t know either; I’ve never even been to a bar or bat mitzvah. I’m guessing that part of the dream was based off one of the Community episodes I had watched last night.
Hopefully the rest of today is pretty tame compared to my initial wake-up call.
Wednesday:
I don’t really have anything in particular to talk about today that you haven’t already heard within the last week and a half. Just the usual stress about crunch time for both PhD applications and also coming to the end of the semester. Same old, same old. So this time, I’m going to pull from a list of questions that I saved for blog post ideas.
What do you regularly do before bed?
I don’t really have a set bedtime routine that I go through. Immediately before I climb into bed, I plug my phone into the charger on the bar counter, and place my glasses on the end of the bar counter closest to the bedroom. Those two are things I started doing at the beginning of the MM 30-day challenge.
Seems like lately, I eat and watch Community, or I play some games on my 3DS. The most recent ones are Persona Q and Fire Emblem Awakening (replay). If I haven’t fed the dogs already, I do that before I go to bed. And of course, watching TV and playing video games aren’t exactly recommended right before going to bed. In fact, I’m pretty sure they’re discouraged, since the bright light can make your brain more alert (in addition to the mental stimulation you’re giving it from the TV show/game). I haven’t really had any trouble falling asleep recently, though that’s probably more due to the possibility that I’m sleep deprived. At the very least, I feel tired when I go to bed. Let’s leave it at that.
TMM – Week 1 (Pt. 2)
Wednesday:
This morning, it was a little tough to stay out of bed. After I turned my phone alarm off to keep the derp dog from howling (how’s *that* for extra motivation), I turned back towards the bedroom and looked longingly at the bed for at least 5 seconds. It sounds rather underwhelming now that I’m describing it haha. In The Miracle Morning book, the author (Hal Elrod) likens waking up for his MM routine to waking up on Christmas morning — eyes flying open, being instantly awake, and excited for the day. I haven’t quite gotten there yet. It’s definitely still a struggle for me to not crawl back under the covers, but luckily, Hal was right in that your motivation level in the morning increases as you go through a consistent pre-MM routine — drinking a glass of water, brushing your teeth, turning the lights on, and changing into exercise clothes or taking a wake-up shower. I’ve noticed that I’m considerably more awake and motivated to stay up by the time that I’m on the toilet emptying my bladder, which is usually right after I turn my alarm off. (That was possibly TMI, but hey, I’ve talked about my self-esteem issues and whatnot on here, which for me felt way more embarrassing than talking about common bodily functions.)
In any case, it’s day 4! Woohoo! Maybe on one of these days I’ll do a vlog instead of a text post instead, just so that y’all can actually see the time that I’m up and doing stuff.
Thursday:
The past few days, I’ve actually been waking up before my alarm goes off. Usually it’s a “what time is it, did the alarm go off? No? Okay, back to sleep” kind of thing. I woke up 10 minutes early today, checked my watch, thought “Okay, I am *ready* for my MM at 6”, and fell back asleep. Does that seem a little counterproductive? I don’t know. Then again, it’s also possible that I’ve just been dreaming doing this, because at 5:30 in the morning, it’s pretty difficult to see my watch, even with the whole glow-in-the-dark hands — they’re pretty much not glowing anymore after ~6 hours of darkness.
The other day, I bought another self-help book off of Amazon — Your Life Can Be Better: using strategies for Adult ADD/ADHD. I’ve begun reading it during my MM routine, and a little outside of it too, and so far I’m really enjoying it. The experiences described and the tips to cope make sense, seem doable, and are broken down in a way for simple, straightforward implementation. Plus, the chapters are broken down into short chunks and have a summary at the end of each that reinforces the message.
I’ve haven’t been taking my ADHD medication for pretty much this entire semester because of a change in health insurance providers and as a result, a change in benefits and coverage. However, I’ve always thought of them as a temporary solution anyway — maybe with this MM routine and the ADHD strategies book, I can actually get to a point where I’ve got things together for the most part, for a majority of the time.
Friday:
Today was the groggiest morning yet. But hey, one more day and it should start feeling more habitual and slightly less effortful, right? Part of it is probably that I’m sleep deprived — the other day I accidentally took a 3 hour nap when I went to cuddle with my boyfriend when he went to go to sleep for the “night” at noon. Not sure if I mentioned this in Part 1 of this week, but in the MM book, Hal suggests this theory that whether we feel tired or energized when we wake up in the morning is based more off of whether we tell ourselves that getting ___ hours of sleep is not enough, or more than enough, since the recommended hours of sleep people need is a fairly wide range, and people can vary a lot in how much sleep their own body needs. I admit, the brain is pretty good at tricking itself and the rest of your body into things (e.g., the placebo effect), but I even if I wake up feeling energized, that doesn’t necessarily mean that my body agrees that I’ve gotten enough sleep for the night.
