Looking Back

Monday, 2 March 2015 19:45
lea_hazel: Don't make me look up from my book (Basic: Reading)
Looking back at all the years of my blog which were dominated almost completely by uni stuff and I can't help but thinking that I just sort of flushed all those years away. For nothing. For no good reason. A friend told me once that I would stop thinking (eventually) that my twenties were the decade I had to pay back for my teens. I really hope that's true.
lea_hazel: The Little Mermaid (Default)
I did a lot today. At least it feels that way, and I cling to that feeling whether or not it reflects achievement because I so often lack it. Tomorrow I'm meeting someone from the open university to review my options. Once I know what my options are it'll be easier to draw up a long-term plan. I don't want to give up on a degree if there's a way to salvage it, but on the other hand I don't want to be bull-headed.

In other news, I cannot find a pair of boot cut jeans in my size anywhere.

Complacence

Monday, 21 October 2013 16:11
lea_hazel: The outlook is somewhat dismal (Feel: Crash and Burn)
...And we're back to normal again. Where by normal I mean, "I can't tell if I'm anxious and need to relax, or complacent and I need to be more alert/nervous/watchful.

Tomorrow I have another job interview, the second job I'm interviewing for since I started looking in August. I have a thorough list of things that need to be done before then, but definite items ("make a breakfast sandwich") are easier to handle than vague ones ("be ready for the test"). I'm breaking the cardinal rule that I learned in time management: only deal in concrete tasks. And I procrastinated.

Now, intellectually I'm pretty sure that my level of familiarity with the subjects I'm being tested on will be enough. I was tested last time, on many of the same subjects, and I did well. More revising will probably not improve my performance significantly.

But. But mis-assessing my preparedness for exams is one of the main reasons I am where I am, as opposed to searching for a bioinf job with my shiny new degree. Not that I necessarily feel like that job search would have been quicker, more efficient, or even necessarily less frustrating. Basically, this entry is all me venting. Talking about anxiety tends to destring it a bit.

It's all coming back to me, really. I think I'll do some Ruby stuff to tamp down on the brainfail. And then reread my own fanfic.

fuck.

Sunday, 28 July 2013 14:59
lea_hazel: The outlook is somewhat dismal (Feel: Crash and Burn)
Uni tried to give me a panic attack by writing the wrong course title on the test paper, thus making me think I might have signed up for the wrong class and would end up not qualifying for a BSc.

I signed up for the right class. And I took the right test. And I'm pretty sure I passed. And Tumblr is blocked on this browser until 5 PM so I'm crawling into bed with my tablet.
lea_hazel: Neuron cell (Science: Brains)
I have two major papers due before I can finish my degree. I had a brilliant energy-saving plan of focusing one of them on a subject I already dealt with once a couple of years ago. I would have a good portion of the research done and available, and I could look at very recent developments, and it would be interesting and cool. Now I'm looking back at the work I did two years ago, and oh mercy lord. It's not that I didn't know I had a problem, it's just that it keeps becoming stupidly stark in front of my eyes and somehow that never fails to amaze me.

No matter how many times I remind myself that it's terrible, I still keep picking up projects with far too wide a scope and failing to narrow them down properly. I was skimming the bibliography of this work to get an idea of the material I'd need to review, and I think I lost count at fifteen. Why would a work of this scope need a bibliography that deep? What was I thinking? Also, I misspelled dysregulation. Sometimes I just get so angry at myself over such things.

Woe.

Friday, 21 June 2013 12:33
lea_hazel: The outlook is somewhat dismal (Feel: Crash and Burn)
I spent the morning doing an assignment that should have taken an hour and change.

Whatever. What's done is done.

(no subject)

Tuesday, 18 June 2013 18:52
lea_hazel: The Little Mermaid (Default)
Well I feel like shit but as long as it's over.

*Sigh*

Sunday, 16 June 2013 08:41
lea_hazel: The Little Mermaid (Health: Sleep)
There are days when you get up in the morning and all you want to do is crawl back into bed. Ordinarily I would cut myself a little slack in a situation like this, but I have a looming deadline and my project is shit. The thing is, I can't even really tell if I'm tired or depressed.

