free time!

ahh remember when I was complaining about the hells of graduate school? I was so unhappy and all I could think about was my summer of freedom?

well

im going crazy with all this free time.

I've had enough of this life of leisure.

I need some structure!

I thought going through the closets and getting rid of everything we don't need anymore would keep me busy, but i'm already mostly finished! (two full trashbags of stuff so far, thank you very much!).

this is bad. very bad.

right now i'm contemplating going on to campus i'm so bored. do i need to? not really. but the commute will kill two hours and I'm sure I can find something to work on there for a couple of hours.

rescue me!

finals week hell

you know those weeks where you are just filled to capacity? Not one more tiny little thing can possibly fit on your agenda because you don't have the time nor the mental energy to accommodate it? Yeah, that's where I am.

It has gotten to the point that after classes or lab meeting I find myself looking for a private corner to cry in. I'm just that mentally exhausted. I have no resources left. 

I'm trying to pep myself up so that I can put the effort into this final sprint, but lord knows its rough. One week from today my life will be about a hundred times better. So for now, I'm just trying to make it till then.

finals

so remember how i said that graduate school takes up about 80% of my time? well, during these next two weeks I'm expecting that number to jump up to about 98%. I'll pop in and update when I need to destress, but I'll probably mainly just be working away on papers and the like. check back though, because i have a wonderful bridal shower to fill you in on and lots of pictures to share!

wish me luck!

I have two midterms due today. Wish me luck!

(and yes - to anyone who noticed - it is very late in the semester for midterms. finals are just around the corner!) 

graduate school hell

as i mentioned in my last post, school has been getting me down lately. I have to say for the last three weeks I've definitely been dragging. I know three weeks probably sounds like nothing to y'all, but I'm sort of wimpy (I guess) so three weeks is enough for me to want to throw in the towel. Unfortunately, i've got five weeks before I can say "i quit" and not actually be a quitter.

if you think about, that equals out to eight weeks or two months of being beaten down with stress and work and having to pull myself through the daily grind. 2 precious months! That's one sixth of a whole year! and then when you add in the two months I spent in graduate school hell last semester - that knocks it up to 1/3! That means that I'll spend 1/3 of this school year (august 09 to august 10) feeling all . . . stressed to the max. This can't be good for my health (or my fiance's health).

recently, i've noticed that even small things are enough to send me to tears. thankfully, my office provides a wonderful private space for crying :)

I think one of my biggest obstacles to living a stress free lifestyle (besides the mountains of homework and lab work that pile up at the most inopportune times), is making time to destress throughout the day. I'm one of those people that constantly feels like there is not enough time for everything and I tend to work myself up over it. Also, then I find myself not eating lunch or going to the bathroom or drinking water or stretching my legs or any of that good stuff because i've convinced myself that there is not enough time to get xyz done so i couldn't possibly take five minutes to heat up my food. Not taking care of myself in that way just makes me feel crappier and more stressed out.

My other obstacle is using the time I do have wisely. All to often I find myself veggin out in front of the television at the end of the day because I'm so drained it is the only activity that I can imagine doing. While I like to tell myself that this helps me unwind, there are probably some things I could do that would be way more effective.  I wonder if I would feel better if instead of watching tv, I used that time to meditate, call a friend, or write in a journal.

tomorrow might be a good day to put one of these to work! Door to door, I've got a 14 hour day in front of me. I'll be out the door at 8:30 am and won't be back home till around 10:30 pm. In that time period I'll TA, go to research methods class, have office hours, finish up work for lab, have lab meeting, finish a paper that is due at 6:30 PM, go to neuropsychological assessment class, and hopefully keep a smile on my face!

statistics

statistics homework is oh so boring.
why must we run the same sort of analysis over and over again?
main effects. interactions. partial eta squared. simple main effects. cohen's d. within subjects. between subjects. mixed model design. blah blah blah.

finally, a nonwedding related post

This week is technically my spring break, but I've got to say - it doesn't feel at all like a break. Maybe I've just got more time to sit around and think about all of the school work I've got, but it feels like I have even more to do this week than last! I'll admit that I'm feeling more than a little stressed out. I'm trying to remind myself to breath and just put one (proverbial) foot in front of the next.

On a bright side, I'm so happy that my mom is back home! She completed her intensive one month training at a Sivananda Yoga Center in Nassau and is now certified to teach yoga! She has been doing yoga since the 60s and I'm so excited that she has decided to make a career out of something that she loves! During her training she kept a vegetarian diet, so to celebrate her return to Chicago we went out to a new vegetarian restaurant that has been getting great reviews - Mana Food Bar in Wicker Park. Yum!

there is love and work

Oh man oh man. I registered for classes today! yikes! They start August 24th! And voila . . . here is my final schedule:

and more and more and more stuff

lots and lots and lots and lots of more packing going on at my mom's house. packing sucks. it makes me never, ever want to move.

On the other hand, seeing how much room my mom had for all of her stuff . . . I am itching to move into a house. A real house. Not an apartment or a condo or a duplex or whatever. A house with a front and back yard. And two floors. and a basement. A home that we can settle into and not have to worry about moving for years and year and years.

don't get me wrong - i love our condo. And I think we do a very nice job of making it a home. But, I feel like a move is inevitable. At some point, maybe 5 years from now, we will move. And knowing this makes it hard to really put deep roots down. At least, not like I could in a house that has enough room for us and our futures babies.

ahh babies

On a completely (and perhaps opposing) note, I found out what classes I am going to take in the fall! The program is pretty set, so I don't really get to choose my classes until later on. This fall I will be taking:

Psych 412, Sect 001, Class #2248, Hours = 1.5, Intro to the Profession of Clinical Psychology

Psych 432, Sect 001, Class #2264, Hours = 3, Intellectual/Personality Assessment

Psych 446, Sect 001, Class #2276, Hours = 3, Psychopathology

Psych 480, Sect 001, Class #2300, Hours = 3, Advanced Statistics I

Life is feeling very real.