Tl;dr, maybe I’ll just have to start going to bed at 9 PM. That sounds kinda nice. Who am I kidding? That sounds *really* nice.
Only one more day in my first MM week!
Saturday:
All right, I totally fell asleep during my MM routine today, but I still got up at 6 am and did it. In between all my dozing, that is. Guess all that sleep deprivation finally caught up to me. But hey, week one is done for the MM and tomorrow starts week 2! I still need to fill out the 30-day challenge fast-start kit (free downloadable stuff), so that I can have a little bit more direction during the visualization part of the routine. That’s probably harder for me to do than the meditation, haha. I’m not sure, but I think there’s also a place to get a basis for developing your own personal affirmations, as opposed to using the sample affirmations included in the downloadable materials. Then again, since there’s a set of sample affirmations included, maybe there’s not a step-by-step part for making your own.
I’ve noticed myself becoming more easily irritated the last few days. I bet it’s because of the sleep deprivation, because it’s not the right time of the month to be PMS-ing. Maybe I’ll take a nap after I get home from work today. And on that note, I need to start getting ready for work.
Maybe next week my posts won’t be only about my MM progress lol.
TMM – Week 1 (pt. 1)
Sunday:
It is now 7:20 AM. I’m trying this new morning routine called The Miracle Morning (haha, “morning”, not “mourning”, Praxling). The idea of the routine is that you wake up an hour earlier than you need to, and spend that hour going through a routine intended to give you energy, motivation, and focus for the day. Considering how I’ve been dunning for a majority of my life, and that I am at a point where I am applying to PhD programs and getting ready to graduate, I think it’s time to stop dunning. Or at least, not dun so much.
Honestly, I am a little bit skeptical of the routine just because the creator of TMM and the author of the book (The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8AM)) was an employee at Cutco — and a very successful one at that. Having worked there briefly during one summer, and having come to the conclusion that it is likely a pyramid scheme, it was a little difficult to trust this author. However, I actually rather enjoy waking up early — it’s just the act of following through that I’ve always had difficulty with. So after hearing about this routine and the book about it, I figured that there’s no harm in at least giving it a try.
Part of the TMM routine is “scribing” aka journaling. So hey, that’ll also help me blog more often! I anticipate some of these daily entries being pretty short, so for the moment, I plan to post these daily entries as one single weekly entry.
This is actually day 3 of me getting up early at 6, but I haven’t done the full routine until today — after all, you’re not seeing any blog entries before today, amirite??? — so today is my official Day 1 of the TMM. Here’s to hoping this one sticks, ’cause I’m actually really enjoying it so far.
Monday:
I got a little bit of a late start to my TMM this morning (and yes, I realize it should probably be “MM” not “TMM” because the latter is not grammatically correct). I’ve been leaving my phone charging on the bar counter outside of the bedroom since there’s not really “across the room” space in the bedroom. Plus that adds motivation since Toto always howls when my alarm goes off or I get a phone call; really don’t want him doing that for very long at 6 in the morning. But I digress — I laid back down in bed today after shutting my alarm off, so I didn’t start my routine until about 30 minutes later. But hey, I’m still doing it!
Getting up this early is getting easier, but I probably need to start taking a nap later in the day. I think my body needs more than ~6 hours of sleep — then again, I have also been falling asleep earlier, so hopefully that helps. I just don’t want to get drowsy since all my commutes are longer than 20 minutes.
Oh yeah, I got a new job — quit my old one. More on that tomorrow, though. :)
Tuesday:
Day 5 of getting up early at 6, only day 3 of doing the full MM routine. The first seven days of forming a new habit are the hardest, right? If I can make it to Saturday, it’ll start feeling easier after that. I actually woke up this morning before my alarm, worried that it somehow hadn’t gone off. Checked my watch and it was 5:30.
Part of me thinks that starting this new habit of waking up early and doing the MM routine in the winter was not the best idea. We still haven’t started using our heater — and I always relied more on space heaters and my electric blanket whenever I lived alone — so it’s pretty cold when I wake up in the morning. Everyone knows that all you want to do when you wake up on a cold morning is to just bury yourself deeper in the blankets. Setting up my space heater by the couch (where I do the MM) and/or wearing my cow kigurumi helps with that a fair amount, at least.