Fuck my life, fuck this semester, and fuck me for not planning my projects better or taking on fewer classes. Or getting fucking ritalin three years ago.

The Pits

Thursday, 13 June 2013 12:02
lea_hazel: The outlook is somewhat dismal (Feel: Crash and Burn)
I have a MATLAB project due Tuesday and I may have just learned I need to throw out almost everything I've done so far. Because I failed to do sufficient research into the basic capabilities of the toolboxes I was using, in a timely and orderly fashion, before I dove right in to start writing code. Which is the most foolish mistake I can possibly imagine making.

Not feeling too great about myself right now.

Luckily or perhaps not so much I can do heavy load "crunch days" today, tomorrow and Saturday, and even most of Sunday if necessary. The only problem then would be where to direct that time because I'm at a loss for ideas right now. Crisis point.

If I make it past this it's one down, five to go. I am so close to the end, it's just ear enough to taunt me.

At least I filled my prescription and I think I'll finally be rid of the furious looking red scratchy rashes that have infected my forearms and thighs lately, whenever they've been exposed to the air. It's either heat rash or pollen allergies but either way I'm sick of scratching myself to rawness and slathering myself in moisturizer by turns.

FML.

What.

Saturday, 1 June 2013 10:43
lea_hazel: A frowning white theater mask (Feel: Sad Face :()
It's fucking June now, are you getting this? How is it fucking June?

I keep having to send e-mails and talk to people and just generally communicate like an adult.

And there's no magic bullet, which I knew, but was trying not to think about.

Ugh, whatever. For better or worse it will all be over soon. Past a certain point, the petty things stop mattering and you need to just brush them out of your mind. I just wish that wasn't so hard to remember.

I cannot

Thursday, 25 April 2013 13:50
lea_hazel: The Little Mermaid (Default)
I was about to make a post about anxiety but was momentarily rendered insensible by anxiety. Like I was staring blankly at the screen with my cursor hovering over the icon list, just... senseless with anxiety.

Goddamnit. I told myself that I knew how to deal with this shit. Am I going to have to take the rest of the day off? I need that time to do work, or at a bare minimum write. Right now I'm staring not finishing my degree in the face, like, every damn day. If I don't put out a proposal soon I might as well throw in the towel. And then set it on fire.

Fuuu--

Thursday, 4 April 2013 12:13
lea_hazel: A frowning white theater mask (Feel: Sad Face :()
Motherfuck, my schedule.

And all I want is to take a damn nap.
lea_hazel: Neuron cell (Science: Brains)
How do I not have a panic attack about the possibility of failing a class because of a communication breakdown that has nothing to do with all the work I did for it or everything I learned?

These are all the ideas I had )

Hisssss

Saturday, 19 January 2013 17:37
lea_hazel: Neuron cell (Science: Brains)
Turns out my course load next semester isn't as light as I remembered making it. Boo. No wonder I avoided looking at my schedule for so long. I must have been subconsciously dreading the realization or something.

Maybe I'll drown my sorrows in wicked princesses or something.
lea_hazel: A frowning white theater mask (Feel: Sad Face :()
Okay, so tomorrow's gonna be pretty rough. In the morning I have to show up before class to work on project #1 (the one that's due next week). Then we have a meeting with the lecturer. Then class. Then I rush to the other campus to slap together a last minute exercise in one of the classes I've totally been neglecting all semester, which is worth 15% of the final grade.

Then I rush back, and I have to decide whether to attend the other class I've been neglecting all semester. Either way, I have to stay late in campus and practice the presentation for project #3 that's due tomorrow morning at 9AM and, oh, get some sleep because I have class tomorrow at 9AM. Oh yay.

But both those projects are going relatively well. It was project #2 that was derailed, both by my being ill and primarily by my absurd, irrational loathing for my project partner and everything that comes out of hir mouth and/or keyboard. Ordinarily I am not the most socially well-adjusted and I know that when I'm under academic strain I can blow my lid a little too often and way too hard... This was one such time.

Suffice to say I will be absurdly relieved when the presentation is finally over and done with.

