historical achievement #1

it's official; i finally witnessed something i have never witnessed before.

someone actually broke down and cried in lecture today. we were going over the voltage, concentration, and electrical current-dependent relationships of ion channels and busting down into all the physics and mathy math graphs, which i thought was all pretty neat and rather straightforward. someone asked a question, and the prof, being of that kind of brilliance where you don't understand the silly questions of mere mortals, went off into some kind of tangent whose information was interesting and useful, but patently unrelated to the question. i think some questions are too stupid to understand for those brilliant prof types.

the chick goes, ok great but that doesn't address my question, and the prof looks at her with a defeated smile that says, my dear i am sorry that i, physics, and logarithmic algebra have failed you, and that if you don't understand this now you will probably make a living as a 3rd grade earth sciences teacher, but it's 10.47 and we must press on.

and she just put her head down on the desk and cried, i mean shoulders-shaking cried in front of over 60 people (and on video, actually) and accepted no comfort from her surrounding friends. i half got out of my chair to go over, because i understood what she was asking and had a really simple answer. but i didn't know her, and something made me hesitate, also because i am not characteristically a volunteer-er of information.
good thing i didn't try to help; she later lashed out at some foreign students she thought were talking about her, and then she stormed out of class.

drama!!

i have the feeling this is not the first type of "are you fucking serious?" moment i'm going to have in grad school, so i have decided to catalog them, with this as #1.

*yawn*

i'm out of it enough that last week, i locked my keys in the car while at the gym on my lunch break, and had to wait for AAA to come and jimmy it open; and then this week i left my headlights on all day and spent some quality time freaking out with my voltmeter before it was determined all i needed was a jump from the dudes in the valet lot.

it's friday, at long last. and there's tropical coconut coffee at the student coffee stand - a harbinger that everything's going to be just fine. weekend, i'm so ready!

the musings of the weary

so i've been really busy; a series of 10 to 14 hour days of class and frenetically paced time on my feet in the lab, with 1 hour of driving and stressing about traffic each way bracketing my day. it's been good; i'm always good when i'm busy. i am known to be very poor at the art of vacationing; i am slowly becoming more adept at weekending. as of late, i can do nothing of consequence for 48 hours without slipping into a listless depression at what is not being done, at what could be if not for the couch and the rain and the tv.

i am bad at change; i have always been. wherever i am, i intuitively feel that the task at hand is to learn the ropes, settle in, prove myself as quickly as possible, carve out a niche for myself and then, once comfortable, get down to business and become productive and efficient. i do not enjoy the break in period; i enjoy my own aptitude, the fruits of all my hard labor. whenever i am in the midst of this trial period, where i am an unknown quantity to all who would judge, i tend to stress out about small things. what i said in lecture. the outfit mis-choice on monday. how i body-checked the bathroom door in front of like, 5 people. i don't dwell on these things, but i notice them and strive to be more conscientious; something there's no need for me to do once i've been established. this morning i had a 2-minute rambling daydream about the amino acid quiz on monday, and how unmotivated i am to learn all those structures over the weekend. whenever i begin to feel sorry for myself, i think of lexi. when i was alone and unloved; when i was in a new city and scared. when the car won't start, and the bank account is empty; when the presentation is 12 hours away and unfinished. when, as eleanor roosevelt said, you must do the thing you think you cannot do. these times, i nearly always think of lexi.

she was a girl in my high school class. we were friendly; talked and joked, were of the more popular crowd and thus, flitted in and out of one another's socializing often. i sat next to her in senior lit class, even passed a note or two. when i went to lunch late, if she were there, i would sit at her table. once i even liked her homemade pants so much, i asked my mom to copy them for me. she didn't even mind that i'd copied her. we elected her to speak at graduation; she was the funniest, wittiest speaker in memory, but i never saw her again. she died in a car accident within a year of graduation. i didn't even know about it for months. there was a discrete period of time when if you had asked me about that blond, effervescent, maternally warm girl lexi, i would have thought of her free in the world somewhere, off tackling things with enthusiasm, and i would have been wrong; she would have been gone already.

whenever i am tired of feeling selfish pity, i think about how much lexi wouldn't mind taking an amino acid quiz, and even failing it. small price to pay to feel the sunshine again. standing up in front of a room of people and talking about something intimidating; stuttering and making mistakes. i'm sure she'd gladly trade places with me. when i pull myself back up by the bootstraps and square my shoulders to face the coming challenge, no matter how paltry or insignificant, i feel as though i'm giving lexi a nod across the great divide; telling her thank you for setting me straight. sometimes i think maybe i am just doing anything i can to make sense of her death; anything to lend it significance, anything so that it won't have been in vain. all the things she might have done, and never got to do, maybe i will do some of them; maybe i will do them better for having known her, and for having this continuing dialog with her. there's a power to the guilt one feels when someone deserving disappears without reason. it keeps you moving; keeps you honest, keeps you busy and true to yourself, if for nothing else other than compensation. and in doing so, it forces you to lead a fuller life, to get the most out of every day, good to the last drop. and for that, i'll be eternally grateful.

that which occurs annually

kz and sabominator, officially 3 years of love, cuddles, snoogles, and wuzzles.



next year, we'll be passing out custom-embossed barf bags...