I’ve had to shut in the Terrorist (Remi) in his kennel during my MM, otherwise I have to struggle with meditating and exercising and whatnot with two dogs playing around noisily. He hasn’t had much of a problem with it until today, but he only whined occasionally.
So, I got a new job. It’s at this small lingerie/loungewear boutique on 75 called Soma. About the same distance from my apartment as Talbots was, but at least this way I don’t have to take the tolls to go to work. Plus, it’s closer to campus in case I have to work before classes. I’m going to be a regular associate there, not a keyholder, so I’m getting paid less; but on the other hand, their extended holiday hours aren’t really extended, and their stock room is small so that I don’t have to worry about having to come in early at 6 to do floorsets anymore. I’ll miss a lot of the people at Talbots, though. They were fun to work with. The store manager who hired me left because she found a better position that was also closer to her house, and the interim acting manager — as nice as she is — kept trying to implement changes to my store’s working structure when she was only supposed to hold down the fort and help us with shift coverage.
Sunday was my last day at Talbots and also my first day at Soma; the shift at Soma was just a store meeting though. I got to meet pretty much everyone who works there. One of them is the former assistant manager who recruited me for Talbots — she got into a bit of an altercation/there was a big misunderstanding with the acting manager, so she decided she didn’t need that stress in her life and left to work at Soma. So she decided to steal me away from Talbots in the process, though I mainly decided after finding out how small the shop is/how easy the work is/it’s the same distance but without having to take toll roads.
Seems like I’m writing more than I thought I would for each of these daily entries, so I think I’ll post bi-weekly so that these entries don’t turn into massive walls of texts. I guess also let me know what you’d prefer — once a week or twice a week.
750 Words: The Final Stretch
Wow, it’s really been a while since my last post. I’m guessing I talked about quitting my job at New York & Company in the vlog (I’m not going to bother with listening to myself talk lol). Well, I wasn’t jobless for very long — I started working at Talbots later in April as their keyholder and it has been great. They’re more organized, they actually have enough people to cover a shift, and most importantly, people periodically bring food for everyone to snack on (especially during new floor sets). Other than that, I went to A-Kon again this summer. There were a few highlights — cosplay contest, a few panels, artist’s alley — but overall it didn’t feel all that special to me. Comparatively, I still prefer SGC to A-Kon; this year’s A-Kon had a similarly laid-back feel to it, but there wasn’t much that piqued my interest in way of panels. To be fair, I haven’t watched or kept up with anime in years. Maybe one day I’ll go to a comic con. It feels like it’ll probably be more appealing, since it’s not focused around one specific genre.
In other news, I started working at a lab this summer, as part of my research internship requirements. This lab (Kennedy Lab of Aging and Cognition) focuses on cognitive aging, and they actually do a fairly wide variety of things for a lab. My project/focus is on white matter hyperintensities, and so far most of what I’ve been doing in lab is figuring out how to use MATLAB and playing with this Lesion Segmentation Tool, which makes WMH probability maps of participants’ scans.
I could go into more depth about lab stuff, but that’s not really my focus for this post. It has come to my attention that this is really going to be my last semester here at UTD. While I don’t have the usual “school pride” that students have at other schools — particularly large ones like UT Austin or Texas A&M (maybe it’s a football-related thing?) — I’ve grown very fond of UTD. Living in an apartment from freshman year was great, playing online video games with my friends in the computer labs at night was awesome, and I always enjoyed watching people play pool and ping-pong while I ate at the student union on the upper floor.
While I guess only the first point is something that was unique to UTD — not anymore though, since they finished the residence halls after my freshman year — something about the size and location of it has always struck me as quaint and homely. Like, in the absence of a football team to bring us together, the student body fully embraced all the habits and behaviors of being nerdy and prided itself on it. Fliers of LAN parties could be found all over the campus, one would occasionally find little printouts of Pokemon stuck in random places from a Pokemon scavenger hunt, the computer lab pretty much always has at least one person playing a MOBA game, and I can always count on getting streetpasses on my 3DS while walking around on campus. We have cheerleaders for our chess team, which is apparently phenomenally good. I often feel out-of-place, like I don’t belong or really fit in with the people I’m with, but being a student at UTD is probably the closest I’ve come to feeling “at home” with a general population.
