keninabu!

...F*ck Me

It's been such a bad day today.

In the first place, when did today start? I'm not sure. For one, it sure as hell didn't start when classes did, but way, way, WAYYYY before that...

I finally finished the presentation slides last night at around 9pm or so. Or was it 10pm? I don't remember.

After having wasted some time taking a short break, I proceeded to try doing the homework. Then the quantum exam.
Except, I couldn't find it.

Panic. Adrenalin rush.

I cycled back. Searched through all my papers, all my stuff. Nothing.

Cycled back to the lab, looked through all the papers again. Finally, there it is. After wasting 40 fucking minutes looking for a piece of paper that was underneath my very nose all this time.

I started work on it. Ran into trouble almost straight away. Maybe I was already tired. I'm pretty sure I was, actually. I looked through it, looking for bits which I understood: nothing. I looked through the chapter, read through the materials again.

Maybe it was the panic.

Whatever it was, my mind was a complete blank. Just panic.

I decided to return to the room, to rest and try again afterwards. Came back, washed up, slept for 2 hours, then tried again.
It was better, but by this time I'm feeling like a complete retard.

Actually, that's an understatement. I am feeling like I was back in secondary school trying to understand calculus for the first time, and feeling the same way as when I got 5% on my exams: numbed and dumbed. I refused to give in to that feeling, and kept trying. "Don't give up!" I thought to myself.

I woke up 1 hour later, realizing I fell asleep without knowing it. Crap. Clock read 4am. Ok, try and focus now.

At 4.10, I lifted my face up from the table again. Fucking shit. Maybe I'm just really exhausted.... so I set an alarm and lay down. For another hour.

Woke up, and still wasn't able to do anything at all.

Finally, I just rushed through whatever I could, packed my stuff, headed for breakfast and went for Accounting class.

Nothing big, nothing unusual, except that it's obvious I am super tired.
I was unable to finish the assignment for accounting, in my muddled state, and I was not able to finish my Chemistry homework as well, due to the fact that the accounting prof was staring at me half the time, which made it hard to inconspicuously glimpse at the homework assignments... feigning interest takes quite a bit of acting!

Went to the Kinetics class, handed in my homework, and the class finished with us doing our course evaluations (which I had wondered, but had not said anything), and ended up with me taking it back to the Registrar's for the professor. I'll miss him: he's a good guy, though the course homework grading scheme is really tough. Handed in the homework, and heart dropped when I read the solution: somehow I ended up getting different answers for one of the two questions I did. Once again, I'll be scoring 1/4 or something like that....

Quantum Chemistry wasn't much better. Went there early, was lying there and resting when El Weirdo came in early and once again tried to get my attention again as usual.... making lots of noises, stupid comments. I just ignored him and tried to catch some sleep.

Lunch was a blur: I don't remember much. I think I slept, and waited for Amu to call, but she didn't call until later. Then we spoke for a bit, and I had to rush off to my Leadership Rice Team's presentation. I took pictures of them like a proud father at a child's graduation: I am proud of them. The presentation didn't go super-well, but it went well enough, I thought. They were really nervous, and it showed.

The other teams came on, and I went back to my computer, just in time to see an email from the accounting prof threatening to fail me straight, if I didn't turn up for classes next week. Quite troublesome. And I am glad I only took the class on a pass-fail basis, because I am feeling overwhelmed by everything...

Went back and spoke to the Missus, but not much, because she was feeling down herself. And her roommate's internet connection was making a royal ruckus on the line: she couldn't hear what I was saying, and that kind of pissed us both off, though not at each other. But it succeeded in preventing us from talking.

Then I was preparing for my presentation for tonight, and then I got an email from the quantum prof, saying that he's gonig to give me a maximum of a C- (and he explained everything nicely: he is a very sweet person) given how badly I screwed up on this exam and the previous one.

That just pulled my mood down: at this rate, I am never going to graduate with any sort of honors at all. At this rate, I am going to end up nowhere... I felt like I squandered my parents money. And I probably have, by coming here. I felt like I was stupid, doing a major in which I'm not particularly good at, which isn't going to give me many opportunities in the future.

But then after I put the phone down on the missus, I decided I had to redeem myself with my presentation, so I forced myself up and practiced with it a bit, going through mentally the entire sequence.

The actual presentation went well: there was a initial bit of a mixup. I was originally scheduled to go first, but ended up going third because the advisors of the other students were there. The feedback I got from J., my friend, was that I was extremely enthusiastic, and bits of my "silly humor" made me likeable. On reading the actual feedback, that seems to be the case: I got a number of "good use of humor" comments, and a surprising number wrote "10^13!" (because I had pointed at that thing on my slide on the Raman enhancements in SERS, and said, "that's an exclamation mark, not a factorial" which cracked everyone up...). I made a lot of "umms" which was more than made up for by my apparent enthusiasm, and I got tripped up by some questions (a very good one from Sculley, about the possibility of trapping other molecules resulting in an overly complicated SERS spectra), but all in all it went well. J said I was funny, because I said stuff like "SAM is not 'surface to air missile' but 'self assembled monolayer' ", or "the substrate acts like a violin to a violin string" or "a SAM is like a mattress of single chain molecules".

The presentation is about the only good thing. At the end of it, I arranged to meet my quantum prof (who also runs this Honors research seminar) tomorrow afternoon, and immediately felt the same dread and sinking feeling....

I came back and immediately wanted to go sleep, but my suitemate's girlfriend and her friends were making a ruckus, watching TV and playing loud music, which made it impossible to sleep early.

So now it is close to midnight, I'm tired as hell, depressed, and want to sleep.

What a fucking day.

Honestly, I think I'm not cut out to be a scientist. I'm wondering whether I should now take on an engineering job instead. It seems to me that an engineering are might be interesting, though I might not necessarily be good at it. Industrial engineering will have an interesting design element to it, coupled with a study of management that I am quite good at.

I'm not thinking straight. Sleep, please take me...

posted by keninabu @ 11:58 PM