write more!

I still have a lot of stuff on my mind since the last time I wrote in this thing, but at least a few things have been resolved. I have decided to live in this apartment complex for another year, but move to a different apartment so we can get clean floors (our apartment hasn't been cleaned/refurbished for FIVE YEARS. Five! The floors have gum and dirt permanently stuck to them.) I am doing crappy in my classes, but I am not going to worry about it so much right now because my study habits are the best they ever have been. I feel like at the rate I am going, I can put myself back on track and do really well this semester:)

Hmm, I have narrowed my study abroad locations (or expanded them!) to the following places: Paris, Germany, London, Japan and Ireland! We will see where this goes.

bombage

I had my first midterm today, in Networks. I thought I had studied pretty well, but the test was really confusing and I ended up doing very poorly. (I was slightly lower than the class average, which was a 57%, which is really low anyway). I'm disappointed because I feel like if I had known exactly how the professor was going to test, I could have studied a lot better and scored higher. Plus there is a lot of confusing jargon with networks that I am not so familiar with. I'm not trying to make excuses for my poor score, but there really are a few plausible reasons that I didn't do so hot.

After the networks exam today, a few boys in my class invited me to go to Louie's (the campus pub). Of course, I had to decline because I'm underage, and it's not usually the best idea to drink when you have another class to go to in 40 minutes! I still felt kind of bad; I always feel odd being too young to do something... anyway, I ran into the boys again on the way to the next class we all had together, and sure enough they seemed fairly drunk. The professor in our next class decided to give a surprise quiz, and suddenly I was actually relieved that I had been too young to go drink with them! Funny how things happen like that.

So I should stop blogging and study for my exams on Thursday so I don't get more bad grades...I want good grades this semester!

wet

It's been really hot the last few days, and all of the sudden there's a downpour and the temperature drops 20 degrees! I went out to Starbucks (when the sky was a little dark, but it wasn't raining) and ended up getting drenched on the way back.

I have a lot going on right now-- my first midterms of the semester are this week, I have projects due and a seemingly endless list of homework to do and emails to return. I also just decided a couple of days ago that I am going to stay in school at least one more semester, and possibly two and pick up a minor or another major. People tend to think I'm insane for trying to enter the job market as a 20-year old, and this is only my third year of school anyway... so I'm considering minors. Two more classes would get me a minor in Economics, which is a pretty sweet deal. But do I want a minor in Economics? It is fun, but it's not something I can foresee myself using in the future and I don't really feel compelled to study it more extensively than I already have.

At the moment, my top three contenders for a minor are:

1. Computer Science- a minor in Computer Science would complement my Information Systems degree nicely, and it seems like it would be a lot of fun. I think it's only five or so classes, which makes possible to complete in a year. My only concern is the math requirement; I am definitely not strong with math and have literally no knowledge of calculus. Working with computer programming apparently requires at least some math, since there are a lot of calc. requirements for the major, and I might have to pass some kind of calc. proficiency examination. So I'm not really sure how that would all work out.
2. Human Biology- I have always enjoyed Biology, and it was one of my top choices when I was selecting a major. I would have taken Bio in college but I managed to knock out my science requirement by using the credit I got in high school for passing the AP Biology exam. Which means I'm at least sort of good at it. I think the human body is fascinating, and I have a lot of admiration for scientists pioneering in genetics research. It would also be a great combination with my Info Systems major, because the IT Health Care field is really new and I find it so interesting and something I would love to work in. Being familiar with the body and common medical/chemistry lingo would be a major asset should I end up working in that field. The minor is 6-8 classes (but the catalog is really confusing, so it's hard to tell). But that still makes it a possible minor to have.
3. Art with an emphasis in Graphic Design- I am really interested in graphic design, but this school doesn't offer a minor in in. I looked into it further and found that I could just get an art minor and take most of my classes in the graphic design field to make it sort of the same thing. I love working with web sites and graphics, so this could be something really fun, and if I ever decide to go into a web related field, having the graphic design background could be beneficial. It is 7 classes, which is a bit much but would probably be manageable in a year's time.

So there's that. Also, I'm strongly considering studying abroad over the summer. I was practically sold on this one program to study abroad at Oxford, but then found out that I was given the wrong financial information and that particular program is ridiculously expensive. So I'm looking at other programs, mostly ones in London or Italy. It would be so much fun!

And I need somewhere to live next year. I'm really overwhelmed by thinking about all this stuff...but my midterms need to take precedence over all these other things right now.

Crash

Some people say that when you are in college, you find a lot of things out about yourself. One of the things I have found out is that I need exactly 8 hours of sleep every day to function. If I'm off by even a couple of minutes, I'll be tired for the rest of the day.

However, I've also figured out as of the end of last semester that the most effective way to get my absurdly large school projects done is to just do them all at once. Sometimes this requires as many as 20 hours of solid work! Which means that I have to pull the occasional all nighter, and my delicate balance of sleep is completely thrown off.

This happened a couple of nights ago. I had a Visual Basic project due at 4pm on Thursday, and since the project looked easy, I figured it would take a couple of hours to do, so I started it on Wednesday night (yes, that was bad planning on my behalf, but I've been pretty sick lately so I really couldn't have started it sooner). I didn't realize that the project was in fact, not in Visual Basic, but in ASP.NET (something somewhat similar) and it took me pretty much until 4am to get the project done, and that wasn't even with the layout forms I needed! I ended up skipping a class so I could sleep, and pounding energy drinks and coffee to stay awake, although completely zoned out, in my remaining classes on Thursday.

However, I've almost come to like the all-nighters. I can work on a program for a week and get a lot done, but I don't have the same feeling of satisfaction afterward. After I spend an insane amount of hours on a programming project and manage to do the whole thing right I kind of get a rush from it, like I just did something really cool even though I'm completely fried and I'm really proud of myself. It's much healthier to plan things out and not procrastinate so much, I need to work on doing that.

So today, in addition to my 8 hours of sleep, I crashed for a while and caught up on my lost sleep so I feel back to normal:)

making the switch (I think)

After some careful deliberation, I've decided to give the whole blogger.com thing a try. For some reason, I don't like staying in one blog community for more than a couple years. It could be the "fad" nature of the communities I pick (I had a xanga for a while, because everyone I used to know three years ago in high school had one, and then I came to college and nobody had one. I now have a LiveJournal, but I never really connected with that site and I just don't like the interface that much).
I also hate reading what I write. I tend to think I whine too much. I'm trying to work on that.
So these next couple of weeks are going to be my trial run. Feel free to leave plenty of comments!