I found some amazing friends here at UTD, pretty much from the first day — even if the circumstances that brought us together were a bit odd. I doubt I would’ve found such amazing friends as quickly if I had gone to another school. Admittedly, and somewhat regrettably, I’ve gotten pretty distant from the culture at UTD since I and my friends finished undrgrad and two of them moved away. Now that I live ~45 minutes away from campus, I doubt I’ll be able to remedy that in this last semester of my masters program. Nevertheless, I’ll always think of UTD fondly; for all the ups and downs I encountered during my 6 years there, the time I’ve spent on that campus has been the best time of my (short 23-year) life. I don’t think I have ever regretted choosing to come to UTD, and consider myself unbelievably lucky for choosing a college where I met my best friends and discovered my true dream career — a life of research in neuroscience. I can only hope that I will be anywhere near as fortunate in my search for the school where I’ll get my PhD.
Realizing how little time left I have at this school has also really made me realize how little time left I have to apply to PhD schools. I have to choose which schools I want to apply to, plus study, take, and do well on my GRE, ask professors to write letters of recommendations, write my statement of purposes, and figure out application processes — all on top of my courses for the semester and a part-time job. I guess that’s one thing that being pre-med had over going into academia; they had a dedicated program and multiple pre-med student associations to inform and coach you through the application and admissions process.
Ah well. I guess all I can say is this: WISH ME LUCK!
750 Words: Work Stress
I’ve always found it difficult to make posts about mundane little details of my life, which is partly also the reason why I have trouble making daily posts. However, I saw two posts on my Tumblr dashboard that were basically lists of questions that followers could choose for the poster to answer, so I copied a few of them into a word doc to use as topics for these 750 Word posts. Maybe I’ll aim for 2 posts a week and work my way up during the year, ’cause once a day is too much of a commitment for me right now lol.
In other news, apparently this past week has been pretty stressful on me. I opened every day that I worked last week, and only one of those days was with an associate who’s been at our store for more than a month. Two of those days was with a manager from another store who was helping us out since we have only one associate at our store who can open during the week, and she was gone on vacation. It was nice though, since the other manager was able to show me how to do more of the paperwork and stuff for the store. The last day, we borrowed an associate from another store, and the closing manager from the day before forgot to do the computer stuff so that the associate could clock in and had the correct register permissions and whatnot. I vaguely remembered how to do it from when I helped out another store, but in the end, I still had to call the help desk.
Speaking of the help desk, I had to call them pretty much every day that I worked last week because we kept having issues with our coupon codes not working properly on our registers. I’ve gotten the same tech support person practically every time I’ve called, which feels a little weird. I guess we only have a handful of tech support people for the stores in our region? It’s the only plausible reason I can think of for me getting the same person that many times in a row.
I didn’t realize how stressed I was until I saw the schedule for this week and just raged. First of all, I’m scheduled for 26 hours this week, when I specifically requested for a max of 20 hours. Secondly, I’m scheduled to open again on Thursday for the few hours before my class starts because I’m the only associate who consistently has opening availability on Thursday. And thirdly, two of my shifts are with new associates. I just dislike that they schedule me with new people when I’m still new at my position. It’s frustrating that most of our associates only have closing availability, so I’ll probably be stuck opening on Thursday for a while until we hire someone who has opening availability. At least our new store manager is done with training, so he’s working at our store starting this week.
I actually raged so hard that I cried after I clocked out on Friday. I’m stuck on campus from 1:00 PM – 9:45 PM on Tuesdays, and even though I only have a class for just over an hour on Thursdays, I still consider it a “class day”. Being scheduled on Wednesdays and Fridays makes it difficult to read ahead for class, or even review stuff for class, since work mentally tires me out so much. So the days that I actually have off from work and don’t have class are mostly spent catching or keeping up with classes, making it feel like I don’t get much time to just relax. So that, and the fact that they disregarded my max availability really irks me. Additionally, my parents are visiting this weekend, so I’ll probably be spending a good deal of my free time cleaning my apartment. I’ve actually been wanting to clean my apartment for a while, but I’d need at least a day to do all of it, and since I’ve been using my days off to study, I haven’t been able to get to it.
I dunno. It doesn’t sound quite as complicated when I explain it, but I guess it feels really stressful to me since my time management skills are still pretty crappy. That, and a whole bunch of new stuff was thrown at me this past week.
Well, on the plus side, I worked on the blanket I’m knitting for my nephew, and I’ve been rereading the Harry Potter series before bed since I don’t have any of my portable game systems to play on lol. I’m already on the fourth book in the series even though I’ve been trying to limit myself to only one or two chapters a night. Then again, the first three books are kinda short — and I also binge read a few times last week when I was feeling frustrated and unmotivated to do anything requiring effort.
Somehow, I can’t believe it’s already February, but I also can’t believe that it’s only February.
750 Words: Still in School! Work Promotion! Resolutions!
I’m not sure where to start on this one. The last post was written right before all my final exams and papers. I somehow managed to get two A’s and one B- for my classes from last semester, but that left me with a cumulative GPA of 2.959, which was just under the 3.0 I needed to get out of academic probation.
In undergrad at UTD, if you get into academic probation and aren’t able to get out of it within 2 semesters, there are a few other levels of probation and whatnot before you get dismissed from the university. However, in grad school, all you get is the one chance. So the second half of my December and the first few weeks of January was spent worrying about whether or not my adviser would be able to convince the Dean of Graduate Studies to not kick me out of the master’s program.
Luckily, he did, and I’m about to start the third week of classes. One of my friends also made me give him my 3DS and PSP for the semester, so hopefully I’ll be able to keep my shit together. Speaking of my 3DS, I bought Etrian Odyssey sometime at the end of December when it was on sale for $15, and somehow managed to put over 40 hours into it before giving my 3DS to my friend after the first week of classes.
I started working at NY&C again 2 weeks ago and made sure they made a note of not scheduling me for more than 20 hours/week. The first week, I probably worked somewhere between 25-30 hours, but that’s fine since classes were just starting up and I wanted to earn money to make up for not working for over a month lol.This past week, they scheduled me for 15, but then I got randomly promoted to management support associate (MSA), so I picked up another 5 hours or so from being trained on opening and closing the store. I get a $1.50 pay raise that should come into effect this week, and tomorrow will be my first time to open the store.
The company decided to remove some job positions (namely, part-time assistant manager) and add others (floor sales leader, pretty much same thing as assistant manager but with less pay and more restricted hours, I guess). Considering that my store has been undergoing management changes pretty much since I started working, and that we’ve been shorthanded in general, this change came at a bad time; I’m guessing that had a lot to do with me getting a promotion. Speaking of which, MSA is a temporary promotion, and I go back to being a regular sales associate once we get a full management team back.
The crappy part is that they’re having me open on Tuesday and Thursday this week from 9:30 – 12 (when I have class at 1), so they’re really desperate. I hope that this doesn’t become a trend, otherwise I’ll change my availability to where I can’t work on Tuesdays and Thursdays at all. Another crappy thing is that we lost one of our part-time managers because she decided the demotion to floor sales leader ($4 decrease in pay) wasn’t worth it, and took the severance package instead.
I’m not really sure what else I have to talk about. I have no idea how people can work all day and then get home and study for classes, though. I’m so mentally drained after working a full shift that I can’t do any studying unless it’s something menial. And since my classes mainly require reading, that means I just don’t study more often than not.
I’ve been getting up and going to sleep earlier and on a fairly regular basis since starting work at NY&C again, and also classes. I enjoy it, but I also wish it were easier to actually get up in the mornings. It probably would be easier if I had something to eat for breakfast. Speaking of which, I still need to go buy some groceries. Better wrap up this super-fragmented blog post quickly. It’s already 8 PM and I should be in bed by teeeeeeeeeeennnnn.
To end things, I guess I could list my vague new year’s resolutions here, since I did think of a few. I usually make any, since I’m of the school of thought that people should continually trying to improve themselves, so I guess this is more of me writing out goals I’ve been working towards, but in a more concrete/detailed way. I should probably write them down and tape them to my monitor so I see them daily, but meh, maybe later.
2015 New Year’s Resolutions:
- Make fewer impulse purchases
- Make fewer *large* impulse purchases
- Short-term goal: limit to one impulse purchase a month
- Update budget regularly
- When getting paycheck
- When making purchases
- Reconcile w/bank statement @ beginning of month
- Fewer purchases = moar $$$
- For food
- For bills, credit cards
- For financial buffer
- For THE FUTURE
- Keep up with classes
- Read chapters before class
- Review class notes & personal chapter notes weekly
- Update planner w/study timelines for upcoming assignments
- Use planner regularly
- Class assignments/exams
- Work schedules
- Meal plans
- Also helps with eating more healthily
- Bills
- Blog more regularly
- 750 Words
- Such work
- Much time
- ???
- ?????
- ???????????????
- 750 Words
750 Words – Hyperbolic Crochet
I haven’t been keeping up very well with these “daily” 750 word posts, have I? During Thanksgiving week and the following week, I had myself checked into the inn on HRPG so that’s the main reason why I haven’t been posting. I also changed the “750 Word post” daily task to “work on blog/750 words”, so I sometimes (often) cheat by considering updates and comment moderation as “working on the blog”, even though those usually take less than a minute or so. In any case, I haven’t been doing anything particularly noteworthy . . . and I also just didn’t feel like making a completely random brain dump post. I know these types of posts are supposed to be uncensored and free-flowing thoughts, but I still prefer my posts to have at least some type of focus and structure.
I probably won’t be posting these daily starting from now, either; I’ve got finals and papers due next week, and then I’ll be visiting family for winter break (plus my parents don’t have internet), so I might instead type up little blurbs each day and post whenever it reaches 750 words/I feel like it.
So I came across this thing called hyperbolic crochet. I actually discovered it from a Kickstarter that is showcasing them as stress balls, but I think hyperbolic crocheting was popularized as a way to raise awareness concerning environmental issues while at the same time paying homage to the beauty of coral reefs. (See more coral-like crocheted versions here.) I have a few balls of yarn that I impulse bought because I felt like knitting/crocheting quick and easy things for instant gratification — and as a way to take a break from the yarn projects that I was working on for other people — so making little crocheted coral stress balls seemed like a quick and easy way to use up that yarn. It is rather stress-relieving to toy with, but I was also pleased to discover that it’s really simple to make as well.
I learned how to crochet before learning how to knit, but I much prefer knitting over crochet. It’s easier to keep track of stitches since they’re always on a needle, I like that the resulting fabric is stretchier and less stiff, and it’s easier to knit by touch than it is to crochet by touch (knitting/crocheting without having to constantly look at your work, if that didn’t make sense). It’s easier for me to space out and watch videos or shows while knitting, which makes it more relaxing and enjoyable. On the other hand, with crochet you typically have only one loop/stitch on your hook at a time, and sometimes it’s difficult for me to tell which stitch to work in — plus I have to count stitches at the end of each round/row to make sure that I have the right number. And when I’m off by one or a few stitches, I’m usually unsure of whether it’s from me just being ADHD and herping up when I was counting, or if I’m actually missing stitches. So counting (and often recounting) rounds is tedious and frustrating when I have to tear out the previous round because I was off, and has a high potential of devolving into a frustrating cycle because I don’t pay close enough dsafdsafsdffsdto where the previous round ends.
The beauty of hyperbolic crochet is that I don’t have to keep count of stitch count nor number of rounds. The pattern is based off a simple repeat, and it doesn’t matter if I miss a stitch or forget where in the repeat I am because it’ll look delightfully convoluted regardless. It’s practically impossible to mess up, so with this pattern, I’m able to enjoy crocheting to the same extent that I do knitting. It’s an easy and simple project that I can pick up and put down without having to keep track of how far along I am because I can make it as big or small as I want. The only downside is that there’s not much point in me making multiple stress corals for myself, and I probably have enough yarn to where I’d make way more than I have friends and family to randomly gift them to. I suppose larger ones that I make can be replacement bath loofahs. (Image for those of you unfamiliar with the term lolz.)
The only other thing I know I wanted to mention is that I got a notebook riser for my laptop to increase the screen height and (hopefully) reduce neck strain from sitting in front of it for so long. I finally have some desk space in front of my laptop so that I can write things in my planner or random notes! My desk doesn’t feel so cramped now haha. Plus my cat can’t sit on my laptop keyboard anymore, and him sitting on my desk will no longer obstruct my view of the screen. However, I don’t mention this because of the increased potential in my productivity, but because of the herp solution I came up with in figuring out how to raise my external monitor to approximately the same height.
I’m not sure how noticeable it is in the other picture, but I took a closer one so that you could see exactly what I’m using to prop up my monitor — 2 empty daily vitamin bottles and an empty bottle from one of my past Adderall prescriptions. It’s not the stablest setup, but at least my desk is up against a corner so I don’t have to worry as much about it potentially falling back off of my desk.
THIS ALSO MEANS I HAVE MORE ROOM TO EAT STUFF AT MY DESK WHILE WATCHING STUFF ON THE INTERNETS. It just feels more spacious, less cramped, more enjoyable. I have more room to do stuff without having had to drastically change the layout of my work area.
Aaaanyway, I’ve already spent over 2 hours on this post and it’s time for bed. Hopefully I won’t be tossing and turning in my bed for hours tonight — it’s been a while since I’ve taken my Adderall regularly, so it’s making it difficult to fall asleep even though I take it at 6 in the morning.