...Then I start gearing up for exams. That's when the two classes I've neglected come to bite me in the ass.
lea_hazel: A frowning white theater mask (Feel: Sad Face :()
The weather tomorrow is expected to get about as cold as it can possibly get round these parts. Yesterday and today I got mired in eating the foods, snuggling in fleecy things, and camping between two space heaters. I did not get nearly enough work done, especially considering I have two presentations due next week, neither of them finished.

Then I went and committed myself to writing some porn by the end of the week. Because, duh, I already have a bunch of unfinished fics and there's nothing more natural than piling on even more. And porn to boot, which I'm beginning to wonder if I'll ever be unselfconscious about.

Hate

Thursday, 3 January 2013 18:55
lea_hazel: The outlook is somewhat dismal (Feel: Crash and Burn)
I bear a completely irrational and disproportionate hate for the psychology textbook I'm reading right now, and it's making it hard to complete my assignment. Maybe it's because this chapter reads so much like a terrible new age pop-sci book about relationships and the power of lurve. For crying out loud, you do not need a freaking biology degree to know that there are no feelings in the heart. It's an organ that pumps blood. No, I do not accept that this is a metaphor. No, you are a psychologist dammit, and you should by now know for a fact that feelings live inside the brain.

Grumpy materialist is grumpy.

Sigh

Wednesday, 2 January 2013 18:02
lea_hazel: A frowning white theater mask (Feel: Sad Face :()
Today I gave myself the morning off, semi-accidentally. Yesterday I did less work than I'd intended, in part because I had less work, and in part because I couldn't be assed to divert those hours to some other project that needed them. I have three papers due this month, it's not like there's ever "nothing to do", y'know?

Right now the impending crisis is if I run out of fucks to give before the semester ends. That's pretty much how it's gone down in previous years.

The worst of it is that one of my classes just assigned a one-page assignment to be done in fours. As if working in pairs wasn't enough of an ongoing nightmare, we have to write a damn research proposal in fours. How exactly that's going to work, I have no idea.

Warning Ahead

Wednesday, 26 December 2012 18:01
lea_hazel: Neuron cell (Basic: Science)
Just a fair warning that my journal may be pretty boring for a while. We are drawing ever closer to the end of the semester and that means term papers to present, which is a lot of work. I'm presenting three papers in pairs and I have a fourth one to write as well. That last one is at major risk of being done at the last minute or else handed in late. I am trying not to think about that and accepting the challenge with all my might.

Right now, for example, I'm tamping down my panic about gene therapy and positive psychology, while at the same time trying to wrap my mind around the idea of "self-other overlap" as a measure of interpersonal conflict solving. Meanwhile another part of my mind is speculating about whether I can skip this week's reading and still have handed in the requisite eight assignments. Luckily yesterday I was struck by unexpected foresight and stuffed my freezer with frozen pizzas.

Earlier today I spent some time browsing the Yuletide archive. I bookmarked a few fics for later, but I fear I'll have little smut time in the next four weeks or so.
lea_hazel: The Little Mermaid (Science: Genetics)
I've been struggling with my assignments in evolution. For some reason, though, I can never successfully translate my knowledge of this difficulty into paying sufficient attention in class. I've lapsed into the kind of absurd trickery I used in year 1 during physics classes: snoozing and then frantically googling for formulas that I don't really understand. Predicting that the exam for this course will be fairly painful.

The consequence of taking Saturday (and most of Friday) off is that I started the week with a disorganized schedule. Tomorrow morning the first thing I'm doing is fixing that and plotting out the rest of the week in exacting detail.

In other news, as every right-thinking person could tell me, going off coffee cold-turkey style was a ludicrously ill-advised proposition. I ought to have done some research first, and then I would have gradually decreased my consumption and avoided all this headache. I stand by the fact that quitting is a good idea, though. Once I have some hard data, I will be better able to assess whether one cup a morning is fine, or if I should cut it down to once-twice a week. Meanwhile I'm relearning to appreciate cocoa from powder, herbal teas, and on Saturday night I drank hot cider.

I want to end on a fun note, so: I have yet to win Briony's heart on LLTQ, despite my best efforts. However, so as not to burn out on the game to quickly, I resolve not to play at all tonight.

Profile

lea_hazel: The Little Mermaid (Default)
lea_hazel

July 2025

M T W T F S S
 1 23456
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
28293031   

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags