Snowed In

I’m sick and feeling like crap, pretty depressed and stressed out, so here is a list of things I wrote about in my journal last week that I was feeling happy about.

Sigh.

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Picking up the prospectives from the airport, I felt good about being nurturing. Jordan’s response to the Volvo: “I love the car by the way!”

Meeting with Rik on Friday. He was really excited about what I was doing, and he was a really good listener, and we found a great new direction for my project to go in (classifier systems!).

I used Marty’s glerb demonstration in my discussion section today. I don’t know if you’re still reading Marty, but thanks! They loved it! And that makes me feel good about my roots in Indiana. Kind of like wiggling your toes to remind you that they’re there.

Dinner at Sipz (one of the many awesome mostly vegan restaurants in San Diego) with the prospectives, and meeting the kids with the hotel. I felt like I did a good job making people feel comfortable, a good job representing our department. And I felt like the kids were really interesting… people I’d love to work with.

Dinner coops have been great lately. Last week when Matthew cooked (thai curry=delicious)… I was really excited that the other Matthew (from the Women’s Center) and his partner Anetti came. They haven’t been coming much, and I like them a lot because I learn a lot whenever I talk to them. And we inaugurated our donation jar, which Niko actually made! She blew the glass! She hasn’t even been to dinner coop (yet) and I felt really happy to have her contributing, even though it was kind of unwitting… she gave the jar to Matthew, and he donated it to the coop!

And then we had a really nice intimate small coop on Tuesday, and then last night was a nice raucous Thursday coop. Oh, and the front street girls haven’t been coming to a ton of coops lately, but Katie is wanting to host next Tuesday, and E lended the pizza stone. And Kaya biked to school with Liz (13 miles!) yesterday… so, I feel like we’re reaching out well to that group.

Working with Matthew on the Neuroscience quiz was really nice. We stayed up really late, to the brink of exhaustion, working together. It’s really rewarding to be working on something, and you help it along, then someone else helps it along, and you each help each other through stuff. It feels a lot nicer than just working on something alone.

Driving to campus with Kensy, and then walking from the glider port (overlooking the ocean) to campus in the morning was nice. It was just a nice walk.

Seeing the prospectives in the morning was good, even if I was only there for a half hour or so. I felt good about showing up and supporting them, and their orientation. Free breakfast burritos too.

Thinking about the next steps on the project with mostly Ed about scientists using their bodies to think. I’m going to be doing some more observations in science labs, and that project just feels really heavy with opportunity.

I’ve been mostly feeling excited about school, not anxious. It’s not true every day, but it’s true a lot of days.

And I’ve been really excited about my neuroscience class. It’s just that I have no emotional investment in it. There’s almost no work, it’s outside of my area of interest, and the professor is leaving the department anyway. So, there’s no need to be impressive. Which means I just sit and soak in the awesome lectures about how owls hear the direction of sounds, or how human beings are able to see lines move, and all this stuff. I just sit there with sparks flying in my head as I learn interesting stuff, anxiety free.

Having two little crushes today. Crushes always feel really exciting, and little ones are almost the best because you don’t even feel bad when they evaporate.